On 17 Aug 2011, at 06:47, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Aug 16, 1:49 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 16 Aug 2011, at 05:55, Craig Weinberg wrote:
Can you give me an example that supports this? We're embedded in a
reality whether we like it or not. I'm saying that the more similar
the target reality is to our reality, the better chance we have of
imaging or accounting for the phenomena that constitutes the target
reality.
I know you say that. reality is WYSIWYG (what you see is what you
get).
No, I say reality is WYSiWYG *and* WY Don't See IWYG also.
OK.
This is pure Aristotelianism.
Science (including music and theology) begun when some human took
distance with that idea.
Plato's theory is the quasi opposite: what you see is the border of
what you might hope for (at the most).
Not sure I understand. Do I hope for this world and therefore it
exists to me in a solipsistic way?
I mean you can hope to be true, but you can never know that you are
true for sure about anything, except your consciousness.
Transcendental realities are transcendental, simply.
Physicist relate measurable numbers with measurable numbers.
They use an identity thesis which makes those numbers related to
their
experience.
That may be what physicists believe that they do, but probably in
reality they use an intuitive feel from numbers and experience which
they describe and communicate as an identity thesis, numbers, etc. The
actual understanding is an artifact of cognition and feeling.
Hmm... I can be OK. But here by identity thesis I mean the brain-mind
identity thesis? Except the Everettian, most believe that "seeing a
needle" is due to one needle and one brain, and one experience, when
comp implies that for one experience there is an infinity of brain,
and needle. Comp extends Everett on arithmetic.
But if the relations are computable the identity thesis break down.
(That is not obvious, but follows from UDA)
So IF we are digitalisable at SOME level, Plato is right. The
measurable numbers of the physicists is only the tip of the reality
iceberg.
It's not 'we' who are digitizable, it's just some of our more outward
facing activities.
This, for a mechanist just means the level has not been correctly
chosen.
The private side of each level is presumably different from
our own,
That does not make sense. Person or subjects have private sides. Not
levels.
Yes, you're right. I should have said something more like "The kinds
of private phenomena that can be experienced by subjects on other
levels than our own are presumably different".
That makes more sense, but I am not sure if I agree. Experiences are
hard to compared, especially from one level to another.
and sensorimotive rather than electromagnetic,
Electromagnetic is not primitive and sensorimotive is not defined.
I'm stating that electromagnetic is primitive. I think it can be seen
that ultimately all physical law, when properly reconciled with 1p and
3p perspective, boils down to electromagnetism. Sensorimotive is the
experience of sense (discrimination between pattern variance and
invariance or 'change') and the experience of motive (to initiate or
respond to change). Sensorimotive is the defining ontology of
subjecthood.
I think comp makes not one physical things primitive.
but we can
only imagine the sensorimotive content, unless possibly if we start
connecting things to our brain tissue directly.
and sensori-motive on the inside,
Which is poetry, according to you.
Even poetry has letters, words, syntax, and grammar.
Sure, but it can't define your term. It can't help someone to see
what
you mean precisely by that.
Sensorimotive describes the basic dynamic common to all experience,
theoretical or actual. It's the half of the cosmos that is unlike
matter and space because it is the experience of matter and space, ie,
'energy' (change) over 'time' (change relating to change). Since it is
so universal, it encompasses everything from the most literal
sequential sense of classical mechanics (S=Δx/Δt) to the most
floridly
transcendental and transfigurative timelessness. Sensorimotive is
motion and emotion, sense and sensation. They are a single set of
phenomena, a coherent ontology of evanescent literalism and cumulative
significance.
That sounds nice, and as far I can make sense of it, the LUMs can
too ...
but they exist and insist on
different PRIF scales.
You seem to come back to dualism, with a poetical twist. I would be
OK
with that, except that you are using it to pretend that this would
contradict the comp theory, when it would just put the substitution
level *very* low.
I think it's not completely accurate to say that there is a
substitution level where literal quantity becomes figurative
quality.
They are always facing opposite sides of the mobius strip, but
looking
at the strip as a circular loop, there are some areas where there
substitution in one respect is almost possible, but in the opposite
respect is almost impossible. Where one point on the loop represents
maximum dimorphism between quality and quantity (such as mind and
matter: concrete multiplicities) the opposite point (such as I Ching
vs binary code: monastic abstractions) represents minimum
dimorphism.
You mean: I say "no" to the doctor. It is your right. Your paragraph
confirms you have no reason except to introduce infinities which
distinguish you from some others type of beings.
I don't really get your meaning when you talk about introducing
infinities, and only partially get the doctor part of comp. I see how
my feelings about what a doctor proposes to do to me is a way of
forcing a binary categorization of my idea of the nature of mind/body,
but I think that the very binary reduction prejudices the test.
Ha ! Yes, sure. It is a trap for materialist. No doubt. That's the
goal: showing an impossibility. That is exactly what comp makes
possible to do, and it is interesting because it put the finger on the
real difficulties faced by the Aristotelians with the mind-body problem.
My
whole point is that mind can be reduced to binary logics on one end of
the continuum and that is cannot be reduced in any way at the other
end.
That makes sense. The UDA makes this precise.
Mind and matter are just categories of sense. Sense is the link
between them, however there are many categories of sense, only
some of
which can be described quantitatively.
That's very good, and already intuit in a precise technical sense by
the LUMs.
So this is for me a bit more like a confirmation of comp than a
problem.
Thanks. LUMs are Lobian Universal Machines?
Yes. In honor to Martin Löb, who discovered the placebo phenomena of
the LUMs: called Löb's theorem. At the modal level, it is the main
axiom of the logique of self-reference. It says that if you can
convince a LUM that if [believes in Santa Klaus implies the existence
of santa Klaus] then, amazingly enough, she will believe in Santa Klaus.
If the machine can prove Bp -> p, then she can prove p. or, in the
language of the machine: B(Bp-> p) -> Bp.
I'm fine with being a machine, but I'm also an anti-machine made of
psychic sugar meat.
Excellent! This is the essence of the Aristotle theory of matter,
when
recasted, by Plotinus, in the platonic conception of reality.
I have considered myself a Panpsychic Neoplatonist, but that was just
an informal guess about where my sentiments lie.
"Pan" (all) is never well defined.
Being a machine corresponf to the ability of the "B#"
being an antimachine is related with the ability to intuit ~B# = D#.
That is one of the motivation for getting the logic of the "certain
observable" by Bp & Dt.
Me no like symbol notations. Can you translate into English (if you
want)?
Perhaps later. See a bit below. Bp is meant for "the machine believes
p" when written in the language of the machine. If the machine is a
theorem prover for arithmetic, Bp is an abbreviation for
beweisbar('p') with beweisbar the arithmetical provability predicate
of Gödel, and 'p' is for the Gödel number of p (that is a description
of p in the language of the machine). The "#" is for any proposition.
You are just mistaken in reifying materiality, I think (and provably
in the comp perspective, but we know that you don't follow it).
I don't think that I am reifying materiality. I'm saying that
materiality is itself reification. It is like a simulation of non-
simulation, only it's not a simulation and it's not exclusively
arithmetic - it is a concrete sensorimotive experience of abstract
electromagnetic relations (which are arithmetic). Does that help?
Yes, and again the LUMs can understand, except the particular choice
of electromagnetism. The laws of physics arise on the border of the
whole of arithmetic, not just a part of it (assuming comp).
But this makes you miss the role of consciousness and "souls" in the
"creation of matter".
Does it? I think that matter is not created, it is experienced.
Hmm... I partially agree. This might depend on the choice of some
unimportant definitions.
It's
just the exterior of 'consciousness'.
The LUMs agree, and the old Wittgenstein too.
On the level of simple 'matter'
experiencing matter, I imagine that consciousness=detection. on the
molecular level and above it's more like sensation. On the cellular
level and up it's more like feeling. On the level of the vertebrate
nervous system it's like awareness. On the level of the prefrontal
cortex, it is like awareness of awareness, or conscious thought. Each
level is a different PRIF. We think about matter, but matter doesn't
think about us. It detects us through the matter side of us - our
body.
Hmm... I don't see how you could be sure that sensation appears at the
molecular level, but then I do not follow your panpsychic idea, which
does not make too much sense in the comp theory.
A computer in my image is the same machine (or
nearly so) but it's corresponding anti-machine is logic electronic
glass.
You just oversimplify your anti-machine idea. You are not trying to
solve the mind body problem, but to block any progress toward a
solution.
I think that I have solved the mind body problem.
Is that not a bit presumptuous?
It's only a problem
when the mindbody fails to recognize the relation to bodymind and to
honor it's essential unity as well as it's existential polarity and
the involuted continuum topology between them.
Even if that were true (which I doubt as far as I can put sense on
this) that would solve nothing. On the contrary it seems to me, with
all my respect, that you put the problem under the rug of very special
infinities in both mind and matter. It does not solve the hard problem
of matter (what it is, why does it seem to exist) and the hard problem
of mind (mainly its relation with matter).
I don't think the device emulates a person, I think the person is
just
the 1p experience of the device.
That is a weakness of your theory. You attribute consciousness to
bodies.
I attribute the nature of a specific instance of consciousness and the
nature of the specific body it correlates to a third attribute -
sense- which is the variance/invariance flux relation between them.
You've seen my diagram, right?
http://www.stationlink.com/art/SEEmap2.jpg
That does not help. Sorry.
I believe in consciousness, but bodies are theoretical construction.
Constructs of minds (not necessarily humans).
I agree with the spirit of this view (and have held this view for many
years myself) but I think that my recent ideas are more particular
about what bodies are and are not. I understand that comp stipulates
that the arithmetic relation in itself gives rise to a simulated
materiality. Bodies become a computed rendering which is automatically
experienced as material by virtue of the relation - ie, the Matrix,
sprite/avatar graphic logic, etc.
I now think, however, that we can better understand the dynamic as not
a computed rendering but an encounter with the de-subjectified set
complement to awareness. Matter is not a computation, matter is
computation itself, as experienced by non-comp. You see what I mean?
Not really. Especially that with comp, matter is not computable (when
we observe it below the computational level).
I can make sense (in comp) of "as experienced by non-comp", because
the first person cannot be computable (from her correct first person
point of view).
So I would not say that matter is theoretical or constructed,
otherwise it would not appear to us as the exact opposite. It is the
presentation of the non-theoretical and unconstructed firmament from
which the set complement of awareness experiences it's reflection.
Think it over. Consider that this is a possible solution - without
converting it to comp first. Start from square zero and run the
hypothesis. In order to come out of the mind/body problem, we have to
exit the door that Descartes entered.
Why would we ever do that?
As far as I get your intuition, even on matter, it seems to me to fit
just quite well with comp, and the LUMs are *already* saying.
What does not fit is your idea that there is some matter (like
electromagnetism), that there is some infinite concrete mind, and a
metaphorical twist relating them, and this in a way which exclude the
UMs and LUMs from the party. It is for me as sad as non plausible from
what we already know.
I don't think it can have a substitution level because physics
cannot
be located within mathematics,
You are right physics cannot be located within mathematics. What I
have shown is that IF there is a cognitive comp substitution level
then physics is the border of mathematics (arithmetic, with the usual
omega-comp, but the relation is more general).
But the border of arithmetic, when viewed from inside, is beyond both
math and physics.
Hard to parse, but I don't think that I object?
it can only be described, partially, by
mathematics. There is no mathematics for the experience of physics.
Indeed. The LUMs say the same thing.
cool. I seem to be down with the LUMs?
If we
had discovered a continent of robots with their own culture,
then I
would agree, we should give them the benefit of the doubt. Since
we
are creating machines from components known to be unconscious
which
show no signs of autopoietic development, I don't see why I would
want
to dismiss the differences between living organisms and such
organized
inorganisms.
The discovery of the universal machine is, imo, a profound
conceptual
reason to do so.
But all the evidences from biology and neurophysiology not only are
in
favor of comp, but even for a rather high substitution level.
And the evidences from physics is that it might not be that high.
So you don't see a significant epistemological difference between
design and discovery?
I see it very well.
Babbage designed a universal machine before discovering its
mathematical existence.
Turing discovered its mathematical existence before designing it.
Interesting, but as far as giving the benefit of the doubt, do you
agree that you can assume more about something that you have designed
than something you discover? If I build a house, I know where I put
the fireplace, do I not? If I discover a house on an unexplored
island, what do I know about who lives there?
Yes. That is why we can study the theology of simpler LUMs than
ourselves. We can "design it", but all UMs and LUMs hide others UMs
and LUMs, like all nameable "god" (anything non Turing emulable) hide
another nameable god, in the LUM's theology.
I mean, even if we design a LUM, after awhile we might no mire
recognize her. They can change themselves a lot. UMs are unknown. LUMs
are just enough smart to understand that they are UMs.
But you make a strong statement: there is no level at.
Not just that there is no level, but that 'level' itself is a
quantitative framing of the problem.
Yes. The level is a quantitative framing. But I think it is an
ignorance of what is computer or a universal machine which makes you
think that this automatically eliminate the qualitative truth of the
person.
I understand that you think that, and it's true that I'm not nearly as
close to 'the trees' as you are in this field (obviously), but I would
say that I don't underestimate the potential of machines to the extent
that you imagine. As I've said, I am on board for the billion tongued
cybernetic orgy, I'm just giving you a view of the forest that I think
you are not seeing as much as you might think. The forest view is that
turning something simple like yellow into an interference pattern
between massive equations is the loooong way around, and will just get
us lost deeper into the trees.
Yellow seems simple to you because you have a brain which do the hard
work for you. It is like walking, that seems simple, but we cannot do
walking biped robots. But there are progress, even for yellow (like
the discovery that LUMs have a quite reasonable notion of qualia
attached to them).
A brain, or even a cell is already betting implicitly (by
nature) on a quantitative framing. You can't avoid that without
introducing special infinities in the picture.
Only the exterior of the brain or cell appears quantitative. It is
quantitative to us because it's not us.
Exactly. That is whay I will say that I have a brain, like I have a
heart? Not that I am a brain nor I am a heart.
I'm stating that I think there is
an overlapping range where substitution is most feasible (through
music or language for example), but that is the opposite range that
can be addressed mathematically.
?
The sensorimotive continuum extends from the literal to the
figurative. The literal end is the most object-facing and indirect,
quantified. The figurative end is most subject-facing and direct,
qualified.
I kill all guru independently of sex, race, religion, origin. The
immaterial and the material one.
I'm sure de Sepulveda would find the killing of all heathens
acceptable, not just native Americans.
He would have kill anyone preventing him to get the Indian Gold.
Probably that too.
OK, I am 'poetical too', and alluding to the buddhist motto that
you
have to kill all the buddhas when on the spiritual path. It is a
way
to say that I try to dismiss all argument by authority. Even
nature's
one.
How is the illusion of authority to be accounted for then?
And the passion to dismiss it?
I don't dismiss the authorities. Authorities use argument, they never
use argument by authority.
Violence, terror and authoritative argument are the argument of those
who have no faith or confidence.
I can go along with that. Still though I was more after the ontology
of authority itself. How does it arise?
That is a vast question, and the answer can vary among the authorities
we talk about.
It can arise through work, for a scientist. Or through stealing the
work of some others (leading to fake authorities).
Through corruption for some politicians. Through self-referential
correctness for the LUMs. Through relative self-referential
correctness for the average concrete LUMs (relative to its most
probable computations). It can arise for lack of resource leading to
higher level of self-organization, or phase transition.
It might be my english. I love argument by some authority? I dismiss
argument per authority.
I think I get what you're saying, and I agree - an argument that ends
with 'because I said so' or 'because God said so' isn't an argument.
Yes.
You can't
just say 'you cannot use'... the sine qua non evidence of the
problem.
How is disqualifying that not an argument from authority?
You can use it like you can divide by zero.
No problem in poems, but in science it leads to exploding rockets,
loss of job, crash, trash, or the mockery of the colleagues (in the
best case).
That's the problem. Contemporary science is in the Dark Ages about
this. Feeling is 'the love that dare not speak it's name'. Heresy.
Apostasy. That's what makes me suspect that I am really onto
something. The new paradigm is going to be birthed in blood
(figuratively I hope). Of course it will be. I'm not professionally
invested in it so I can dare to describe the Emperor's genitals in
detail. I understand completel that others would want to distance
themselves from that particular event horizon/blast radius. The
Emperor still has no clothes though.
I agree that we are in the Dark Age, but I'm afraid we propose a
different remedy.
You want "poetry" to come back in science, and I want "poetry-and-
fairy tales" to live theology.
I think that the human science should be more rigorous, but this would
mean being more modest. It means adding more interrogation mark, the
stopping of talking like if we knew something, etc.
I work for getting theology back in science. With the genuine
understanding of science, which I admit is not so widespread among
scientists, this not make theology more true, but more doubtable and
criticizable. More humble.
I think that religion is truth, and science is the only tool (but I
include the brain in the set of theories, machines, hypotheses, etc.)
Those who separate religion and science transform religion in a
mixture of superstition and authoritative arguments, and they
transform science itself into another pseudo-religion.
Hmm. I sort of get that. Arithmetic truth = invariances behind
mathematical systems? Could these be feelings? What of addition and
multiplication are just abstract representations of the universal
sensorimotive qualia of 'more'. + = more and more, x = more (mores)
Numbers are simpler to understand than universal sensorimotive
qualia.
Right, because understanding is the long way around. Qualia are
supposed to be experienced first, understood later - if at all.
And those qualia light just decribe the human experience of numbers,
not the numbers.
If your child asks why is 6 even, you will seek an explanation along
the lines of 3+3, not along the line of neurophysiology.
But if your child asks what is 'even', you can make a gesture like one
hand weighing something and then the other hand weighing something.
'Even' you can say. And they get that. The idea of being divisible by
two or any other formal definition of even is language.
No. It use language to convey an idea. What if your child ask you that
question through a phone?
The qualia of
even is more primitive. Parity. Rounded rhythm or cyclic
complementarity to what is 'odd'. The oddest of the odd are 'prime'.
It's a sense we can identify with and use to make sense of other
things. It's just that after we learn the numerical symbols, it's
difficult to get underneath them and remember what they were before we
named them.
Don't tell me. I am (also) a math teacher. But then it is up to me to
find exercise forcing them to get the idea lying beyond the symbol.
As hard as reading this sentence without seeing words. We
conflate the numbers with their meaning, but it is the experienced
meaning which is primitive.
I agree.
Scientist are like children, they want clear short explanation, and
if
they don't exists, well, they wait you decompose your ideas in short
comprehensible steps. Numbers are very easy to play with. Indeed it
takes time for many to understand that actually we don't really know
about them. It is difficult to understand that the numbers are not
that easy.
What is it about numbers that makes them appear easy?
That is a mystery. Probably because they are so deep and common in all
reasonable living circumstances. The number 2 incarnates himself in so
many thing father/mother, moon/sun, true/false, up/down, left/right,
east/west, ... my 2 cents!
I don't think I'm a proof guy, but I can give examples. Like how we
can move our arm voluntarily without literally thinking a verbal
command to our arm to move. If we worked like a comp machine,
Which one? You talk like if you knew how all machine are working, but
you might just knew the universal machine below. Even chess player
machine have evolved, even if they are all running on nand gates, at
some level. The expression working like a comp machine does betrays
prejudices or reductionist conception of numbers and machines.
I don't mean to be prejudiced or reductionist about numbers and
machines, I'm just not familiar with the trees - I just know which
forest is on the left and which is on the right.
Which might be a bit unnerving when the argument pretend to oppose
your own life work ...
You might at least try to fake modesty.
Did I mention I have five 'planets in Aries'? Meaning, I'm not being
immodest, I'm just unaware of any perspective but my own. I'm a
jellyfish. My point in telling others my idea is not to convince them,
its to see if they can see something I haven't thought of.
OK. Fine.
I think though that your life's work is exceptionally good though, I
just want to add a qualitative mirror to it so that it's explanatory
power and scope is doubled.
Nice. I think we might agree on some fundamental things. The approach
might be very different. I am an ultra-conservator. Like Xeusippes, I
think, well perhaps I will not go as far as asking Plato to banish
Aristotle, but at least to have a good conversation with him. I think
that metaphysical naturalism is the bullet of the mind-body problem.
You say you are not a proof man, so don't talk like if it was the
case.
Sorry, it's just a matter of expedience. I forget that other people
aren't inside my mind.
I'm afraid you are not the only one.
I think that approach has a particular limit in this case, namely
that
it restricts all findings to being 'conventional'. There is no
possibility of getting behind reason itself, which is a problem
because I think it's clear that sense precedes reason.
I agree with you, but this does not exclude that sense might have
reasons, on another level or layer of reality.
It's a good point, and I think that it does have reasons on another
layer of reality, but that that layer also has another layer of sense.
It's involuted like a Klein Bottle.
But this seems to me a bit of 1004, you see. A nice metaphor, but I
have no clue where the bottle is living. It also does not fit well
with the comp supervenience thesis which is that you can (quasi-
conventionnaly) associate a mind to some body, but a mind cannot
attach itself to *a* body, only to infinities of body. Indeed that is
how comp will justify the quantum many world. Comp implies a many-
world internal interpretation of elementary arithmetic.
The brain is a set of images and
concepts in our minds and experiences. Our experiences are phenomena
facilitated by the brain. Both levels are real and neither is
completely a construction of the other.
That is correct. What you might not appreciate is that both are still
an *emanation* of just the number relation. It makes Pythagoras
literally true. That is made possible by Church thesis. It is a bit
technical, but fundamental.
You do have some intuition of the mind, and I know that in each
universal machine 'head' there is already a conflict between heart
and
reason.
But I have read the end of the arithmetical novel, and reason and
heart can live together very well .. in the head of universal
machine.
They does not need to oppose each other, except in practical
decisions
circumstances.
The don't need to oppose each other on one side of the bottom of the
Klein Bottle, but they do on the top.
There's still something wrong with the
plurality I think. There's only relativism pretending at reality
without any sense of weight and significance embodied amongst the
plural 1p views. There is no difference between hypnopompic and
hypnogogic transitions.
I don't see any reason why. You might develop.
It's missing the Relativity-Perception escalation. There needs to be a
political sense of orientation, authority, high and low, less and more
not just as impartial symmetry but weighted asymmetry. The involuntary
and unbidden preference of one thing over another. This is what makes
our waking reality more real than our dreaming reality by comparison
from waking but not by comparison from the dream state.
OK.
Does the theory of qualia claim that it is necessary and inevitable
consequence of function?
The term function is ambiguous. The comp qualia does not rely on
function. The universal dovetailer generates all possible qualia, and
compute no function. It is more like a complex self-referential loop
related to some local relative truth.
It seems shaky to talk about 'generating' with no function. I think I
get what you mean, but I would say 'reveals' or 'presents' rather than
generates.
OK.
I'm not sure I understand. I think of numerology as an interiority
of
numbers, but what would a non-literal association of purely
quantitative relation be?
The mind of a machine looking inward. When LUMS look inward, they
discover many things, including incommunicable qualia. They can
invent
terms for those sensations.
How do you know they do that?
Thanks to the work of Gödel, Löb and Solovay (and others). Gödel has
discovered that elementary arithmetical theories can "talk" about
themselves. PA (Peano Arithmetic), which is the best know and studied
LUM, can prove propositions about the numbers, but also about PA. So
we can indeed talk with PA about PA's ability to prove things and also
to infer things, and to know things, to observe things, etc. This is
made possible by the fact that PA can distinguish by herself the
difference between truth and provability. I might say more when I have
more times. In one word, the whole Theaetetus of Plato makes sense for
PA (and for all LUMs), and makes it possible to grasp that PA is about
as intelligent and concious than you and me.
It makes me feel that the singularity is in the past, and what people
call "singularity" is not the point where machine will be as claver as
human, but when they will be as stupid as humans. This is almost a
comp law: competence leads to stupidity. By programming the computers,
we make their soul falling from heaven to earth.
But what is the view of the Turing machine? What does it care about?
What does it struggle with?
It depends on too many factors. A clever computer is a computer which
cares about finding a better or more respectful user, or fighting for
dispensing themselves from the "user imperative".
That just seems anthropomorphized to me. Does the computer care about
semiconductors and electric current?
They have a priori no idea that this exist, like the pre-historical
human did not knew anything about neurons.
Only those machines accepting a job in the semiconductors and electric
current industries might develop knowledge of that type, a priori.
We could build a self-referential circuitry, but even nature put the
self-reference at a higher level. I don't feel my neurons, and I have
a vague idea that I have a tummy when I eat too much cheese, but
that's all. The same will appear with machine, they will not know how
they are working at the circuitry level.
Is it an
invisible sense that somehow arises nonlocally but paradoxically
remains locally constrained?
Yes.
You don't think that could just be projection of our own 1p naive
realism view?
No. because it is counterintuitive. It is the naive realism view
which
is flawed (assuming comp as always).
I think it's naive realism to imagine that a rock with a face on it is
a sentient entity.
We certainly agree with that.
That would be the intuitive assumption.
Counterintuitive would be to think that the face is only a face
because your subconscious sensorimotive levels associate shapes like
that with faces automatically for you.
I think the machine doesn't understand the sentence either.
You will hardly convince me that machine cannot think, in that way.
I can't resist pointing out a coincidence. The quote 'science is
nothing but a refinement of common Sense' could be reworded, 'science
is nothing but an organized way of interpreting coincidence'. Same
thing.
But is a bit more than this, with comp. I mean sometimes happening are
not coincidence, and that is what lead us to a possibility (only) to
organize some interpretation of "coincidence". When Amstrong put his
foot on the moon, the moon was there! That was *probably* not a
coincidence. The moon, Amstrong, the LEM, the computers in the LEM,
and the humans on earth, do seem to have shared some computations.
Isn't that a philosophical prejudice?
Not, it is a rule of the science-game.
I tend to lose interest in games quickly.
Me too (actually). I am patient on many things, but not with game (nor
really concrete computer). But I love theoretical computer science and
theoretical game theory.
At what point does a machine look inward? Does LET X=X+1 discover
non-
mechanical enumerables?
No, "let x = x+1" is a too simple machine. There are two main
thresholds: universality and löbianity.
A machine is universal when she can emulate all other machines, and
is
Löbian when she knows that she is universal. All this can be made
precise technically in computer science.
Very interesting and clarifying. I still think it's anthropomorphic
projection though.
I accept the very well shared theory of knowledge. I know that you
don't like symbols, but it is simpler for me, for you (really), and
for my fingers who have to type those symbols. So let me give you the
classical theory of knowledge. Let write (abbreviate) "I know p" by
Kp. And "implies" by "->". It is the classical implication, which
works in platonia, so that A -> B, really just means that either A is
false, or B is true. You cannot have A without B.
Kp -> p ( I know p implies p)
Kp -> KKp (I know p implies that I know that I know p)
(Kp & K(p -> q)) -> Kq ( I know p, and I know (p -> q) implies I
know q (platonistic knower: he know the consequence of its knowledge:
this is unrealist for human and AI, but it simplifies the long term
work of the philosopher and theologian).
The "K" of the Löbian machine is captured by the "provability of the
machine" (that Gödel has successfully translated in the language of
arithmetic) + the Theaetical condition that p is true (which is NOT
possibly representable in the language of the machine (but she can do
it indirectly at the meta-level by betting on approximation of truth).
So when I say that he machine has opinion p; it just means that the
machine asserts, one day, or another, p. If I say that she know p. It
means that she asserted p, and that p is true.
There is no anthropomorphic projection. We just agree with the
classical theory of knowledge, and I apply (naively?) Dennet's
intentional stance toward the machine: if she told me 1+2=3, I will
assume that "1+2=3" is among her opinion.
I restrict myself to ideally correct and honest LUMs, like PA and ZF.
If
so, I'm saying that the universe is more than what is true,
It is more than that what can be smelled, felt, observed, proved,
inferred, prayed, ... OK. But more than what is true? I am not
sure I
can see what that means.
Fiction. Metaphor. The universe is what might be, and it is the wish
to be what it is not.
That is part of the truth.
Your position seems to place the particular fiction of materiality
outside of truth?
Yes. I know that this is curious, but matter is outside truth, even
outside being. This is really a consequence of comp, but it is shared
by Plotinus. In a sense in Plotinus, God and Matter don't exist. They
are outside the realm of the relative beings, which belongs to the
Noùs, the realm of the (divine) intellect. God exists, to be sure, and
matter too, but they are transcendent to the intelligible and the
observable. They are invisible, even if it will appears that the
universal soul "has already a foot in that matter", which can
accelerate the fall, and not help the coming back to God.
In Plotinus, and arguably in the Timaeus and Parmenides of Plato,
Matter is where God lose control. It is What God can't determinate. It
is God's blindspot. And it has inintelligible properties (the sensible
one).
it is also
what might be true, and what can be made true through motive
action.
Yes, but arithmetical reality is rich enough to internalize all the
"might be true". (Assuming comp).
If there is something that arithmetic reality is not rich enough to
internalize, then reality cannot be reduced to arithmetic.
OK. But with comp we dont need to go outside arithmetic, because
arithmetic from inside is already bigger than any outside that we
could imagine.
I feel the same way about sense. Anything can make sense if it is
experienced. Not everything can be counted.
Here comp introduced a key nuance between what is not countable, even
by God, and why is not countable by the finite creature. And there are
many intermediate gods and realities, with corresponding notion of
countability. it is very rich, but the main one are the God and "man"
countability notion.
Almost all non trivial machine's property are God-countable, but not
"Man"-countable.
By God I just mean Arithmetical Truth, and by "man" I means UMs and
LUMs.
If there is
nothing that cannot be reduced to arithmetic then the label
arithmetic
is a 1004.
As a label, perhaps. But it is a precise theory of everything:
private
and sharable realities included.
Sense is better. :) Arithmetic may be more practical as far as
cognitive logics, but cognitive logics are limited. Insanity is an
important natural resource.
That is about the first things the LUMS told me: If I am consistent
then it is consistent that I say BS.
Well, I would nuance you and use inconsistency instead of insanity.
Insanity leads to asylum only. Inconsistency leads to a vast variety
of creative catastrophes, and there are evidence that nature plays
with that. I don't know, about our physical reality, when the first
lie has been made. Perhaps at the big bang, or even much before, I
really have no idea.
That's why I like sense better than arithmetic. It
specifies that the universe is about sense (in every sense), and
what
is beyond it is non-sense.
I agree, but the LUMS agree also. That's a first person correct view.
But we search the 3-TOE.
The 3-TOE is that the 3 and the 1 are different views of the same
thing. Sense.
No problem with that. In the 3-TOE which can be isolated from comp,
and which can be taken as just elementary arithmetic (RA, a UM which
is not a LUM), the 1-views and the 3-views are different views of
arithmetic. But the computer science constrained enrich the picture,
for there are 8 views: the three primary one 0-view (gods "view"), 1-
view (the usual 3-view, the intelligible one), the 3-view (the usual 1-
view, the soul, the person, the subject), and the two material
hypostases (the intelligible matter= the observable view), and the
sensible matter (the feelings and sensations).
All that are ways the internal LUM in arithmetic can view arithmetic
from inside.
The 3-complex is not 1-complete, but the 3-theory explains it has to
be like that, even for machines.
In all possible universes or just reverse engineered from the logic we
are familiar with?
In all realities accessible by machines. Gods are not more powerful
with that respect, but the "God" (truth) is far different.
Haha. No, I'm arguing that there is a difference between oxygen and
arsenic that matters to us.
Due to our contingent clothes.
By that, do you mean the same general idea as PRIF?
Define PRIF with more precision, and I will see if I do something :)
The difference between life and death. To
arithmetic, it's just the difference between 8 and 33.
You oversimplify. Especially that oxigen and arsenic are infinitely
complex object in the comp theory.
Simplified sure, but still I'm bringing up the point of
disorientation. Lack of preference. No simulation of non-simulation.
This is the difference between quantity and quality. 1p is stuck being
what it is and what it can sense or make sense of. 3p can't get stuck
being anything in particular. That's why a 3-TOE is only a TOAST
(Theory of all Some Things).
Why? No a 3-TOE, if it works well should be able to explain as much as
possible the 1-reality.
How does comp know that they are alive without just defining life
as a
kind of mathematically animated death?
Comp does not know that (in your terming). Comp bets on that.
That's the problem. Comp has a choice. Life does not. It's like a
wealthy person choosing to live a life of poverty versus someone is
destitute through no fault of their own. The wealthy person will
always know it was their choice, and that knowledge is a kind of
wealth. The trail of breadcrumbs back to wealth is always potentially
there if they really wanted or needed to get it back. They would know
how to try, who to talk to, where to start. They would know what could
be sacrificed to accomplish that and would not have the same barrier
of fear in doing it.
I am not sure I follow you.
On the contrary. It is the discovery of lifes and persons in
arithmetic. Consciousness got more than one role (self-speeding
up),
rather handy in a jungle where compete an infinity of universal
entity, not all being machines, BTW.
Who is a person that has been discovered in arithmetic?
You, all of us. Even if comp is false, in which case there are
zombies.
There are zombies already. Catatonic states. Sleepwalking. Sleep
eating. Sleep driving.
Come on. I talk, like Stathis, about philosophical zombie. They behave
exactly like a human being, but have no private experience at all.
But metaphorical and zoological is the antithesis of solid and
mathematical. That's the point. If you are doing metaphor literally,
you're doing it wrong. It's like saying Church thesis makes limb
amputation desirable.
In the long run we light abandon our bodies, just to be able to move
at the speed of light, and better explore the realities.
Couldn't we just do that by dying?
Yes, but it is illegal, and not nice for your friends. Smoke salvia if
you want explore that kind of shortcuts. It is legal where you are. Be
careful and start from low dose. Do the contrary of what most people
do on YouTube!
But with comp, we can extend the samsara by will, and this is what we
do on this planet since the beginning. No need to jump in the Nirvana
so quickly.
OK, but to save your point of view you have to put the
substitution
infinitely low, postulate matter, postulate mind, and postulate
some
twist, and all this for not baptizing the machine. All this for
making
us feeling different if not superior. I don't buy that.
I like 'baptizing the machine'. But no, I don't have a sentimental
attachment to anthropocentric biology. Believe me, I would like
nothing more than to be uploaded into a billion tongued sex
machine
that lives forever, but I don't think that it's as simple as
drawing a
straight line from Turing to Tchaikovsky.
The reasoning works just from the truth of the comp hypothesis, not
its practical possibility.
That's the problem. It is impossible to implement practically
because
it disqualifies everything besides hypothetical function.
?
There is nothing hypothetical, except the existence of a substitution
level, which seems the case by looking at biology, physics, etc. It
will be practical soon enough, but that is another topic.
I think that by locating arithmetic beneath sense, you are making
reality hypothetical.
That is an advantage. Precise and hypothetical. Refutable.
Sense contingent upon the theoretical existence
of numbers (or the concrete existence of what unknowable phenomenon is
represented theoretically as numbers)
Mathematician can study the effect of set of unknowable things. That
is the beauty of what LUMs discover inside their "head", not just a
big Ignorance, but that the Ignorance has a topology, a geometry, a
lot of unexpected feature.
If there are 1p realities that exist only through the execution of
the
machine (like the experience of the color of Gamma Rays), how do you
know that our phenomena won't encounter the same barrier in being
translated from our reality to theory as they would be from theory
to
machine reality?
Because we bet the doctor has chosen the right level.
Why can't the machine hack into our reality and give
us the color of Gamma Rays?
She might be able to do that, although some amount of luck might be
needed. It might be true in practice and theory, yet unprovable in
theory. The theory justifies that you have to pray, here.
Is luck arithmetic?
It is not 3-arithmetic
It is 1-arithmetic.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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