On 3/11/2012 11:47 PM, meekerdb wrote:
On 3/11/2012 8:03 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 3/11/2012 7:39 PM, meekerdb wrote:
On 3/11/2012 2:43 PM, acw wrote:
On 3/11/2012 21:44, R AM wrote:
This discussion has been long and sometimes I am confused about
the whole
point of the exercise.
I think the idea is that if comp is true, then the future content of
subjective experience is indeterminated? Although comp might seem
to entail
100% determinacy, just the contrary is the case. Is that correct?
3p indeterminacy in the form of the UD*, 1p determinacy from the
perspective of those minds relative to bodies in the UD*.
However, I think that if comp is true, future experience is not only
indeterminate, but also arbitrary: our future experience could be
anything
at all. But given that this is not the case, shouldn't we conclude
that
comp is false?
You're basically presenting the "White Rabbit" problem here. I used
to wonder if that is indeed the case, but after considering it
further, it doesn't seem to be: your 1p is identified with some
particular abstract machine - that part is mostly determinate and
deterministic (or quasi-deterministic if you allow some leeway as
to what constitutes persona identity) in its behavior, but below
that substitution level, anything can change, as long as that
machine is implemented correctly/consistently. If the level is low
enough and most of the machines implementing the lower layers that
eventually implement our mind correspond to one world (such as
ours), that would imply reasonably stable experience and some
MWI-like laws of physics - not white noise experiences. That is to
say that if we don't experience white noise, statistically our
experiences will be stable - this does not mean that we won't have
really unusual "jumps" or changes in laws-of-physics or experience
when our measure is greatly reduced (such as the current
statistically winning machines no longer being able to implement
your mind - 3p death from the point of view of others).
This implies that our measure is strongly correlated with the
regularity of physics. I'm not sure you can show that, but if it's
true it means that physics is fundamental to our existence, even if
physics can be explained by the UD. Only worlds with extremely
consistent physics can support consciousness (which seems unlikely
to me).
Brent
Hi Brent,
I do not understand how you think that "only worlds with
extremely consistent physics can support consciousness" is unlikely.
Are you only considering a single momentary instance of
consciousness? It is quite easy to prove that if there exist multiple
conscious entities that can communicate coherently with each other
(in the sense that they can "understand" each other) then the physics
of their common world will necessarily be maximally consistent as it
if where not then pathological Harry Potterisms will occur that would
prevent the arbitrary extension of their experience.
I don't know what you mean by 'the arbitrary extension of their
experience'.
Hi Brent,
Oh, let's see. If we could upload ourselves into artificial
hardware then we are by definition "arbitrarily extending our
experiences"... If we go with the "reincarnation" theories we get
arbitrary extensions as well...
How would magical events prevent anything.
An Evil Wizard could pop into my vicinity and banish me to the
Nether plane! A "magical act", if real and just part of a story, is an
event that violates some conservation law. I don't see what else would
constitute magic... My point is that Harry Potterisms would introduce
cul-de-sacs that would totally screw up the statistics and measures, so
they have to be banished. Chain-wise consistency and concurrency rules
would prevent these pathologies, but to get them we have to consider
multiple and disjoint observers and not just "shared" 1p as such
implicitly assume an absolute frame of reference. Basically we need both
conservation laws and general covariance. Do we obtain that naturally
from COMP? That's an open question.
We have reports of miracles all the time from less scientific places
and times and they don't seem to prevent anything. We tend to not
believe them because they violate the physics which we suppose to be
consistent in time and place - but you can't invoke that as evidence
that physics is consistent on pain of vicious circularity.
That is my point. We do not see such violations, not ever!
Additionally, it would be extremely difficult for such worlds to have
conservation laws.
But the symmetry principles that result in conservation laws are
arguably human selections. We pay attention to and build 'laws' on
what does not depend on particular time/place/orientation; so may
conservation of momentum and energy are (at least approximately)
inevitable.
How so? It is one thing to have symbolic representations of
experiences and so forth, it is another to have explanations that must
be built for each and every situation with no possibility of symmetries
and isomorphisms that would relate them into frame independent forms.
Physics, as in what physicist study and experiment about, cannot be
considered as mere instrumentalism of the moment! So the case that
conservation laws are necessary of a "real world" seems inescapable. The
question settles into one of two possible vacua: 1) laws are imposed by
fiat from some underlying "reality" or 2) laws are the maximally
consistent relations possible for a large but finite collections of
communicating Minds. I am betting on the latter.
There is also the problem that according to current theories are many
possible kinds of physics even if you limit them to just those
consistent with string theory, much less Classical physics.
Classical physics is a long decayed corpse. Strings are already
dull and flat. Check out Nima Arkani-Hamed's latest talk :
http://streamer.perimeterinstitute.ca/mediasite/viewer/NoPopupRedirector.aspx?peid=ff8f97a4-2848-4b93-98d9-1218de2070af&shouldResize=False
But my main point was conditional. IF consciousness is strongly
dependent on physics then Bruno's program of replacing physics with
arithmetic isn't going anywhere because arithmetic will produce too
many kinds of worlds and only by studying physics will we be able to
learn about our world.
I agree and that is why I am focusing on situations that involve
multiple observers interacting with each other as a way to overcome this.
It is because of this line of reasoning that I resist the Platonic
interpretation of COMP as it puts pathological universes on the same
level of likelihood as non-pathological ones.
That's the question. Is there some canonical measure that makes the
non-pathological ones overwhelmingly likely?
I do not think so. For one reason, there are structures that simply
cannot be reduced to Unary or Boolean algebras and thus cannot be
described in terms of single or [0,1] valued functions. This tells us
that if we are to get non-pathological worlds as not only likely but
highly probable there has to exist irreducible aspects to the physical
"stuff". In classical physics we can always just use the least action
principle, but that requires infinite computations for each and every
pair of Observer moments to find the answer to the simple question: Is
there a smooth diffeomorphism between these spaces? In QFT things are
not that easy.
One thing that I have found in the last few days is that it is
impossible to define the computational operations of deleting, copying
and pasting onto/into topological manifolds unless one is willing to
give up the invariance of genus and Betti numbering. Cutting and pasting
seem to be absolutely necessary operations of computation so if physical
worlds are topologically invariant (modulo Ricci flows, etc.) then they
are cannot be used as primitives in the computational sense. This seems
to add support to Bruno's result, but does not quite meet the Platonic
expectations that he is assuming, since it also shows that we cannot
construct spaces from mere arithmetic operations, we also need some form
of infinitesimal calculus (to parametrize Ricci flows, homotopies and so
forth). We need the non-standard stuff.
Onward!
Stephen
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