On 13 Jul 2012, at 11:55, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 7/13/2012 3:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 12 Jul 2012, at 21:53, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 7/12/2012 5:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 12 Jul 2012, at 02:39, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 7/11/2012 4:30 PM, meekerdb wrote:
On 7/11/2012 7:32 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:
In your work you seem to posit that numbers have minds
(thus they can dream) and that their ideas are passive and yet
can reproduce all phenomena that would be explained as being
the result of physical acts in materialism. You argue that
this reduces all phenomena to passive hypostatization, but I
argue that this is a fallacy of misplaced concreteness as per
the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, since you have severed
all ties to physical implementation. Please understand that it
seems that the only place where there is disagreement between
you and I is on the postulation of primacy. I am arguing that
neither matter (atoms) nor ideas (numbers) can be taken as
primitives as they are devoid of causal efficacy.
But you are assuming that is some fact-of-the-matter as to
where 'concreteness' is placed. I think this is a mistake (a
theological mistake). The scientific attitude is to
hypothesize whatever you want as the basic ontology and to see
if the resulting model is consistent and predictive of the
epistemological (subjective) facts. So you may take tables and
chair as basic objects interacting through gravity,
electromagnetic, and contact forces - this is the model of
Newtonian physics. It obviously leaves out a lot and
ultimately was found to be applicable only in a limited domain
of its own ontology. You may start with atoms of conscious
thoughts (aka observer moments) and try to recover the
intersubjective world from that. And there is no proof known
that would prohibit these different bases from making
overlapping or even identical predictions. There may be no
*unique* basis.
Brent
--
If QM is correct then there is no *unique* basis! This is
the "basis problem" of MWI rit large!
It seems to me that Everett shows convincingly that the "MW" does
not depend on the basis, even if the partitioning of the
mutliverse depends locally on the base used in some measurement.
Then, once brain appears, they will defined some local relative
base, but this does not change the universal wave, which will
give the same observation for all possible observers, whatever
base is used for the universal wave. There is no unique base, but
physics, globally, does not depend on the choice of that base. A
base choice is really like the choice of a map. Locally the base
are defined by what we decide to measure, but of course "nature"
has made the choice for us, and Brent mentions paper explaining
how such fact is possible, and why the position base can be
justified for measurement by entities of our type. The point is
that such a justification can be made *in* any base chosen.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Hi Bruno,
Umm, you are considering a different aspect of MWI and yet I
think we agree here, as what you are pointing out is not a
contradiction. The paper that Brent mentioned is quite good and I
am taking into account there. The point that I am trying to make
is that we cannot let a particular local situation lead us into
thinking that the conditions that are true for the local
conditions are true universally. I am trying to get
more into the details of how " a justification can be made *in*
any base chosen". This hints of an invariance that we can use to
define the notion of Locality in more general and not problematic
way.
My contention is that the "world" as perceived by an observer
is a integral whole that contains no contradictions (that can be
found in some finite time), this is just another way of arriving
at the notion of an "Observer moment". This definition requires
that we take into consideration the notion of physical resources
that are available for computations to occur. In your scheme,
resources play no role at all and thus my definition cannot be made.
Computation is a mathematical notion. You are confusing levels.
Nothing in comp prevents resources to have a rôle in physics. On
the contrary evidences already exists that comp implies linearity,
symmetry and resources in physics. But it explains it from the non
physical notion of computation. But even if this was not yet found,
the problem is that comp makes this obligatory. Just study the
proof and criticize it.
Bruno
How exactly does one make a connection between a given set of
resources and an arbitrary computation in your scheme?
From the measure on all computations, which must exist to satisfy
comp, as the UDA explains with all details, and as the translation of
UDA in arithmetic (AUDA) makes precise. We still don't have the
measure, but AUDA extracts the logic of measure one (accepting some
standard definitions). And that measure one verifies what is needed to
get a linear logic à-la Abramski-Girard which makes a notion of
resource quite plausible. Anyway, we have no choice. If the measure
does not exist, comp is false (to be short).
I am not sure what you mean by "explanation" as you are using the
word. Again, AFAIK abstractions cannot refer to specific physical
objects
It is better, when working on the mind-body problem, to not take the
notion of physical object as granted, except for assuming that the
physical laws have to be rich enough to support brain and computer
execution, that is, to be at least Turing universal.
unless we consider an isomorphism of sorts between physical objects
After UDA, and the usual weak Occam rule, we *know* (modulo comp)
that physical "objects" are collective hallucination by numbers.
You have more than once acknowledge that the physical reality is not
primitive (= cannot be assumed), so I am not sure to see why you come
back with it to challenge the comp consequences.
and "best possible computational simulations thereof" as I am
suggesting, but you seem to not consider this idea at all.
Because such an idea has been shown to be inconsistent with comp (UDA).
Your statement "just study the proof and criticize it" begs the
question that I am asking!
It does not. UDA *is* the explanation why if the brain (or the
generalized brain) works like a digital universal machine, (even a
physical one, like a concrete computer) then the laws of physics HAVE
TO emerge from the laws of the natural numbers (addition and
multiplication) law.
You might study any textbook in mathematical logic to see that a
computation is a purely arithmetical notion (accepting the Church-
Turing thesis). I am currently explaining this in FOAR, so you can ask
a precise question for anything you would have some problem with in
that list (that you already follow). I can no more explain this here,
as I have done this more than once before.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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