On 22 Jun 2017, at 01:31, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 22/06/2017 1:44 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 21 Jun 2017, at 08:21, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 21/06/2017 4:03 pm, Russell Standish wrote:
On Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 12:15:31PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 19/06/2017 10:23 am, Russell Standish wrote:
I know Scott wouldn't go as far as me. For me, all such
irreversible
processes are related to conscious entities in some way. Whilst
agreeing that Geiger counters are unlikely to be conscious, I
would
say that the output of Geiger counter is not actually discrete
until
observed by a conscious experimenter.
That sounds remarkably like the "many minds" interpretation of
quantum mechanics. This is disfavoured by most scientists
because it
leaves the physics of the billions of years before the emergence
of
the first "conscious" creature unresolved -- the first
consciousness
would cause an almighty collapse on the many minds reading.
Each consciousness causes "an almighty collapse" in er own mind
independently of any other. It's a pure 1p phenomena.
It is actually a 3p phenomenon because there is inter-subjective
agreement about the fact that measurements give definite results.
Inter-subjectivity does not imply 3p, as it can be "only" 1p
plural. Let me illustrate this with a variant of the WM duplication.
Imagine that Bruce and John are undergoing the WM-duplication
*together*.
By this I mean they both enter the scanning-annihilating box, and
are both reconstituted in Washington and in Moscow.
And let us assume they do it repetitively, which means they come
back to Helsinki, and do it again together.
Obviously, the line-life past that each copies describes in its
personal diaries grows like H followed by a sequence of W and M.
The number of copies grows exponentially (2^n). After ten
iterations, we have 2^10 = 1024 individuals, who share an
indeterminate experiences. With minor exceptions, they all agree
that the experience has always given each times a precise outcome,
always belonging to {W, M}. Importantly the duplicated couples
agreed (which was the Washington or Moscow outcome) in all
duplication. They mostly all agreed they did not found any obvious
algorithm to predict the sequence (the exception might concerned
the guys in nameable stories, like:
WWWWWWWWWW
MMMMMMMMMM
Or the development of some remarkable real number in binary, like
the binary expansion of PI, sqrt(2), sqr(n), etc. In this case, the
computable is made rare (and more and more negligible when n grows,
those histories are "white rabbits histories").
That is what I mean by first person plural. It concerns population
of machine sharing self-multiplication. it is interesting to
compare the quantum linear self-superposition with the purely
arithmetical one.
Sure, that would seem to be reasonably described as 1p-plural.
except that there is no need to have two people enter the
duplicating machine
? Then it is just 1p singular. We need two (or more) people entering
the duplication device so that we get the intersubjective agreement.
and undergo different teleportations afterwards.
? They undergo the same teleportations. They are both reconstituted in
the two different locations, and, obviously (we assume Digital
Mechanism) they agree that the outcome is well determined from their
common first person view, and that this the 1p plural.
Surely it is sufficient to consider one person doing a series of
polarization measurements on a sequence of photons from an
unpolarized source.
You need two persons. With one person, you can't distinguish 1p from
1pp (1p plural).
That person will record some sequence of '+' and '-' results. If the
experiment is repeated N times, there will be 2^N sequences, one in
each of the generated worlds.
Glad to hear that. You might try to explain this to John. But you need
two person doing the experiment, or discussing it at least, in which
case the secondf person will entangle with the first, already
entangled with the observed particle (say).
O2 O1 (up + down) ==>O2 (O1 up + O1 down) ==> O2 O1 up + O2 O1 down =>
O2 O1[up] up + O2 O1[down] down => etc. There is subjective agreement
between O1 and O2, because the superposition and measurement (in the
same base, here) propogate from O1 to O2.
But that has nothing to do with inter-subjective agreement between
different observers.
? Because you withdrew the second person. I think me or you miss
something.
To see that, consider just one polarization measurement: In order
for it to be said that the measurement gave a result, there has to
be decoherence and the formation of irreversible records. I think it
is Zurek who talks about multiple copies of the result entangled
with the environment. So many different individuals can observe the
result of this single experiment, and they will all agree that the
result was what the experimenter wrote in her lab book. That is
inter-subjective agreement.
But this is provided by the "contagion of superposition", which is
itself a consequence of the linearity of the tensor product (and the
ensuing linear evolution of each terms).
It clearly has nothing to do with 1p, or 1p-plural pictures.
? (Are you assuming a collapse of the wave, or a Bohmian guiding
potential?). The 1p plural subjectivement agreement is simply a
consequence of quantum entanglement.
But it is precisely that inter-subjective agreement that is
essential for physics -- people have to agree that experiments have
definite results,
Which is well explained by the above.
and they have to agree what those results are. Inter-subjective
agreement occurs in just one world --
OK. That's the key point n° 1.
although there may be similar agreements between copies of those
people entangled be decoherence with the other possible experimental
results.
Yes, that is what happen with the MW. Key point n° 2.
Each world is then characterized by inter-subjective agreement about
the result obtained in that world.
Like John and Bruce both agree to be in Moscow, in Moscow, and both
agree to be in Washington, in Washington.
Again, this bears no relation to Tegmark's 'bird' view. You might
well call the bird view the 0p view, because there is no person or
consciousness that can ever experience that view.
Any question like that presuppose a theory of mind. With mechanism it
is an open problem, if the whole Reality (Arithmetic, sigma-
arithmetic) is better seen as a person or as a thing, although
Arithmetic is usually considered 3p. But at the G* level, we restrict
Arithmetic to sigma arithmetic, which is equivalent to a computer, and
has canonical personal points of view, in which case "God" is a
person. This is interesting and plausible, but, to be sure, it is not
needed to derive physics and test Mechanism.
There is no collapse at all at the 3p level, nor even decoherence
as such.
Decoherence is a well-understood physical phenomenon that has been
widely observed.
I can't agree more. It might be, and should be when assuming
digital mechanism, a first person plurality phenomenon. In the
(quantum) MW, is the fission/differentiation of histories brought
by measurement, and the measurement itself is part of the histories.
As I have just explained at length, decoherence is not a 1p-plural
view -- it is quite definitely a matter of entanglement in a single
world giving rise to inter-subjective agreement on the results of
any particular experiment.
Each 'world' in the many worlds picture is a separate decoherent
history.
? So decoherence, or if you prefer, the result of decoherence is the
1p plural view. You can see it as a splitting of the universe, which
grows locally, or as a consciousness differentiation along "pre-
existing" mind-block, or MW-block-universe.
I do not know what you mean by saying "nor even decoherence as
such."
Maybe Russell meant in the (3-1) view of the (assumed by Everett)
Universal wave. Plausible. The universal wave describes a change of
base. It is God's vision (in this still physicalist view).
Everett, that is QM without the collapse axiom, looks already like
a solution of the computationalist mind-body problem. But it works
only if Everett QM is itself derivable from (intensional) arithmetic.
In that case you shouldn't be making pronouncements about what the
physics means until you have completed that derivation from
arithmetic.
My point is that IF Mechanism is correct, then we HAVE to do that
derivation.
Then, to help a bit, I derived already the propositional physics, and
show it to be quantum, and having the right shape to get a unique
measure. Seeing that Everett solve the mind body problem in the QM
theory is a good training to solve the measurement problem in the
arithmetical structure.
Also, you seem to be confusing the inter-subjective 3p view with
Tegmark's bird view. There is no person, body, or consciousness
that ever has the bird view -- the bird is a purely formal
construct and has nothing to do with mind or consciousness.
That is an interesting remark, but it is a highly debatable
question. See my conversation with David Nyman, about the "the
nature" of the 0p view: is it more 1p or 3p? Is it more like a
thing or a person? Well, I don't know. Is the arithmetical reality
conceivable as a person? You can see it has an infinite (and highly
non mechanical) body of (arithmetical) knowledge, but this would be
a poetical acknowledgment of our ignorance.
I can accept the characterization of the bird view as 0p -- but
since it is not experienced by anyone or anything, then it is
neither 1p, 3p, nor 1p-plural.
The fact that it is not experienced does not entail that it could not
be a 3p thing. Usually the physical universe *is* conceived as a 3p
thing, and the arithmetical reality too, with consciousness becoming
internal 1p (sometimes plural) views.
It seems unscientific to postulate that Reality cannot be conceived as
a 3p reality. That might be the case, with some theory of mind, but
then you should elaborate. I would have thought, from your post, that
you conceive the physical universe (that you seem to assume) as a
physical thing (and thus 3p).
Even though everything might remain unitary at that level, no one
can ever experience the consequences of that unitary evolution.
Hmm... You speculate that there is no global 1p for the global
unitary evolution, which is an open problem to me. Hard to know.
Well, you can speculated about panpsychism if you wish, but since it
would have no observable consequences, the notion seems otiose to me.
Saying that the ultimate reality (be it physical or arithmetical) is
conscious is NOT panpsychism. Panpsychism says that everything is
conscious, including my fridge. But the entire universe could be
conscious does not entail that my fridge is conscious, no more that
the fact that I am conscious entails that my skin, bones, or even
brain, are conscious.
Nevertheless, assuming QM, you do *experience* the *consequences*
of the unitary evolution, right here and right now, directly, and
indirectly, as you are using a machine whose miniaturization has
been made possible by the QM laws + human inference of the QM laws.
Unitary evolution is a property of the equations, not of the
experiences. It is only ever inferred, not observed directly. The
universal wave of the multiverse is 0p -- there is no one or thing
that ever experiences the assumed unitary evolution of the universal
wave,
In which theory of mind? What you say is very natural, and Digital
Mechanism is quite coherent with that point at first sight, but
technically, it is still an open question (and some dreams and
experiences can shaken any certainty we could have on this).
The fact that QM describes many aspects of experience does not prove
unitarity, because we interact with quantum mechanical phenomena
only at the 'classical' level, after decoherence and FAPP collapse.
Our experience is, in fact, entirely of non-unitary behaviour --
experiments give unique results, not superpositions in the
measurement basis.
With FAPP collapse. But without collapse, the big thing evolves
unitarily, and the non linear and non unitarity is explained as being
a 1pp "delusion", a bit like Earth is flat, locally and
experientially, but we know better for the bird or moon view on Earth.
With Mechanism, of course, the difficulty is in explaining the
unitarity from a structure which is only Turing universal. The main
result is that on p sigma, the three main material pov is quantum.
from this we can say that the quantum is more an ally of Mechanism,
than a tool to make it false, as many believe (or want to believe).
Bruno
Bruno
Bruce
With mechanism, the QM laws have to be derived from the first
person views emulated in elementary number theory, or from any
first order Church-Turing-Post -Kleene equivalent theory.
Bruno
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