On Wed, Sep 19, 2018 at 4:17 AM Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
The state of a Turing machine is matched to a number and always
has and always will be matched that very same number forever.
Nothing changes.
_You can say the same for your state here and now. But
consciousness is not supported by the state, but by the sequence of
states, or more exactly, the logical relation brought by a universal
machine relating those states._
The logical relationships between those states never changes, not in
the time dimension or in any other dimension, and consciousness, just
like computation, demands change; physics can provide that,
mathematics can't.
_>Your critics invalidate any block-view of reality._
You can't have a block-view of reality or of anything else without a
block, and time is one of the dimensions of that block, and time is
the one and only reason the geometry of that block is Non-Euclidean.
_Are you, like Prigogine, assuming a fundamental time?_
Physicists have tried for decades to develop a Theory Of Everything
without making use of time in any way but have not been very
successful. Lee Smolin in his book "Time Reborn" says the obsession so
many physicists have had on getting rid of time is the reason little
progress has been made at finding a quantum theory of gravity. Brains
are certainly not fundamental but are nevertheless of vital importance
to cognition, so if we're just talking about consciousness it doesn't
make any difference if time is ultimately fundamental or not because
nothing is more apparent and important to a consciousness than time.
And don't tell me time is just a illusion because that explains
nothing, a illusion is a perfectly respectable subjective phenomenon
and subjectivity is what we're talking about.
___Time is an internal indexical,_
The index never changes, but time does and so does consciousness.
Definitions are a bore . SHOW ME!
_>That is just ridiculous._
I see. So if I were to define a dragon as a huge fire breathing lizard
that can fly it would be ridiculous of you to dispute my claim that by
defining them I have proven dragons exist.
_> Without agreeing on what is a computation,_
We don't learn by reading definitions, we learn from EXAMPLES. A
definition is made of words and all of those words have there own
definitions also made of words and all of those words have there own
definitions also made of words and [...]
You seem to be very big on fundamental stuff but if we're talking
about meaning definitions are most certainly NOT fundamental, but
examples are. Where do you suppose lexicographers got the information
to write the definitions in their dictionary?
So forget definitions, just compute 2+2 without using physics and I
will concede defeat and nominate you for a Nobel Prize.
The trouble with arithmetic is it doesn't change.
_>Nor do a block universe;_
And that is exactly why consciousness can not directly perceive the
block universe and in fact until a century ago nobody was conscious of
the idea, and even today nobody knows if it's a correct view of
reality. At best it's just an approximation, and it can't even
approximate what's going on at the center of a Black Hole or at the
instant of the Big Bang.
_Just ask the copies, they know well what they are living._
And I predicted that would happen long before the experiment started.
_Wat I request is that you tell me what the H-guy can expect to
live_
And what I request of you is far far easier than a prediction, all I
want you to do is go somewhere look around and tell me what you see.
Just answer the following question: "After the experiment is completed
and the 1 H-guy became 2 H-guys what 1 and only 1 city did the H-guy
end up in?". If you can't answer that then it was not a experiment and
it was not even a question, it was just a series of words with a
question mark at the end.
_You have already said that the H-guy survives___ [...]
I can make all sorts of statements about the H-guy because I know
exactly what I mean by "the H-guy", but you have no idea what you mean
by "the H-guy".
I predicted the guy who saw Moscow would become the Moscow guy
and the guy who saw Washington would become the Washington guy,
___Sure, but that is tautological. _
Exactly! Seeing Moscow is the one and only reason the Helsinki man
became the Moscow man. So why did I see Moscow? Because I'm the Moscow
man. Why am I the Moscow man? Because I saw Moscow. That may not be
deep but like all tautologies it's true, and I remind you it's your
thought "experiment" not mine.
The prediction is on which guy you can expect to be,
Which guy who can expect to be? Bruno is unable to say what the ASCII
sequence y-o-u means in the above sentence and that's why Bruno is so
fond of personal pronouns, when people duplicating machines are
involved they help cover up the gaping holes in logic.
___from the 1p, after pushing the button, with will admit that
the symmetry is broken, and this in a way they were unable to
predict with certainty in Helsinki._
Unable to predict exactly what in Helsinki?
Regardless of if X stands for a banana or one of the 7.5 billion
"the first persons" on the Earth at the current time, if X becomes
2 X it's brain dead dumb to ask what one and only one thing will
happen to X.
_That is refuted by both copies,_
Wonderfull! So both copies agree on the name of the one and only one
city the Helsinki Man ended up in! So which ONE did it turn out to be,
Washington OR Moscow?
you have demanded over and over for years the name of one and
only one city.
_>Yes. _
But even after the "exparament" is over you STILL don't know that one
and only one city name so you have no way of knowing if my prediction
was correct or not. And if you know before you start you will learn
nothing from an experiment what's the point of performing the
experiment?
The prediction can never be correct,
_>Good. _
The prediction can't be incorrect either. and only one thing has that
property, gibberish. A burp is neither true or untrue because it's not
a statement, it's just a burp.
and doing the "experiment" and then just looking won't help
figure out what the correct answer turned out to be because you
have no idea what the question was or what you're trying to
predict.
_>False._
If it's false then just look and tell me if the answer turned out to
be Washington or Moscow. What are you waiting for, let's hear it!
And I don't even understand why you're so obsessed with
prediction when that has nothing to do with our sense of self, we
get that by looking into the past and a good thing too because
nobody can look into the future.
_This you will probably need step 4, 5, … to grasp._
And I will probably never read step 4 because you will probably never
repair the ridiculous blunder you made in step 3.
_>When you say that the H-man will see both cities, do you mean that
he will see both cities at once._
I can't answer your question until I know what the referent to the
personal pronoun "he" in the above is. I'm pretty sure it doesn't
refer to anybody who remembers being the Helsinki Man but other than
that I have no idea what one and only one thing you mean by "he", if
this were everyday life I'd know but this is very far from everyday
life because "he" duplicating machines are involved.
Which one of the two "1-views themselves" do you want to know
about? If you say "both" you can't still demand one and only one
answer unless logic means nothing to you. Don't you think the fact
that you can't answer the question even AFTER the “experiment"
_Both can. The point is that they give different and of course
incompatible answer. _
So there are 2 answers to the the question that you demand one and
only one answer to, and the 2 answers are incomparable. There is only
one sort of question that has that property, a gibberish question.
John K Clark
