> On 8 Dec 2018, at 00:51, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 6:40 AM Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be 
> <mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:
> 
> >> Physics CAN safely assume that neither Aristotle nor any other ancient 
> >> Greek fossil can be of the slightest help in answering modern cutting edge 
> >> scientific questions. 
> 
> > But we re not doing physics, but metaphysics.
> 
> The trouble with metaphysics is it's too easy, because it doesn't use the 
> scientific method

Since 529.

Metaphysics has been done with the scientific attitude before. It is not easy 
to come back to this because in this filed, since 529 we have been brainswahedq 
by fairy tales, and this includes taking the primitive material reality for 
granted.





> but does allow invisible evidence any theory will work just fine because 
> there are no facts they need to fit. There are a infinite number of 
> metaphysical theories and one is as good as the other.


Not at all. When we do it with the scientific method, we get experimental means 
to verify it.

As quantum mechanics confirms (up to now) mechanism, we can say that we have 
good empirical reason to disbelieve in physicalism or materialism.

Your belief in primary matter on the contrary, is sustained without any 
experimental evidence at all.





>  
> > take Aristotle’s theology
> 
> Please!

No, your remark above show how much it is necessary for you to remember that 
there was another rational conception of reality before Aristotle, and it fits 
better with the contemporary facts (Gödel, Einstein, QM, …).

You talk like if the consciousness problem was solved. I am OK that 
consciousness is easier than intelligence to solve, but it is not so easy when 
we assume mechanism, which enforce to come back to the pre-aristotelian 
conception of reality.

When you invoke matter to make a computation real, you invoke the Aristotelian 
religion. That is just irrational. 




>  
> > Aristotle theology, and [,,,,[ Plato was [...] Aristotle, who did not [...]
> 
> And the longest fossilized turd from a extinct thing was 40 inches long and 
> sold for $8,000 in 2014. I guess if something is old enough somebody will 
> think it has value. You can read all about this massive turd here"
> 
> OLD FOSSILIZED TURD 
> <https://www.cbsnews.com/news/longest-fossilized-poop-to-be-sold-at-auction/>
>  
> > closer to Plato, even Pythagorus, than to Aristotle.
> 
> It's interesting, out of all the ancient Greeks you keep yammering about you 
> never mention the greatest of them all Archimedes, and he was a mathematician 
> and an excellent one. 

Bt we don’t discuss mathematics here. Of course Archimedes was a great guy, no 
doubt, but he was not an expert in metaphysics and theology.



>  
> 
> >>SHOW Me this mystical Turing Machine of yours that doesn't need matter or 
> >>physics make a calculation, don't tell me about it, don't claim to have a 
> >>proof about it, just SHOW ME it making a calculation. And there is nothing 
> >>fuzzy about that request.  
> 
> > I have done that, but then you criticise it as being “invisible”.
> 
> Yes how unreasonable for me not to be impressed by invisible evidence.  


That is what lead you, and others to think that mathematics is conventional. 
Even Einstein did do, until Gödel explained him his mistake.

Numbers are invisible. All the subject matter of mathematics is invisible, yet 
arguably quite “real” and senseful. Then indeed, with mechanism we get the 
theorem that the physical reality emerge from the number arithmetical 
self-reference.



> 
>  > there is no paper showing that primary matter exists.
> 
> Two can play this game, I have invisible evidence it does exist.  

Then explain them. 

An evidence does not need to be visible, but it still needs to be given and 
shared. I can conceive some mathematical evidence for Matter, but eventually, I 
found none. Quite the contrary.




>  
> > You speculate on something, just to prevent scientific testing. That is 
> > unscientific.
> 
> But of course accepting invisible evidence is very very scientific. 


Mathematics is entirely based on invisible evidence. 

Plato was skeptical on just that: the visible evidence, as the dream argument 
shows that visibility is not a criterion of truth.

The idea that visibility is evidence is exactly the Aristotelian theology, well 
recasted in christianity through St-Thomas, who famously said that he believes 
only in what he sees. 


> 
> > Human are made of matter and obey to physics, sure, but that does not mean 
> > that this matter is primitive.
> 
> But it does mean matter can do something numbers can’t.


That inference is not valid if used to defend your idea that some Matter 
exists. Only matter exists, but that one is phenomenological in arithmetic. I 
use “Matter”, with a big M, to denote Aristotle’s notion of matter, with its 
ontological primary existence.



>  
> >> Did you know that of all the people that have extended his work Godel 
> >> thought Turing's was the most profound? He had more respect for Turing 
> >> than Church even though Church independently solved the halting problem a 
> >> few months before Turing because in the process of solving it Turing told 
> >> us something new about the physical world that Church did not.
> 
> > That is plainly wrong.
> 
> I don't think so, and my evidence that backs up what I say isn't invisible. 
> Godel said:
> 
> “ [Turing] has for the first time succeeded in giving an absolute definition 
> of an interesting epistemological notion, i.e., one not depending on the 
> formalism chosen.” -Godel, Princeton Bicentennial, [1946, p. 84]
> 
> Please note the words "not depending on the formalism chosen", Godel thought 
> Turing didn't just prove something about symbols but proved something about 
> the real physical world.



Nor did Turing. The independence of the formalism means here that you can take 
arithmetic, or fortran, or lisp, or lambda calculus, etc. 

This has nothing to do with physics, as none of those formalism assumes 
anything in physics.

You attribute statement to Turing, who never assert them. There is no physical 
hypothesis in Turing work in Logic, still less a physicalist hypothesis in 
metaphysics.



> Even Alonzo Church admitted Turing did something he didn't.
> 
> " [Computability by a Turing machine] has the advantage of making the 
> identification with effectiveness in the ordinary (not explicitly defined) 
> sense evident immediately—i.e., without the necessity of proving preliminary 
> theorems.” -Alonzo Church, [1937], Review of Turing [1936]
> 

Yes, but now we see that some confuse a pedagogical idea (explaining 
computation by machine which looks like material human) with metaphysics. But 
the Turing machine does not assume more physics than the combinators or the 
lambda calculus: none.





> And Godel had plenty of other good stuff to say about Turing:
> 
> "But I was completely convinced only by Turing’s paper.” -Godel: letter to 
> Kreisel of May 1, 1968 [Sieg, 1994, p. 88].
> 
> “That this really is the correct definition of mechanical computability was 
> established beyond any doubt by Turing.” -Godel 193? Notes in Nachlass [1935] 
> 
> "The greatest improvement [in my work] was made possible through the precise 
> definition of the concept of finite procedure, . . . This concept, . . . is 
> equivalent to the concept of a ‘computable function of integers’ . . . The 
> most satisfactory way, in my opinion, is that of reducing the concept of 
> finite procedure to that of a machine with a finite number of parts, as has 
> been done by the British mathematician Turing.” —-Godel [1951, pp. 304–305], 
> Gibbs lecture

But Godel knew, as everyone, that the Turing machine is non material.




> 
> And Mathematician Robert I Soare had this to say:
> 
> "Godel was interested in the intensional analysis of finite procedure. He 
> never believed the arguments and confluence evidence which Church presented 
> to justify his Thesis. On the other hand Godel accepted immediately not only 
> Turing machines, but more importantly the analysis Turing gave of a finite 
> procedure.”


And Turing was the one showing that his (more pedagogical perhaps) formalism 
was equivalent with Lambda calculus, HerbrnGödel equation, etc.

Anyway, none assume a physical reality, nor physical object, as anyone can 
verify by taking a look at their original papers (cf Davis “The Undecidable”).



> 
>  
> > In the Aristotelian theology [...]
> 
> In 2018 why on Earth would anybody have even the slightest bit of interest in 
> Aristotelian theology, or of any Greek theology, or any theology at all?


People who says that theology makes no sense, are usually people who takes 
Aristotelian theology for granted. 

Are you able to doubt that physics is the fundamental science? Are you able to 
doubt physicalism?




>  
> > You are a fan of Aristotle theology,
> 
> Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard that 
> one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12. 
> 
> > >Your problem is even if you are able to follow all the steps in a proof 
> > >after you've finished all the steps you don't have a deep understanding of 
> > >exactly what it is that you just proved.
> 
> Argument?
> 
> I'll do much better, I'll give an example. After your brain (which is made of 
> matter and obeys all the laws of physics)


You don’t know that this matter is primary.



> learned how to manipulate the symbols in Robinson arithmetic and proved a 
> theorem in it you think that proof is telling you calculations can be made 
> without matter or physics.


Yes, end indeed I can prove that the (sigma_1) arithmetical reality implemented 
them all, and the physical appearance have to emerge from the first person 
indeterminacy on all (relative) computations.

I use the mathematical definition of computation, not to be confused with any 
of its implementation y some other universal machine, be it arithmetic or a 
physical reality. 

You beg the question by identifying/confusing the concept of 

Matter with primary matter
Computation with physical computation
God with Christian theory of God








>  
> >>There is a reason the Multiverse has always existed or there isn't. 
> 
> >Yes, and there is a reason.
> 
> I won't even ask what silly thing you dreamed up or what invisible evidence 
> you have in support of it, instead I will ask a more important question,


You don’t ask, because you know the answer. If we believe that 2+2 = 4 
independently of us, we HAVE TO believe that all computations are realised in 
arithmetic, because that it is easy to prove, and that is where the apparent 
multiverse come from.




> is there a reason for that reason?


The reason is elementary arithmetic. And elementary arithmetic explains why we 
cannot get it from less.

If you doubt that 2+2=4, or that x^3 + y^3 + z^3 = 33 has, or has no, 
solutions, then “digital mechanism” has to be abandoned, and in that case you 
can believe in your Matter. But with Mechanism, that belief is irrational, and 
only based on the ignorance or misunderstanding of <hat are computations.



> 
>  >>a simulated person can observe a simulated typhoon but so can we who are 
> outside the computer because the simulation can change things in our world in 
> addition to the simulated world; if we couldn't see it too nobody would 
> bother to make computer simulations.  But unlike simulations nobody anywhere 
> can observe your mystical non-material Turing Machine because it doesn't have 
> the ability to change anything in time or space.
> 
> > Everyone see this. 
> 
> Good, so you admit matter has properties arithmetic does not,

Of course.




> a Turing Machine made of matter has the ability to be observable and the 
> ability to change in spacetime, your mystical invisible nonmaterial Turing 
> Machine can't do either.

Like a simulated typhoon cannot makes a physical object wet. 

Yet, the simulation of the physical couple “observer + typhoon”, in arithmetic, 
will make the observers feel wet, relatively to that typhoon when enough well 
situated (which is the case in arithmetic, as it does all simulations).

So your argument fails to justify a belief in Matter. It just gives a role to 
matter, which is explainable without Matter.





>  
> >> I'll make this as easy for you as I can, forget calculation forget Turing 
> >> Machines forget measurement, all you have to do is show me one thing that 
> >> makes no use of matter or energy or the laws of physics that can change in 
> >> time or space or both.  
> 
> > That is impossible,
> 
> I most certainly agree, it's impossible, and as time and space are rather 
> important to me I'm not very interested in your mystical invisible Turing 
> Machine that can't do anything in either.
>  
> > and there is no reason to ask me this, unless you invoke your faith in time 
> > and space,
> 
> So you ask me to ignore time and space and matter and energy and have faith 
> in an invisible mystical nonmaterial Turing Machine and just listen to you. 
> That's asking rather a lot.
>  
> >> So the value of 2+2 is one thing in Moscow and something different in 
> >> Washington, and it changes from Wednesday to Thursday?  
> 
> > You can see it that way. 
> 
> What the hell? Even for you that's nuts.
>  
> >>No program can be executed without a computer that is made of matter and 
> >>uses energy.
> 
> >That contradicts the definition of execution in computer science.
> 
> The graduates of any school of computer science that used a definition of 
> "execution" that have nothing to do with time or space or matter or energy 
> would NEVER be able to get a job, so it's fortunate no such school of 
> computer science exists; or if it does the school is invisible and does not 
> change in time or space.


We would never been able to implement the arithmetical computation in matter, 
and handle them properly, without having discovered them in mathematics. Even 
Babbage says that its functional language does not depend on its machine, and 
was a truly mush bigger discovery than his machine.

I don’t ask you any act of faith (beyond the “yes doctor”, as hypothesis). You 
need just to believe in 2+2=4, and to accept the definition of the textbook in 
the domain. 

Oh, I ask you perhaps also to leave your personal convictions out of the room.



> 
> >>If there is a infinity of levels then nothing is primary, 
> 
> > Why? With mechanism, you can take the numbers, or the combinators, or any 
> > term of any Turing-complete theory as primitive, 
> 
> If something is primitive then something exists for no reason and there are 
> not a infinite number of iterated questions, the series eventually ends with 
> a brute fact.

Yes, and with mechanism the only truth facts we need is that Kxy = x, and Sxyz 
= xz(yz). Or the definition and axiom of elementary arithmetic, as Gödel saw, 
the computer science will be independently of the choice of the formalism, and 
that makes theology and physics independent of the formalism. But we have to 
assume at least one Turing universal reality (like arithmetic) to get all the 
others and the internal appearances.





>  
> > You would read the greeks,
> 
> If you put a gun to my head perhaps.

Which shows the immensity of your lack of knowledge on them.



> 
> > Textbook can contain proofs but do not prove.
> 
> Then why do you keep referring me to some  textbook every time I say 
> calculations can't be made without matter energy and physics


Because all textbook use my definition of computation, not yours which assume 
physics.




> 
> >> "a Turing Machine" can't [change] because ASCII characters never change.
> 
> > Change relatively to what? 
> 
> Time and space.

But with mechanism, you cannot assume the. You need to explain that. It is part 
of the “easy problem of consciousness”.




> And  a Turing Machine that does not make use of matter and the laws of 
> physics can't change in time


It changes relatively to any numbering “time”, called "steps" in computability 
theory. Those digital steps needs the number successor relation, not any 
physical space or time.




> or space and as both play a key part in consciousness it's odd that you don't 
> think that's important given that you keep talking about consciousness.

After 1500 years of Materialism failing to solve the mind-body problem, when it 
does not eliminate it, or replace it by fairy Tales.




>  
> > You god the primary physical universe [...]
> 
> Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard that 
> one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12. 
>  
> >>Why on Earth would any rational person keep reading a proof after they 
> >>found a blunder that the author can't fix? 
> 
> > All scientist do that all the time. 
> 
> BULLSHIT. Scientists have better things to do with their time than to 
> continue reading a proof after they already know it can't be correct. 

False. If a scientist believe that a proof cannot be correct, he will do the 
work and show where the proof is incorrect, or change its mind. That is even 
why you do claim having found an error, but you have not written any of this 
that any one could understand. You just oscillate between understand step 3, 
and dismissing as too much easy, or confusing 3p and 1p views. I it is too much 
easy, just move on step 4. If you really believe step 3 is false, try a new 
refutation, perhaps.





> 
> >>In the first place Einstein was a physicist not a mathematician and the 
> >>block universe involves matter and energy.
> 
> >But not time, which was the object of the discussion.
> 
> You discuss consciousness constantly, and there is no property more important 
> to consciousness than time.

The mundane type of consciousness requires time. OK. 



> And don't tell me time is just an illusion because illusion is a perfectly 
> respectable subjective phenomenon and subjectivity is what we're talking 
> about.  

We are taking about the origin of that illusion. With mechanism, any 
Turing-complete formalism will work, an indeed has worked until now.




> 
> >>In the second place the block universe as a whole never changes (if we 
> >>ignore Quantum Mechanics as Einstein did) and so can't calculate and even 
> >>if it did nobody could see it, but things in it can calculate.
> 
> > So it is like the arithmetical reality. It does not calculate, but contains 
> > all universal numbers 
> 
> I'd never heard of "universal numbers"  before so I asked Google about them 
> and all I got was a bunch of astrology websites. Apparently the "universal 
> numbers" are 1 through 9 plus for some bizarre reason 11 22 and 33. They may 
> explain the astrological significance of those numbers but I was too bored to 
> read more.


You continue to play dumb. I have already given the definition of universal 
numbers. Let me refresh your memory. We fix a universal machinery phi_i (see 
rogers or any book, or may posts in the CT thread, or my older post). U is a 
universal number is phi_u(x, y) = phi_x(y). We say that u emulates x on y.




> 
> >>The word "protocol" makes it sound very scientific but you don't even know 
> >>who the personal pronouns that infested the thought experiment refer to 
> >>after you ground them up in your personal pronoun duplicating machine.
> 
> > Where? We did agree on all pronouns used at each state.
> 
> OF COURSE WE DIDN'T AGREE!

You did agree that HM and HW are the H_guy. That follows also from the fact 
that the H_guy believes correctly (when assuming computationalism) that he will 
not die in the duplication process.




> The iron clad proof that you are utterly confused is that even after your 
> thought exparament is long over you STILL don't know what the correct 
> prediction Mr. He should have made yesterday back in Helsinki

It “W v M” but I cannot be sure of which one.




> because you have no idea who the hell Mr.He is.


It is the Huy in Helsinki. 




> You quite literally don't know what you're talking about, but that doesn't 
> inhibit you in the slightest from talking about Mr.He .

What is your prediction? Sometimes you say he guy dies, sometimes you say “W & 
M” which is directly refuted by both HM and HW, when describing their first 
person experience (the original question is about that subjective experience).





> 
> >>And that is exactly what's wrong with your "protocol", I don't know who's 
> >>"THE first person experience" you're talking about and neither do you.
>  
> > That is what we know the best, and with mechanism, we attribute 1p 
> > consciousness to both copies, and both see only one city, and recognise he 
> > could not have predict it in Helsinki, which is the point.
> 
> That's nice, but you haven't answered my question.  When you demand 
> predictions about "THE first person experience" after introducing a THE first 
> person experience duplicating machines


THE experience is duplicated from the view of a third person guy, but is not 
from the first person of both copies. They see only one city, and can only 
infer the presence of a doppelgänger in the other city.






>  who's "THE first person experience" do you want the prediction to be about?

The experience that the H-guy can predict he will live. Two will be realised in 
the 3p picture, but as the H-guy know that he will acquire telepathic abilities 
between its tow copies, he can predict in Helsinki that he, the H-guy, will 
feel to be only in one of the disjunct of W v M. Everyone understand this, 
except you.

I do not ever have meet one scientist who have problem with this. When there is 
a problem, it either by people clearly disbelieving in Mechanism, but even them 
understand eventually that it follows from Mechanism (it is just that they 
disbelieve in Mechanism, for personal reason).



> 
> >>I don't know who the hell Mr.He is
> 
> >The H-guy.
> 
> That's not nearly specific enough because both the M-guy and the W-guy are 
> the  H-guy.

The whole point is that there is no specific answer here. That is the whole 
point. The prediction is asked to the H-guy, who know that he will be 
physically at both W and M, but as the question is about the subjective future 
result, he, the H-guy when still in Helsinky,  knows that he will feel 
subjectively to see only one city, and this with certainty, as BOTH its 
“descendant” will feel to see only one city.



> So who exactly did you want to make a prediction yesterday in Helsinki 

The H-guy, before he push the button, still in Helsinki. 



> and who exactly did you want the prediction to be about?

As we both agree that both copies are digne successor/descendant of the H-guy, 
that HM and HW are both the H-guy, even if HM and HW have differentiated, the 
verification of the prediction has to be asked to both copies. 

And indeed, both confirms that W v M was the best prediction possible, as they 
both agree with it. For them, it is equivalent to a fair coin.





> Your complete inability to answer this simple question is proof your thought 
> exparament is not thoughtful and is not an exparament at all, it's gibberish. 

See above.



>  
> >>So you think 2 Catholics in 2 different cities will only see one city,
> 
> > Each of them? 
> 
> No, my question was how many cities will Catholics see.

That is not English. You might rephrase it. 




> I can think of no reason why 2 Catholics can't see 2 different cities at the 
> same time. 


In some 3p view, but you forget again that the question is about the subjective 
experience. All catholics in the world see only one city, from their first 
person experience, which is that what re interested in.





>  
> > Then you die, and you backtrack on mechanism
> 
> John Clark doesn't know if that's true or not because John Clark doesn't know 
> who Mr.You is, and Bruno has even less understanding of Mr.You's identity 
> than John Clark does.
> 
> >>I don't know who the hell this mysterious Mr.He is that you keep talking 
> >>about. 
> 
> > It is always the H-guy, who survives into HM and HW, but, of course, only 
> > in one of them from the 1p view.
> 
> So now that the experiment is over which one did it turn out survived from 
> the one and only "THE 1p view"?  Was it HM or HW? You don't know the answer 
> because you don't know the question and neither do I.


On the contrary; it is very simple. The H-guy predicts W v M, and both the HM 
and HW guys confirms. All different predictions fails, or violate the principle 
that both the HM and the HW guys are digne H-guy survivors.


What is your prediction? What could the guy in Helsinki predicts about the 
subjective experience that he will live?

Bruno






> 
> John K Clark
> 
> 
> 
> 
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