On Wed, Dec 12, 2018 at 6:13 PM Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > An electron can change in time and space, 3 can not change in either. >> > > You are ruling out the block time view, which contradicts special > relativity. > The block universe changes along the time dimension and special relativity deals with time, but the number 3 never changes with time and has nothing to do with it. > > What are particles but computations involving positional coordinates? > What are computations but the descriptions of particle's motion? Particles can do computations but computations can't do particles. > > Change is an illusion. > As we're talking about subjectivity and an illusion is subjective that statement contains ZERO information. How would things be different if change were not an illusion? > > Think of consecutively computed states in the Game of Life, for > example. > Bad example. There is no memory in the Game of Life, from within the game there is no way to know what your previous state was because more than one previous state could produce the exact same current state. And the Game of Life needs either a biological brain or a electronic computer for the game to change, that is to say for it to DO anything, and both brains and computers are made of matter and obey physics. *>They observe changes between computation states.* > For me to compare my present state I need a record of it , and that means my previous state must have somehow changed something that I can read now. But my previous state had only numbers to work with so which number did it change, is 3 no longer 3? All I want is for you to tell me of something other than mass/energy that can change. *> The value of a variable in a computation may change from one > computational step to the next.* > Yes, and when I make a long calculation I need a scratch pad to write down the results of one part of it so I remember it while I work on some other part of the calculation, but a scratch pad it made of matter and it took me energy to write on it, but you have neither all you have to work with is numbers; so what is your scratchpad made of and how do you change it? > *The mathematical truth of the valid solutions to the equations yields > the executions of every possible LISP program at every possible time step. * > No. You're simply asserting the very thing you're trying to prove. Nothing gets executed and nothing yields anything without matter/energy. > at every possible time step. Time does not change numbers, arithmetic worked the same way in the Jurassic as it does now. > > *Its solutions yields a fractal like structure within which you would > see the execution traces of every program, and within the patterns of the > registers in some of those solutions, you would see evolved life > manifesting behaviors we would ascribe to conscious beings, such as writing > books about consciousness, and talking over e-mail lists about > consciousness.* > All that could indeed happen if the program was executed on a computer, but it it's not all you'll see is a inert sequence of squiggles printed on a paper that never changes and is unable to DO anything. > If I'm in the integer 8 in the Fibonacci sequence there is no way I could >> know that I was in the Fibonacci sequence or in a sequence of any sort >> unless I remembered that my previous state was a 5 and the one before that >> was a 3, but to form a memory something has to change and 3, 5 and 8 never >> change. >> > > > No, but if you were something with a memory [...] > And that is exactly the problem! Pure numbers have no memory because regardless of how you arrange them they never change in space or time. > > When you say "there is no way for X", might it be a failure of > imagination? > That depends on what X is. If X is a pure number then you'd better hope nobody can change it because if they did then mathematics would not only become useless it would be ridiculous. And without change you can't have memory and without memory you can't make a calculation and without calculation you can't have intelligence or consciousness. Fortunately for us numbers can't change but one thing can, matter/energy. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
