ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/15/2012 07:51 AM: > the next step in a discussion like this is for someone > to ask you what evidence you have that any actual thing has more "actor > status" > than a thermostat.
My evidence is, like *all* evidence, subject to interpretation. Unlike most people, I don't believe there are such things as "facts". ;-) With that preamble, I'll set up my evidence. There seem to be unpredictable processes. Either they are actually unpredictable, or we're just not smart enough to predict them. If the former, we're talking Truth. If the latter, we're talking practicality. Some of these systems are chaotic, some are stochastic. Regardless, they are unpredictable. There are also some processes that are predictable. We can infer "laws" and then show that those systems (usually) follow them. These laws allow compressed models (analogs[*]) of the referent system, ways of describing those systems that are reasonably accurate. I'll call these systems "compressible" to indicate that there exists at least one [+] _accurate_ (enough) description of them that's shorter than a fully detailed description (i.e. the referent system itself). Zombies and tools are compressible. (You'll remember that I'm defining "tool" as an artifact whose purpose has been inscribed/imputed by an actor.) Actors are _incompressible_ in the sense that you can't define a short-cut law that accurately describes what how the system will evolve. We can call the incompressible part "free will" or "general intelligence" or "soul" or whatever we want to call it. That doesn't matter. But what's important is that you cannot get high confidence validation out of a model of such a system _unless_ you implement the incompressible part in all its gory detail. You have to execute it in order to know what it's going to do. (You might recognize this as the halting problem.) Now, what evidence do I have that incompressible systems exist? Well, there's plenty, from the radioactive decay of matter to meteorology. Whether you'd accept any of this evidence depends, I'd say, on whether you [dis]like my rhetoric. [*] All models, in order to do their work, need implementations. So I'm not really talking about the laws, per se. I'm talking about any machines you might use to implement the laws. E.g. not the equations, the computer and program used to implement the equations. E.g. not the indefinite equations in pencil, the definite equations without variables like "x" and "y" ... plus your fingers and such to push the pencil. [+] To be more correct, I'd have to say that actors are composite and have at least one component that is incompressible. So, while the whole actor may submit to a compression, at least part of her will not. -- glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
