Re: Newbie
On Sat, Dec 21, 2013 at 03:42:23PM -0800, Edgar Owen wrote: Hi, I just joined the group and have a few questions since it's the first Google Group I'm on. First I assume the group must be moderated since it seems to take quite a while for my posts to show up. Is this so and who is/are the moderator(s). There is no moderator. In my experience, messages appear within 5 minutes of being posted, which is about how long it takes my email spam processor to check the incoming emails. Second I thought I set my settings to get all posts as emails on my MacMail so I can reply there which is best for me. But I see a lot of posts on the group website I don't seem to be getting in my MacMail. Can anyone tell me if there is some delay or how to set that correctly? Do you have a spam filter running? Perhaps you can check your spam folder to see if your missing messages are there? Thanks, Edgar -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Newbie
I haven't noticed any particular delay between posting and the post appearing on the forum. Even posts about backwards causality come up in a timely fashion. Mind you I consider myself very moderate... -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Bruno's mathematical reality
On 21 Dec 2013, at 00:52, Edgar Owen wrote: All, The fundamental nature of reality is examined in detail in my recent book on Reality available on Amazon under my name. Marchal is on the right track, but reality consists not just of numbers (math) Arithmetic is not just numbers, but numbers + some laws (addition and multiplication). but is a running logical structure analogous to software When you have the laws (addition and multiplication), it can be shown that a tiny part of arithmetic implement all possible computations (accepting Church thesis). Without Church thesis, you can still prove that that tiny part of arithmetic emulates (simulate exactly) all Turing (or all known) computations. that continually computes the current state of the universe. You mean the physical universe. Have you read my papers or posts? if we are machine, there is no physical reality that we can assume. the whole of physics must be derived from arithmetic. Just as software includes but doesn't consist only of numbers and math, so does reality. It depends on your initial assumption. In fact the equations of physical science make sense only when embedded in a logical structure just as is the case in computational reality. The computational reality is a tiny part of arithmetic. Logic is just a tool to explore such realities. Modern science has a major lacuna, the notion that all of reality is mathematical, Most scientists do not believe this, and indeed criticize my work for seeming to go in that direction. Then term like reality and mathematical are very fuzzy. Now, if we are machine, then it can be shown that for the ontology we need arithmetic, or any equivalent Turing universal system, and we *cannot* assume anything more (that is the key non obvious point). Then, it is shown that the physical reality is: 1) an internal aspect of arithmetic 2) despite this, it is vastly bigger than arithmetic and even that any conceivable mathematics. That is why I insist that the reality we can access to is not mathematical, but theological. It contains many things provably escaping all possible sharable mathematics. That arithmetic is (much) bigger viewed from inside than viewed from outside is astonishing, and is a sort of Skolem paradox (not a contradiction, just a weirdness). that prevents science from grasping the complete nature of reality. In truth all of reality is logical, as is software, and the mathematics is just a subset of the logic. I disagree, with all my respect. Even arithmetic escapes logic. It is logic which is just a branch of math, but math, even just arithmetic, escapes logic. Arithmetical truth escapes all effective theories (theories with checkable proofs). After all, modern science with its misguided insistence that all of reality is mathematical, I really do not believe this. Except for Tegmark and Schmidhuber, I doubt any scientist believes this. But its is a consequence of computationalism, for the ontology. Yet, the physical is purely epistemological, and go beyond mathematics. I show that all universal machine, when believeing in enough induction axioms, can discovered this by introspection only. has had nothing useful to say about the nature of either consciousness or the present moment, the two most fundamental aspects of experience. I suggest you read my sane paper.: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html It explains the present moment by using Gödel form of indexical (with explicit fixed points), including the non communicable part, the qualia, and also the quanta (making computationalism testable). In fact machines have already an incredibly rich and complex theology, and it is testable, as it should contain physics. However I present a computational based information approach to these in my book among many other things. The second clarification that needs to be made to the post on Marchal's work is that human math and logic are distinct from the actual math and logic that computes reality. With computationalism, reality is not computed. Most of the arithmetical reality is already highly not computable. The (partially) computable part of arithmetic is the sigma_1 part (the sentences having the shape ExP(x) with P decidable). Abobe it is no more computable. The whole of the arithmetical reality is the union of all the sigma_i and pi_i parts, and is far beynd what we can compute or emulate with a computer. The the human arithmetic and arithmetic are well distinguished in my presentations, so I am not sure to what you allude too. For computation, Church thesis makes it a *very* general human independent notion. The human version is a generalized and extended approximation of the actual that differs from the actual logico-mathematical structure of reality in important ways (e.g. infinities and
Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?
On 21 Dec 2013, at 17:09, John Mikes wrote: 'Implicit assumptions'? Jason seems to me as standing on the platform of physical sciences - I let Jason answer, but this is not my feeling. It seems to me that Jason is quite cautious on this, and open to put physics on an arithmetical platform instead. at least on a mthematical justification of theorems. Even Bruno's we see is suspect: we THINK we see, in adjusted ways as we can absorb phenomena, potentially including a lot more than we know about 'today'.. seeing is an 1-p experience. seeing is always thinking seeing. Even provably so with the comp assumption. About Bruno's remark on 'agnosticism' (also callable: ignorance) : I don't know (!) if a 'theory' (the partial one within our existent knowledge) is working indeed, or it just SEEMS working within the limited circumstances. Here, even without comp, I would say that a theory can only seem to be working. WE never know if our theories are true or not. We might know that they are refuted, as just one element of reality can demolish a theory, locally. Refuted? No one can include into a 'refutation' the totality, only the elements of a content of the present model. At some level, you are right, we might have dreamed the refutation!. But that level is impractical, and we will say that a theory is empirically refuted if it is contradicted by a sufficiently repeatable fact (a notion which ask in some faith in or waking state!). If comp predicts that the electron has a mass of one tun, then comp is refuted, (again, unless I wake up, and realize that electron does weight one tun), which needs we have to make small or big change in the assumption. Finally: I don't consider agnosticism a philosophy (oxymoron). The 'practical' results we achieve in our limited science-technology are commendable and useful, subject to Bruno's just be cautious to not draw conclusions. OK. (Scientific humility?) Yes. I may include a whole wide world beyond the mathematical computations into the term of 'compute'. That is semantic and requires a wider vocabulary than just ONE language. Comp offers an infinity of equivalent language. Your last remark would make sense if Church thesis is false, which I doubt, but is part of my assumption anyway. If you doubt Church thesis, it will be up to you to explain why. Church thesis is very solid for two main reason: 1) all attempts to define computable give rise to the same class of functions (be it by Babbage machine or quantum topological functors, etc.) 2) that class of computable functions is immune to the universality- destructive cantor diagonalization. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Minds, Machines and Gödel
On 21 Dec 2013, at 17:32, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, December 19, 2013 10:13:25 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 19 Dec 2013, at 15:07, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, December 19, 2013 5:23:20 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hello Craig, That is the very well known attempt by Lucas to use Gödel's theorem to refute mechanism. He was not the only one. Most people thinking about this have found the argument, and usually found the mistakes in it. To my knowledge Emil Post is the first to develop both that argument, and to understand that not only that argument does not work, but that the machines can already refute that argument, due to the mechanizability of the diagonalization, made very general by Church thesis. In fact either the argument is presented in an effective way, and then machine can refute it precisely, or the argument is based on some fuzziness, and then it proves nothing. If 'proof' is an inappropriate concept for first person physics, then I would expect that fuzziness would be the only symptom we can expect. The criticism of Lucas seems to not really understand the spirit of Gödel's theorem, but only focus on the letter of its application...which in the case of Gödel's theorem is precisely the opposite of its meaning. The link that Stathis provided demonstrates that Gödel himself understood this: So the following disjunctive conclusion is inevitable: Either mathematics is incompletable in this sense, that its evident axioms can never be comprised in a finite rule, that is to say, the human mind (even within the realm of pure mathematics) infinitely surpasses the powers of any finite machine, or else there exist absolutely unsolvable diophantine problems of the type specified . . . (Gödel 1995: 310). To me it's clear that Gödel means that incompleteness reveals that mathematics is not completable OK. Even arithmetic. in the sense that it is not enough to contain the reality of human experience, ? He says the 'human mind', but I say human experience. Mathematics is not enough for the mind and experience of ... the machines. not that it proves that mathematics or arithmetic truth is omniscient and omnipotent beyond our wildest dreams. Arithmetical truth is by definition arithmetically omniscient, but certainly not omniscient in general. Indeed to get the whole arithmetical Noùs, Arithmetical truth is still too much weak. All what Gödel showed is that arithmetical truth (or any richer notion of truth, like set theoretical, group theoretical, etc.) cannot be enumerated by machines or effective sound theories. The issue though is whether that non-enumerablity is a symptom of the inadequacy of Noùs to contain Psyche, or a symptom of Noùs being so undefinable that it can easily contain Psyche as well as Physics. The Noùs is the intelligible reality. It is not computable, but it is definable. Unlike truth and knowledge or first person experience. I think that Gödel interpreted his own work in the former and you are interpreting it in the latter - doesn't mean you're wrong, but I agree with him if he thought the former, because Psyche doesn't make sense as a part of Noùs. That is too much ambiguous. The psyche is not really a part of the Noùs, which is still purely 3p. I see Psyche and Physics as the personal and impersonal presentations of sense, Machine think the same, with sense replaced by arithmetical truth. Except that the machine has to be confused and for her that truth is beyond definability, like sense. and Noùs is the re-presentation of physics (meaning physics is re- personalized as abstract digital concepts). The Noùs has nothing to do with physics a priori. It is the world of the eternal platonic ideas, or God's ideas. keep in mind the 8 hypostases: - p (truth, not definable in arithmetic, but emulable in some trivial sense) - Bp (provable, believable, assumable, communicable). It splits into a communicable and non communicable part (some fact about communication are not communicable) - Bp p (the soul, the knower, ... the psyche is here). It does not split. - Bp Dt (the intelligible matter, ... matter and physics is here). It splits in two. - Bp Dt p (the sensible matter. the physical experience, (pain, pleasure, qualia) are here. It splits also in two parts. Physics is the commercialization of sense. Psyche is residential sense. Noùs is the hotel...commercialized residence. An excellent book has been written on that subject by Judson Webb (mechanism, mentalism and metamathematics, reference in the bibliographies in my URL, or in any of my papers). In conscience and mechanism, I show all the details of why the argument of Lucas is already refuted by Löbian machines, and Lucas main error is reduced to a confusion between Bp and Bp p. It is an implicit assumption, in the
Re: Bruno's mathematical reality
On 21 Dec 2013, at 17:36, John Mikes wrote: Dear Edgar Owen: thanks for a post with reason. I am sorry to be too old to read your (any?) book so I take it from your present communication. You wrote among others: ...Modern science has a major lacuna, the notion that all of reality is mathematical, that prevents science from grasping the complete nature of reality. In truth all of reality is logical, as is software, and the mathematics is just a subset of the logic. After all, modern science with its misguided insistence that all of reality is mathematical, has had nothing useful to say about the nature of either consciousness or the present moment, the two most fundamental aspects of experience. However I present a computational based information approach to these in my book among many other things... I doubt if we can have knowledge about reality at all, especially the complete nature of it. I presume (hope?) you do not limit 'logical' to our present human logic? I arrived by speculating on the diverse facets of different authors what they call (their) coinsciousness a response to relations irrespective of the performer. Your other inconnu: the present moment appeared in my speculations to cut out TIME from the view we carry about our existence (I was unsuccessful). Finally: I hope what you deem computational is not restricted to a numbers-based mathematical lingo - It is, by definition. rather a sophisticational ways of arriving at conclusions by ANY ways we may, or may not even know (com - putare). That is not computability, but provability, or inductive inference, which are indeed NOT universal. There are as many ways to get conclusion than there exist thinking creatures. That is why Church thesis is truly miraculous. Limiting us on the arithmetical reality, all theories gives different theorems, but for computability (on any effective domain) all languages gives exactly the same class of computable functions. Bruno On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 6:52 PM, Edgar Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: All, The fundamental nature of reality is examined in detail in my recent book on Reality available on Amazon under my name. Marchal is on the right track, but reality consists not just of numbers (math) but is a running logical structure analogous to software that continually computes the current state of the universe. Just as software includes but doesn't consist only of numbers and math, so does reality. In fact the equations of physical science make sense only when embedded in a logical structure just as is the case in computational reality. Modern science has a major lacuna, the notion that all of reality is mathematical, that prevents science from grasping the complete nature of reality. In truth all of reality is logical, as is software, and the mathematics is just a subset of the logic. After all, modern science with its misguided insistence that all of reality is mathematical, has had nothing useful to say about the nature of either consciousness or the present moment, the two most fundamental aspects of experience. However I present a computational based information approach to these in my book among many other things. The second clarification that needs to be made to the post on Marchal's work is that human math and logic are distinct from the actual math and logic that computes reality. The human version is a generalized and extended approximation of the actual that differs from the actual logico-mathematical structure of reality in important ways (e.g. infinities and infinitesimals which don't actually exist in external reality). I can explain further if anyone is interested, or you can read about it in my book... Edgar Owen -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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
The difficulties of executing simple algorithms: why brains make mistakes computers don't.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-12-odd-easy-feat-mind.html Even scientists are fond of thinking of the human brain as a computer, following sets of rules to communicate, make decisions and find a meal. Almost all adults understand that it's the last digit—and only the last digit —that determines whether a number is even, including participants in Lupyan's study. But that didn't keep them from mistaking a number like 798 for odd. A significant minority of people, regardless of their formal education, believe 400 is a better even number than 798, according to Lupyan, and also systematically mistake numbers like 798 for odd. After all, it is mostly odd, right? Most of us would attribute an error like that to carelessness, or not paying attention, says Lupyan, whose work was published recently in the journal Cognition. But some errors may appear more often because our brains are not as well equipped to solve purely rule-based problems. Asked in experiments to sort numbers, shapes, and people into simple categories like evens, triangles, and grandmothers, study subjects often broke simple rules in favor of context. For example, when asked to consider a contest open only to grandmothers and in which every eligible contestant had an equal chance of victory, people tended to think that a 68-year old woman with 6 grandchildren was more likely to win than a 39-year old woman with a newborn grandkid. Even though people can articulate the rules, they can't help but be influenced by perceptual details, Lupyan says. Thinking of triangles tends to involve thinking of typical, equilateral sorts of triangles. It is difficult to focus on just the rules that make a shape a triangle, regardless of what it looks like exactly. In many cases, eschewing rules is no big deal. In fact, it can be an advantage in assessing the unfamiliar. This serves us quite well, Lupyan says. If something looks and walks like a duck, chances are it's a duck. Unless it's a math test, where rules are absolutely necessary for success. Thankfully, humans have learned to transcend their reliance on similarity. After all, although some people may mistakenly think that 798 is an odd number, not only can people follow such rules—though not always perfectly—we are capable of building computers that can execute such rules perfectly, Lupyan says. That itself required very precise, mathematical cognition. A big question is where this ability comes from and why some people are better at formal rules than other people. That question may be important to educators, who spend a great deal of time teaching rules-based systems of math and science. Students approach learning with biases shaped both by evolution and day-to-day experience, Lupyan says. Rather than treating errors as reflecting lack of knowledge or as inattention, trying to understand their source may lead to new ways of teaching rule-based systems while making use of the flexibility and creative problem solving at which humans excel. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24156803 The difficulties of executing simple algorithms: why brains make mistakes computers don't. Lupyan G. Abstract It is shown that educated adults routinely make errors in placing stimuli into familiar, well-defined categories such as triangle and odd number. Scalene triangles are often rejected as instances of triangles and 798 is categorized by some as an odd number. These patterns are observed both in timed and untimed tasks, hold for people who can fully express the necessary and sufficient conditions for category membership, and for individuals with varying levels of education. A sizeable minority of people believe that 400 is more even than 798 and that an equilateral triangle is the most trianglest of triangles. Such beliefs predict how people instantiate other categories with necessary and sufficient conditions, e.g., grandmother. I argue that the distributed and graded nature of mental representations means that human algorithms, unlike conventional computer algorithms, only approximate rule-based classification and never fully abstract from the specifics of the input. This input-sensitivity is critical to obtaining the kind of cognitive flexibility at which humans excel, but comes at the cost of generally poor abilities to perform context-free computations. If human algorithms cannot be trusted to produce unfuzzy representations of odd numbers, triangles, and grandmothers, the idea that they can be trusted to do the heavy lifting of moment-to-moment cognition that is inherent in the metaphor of mind as digital computer still common in cognitive science, needs to be seriously reconsidered. -- 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
Re: Minds, Machines and Gödel
On 21 Dec 2013, at 19:06, Edgar Owen wrote: Craig, Godel's Theorem applies only to human mathematical systems. provably assuming that humans are arithmetically sound machine (which is a rather strong assumption). It doesn't apply to the logico-mathematical system of reality, of which the computational systems of biological organisms including humans are a part. I agree. Why? The answer is straightforward. Because Reality's logico- mathematical system is entirely computational in the sense that every state at every present moment is directly computed from the prior state. Only in the third person perspective, but with computationalism, all accessible realities are not computation, nor result of computation, but they are the result of infinitely many computations mixed with the first person indeterminacies. Godel's Theorem does not apply to this. Right. Gödel' theorem applies to finite or enumerable machines or theories. Not on their models, even in arithmetic. What Godel's Theorem says is that given some mathematical system it is possible to formulate a correct statement It is correct if we already know that the theory is correct, which is doubtful for rich theories like us, in case of comp. which is not computable from the axioms. But Reality doesn't work that way. It simply computes the next state of itself which is always possible. Reality does not compute. That's the digital physics thesis, which makes no sense. Indeed, as often explained here: if digital physics is correct then comp is correct, BUT if comp is correct then digital physics is incorrect. thus digital physics entails the negation of digital physics, and this makes digital physics incorrect (for a TOE) in all case (with comp or with non comp). The implication is that the logico-mathematical system of reality IS AND IN FACT MUST NECESSARILY BE logically consistent and logically complete in every detail. If it wasn't Reality would tear itself apart at the inconsistencies and pause at the incompletenesses and could not exist. But Reality does exist. OK, but we don't *know* that. We hope that. We know only that we are conscious here-and-now. We don't *know* if there are planets and galaxies. We bet on that. Those are theoretical assumptions. Reality is analogous to a running software program. Read the UDA. Apparent realities have to be much bigger than anything we could emulate on a computer. That is already the case for arithmetic itself. You might confuse proof and computation. Godel's Theorem does not apply. A human could speculate as to whether any particular state of Reality could ever arise computationally and it might be impossible to determine that, but again that has nothing to do with the actual operation of Reality,since it is only a particular internal mental model of that reality. The universal dovetailer get all states of mind, but no states of physical reality at all, which needs the non computable First Person Indeterminacy on all (relative) computations. Then the bigger theological (true) reality is even bigger. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?
On 21 Dec 2013, at 19:55, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Dec 21, 2013 at 4:46 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: That's a great answer but unfortunately it's NOT a answer to the question John Clark asked, the question never asked anything about the 3p view, it was never mentioned. So John Clark will repeat the question for a fifth time: how many first person experiences viewed from their first person points of view does Bruno Marchal believe exists on planet Earth right now? 1 (I already answered this, note). from the 1-view, the 1-view is always unique. Let me be sure I understand you correctly, on this entire planet there is only one first person experience viewed from their first person points of view. Is that what you're saying? No. What I said is that *for* each (3p-numerous) first person view possible, it is felt as being unique and entire. Bruno If so who is he, who is the lucky guy? 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: It's really all math
Hi Liz, Hi Richard, On 21 Dec 2013, at 20:43, LizR wrote: On 21 December 2013 23:23, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 21 Dec 2013, at 10:22, LizR wrote: On 21 December 2013 22:18, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 20 Dec 2013, at 18:48, Richard Ruquist wrote: Bruno: In that case a multiverse could contain another multiverse, a bit like a black hole could be a door to another universe. Richard: I like that idea because Smolin hypothized and Poplawski confirmed using GR + spin that black holes yield at least an internal universe. Interesting. Wish I could follow this more closely. I think this is shown by the Penrose diagram of a rotating black hole, if I remember correctly. I certainly wrote a science fiction story on that basis once! Any chance to get a PDF or link? For the diagram, or the story? The diagram's here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PENROSE2.PNG Thanks to you and Richard for the technical links, but I was actually asking for the fiction story you wrote :) The story is in a notebook in my bedroom. It was written in the 1970s, before the era of PCs. OK. If you like it, scan it, so that we can share the pleasure. easy to say, I am a bit lazy myself with the handwritten stuff. I bought a scanner, but it worked for two days ... The worst is that I continue a lot the handwriting (on salvia mainly, though). Thanks again for the links, but my wish above was more in finding time to read the papers, than to find the papers. As a mathematician, it takes me a lot of time to understand the math of physicists :) Best, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?
On 21 Dec 2013, at 23:28, meekerdb wrote: On 12/21/2013 1:26 AM, Jason Resch wrote: If there exists a mathematical theorem that requires a countable infinity of integers to represent, no finite version can exist of it, in other words, can its proof be found? If its shortest proof is infinitely long, or if the required axioms needed to develop a finite proof are infinite, (or instead of infinite, so large we could not represent them in this universe), then its proof can't be found (by us), but there is a definite answer to the question. The other possibility is that there are mutually inconsistent axioms that can be added. As I understand it, that was the point of http://intelligence.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Christiano-et-al-Naturalistic-reflection-early-draft.pdf A truth predicate can be defined for arithmetic, In set theory, OK. But not in arithmetic. And in a set theory (like ZF) you cannot define a set theoretical predicate for set theoretical truth. In ZF+kappa, you can define truth for ZF, but not for ZF+kappa. (ZF +kappa can prove the consistency of ZF). Shortly put, no correct machine can *define* a notion of truth sufficiently large to encompass all its possible assertions. Self-consistency is not provable by the consistent self (Gödel) Self-correctness is not even definable by the consistent self (Tarski, and also Gödel, note). but not all models or arithmetic are the same as the standard model. Computationalism uses only the standard model of arithmetic, except for indirect metamathematical use like proof of independence of axioms, or for modeling the weird sentences of G*, like []f (the consistency of inconsistency). Bruno Brent -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Newbie
On 22 Dec 2013, at 00:42, Edgar Owen wrote: Hi, I just joined the group and have a few questions since it's the first Google Group I'm on. First I assume the group must be moderated since it seems to take quite a while for my posts to show up. Is this so and who is/are the moderator(s). We are self-moderate. No moderator for this list. Second I thought I set my settings to get all posts as emails on my MacMail so I can reply there which is best for me. But I see a lot of posts on the group website I don't seem to be getting in my MacMail. Can anyone tell me if there is some delay or how to set that correctly? For me it depends. Sometimes my mail get through quickly, and sometimes they can take some days. Usually it takes 5 minutes, but regularly, it takes more time. It can depend on the servers. Hope you solve your problem. A long time ago, some posts have disappeared from the archive, and some among them have come back, now I am not sure. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Bruno's mathematical reality
On 22 Dec 2013, at 01:00, Edgar Owen wrote: Hi John, First thanks for the complement on my post! To address your points. Of course we do have some knowledge of reality. We have to have to be able to function within it which we most certainly do to varying degrees of competence. That is proof we do have sufficient knowledge of reality to function within it. Yes, computations include logic as well as math. Computations is only a very tiny part of arithmetic and thus of math. Logic is something else, despite many i-rich interrelation with computation and computability theory. Computability can be represented in term of a very special case of provability, and provability can be represented as a very special case of computability, but those notion are very different and non isomorphic. Proof and mathematical theories are never universal. For computability, we do have universality (that's why universal purpose computer exists). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The difficulties of executing simple algorithms: why brains make mistakes computers don't.
On 22 Dec 2013, at 13:28, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-12-odd-easy-feat-mind.html Even scientists are fond of thinking of the human brain as a computer, following sets of rules to communicate, make decisions and find a meal. I thought that only Dreyfus cofused computer and expert system. A computer follows simple laws, but a brain, a priori, too. Sets of rules is ambiguous, and quite misleading when discussing the possibility or impossibility of computationalism. Almost all adults understand that it's the last digit—and only the last digit —that determines whether a number is even, including participants in Lupyan's study. But that didn't keep them from mistaking a number like 798 for odd. A significant minority of people, regardless of their formal education, believe 400 is a better even number than 798, according to Lupyan, and also systematically mistake numbers like 798 for odd. After all, it is mostly odd, right? Well, that make sense if you say that a number is more even if it has a bigger power of two factor. 400 - 200 - 100 - 50 - 25 (biggest power of two factor = 16 = 2^4) 798 - 399 (biggest power of two factor = 2 = 2^1) Most of us would attribute an error like that to carelessness, or not paying attention, says Lupyan, whose work was published recently in the journal Cognition. But some errors may appear more often because our brains are not as well equipped to solve purely rule-based problems. Nor is a digital neuronal net. Asked in experiments to sort numbers, shapes, and people into simple categories like evens, triangles, and grandmothers, study subjects often broke simple rules in favor of context. For example, when asked to consider a contest open only to grandmothers and in which every eligible contestant had an equal chance of victory, people tended to think that a 68-year old woman with 6 grandchildren was more likely to win than a 39-year old woman with a newborn grandkid. Even though people can articulate the rules, they can't help but be influenced by perceptual details, Lupyan says. Thinking of triangles tends to involve thinking of typical, equilateral sorts of triangles. It is difficult to focus on just the rules that make a shape a triangle, regardless of what it looks like exactly. In many cases, eschewing rules is no big deal. In fact, it can be an advantage in assessing the unfamiliar. This serves us quite well, Lupyan says. If something looks and walks like a duck, chances are it's a duck. Unless it's a math test, where rules are absolutely necessary for success. Thankfully, humans have learned to transcend their reliance on similarity. After all, although some people may mistakenly think that 798 is an odd number, not only can people follow such rules—though not always perfectly—we are capable of building computers that can execute such rules perfectly, Lupyan says. That itself required very precise, mathematical cognition. A big question is where this ability comes from and why some people are better at formal rules than other people. That question may be important to educators, who spend a great deal of time teaching rules-based systems of math and science. Students approach learning with biases shaped both by evolution and day-to-day experience, Lupyan says. Rather than treating errors as reflecting lack of knowledge or as inattention, trying to understand their source may lead to new ways of teaching rule-based systems while making use of the flexibility and creative problem solving at which humans excel. Following, or not, rules, is a level dependent question. You can simulate with prolog (which is a universal system with rules) a neuronal nets (a universal system without rule), and vice versa. Bruno http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24156803 The difficulties of executing simple algorithms: why brains make mistakes computers don't. Lupyan G. Abstract It is shown that educated adults routinely make errors in placing stimuli into familiar, well-defined categories such as triangle and odd number. Scalene triangles are often rejected as instances of triangles and 798 is categorized by some as an odd number. These patterns are observed both in timed and untimed tasks, hold for people who can fully express the necessary and sufficient conditions for category membership, and for individuals with varying levels of education. A sizeable minority of people believe that 400 is more even than 798 and that an equilateral triangle is the most trianglest of triangles. Such beliefs predict how people instantiate other categories with necessary and sufficient conditions, e.g., grandmother. I argue that the distributed and graded nature of mental representations means that human algorithms, unlike conventional computer algorithms, only approximate rule-based classification
Re: Minds, Machines and Gödel
On Sunday, December 22, 2013 7:21:05 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 21 Dec 2013, at 17:32, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, December 19, 2013 10:13:25 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 19 Dec 2013, at 15:07, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, December 19, 2013 5:23:20 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hello Craig, That is the very well known attempt by Lucas to use Gödel's theorem to refute mechanism. He was not the only one. Most people thinking about this have found the argument, and usually found the mistakes in it. To my knowledge Emil Post is the first to develop both that argument, and to understand that not only that argument does not work, but that the machines can already refute that argument, due to the mechanizability of the diagonalization, made very general by Church thesis. In fact either the argument is presented in an effective way, and then machine can refute it precisely, or the argument is based on some fuzziness, and then it proves nothing. If 'proof' is an inappropriate concept for first person physics, then I would expect that fuzziness would be the only symptom we can expect. The criticism of Lucas seems to not really understand the spirit of Gödel's theorem, but only focus on the letter of its application...which in the case of Gödel's theorem is precisely the opposite of its meaning. The link that Stathis provided demonstrates that Gödel himself understood this: So the following disjunctive conclusion is inevitable: Either mathematics is incompletable in this sense, that its evident axioms can never be comprised in a finite rule, that is to say, the human mind (even within the realm of pure mathematics) infinitely surpasses the powers of any finite machine, or else there exist absolutely unsolvable diophantine problems of the type specified . . . (Gödel 1995: 310). To me it's clear that Gödel means that incompleteness reveals that mathematics is not completable OK. Even arithmetic. in the sense that it is not enough to contain the reality of human experience, ? He says the 'human mind', but I say human experience. Mathematics is not enough for the mind and experience of ... the machines. i agree, of course, but how is that view compatible with computationalism? not that it proves that mathematics or arithmetic truth is omniscient and omnipotent beyond our wildest dreams. Arithmetical truth is by definition arithmetically omniscient, but certainly not omniscient in general. Indeed to get the whole arithmetical Noùs, Arithmetical truth is still too much weak. All what Gödel showed is that arithmetical truth (or any richer notion of truth, like set theoretical, group theoretical, etc.) cannot be enumerated by machines or effective sound theories. The issue though is whether that non-enumerablity is a symptom of the inadequacy of Noùs to contain Psyche, or a symptom of Noùs being so undefinable that it can easily contain Psyche as well as Physics. The Noùs is the intelligible reality. It is not computable, but it is definable. Unlike truth and knowledge or first person experience. The Noùs is intelligible, but why is it necessarily reality? I think that Gödel interpreted his own work in the former and you are interpreting it in the latter - doesn't mean you're wrong, but I agree with him if he thought the former, because Psyche doesn't make sense as a part of Noùs. That is too much ambiguous. The psyche is not really a part of the Noùs, which is still purely 3p. Cool, we agree. I see Psyche and Physics as the personal and impersonal presentations of sense, Machine think the same, with sense replaced by arithmetical truth. Except that the machine has to be confused and for her that truth is beyond definability, like sense. I don't think that Psyche can be strongly related to arithmetic truth. There are thematic associations, but I would say that they are by way of reflected Noùs. First person arithmetic truth is intuition of Noùs, and Noùs is alienated sense. The idea that confusion of truth would be necessary to transform quantitative rules into qualitative experiences seems to be a shaky premise at best. It smells like hasty reverse engineering to plug a major hole in comp. It creates an unacknowledged dualism between arithmetic truth/definitions and colorful/magic confusion of definition. and Noùs is the re-presentation of physics (meaning physics is re- personalized as abstract digital concepts). The Noùs has nothing to do with physics a priori. It is the world of the eternal platonic ideas, or God's ideas. I understand, yes. I place it here on the upper left (West) side:
Re: Bruno's mathematical reality
Bruno wrote: *(JM)...Finally: I hope what you deem computational is not restricted to a numbers-based mathematical lingo -* It is, by definition. *((ONE definition you happen to choose - JM))* *(JM:)...rather a sophisticational ways of arriving at conclusions by ANY ways we may, or may not even know (com - putare). * That is not computability, but provability, or inductive inference, which are indeed NOT universal. There are as many ways to get conclusion than there exist thinking creatures. That is why Church thesis is truly miraculous. Limiting us on the arithmetical reality, all theories gives different theorems, but for computability (on any effective domain) all languages gives exactly the same class of computable functions. Bruno *JM: Please, forget now about 'provability' WITHIN mathematics-related theories. * *My parenthesis (com-putare) refers to the language-origin of the word: * *PUT together AND **THINK about it. That MAY include math, or other ways of * *thinking. Maybe ways we do **not even know about at our present development. * *(You basically seem to be open for such). * *John M* On Sun, Dec 22, 2013 at 7:27 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 21 Dec 2013, at 17:36, John Mikes wrote: Dear Edgar Owen: thanks for a post with reason. I am sorry to be too old to read your (any?) book so I take it from your present communication. You wrote among others: *...Modern science has a major lacuna, the notion that all of reality is mathematical, that prevents science from grasping the complete nature of reality. In truth all of reality is logical, as is software, and the mathematics is just a subset of the logic. After all, modern science with its misguided insistence that all of reality is mathematical, has had nothing useful to say about the nature of either consciousness or the present moment, the two most fundamental aspects of experience. However I present a computational based information approach to these in my book among many other things...* I doubt if we can have knowledge about reality at all, especially the complete nature of it. I presume (hope?) you do not limit 'logical' to our present human logic? I arrived by speculating on the diverse facets of different authors what they call (their) coinsciousness a *response to relations* irrespective of the performer. Your other inconnu: *the present moment *appeared in my speculations to cut out TIME from the view we carry about our existence (I was unsuccessful). Finally: I hope what you deem *computational *is not restricted to a numbers-based mathematical lingo - It is, by definition. rather a sophisticational ways of arriving at conclusions by ANY ways we may, or may not even know (com - putare). That is not computability, but provability, or inductive inference, which are indeed NOT universal. There are as many ways to get conclusion than there exist thinking creatures. That is why Church thesis is truly miraculous. Limiting us on the arithmetical reality, all theories gives different theorems, but for computability (on any effective domain) all languages gives exactly the same class of computable functions. Bruno On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 6:52 PM, Edgar Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: All, The fundamental nature of reality is examined in detail in my recent book on Reality available on Amazon under my name. Marchal is on the right track, but reality consists not just of numbers (math) but is a running logical structure analogous to software that continually computes the current state of the universe. Just as software includes but doesn't consist only of numbers and math, so does reality. In fact the equations of physical science make sense only when embedded in a logical structure just as is the case in computational reality. Modern science has a major lacuna, the notion that all of reality is mathematical, that prevents science from grasping the complete nature of reality. In truth all of reality is logical, as is software, and the mathematics is just a subset of the logic. After all, modern science with its misguided insistence that all of reality is mathematical, has had nothing useful to say about the nature of either consciousness or the present moment, the two most fundamental aspects of experience. However I present a computational based information approach to these in my book among many other things. The second clarification that needs to be made to the post on Marchal's work is that human math and logic are distinct from the actual math and logic that computes reality. The human version is a generalized and extended approximation of the actual that differs from the actual logico-mathematical structure of reality in important ways (e.g. infinities and infinitesimals which don't actually exist in external reality). I can explain further if anyone is interested, or you can read about it in my book... Edgar Owen -- You received
Re: Minds, Machines and Gödel
On 22 Dec 2013, at 14:56, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, December 22, 2013 7:21:05 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: Mathematics is not enough for the mind and experience of ... the machines. i agree, of course, but how is that view compatible with computationalism? It prevents the use of the idea that mathematics is not enough to circumscribe the human mind, to be applied against mechanism. It means also that most proposition *about* machine, cannot be found in a mechanical way. The simplest examples are that no machine can decide if some arbitrary machine will stop not, or no machine can decide if two arbitrary machine compute or not the same function, etc. If there is no complete theories for machines and/or numbers, it makes harder to defend non-comp, etc. The issue though is whether that non-enumerablity is a symptom of the inadequacy of Noùs to contain Psyche, or a symptom of Noùs being so undefinable that it can easily contain Psyche as well as Physics. The Noùs is the intelligible reality. It is not computable, but it is definable. Unlike truth and knowledge or first person experience. The Noùs is intelligible, but why is it necessarily reality? It is the world of ideas, and with comp it is the world of universal numbers' idea, which rise up as a consequences of addition and multiplication. It splits into G and G* (but you need to study a bit of math for this). I think that Gödel interpreted his own work in the former and you are interpreting it in the latter - doesn't mean you're wrong, but I agree with him if he thought the former, because Psyche doesn't make sense as a part of Noùs. That is too much ambiguous. The psyche is not really a part of the Noùs, which is still purely 3p. Cool, we agree. I see Psyche and Physics as the personal and impersonal presentations of sense, Machine think the same, with sense replaced by arithmetical truth. Except that the machine has to be confused and for her that truth is beyond definability, like sense. I don't think that Psyche can be strongly related to arithmetic truth. There are thematic associations, but I would say that they are by way of reflected Noùs. First person arithmetic truth is intuition of Noùs, and Noùs is alienated sense. No problem. The intuition of truth comes from the fact that sometimes our beliefs are true. The Noùs is alienating us, as anything which is not personal consciousness. The Noùs is a gate to the others. The idea that confusion of truth would be necessary to transform quantitative rules into qualitative experiences seems to be a shaky premise at best. It smells like hasty reverse engineering to plug a major hole in comp. It creates an unacknowledged dualism between arithmetic truth/definitions and colorful/magic confusion of definition. The idea comes from Plato and notably the Theaetetus idea of defining knowledge by true belief. It works well. Socrate refuted the idea, but Gödel's incompleteness refutes Socrate's refutation of Theaetetus. Also, it is the only definition of knowledge which is coherent with the dream metaphysical argument, and thus with comp. This wold be long to be developed. All this is fully developed in conscience et mécanisme. and Noùs is the re-presentation of physics (meaning physics is re- personalized as abstract digital concepts). The Noùs has nothing to do with physics a priori. It is the world of the eternal platonic ideas, or God's ideas. I understand, yes. I place it here on the upper left (West) side: keep in mind the 8 hypostases: - p (truth, not definable in arithmetic, but emulable in some trivial sense) Instead of p being truth, p is just a symbolic way to represent truth. p alone means p is true, when asserted by a machine which is supposed to be correct by definition and choice. I see truth as a narrow intellectual sensitivity, not primordial. Truth encompasses everything. It is provably beyond anything intellectual. In the Plotinus/arithmetic lexicon: Arithmetical truth plays the role of the non nameable God of the machine. The primordial capacity to experience, from which comparisons and discernments can self-diverge *must* be more primitive than the notion of right and wrong or is-ness and may-not-be-ness. Before anything can 'be', there must be a the potential for a difference between being and non-being to be experienced. That difference is a quality, not a logic. The logic of the discernment I think must be second order - the primary quality of discernment is a sense of obstruction, a fork in the road which interrupts peace/solitude. Perhaps. - Bp (provable, believable, assumable, communicable). It splits into a communicable and non communicable part (some fact about communication are not communicable) Instead of belief or proof being primitive or ontological, Belief or proof are not primitive. They are
Re: Bruno's mathematical reality
That is not computability, but provability, or inductive inference, which are indeed NOT universal. There are as many ways to get conclusion than there exist thinking creatures. That is why Church thesis is truly miraculous. Limiting us on the arithmetical reality, all theories gives different theorems, but for computability (on any effective domain) all languages gives exactly the same class of computable functions. Bruno JM: Please, forget now about 'provability' WITHIN mathematics- related theories. OK. Those are indeed infinitely extendible. My parenthesis (com-putare) refers to the language-origin of the word: Which is very nice to remind us. It is a nice etymology, which unfortunately describe more the notion of proof than of computation. PUT together AND THINK about it. That MAY include math, or other ways of thinking. Maybe ways we do not even know about at our present development. (You basically seem to be open for such). Yes. Even by staying with the computationalist hypothesis (with the sense of Church, Turing, Post, etc.), we cannot circumscribe the non enumerable ways for machines to get knowledge. The more you understand machines/numbers, the more you get familiar with the idea that we really can only scratch the surface. Provably so if we are machine ourselves. The universal machine is a born universal dissident. It eventually refutes all theories, making its learning ability without bounds. If we are machines, we are bound to get an infinity of surprises (good or bad, this is part of the surprises). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?
On Sat, Dec 21, 2013 at 1:57 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: Let me be sure I understand you correctly, on this entire planet there is only one first person experience viewed from their first person points of view. Is that what you're saying? If so who is he, who is the lucky guy? Are you dumb ? Are you really claiming that's what Bruno said ? really ? If you say yes, then you're proving once more what a liar you are. OK maybe I am dumb and a liar (although in this instance the 2 states would seem to be mutually exclusive) and maybe the answer is not 1, so then what is the answer? Give me a number! 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Bruno's mathematical reality
Dear Edger, Where does the fire come from that animates the logic? On Friday, December 20, 2013 6:52:54 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: All, The fundamental nature of reality is examined in detail in my recent book on Reality available on Amazon under my name. Marchal is on the right track, but reality consists not just of numbers (math) but is a running logical structure analogous to software that continually computes the current state of the universe. Just as software includes but doesn't consist only of numbers and math, so does reality. In fact the equations of physical science make sense only when embedded in a logical structure just as is the case in computational reality. Modern science has a major lacuna, the notion that all of reality is mathematical, that prevents science from grasping the complete nature of reality. In truth all of reality is logical, as is software, and the mathematics is just a subset of the logic. After all, modern science with its misguided insistence that all of reality is mathematical, has had nothing useful to say about the nature of either consciousness or the present moment, the two most fundamental aspects of experience. However I present a computational based information approach to these in my book among many other things. The second clarification that needs to be made to the post on Marchal's work is that human math and logic are distinct from the actual math and logic that computes reality. The human version is a generalized and extended approximation of the actual that differs from the actual logico-mathematical structure of reality in important ways (e.g. infinities and infinitesimals which don't actually exist in external reality). I can explain further if anyone is interested, or you can read about it in my book... Edgar Owen -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?
Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: That's a great answer but unfortunately it's NOT a answer to the question John Clark asked, the question never asked anything about the 3p view, it was never mentioned. So John Clark will repeat the question for a fifth time: how many first person experiences viewed from their first person points of view does Bruno Marchal believe exists on planet Earth right now? 1 (I already answered this, note). from the 1-view, the 1-view is always unique. Let me be sure I understand you correctly, on this entire planet there is only one first person experience viewed from their first person points of view. Is that what you're saying? No. What I said is that *for* each (3p-numerous) first person view possible, it is felt as being unique So what? The first 7 billion integers are all unique too, in fact that is precisely why it is meaningful to speak of the first 7 billion integers, otherwise the phrase would be meaningless as would the very idea of integers. The question is ambiguous. If the question is ambiguous it is because I used YOUR phrase the first person experiences viewed from their first person points of view ! If your phrase means anything you should be able to tell me how many ( give or take a few orders of magnitude) first person experiences viewed from their first person points of view exist on planet Earth right now, but of course if it means nothing then you can't. 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?
Hi John, I will try to answer for Bruno as I think I understand what he means. The number is equal to the number of entities that have a first person experience. The point here is that each entity can only experience their own. The notion of a 3rd person experience can only consider the evidence that such exists, for example I cannot prove that you have a 1st person experience to myself or any one else. My own 1st person experience it incontrovertible to me and me alone. On Sun, Dec 22, 2013 at 1:48 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: That's a great answer but unfortunately it's NOT a answer to the question John Clark asked, the question never asked anything about the 3p view, it was never mentioned. So John Clark will repeat the question for a fifth time: how many first person experiences viewed from their first person points of view does Bruno Marchal believe exists on planet Earth right now? 1 (I already answered this, note). from the 1-view, the 1-view is always unique. Let me be sure I understand you correctly, on this entire planet there is only one first person experience viewed from their first person points of view. Is that what you're saying? No. What I said is that *for* each (3p-numerous) first person view possible, it is felt as being unique So what? The first 7 billion integers are all unique too, in fact that is precisely why it is meaningful to speak of the first 7 billion integers, otherwise the phrase would be meaningless as would the very idea of integers. The question is ambiguous. If the question is ambiguous it is because I used YOUR phrase the first person experiences viewed from their first person points of view ! If your phrase means anything you should be able to tell me how many ( give or take a few orders of magnitude) first person experiences viewed from their first person points of view exist on planet Earth right now, but of course if it means nothing then you can't. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/1NWmK1IeadI/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King Senior Researcher Mobile: (864) 567-3099 stephe...@provensecure.com http://www.provensecure.us/ “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law or may be constituted as attorney work product. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, notify sender immediately and delete this message immediately.” -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Bruno's mathematical reality
Your theory comes from Von Neumann, and Chaitin, and Wolfram, does it not, Edgar? That everything is a program or cellular automata, and in the beginning was a program. Following along, what is this Logic comprised of (sort of like SPK's query) is it electrons, is it virtual particles, is it field lines? Where doth the logical structure sleep? In Planck Cells? I apologize if my questions annoy, but where is the computer network that computes the current state of the universe. Can we get MIT physicist Seth Lloyd to shake a stick or a laser pointer, or otherwise, display, where this abacus dwells? Thanks, Mitch -Original Message- From: Stephen Paul King stephe...@charter.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sun, Dec 22, 2013 1:36 pm Subject: Re: Bruno's mathematical reality Dear Edger, Where does the fire come from that animates the logic? On Friday, December 20, 2013 6:52:54 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: All, The fundamental nature of reality is examined in detail in my recent book on Reality available on Amazon under my name. Marchal is on the right track, but reality consists not just of numbers (math) but is a running logical structure analogous to software that continually computes the current state of the universe. Just as software includes but doesn't consist only of numbers and math, so does reality. In fact the equations of physical science make sense only when embedded in a logical structure just as is the case in computational reality. Modern science has a major lacuna, the notion that all of reality is mathematical, that prevents science from grasping the complete nature of reality. In truth all of reality is logical, as is software, and the mathematics is just a subset of the logic. After all, modern science with its misguided insistence that all of reality is mathematical, has had nothing useful to say about the nature of either consciousness or the present moment, the two most fundamental aspects of experience. However I present a computational based information approach to these in my book among many other things. The second clarification that needs to be made to the post on Marchal's work is that human math and logic are distinct from the actual math and logic that computes reality. The human version is a generalized and extended approximation of the actual that differs from the actual logico-mathematical structure of reality in important ways (e.g. infinities and infinitesimals which don't actually exist in external reality). I can explain further if anyone is interested, or you can read about it in my book... Edgar Owen -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Bruno's mathematical reality
Hi Mitch, No, not a thing, as in ...what is this Logic comprised of If it is a thing then it could not possibly be any subset of the universe (this particular subset of the multiverse or the total multiverse). It would have to be the entire omniverse; all that exists. But that would not answer my question: What animates the logic? Where doth the fire emanate? Maybe the fire, to use a word from my fav philosopher, is what is fundamental and all the things are its sub-invariants. (I have to invent a word here. What would you denote that which remains the same withing some transformation of some subset of all that exists?) Fire rests by changing. -- Heraclitus On Sun, Dec 22, 2013 at 2:04 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Your theory comes from Von Neumann, and Chaitin, and Wolfram, does it not, Edgar? That everything is a program or cellular automata, and in the beginning was a program. Following along, what is this Logic comprised of (sort of like SPK's query) is it electrons, is it virtual particles, is it field lines? Where doth the logical structure sleep? In Planck Cells? I apologize if my questions annoy, but where is the computer network that computes the current state of the universe. Can we get MIT physicist Seth Lloyd to shake a stick or a laser pointer, or otherwise, display, where this abacus dwells? Thanks, Mitch -Original Message- From: Stephen Paul King stephe...@charter.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sun, Dec 22, 2013 1:36 pm Subject: Re: Bruno's mathematical reality Dear Edger, Where does the fire come from that animates the logic? On Friday, December 20, 2013 6:52:54 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: All, The fundamental nature of reality is examined in detail in my recent book on Reality available on Amazon under my name. Marchal is on the right track, but reality consists not just of numbers (math) but is a running logical structure analogous to software that continually computes the current state of the universe. Just as software includes but doesn't consist only of numbers and math, so does reality. In fact the equations of physical science make sense only when embedded in a logical structure just as is the case in computational reality. Modern science has a major lacuna, the notion that all of reality is mathematical, that prevents science from grasping the complete nature of reality. In truth all of reality is logical, as is software, and the mathematics is just a subset of the logic. After all, modern science with its misguided insistence that all of reality is mathematical, has had nothing useful to say about the nature of either consciousness or the present moment, the two most fundamental aspects of experience. However I present a computational based information approach to these in my book among many other things. The second clarification that needs to be made to the post on Marchal's work is that human math and logic are distinct from the actual math and logic that computes reality. The human version is a generalized and extended approximation of the actual that differs from the actual logico-mathematical structure of reality in important ways (e.g. infinities and infinitesimals which don't actually exist in external reality). I can explain further if anyone is interested, or you can read about it in my book... Edgar Owen -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/sqWzozazMg0/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King Senior Researcher Mobile: (864) 567-3099 stephe...@provensecure.com http://www.provensecure.us/ “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law or may be constituted as attorney work product. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or
Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?
On 12/22/2013 5:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 21 Dec 2013, at 23:28, meekerdb wrote: On 12/21/2013 1:26 AM, Jason Resch wrote: If there exists a mathematical theorem that requires a countable infinity of integers to represent, no finite version can exist of it, in other words, can its proof be found? If its shortest proof is infinitely long, or if the required axioms needed to develop a finite proof are infinite, (or instead of infinite, so large we could not represent them in this universe), then its proof can't be found (by us), but there is a definite answer to the question. The other possibility is that there are mutually inconsistent axioms that can be added. As I understand it, that was the point of http://intelligence.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Christiano-et-al-Naturalistic-reflection-early-draft.pdf A truth predicate can be defined for arithmetic, In set theory, OK. But not in arithmetic. That's the point of the paper, that a truth predicate can be defined for arithmetic. I put truth in scare quotes because the predicate is really 1-Probability(x)--0. And in a set theory (like ZF) you cannot define a set theoretical predicate for set theoretical truth. In ZF+kappa, you can define truth for ZF, but not for ZF+kappa. (ZF+kappa can prove the consistency of ZF). Shortly put, no correct machine can *define* a notion of truth sufficiently large to encompass all its possible assertions. Self-consistency is not provable by the consistent self (Gödel) Self-correctness is not even definable by the consistent self (Tarski, and also Gödel, note). but not all models or arithmetic are the same as the standard model. Computationalism uses only the standard model of arithmetic, except for indirect metamathematical use like proof of independence of axioms, or for modeling the weird sentences of G*, like []f (the consistency of inconsistency). But aren't you assuming the standard model when you refer to the unprovable truths of arithmetic. If you allowed other models this set would be ill defined. Brent -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Bruno's mathematical reality
On 12/22/2013 5:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 22 Dec 2013, at 01:00, Edgar Owen wrote: Hi John, First thanks for the complement on my post! To address your points. Of course we do have some knowledge of reality. We have to have to be able to function within it which we most certainly do to varying degrees of competence. That is proof we do have sufficient knowledge of reality to function within it. Yes, computations include logic as well as math. Computations is only a very tiny part of arithmetic and thus of math. Logic is something else, despite many i-rich interrelation with computation and computability theory. Computability can be represented in term of a very special case of provability, and provability can be represented as a very special case of computability, but those notion are very different and non isomorphic. But computable means halting and returning a value. In terms of measure aren't there infinitely more non-terminating programs than terminating? Brent Proof and mathematical theories are never universal. For computability, we do have universality (that's why universal purpose computer exists). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: It's really all math
This is an ancient story that I would be embarrassed for anyone to read and intend to leave where it is. However I could send you my latest one, although it is unfinished... mind you so was that one. I seem to have a problem with finishing... On 23 December 2013 01:53, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi Liz, Hi Richard, On 21 Dec 2013, at 20:43, LizR wrote: On 21 December 2013 23:23, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 21 Dec 2013, at 10:22, LizR wrote: On 21 December 2013 22:18, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 20 Dec 2013, at 18:48, Richard Ruquist wrote: Bruno: In that case a multiverse could contain another multiverse, a bit like a black hole could be a door to another universe. Richard: I like that idea because Smolin hypothized and Poplawski confirmed using GR + spin that black holes yield at least an internal universe. Interesting. Wish I could follow this more closely. I think this is shown by the Penrose diagram of a rotating black hole, if I remember correctly. I certainly wrote a science fiction story on that basis once! Any chance to get a PDF or link? For the diagram, or the story? The diagram's here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PENROSE2.PNG Thanks to you and Richard for the technical links, but I was actually asking for the fiction story you wrote :) The story is in a notebook in my bedroom. It was written in the 1970s, before the era of PCs. OK. If you like it, scan it, so that we can share the pleasure. easy to say, I am a bit lazy myself with the handwritten stuff. I bought a scanner, but it worked for two days ... The worst is that I continue a lot the handwriting (on salvia mainly, though). Thanks again for the links, but my wish above was more in finding time to read the papers, than to find the papers. As a mathematician, it takes me a lot of time to understand the math of physicists :) Best, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?
Hi Brent, Is there a reason why we only consider the 'standard models to apply when we are considering foundation theory (or whatever you might denote what we are studying)? Have you ever looked at the Tennenbaum theoremhttps://www.google.com/search?q=Tennebaum+theoremoq=Tennebaum+theoremaqs=chrome..69i57sourceid=chromeespv=210es_sm=93ie=UTF-8#es_sm=93espv=210q=Tennenbaum+theoremspell=1 and wondered if it could be weakened to allow for computations that are outside of the countable recursive functions? I suspect that the standard model (of arithmetic) is a type of invariant under a strong restricted group of transformations, I do not have the proper language to explain this further at this time. :_( There is more ... Just because we can prove that N x N -N mapping can represent all possible computations we forget that the proof assumes that the quantity of resources and the number of computational steps is irrelevant. As a researcher of computer science and physics, why is the tractability of a computation given a quantity of resources not relevant in considerations of what, say, the UD* can accomplish? I believe that the quest of a universal rule or measure that determines Everything is already excluded as a possibility; have we not learned that a measure zero set is? Why not instead look at how computations can interact with each other, how they might evolve, how entropy may be involved, what does it mean for truths to be finitely accessible and infinite truths to be inaccessible, etc. We look like monkeys chasing the weasel 'round the mulberry tree... On Sun, Dec 22, 2013 at 2:55 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 12/22/2013 5:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 21 Dec 2013, at 23:28, meekerdb wrote: On 12/21/2013 1:26 AM, Jason Resch wrote: If there exists a mathematical theorem that requires a countable infinity of integers to represent, no finite version can exist of it, in other words, can its proof be found? If its shortest proof is infinitely long, or if the required axioms needed to develop a finite proof are infinite, (or instead of infinite, so large we could not represent them in this universe), then its proof can't be found (by us), but there is a definite answer to the question. The other possibility is that there are mutually inconsistent axioms that can be added. As I understand it, that was the point of http://intelligence.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Christiano-et-al-Naturalistic-reflection-early-draft.pdf A truth predicate can be defined for arithmetic, In set theory, OK. But not in arithmetic. That's the point of the paper, that a truth predicate can be defined for arithmetic. I put truth in scare quotes because the predicate is really 1-Probability(x)--0. And in a set theory (like ZF) you cannot define a set theoretical predicate for set theoretical truth. In ZF+kappa, you can define truth for ZF, but not for ZF+kappa. (ZF+kappa can prove the consistency of ZF). Shortly put, no correct machine can *define* a notion of truth sufficiently large to encompass all its possible assertions. Self-consistency is not provable by the consistent self (Gödel) Self-correctness is not even definable by the consistent self (Tarski, and also Gödel, note). but not all models or arithmetic are the same as the standard model. Computationalism uses only the standard model of arithmetic, except for indirect metamathematical use like proof of independence of axioms, or for modeling the weird sentences of G*, like []f (the consistency of inconsistency). But aren't you assuming the standard model when you refer to the unprovable truths of arithmetic. If you allowed other models this set would be ill defined. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/1NWmK1IeadI/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King Senior Researcher Mobile: (864) 567-3099 stephe...@provensecure.com http://www.provensecure.us/ “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law or may be constituted as attorney work product. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error,
Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?
On Sun, Dec 22, 2013 at 6:58 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 21 Dec 2013, at 17:09, John Mikes wrote: 'Implicit assumptions'? Jason seems to me as standing on the platform of physical sciences - I let Jason answer, but this is not my feeling. It seems to me that Jason is quite cautious on this, and open to put physics on an arithmetical platform instead. John's initial critique was that I seemed to be assuming a lot that he doe not. I replied to ask what specifically he thinks I am assuming which he was not. To clarify, I was assuming arithmetical truth and the idea that the correct computation can instantiate our consciousness. Jason -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How the banks are stealing our wealth
On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 6:34 AM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.comwrote: On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 9:02 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 12/16/2013 12:53 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 5:59 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 12/15/2013 4:23 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 9:49 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 14 Dec 2013, at 23:27, LizR wrote: I haven't had a chance to watch it, but I do know that banks are stealing our wealth - as indeed are rich people generally, since wealth breeds more wealth and that more wealth has to be extracted from you and me. Money and richness is not a problem. It is the blood of the social system. Money and richness is a problem only when it is based on lies, and when it is used to hide the lies and perpetuate them. Honest money enrich everybody. True, it is slower for poor, and quicker for the rich, but when people play the game honestly, everyone win, and poverty regress. In a working economy, there are few poor. Presence of poverty means that there are stealers and bandits (or war or catastrophes). Accusing the system and money itself is all benefices for the bandits. It dilutes their responsibility and wrong-doing in the abstract. It helps them to feel like not guilty. As I said, criticizing the economical system is like attributing to the blood cells the responsibility of some tumor since the blood cells feeds it. It hides the real root of the problem, and focus on the wrong target. I agree, unsurprisingly. :) I also agree with Liz, in that it is clear who is stealing the money. The rich get richer is a very fundamental phenomenon. Even if we remove money from society, it will still happen because it also applies to social interactions. The more friends and alliances you have, the more likely you are to get new ones. This is the reason why every entrepreneur seeks the allegiance of celebrities. It's a more subtle form of currency. However, we got trapped into a system that effectively amplifies rich get richer dynamics. This system is central banking -- since the powerful have the capacity to issue fiat money in the form of debt, two things happen: It doesn't take central banking to make the rich get richer. Yes, that is what I said. My claim is that central banking amplifies the effect. Ever since civilization began the rich have been able to get richer just by owning stuff. For a couple of millenia it was owning land. If you owned land then serfs and peasants had to pay you for working the land. Then merchantilism added ships to what you could own. Then industrialization added mines and oil and factories. Banking and insurance added financial instruments that you could own. But it's all of a piece. If you own stuff that you can rent/lend you're rich and you can get richer. But central banks can print new money. This new money is lent. The more money you have, the more new money the banking system will lend to you. Thus the amplification. Also, the marginal value of money decreases the more you have, so this devaluation and speculation with new money exposes the poor to more risk, while they don't actually have access to the investment opportunities that the rich have. You always refer to central banks. But all banks always did this. The bank would take 1M$ in deposits and then make 10M$ in loans, depending on the fact that statistically only a few depositors would ask for their money at any one time. So they collected interest on 10M$ while only having to pay interest on 1M$ (if at all). I agree. It is interesting to notice that it is highly illegal if a private citizen does this, but it is the business model of modern banks. An advantage of bitcoin is that it removes the need for the bank as a storage facility. It will still be useful to have security experts providing safe wallets, but they will not be able to behave as banks and lend your money. We already have pear to pear lending, although it is illegal in many places. Again, with bitcoin, it will be very hard to regulate against such behaviours, and I think that is a good thing. The current situation is very unfair. We need banks to store our money, and they get to invest it in ways that we are not allowed. Then, we don't get any of the profit the bank generates from our own money. This also amplifies rich get richer dynamics. Of course this occasionally resulted in runs on banks and consequence failure of the bank. Central banks were set up as part of a system to regulate this. The central bank insures deposits, but also the same regulatory system limits the discount rate, i.e. the amount of money a bank has to have as a fraction of what it can loan. So Central banks exist to *limit* the printing of
Re: How the banks are stealing our wealth
On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 6:40 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 18 December 2013 12:23, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: The first step has to be to stop population growth. That's pretty much happened in all the OECD nations, except the U.S. and it would be the case there too except for immigration from the south. How to stop population growth: *educate women* so they can lead meaningful lives aside from bearing children and provide readily available birth control; and get rid of Catholicism, Mormonism, and any other religion preaches against birth control. That is exactly how to stop population growth. Wherever women are given equal rights the birth rate drops dramatically (if they are forced to choose between children and a career, it drops precipitously - the places that get the balance right allow you to do both). The rates aren't just stable in OECD nations, they are negative. It seems given the choice and long enough time frames the human population will drop to zero. (this of course ignores future trends such as technical solutions to ageing and the technological singularity, but it is an interesting observation of human nature.) Jason -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How the banks are stealing our wealth
On 12/22/2013 7:59 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 6:40 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com mailto:lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 18 December 2013 12:23, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: The first step has to be to stop population growth. That's pretty much happened in all the OECD nations, except the U.S. and it would be the case there too except for immigration from the south. How to stop population growth: *educate women* so they can lead meaningful lives aside from bearing children and provide readily available birth control; and get rid of Catholicism, Mormonism, and any other religion preaches against birth control. That is exactly how to stop population growth. Wherever women are given equal rights the birth rate drops dramatically (if they are forced to choose between children and a career, it drops precipitously - the places that get the balance right allow you to do both). The rates aren't just stable in OECD nations, they are negative. It seems given the choice and long enough time frames the human population will drop to zero. (this of course ignores future trends such as technical solutions to ageing and the technological singularity, but it is an interesting observation of human nature.) Maybe human nature responds to perceived crowding. Brent -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
