re:Re: QM not (yet, at least) needed to explain why we can't experience other minds
Dear Stephen, When you say: [...] We might not be able to know what it is like to be a bat but surely we could know what it is like to be an ameoba! It is amusing because I describe often---for exemple my thesis or http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3651.html--- my whole work as an attempt to know what it is like to be an amoeba. In my thesis I express myself exactly like that. I am thinking for sure to a self-dividing amoeba, and that's what has lead me to the comp indeterminacy. Frankly if you know what it does look like to be an amoeba, even in between self-divisions, you should try to describe it! Bruno, I am still not convinced that the statements that If we are consistent machine we cannot know which machine we are and Godel's and Lob's incompleteness prevent us to identify any intuitive first person knowledge with objective third person communicable statements mutes my question since it seems that it makes my predicament much worse! It seems that your idea prevents me from knowing what it is like to be a bat by not allowing me to have any 1-person certainty at all. I don't see why. You can still have a lot of 1-person certainties. It is just that 'knowing which machine you are' is not among them. But you can keep the 1-certainty that 1+1 = 2, or that there is no integers p and q such that p/q = sqrt(2), etc. You can *bet* that you are well defined at such or such level of description, but you cannot consistently assert you can prove being well-defined at those levels. (A non-computationalist just pretend that there are no such levels, not even the quantum one because the quantum level is emulable classicaly). All what follows from Godel in this setting is that you cannot consistently ascribe univocally a well defined machine to your 1-person experience. Once you bet on a level, you can ascribe to your experience an infinite vague sets of machines, though. Those machines are going through an infinite vague set of histories. I should have said perhaps that you cannot know *precisely* which machine you are. (Z1* should provide, by construction, the geometry of that vagueness). Best Regards, Bruno
Re: Quantum Probability and Decision Theory
Stephen, Thanks for clarifying that point. I take it it was a misprint. I am new to this list and am still trying to understand what you guys are talking about. Forgive me if I pick on you but your interventions seem to me the most lucid of the ones I have read thus far! I have two naive comments at this stage: 1) I am as puzzled with your suspicion that all minds are quantum mechanical as I would perhaps be with the obverse suspicion that all minds are classical mechanical! Both seem to me rather vaccuous statements since we don't really yet have a theory, classical or quantum or whathaveyou , of what a mind is or does. I don't mean an emprirical, or verifiable, or decidable or merely speculative theory! I mean ANY theory. Please show me I am wrong if you think otherwise. 2) I deduce from your web pages that you are curious about and sympathetic of daring spaculations on these frontier matters. So am I. But you are luckier and abler than me if you understand Kitada's papers. It may just be that he expresses himself so poorely in english that the ideas don't quite come through. He appears to believe in something like a quantum origin of abstract concepts which is an interesting subject, at least to me. Maybe you can explain how this comes out of his internal time! I fail to see the chain of reasoning... Thanks, -Joao Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Joao, Forgive me if my writting gave you that opinion. I meant to imply that any mind, including that of a bat, is quantum mechanical and not classical in its nature. My ideas follow the implications of Hitoshi Kitada's theory of Local Time. Kindest regards, Stephen - Original Message - From: Joao Leao [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Stephen Paul King [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 26, 2002 2:47 PM Subject: Re: Quantum Probability and Decision Theory I am sorry but I have to ask: why would minds be quantum mechanical but bat minds be classical in your suspicions? I am not sure I am being batocentric here but I can anticipate a lot of bats waving their wings in disagreament... -Joao Stephen Paul King wrote: [SPK] Yes. I strongly suspect that minds are quantum mechanical. My arguement is at this point very hand waving, but it seems to me that if minds are purely classical when it would not be difficult for us to imagine, i.e. compute, what it is like to be a bat or any other classical mind. -- Joao Pedro Leao ::: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics 1815 Massachussetts Av. , Cambridge MA 02140 Work Phone: (617)-496-7990 extension 124 VoIP Phone: (617)=384-6679 Cell-Phone: (617)-817-1800 -- All generalizations are abusive (specially this one!) --- -- Joao Pedro Leao ::: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics 1815 Massachussetts Av. , Cambridge MA 02140 Work Phone: (617)-496-7990 extension 124 VoIP Phone: (617)=384-6679 Cell-Phone: (617)-817-1800 -- All generalizations are abusive (specially this one!) ---
Re: Quantum Probability and Decision Theory
On Thu, Dec 26, 2002 at 08:21:38PM -0500, Stephen Paul King wrote: Forgive me if my writting gave you that opinion. I meant to imply that any mind, including that of a bat, is quantum mechanical and not classical in its nature. My ideas follow the implications of Hitoshi Kitada's theory of Local Time. Please explain how your ideas follow from Hitoshi Kitada's theory of Local Time. Keep in mind that most of us are not familiar with that theory. Also, any quantum computer or physical system can be simulated by a classical computer. So in theory, even if human minds are quanum mechanical, we can simulate a complete human being from conception to adulthood in a classical computer, and then copy him to another classical computer, so the no-cloning theorem doesn't prevent copying of minds. Besides, the no-cloning theorem only says that there's no method for duplicating arbitrary quantum systems in such a way that no statistical test can tell the difference between the original and the copy. There is no evidence that the information that can't be copied are crucial to the workings of a human mind. I think current theories of how the brain works have its information stored in macroscopic states such as neuron connections and neurotransmitter concentrations, which can be copied.
Re: Quantum Probability and Decision Theory
Dear Wei, Interleaving. - Original Message - From: Wei Dai [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Stephen Paul King [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 27, 2002 4:18 PM Subject: Re: Quantum Probability and Decision Theory On Thu, Dec 26, 2002 at 08:21:38PM -0500, Stephen Paul King wrote: Forgive me if my writting gave you that opinion. I meant to imply that any mind, including that of a bat, is quantum mechanical and not classical in its nature. My ideas follow the implications of Hitoshi Kitada's theory of Local Time. Please explain how your ideas follow from Hitoshi Kitada's theory of Local Time. Keep in mind that most of us are not familiar with that theory. [SPK] It is hard for me to condense the theory of Local Time, it is better to refer you to Hitoshi Kitada's papers. You will find them here: http://www.kitada.com/#time Also, any quantum computer or physical system can be simulated by a classical computer. [SPK] Bruno has made similar statements and I do not understand how this is true. I have it from multiple sources that this is not true. Do you recall the famous statement by Richard Feynman regarding the exponential slowdown of classical system attempting to simulate QM systems? Let me quote from a paper by Karl Svozil et al: http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~svozil/publ/embed.htm *** 4 Summary We have reviewed several options for a classical ``understanding'' of quantum mechanics. Particular emphasis has been given to techniques for embedding quantum universes into classical ones. The term ``embedding'' is formalized here as usual. That is, an embedding is a mapping of the entire set of quantum observables into a (bigger) set of classical observables such that different quantum observables correspond to different classical ones (injectivity). The term ``observables'' here is used for quantum propositions, some of which (the complementary ones) might not be co-measurable, see Gudder [14]. It might therefore be more appropriate to conceive these ``observables'' as ``potential observables.'' After a particular measurement has been chosen, some of these observables are actually determined and others (the complementary ones) become ``counterfactuals'' by quantum mechanical means; cf. Schrödinger's catalogue of expectation values [42]. For classical observables, there is no distinction between ``observables'' and ``counterfactuals,'' because everything can be measured precisely, at least in principle. We should mention also a caveat. The relationship between the states of a quantum universe and the states of a classical universe into which the former one is embedded is beyond the scope of this paper. As might have been suspected, it turns out that, in order to be able to perform the mapping from the quantum universe into the classical one consistently, important structural elements of the quantum universe have to be sacrificed: · Since per definition, the quantum propositional calculus is nondistributive (nonboolean), a straightforward embedding which preserves all the logical operations among observables, irrespective of whether or not they are co-measurable, is impossible. This is due to the quantum mechanical feature of complementarity. · One may restrict the preservation of the logical operations to be valid only among mutually orthogonal propositions. In this case it turns out that again a consistent embedding is impossible, since no consistent meaning can be given to the classical existence of ``counterfactuals.'' This is due to the quantum mechanical feature of contextuality. That is, quantum observables may appear different, depending on the way by which they were measured (and inferred). · In a further step, one may abandon preservation of lattice operations such as not and the binary and and or operations altogether. One may merely require the preservation of the implicational structure (order relation). It turns out that, with these provisos, it is indeed possible to map quantum universes into classical ones. Stated differently, definite values can be associated with elements of physical reality, irrespective of whether they have been measured or not. In this sense, that is, in terms of more ``comprehensive'' classical universes (the hidden parameter models), quantum mechanics can be ``understood.'' *** What this paper points out is that it is impossible to completely embed a QM universe in a classical one. If, as you say, it is possible to simulate quantum computer or physical system by a classical computer, then we find outselves in an odd predicament. Let me quote from some other papers to reinforce my argument. http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~cristian/coinsQIP.pdf ** 1. INTRODUCTION For over fifty years the Turing machine model of computation has defined what it means to ''compute'' something; the foundations of the modern theory of computing are based on it. Computers are reading text, recognizing
Re: The Mind (off topic, but then, is anything off topic on this list?)
See response attached as text file: Joao Leao wrote: Both seem to me rather vaccuous statements since we don't really yet have a theory, classical or quantum or whathaveyou , of what a mind is or does. I don't mean an emprirical, or verifiable, or decidable or merely speculative theory! I mean ANY theory. Please show me I am wrong if you think otherwise. If you don't like my somewhat rambling ideas on the subject, below, perhaps try A book by Steven Pinker called How the Mind Works. It's supposed to be pretty good. I've got it but haven't read it yet. Eric - What does a mind do? A mind in an intelligent animal, such as ourselves, does the following: 1. Interprets sense-data and symbolically represents the objects, relationships, processes, and more generally, situations that occur in its environment. Extra buzzwords: segmentation, individuation, cutting the world with a knife into this and not-this (paraphrased from Zen The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) 2. Creates both specific models of specific situations and their constituents, and abstracted, generalized models of important classes of situations and situation constituents, using techniques such as cluster analysis, logical induction and abduction, bayesian inference (or effectively equivalent processes). Extra buzzwords: structure pump, concept formation, episodic memory 3. Recognizes new situations, objects, relationships, processes as being instances of already represented specific or generalized situations, objects, relationships, processes. The details of the recognition processes vary across sensory domains, but probably commonly use things like: matching at multiple levels of abstraction with feedback between levels, massively parallel matching processes, abstraction lattices. Extra buzzwords: patterns, pattern-matching, neural net algorithms, constraint-logic-programming, associative recall 4. Builds up, through sense-experience, representation, and recognition processes, over time, an associatively interrelated library of symbolic+probabilistic models or micro-theories about contexts in the environment. 5. Holds micro-theories in degrees of belief. That is, in degrees of being considered a good simple, corresponding, explanatory, successfully predictive model of some aspect of the environment. 6. Adjusts degrees of belief through a continual process of theory extension, hypothesis testing against new observations, incremental theory revision, assessment of competing extended theories etc. In short, performs a mini, personalized equivalent of the history of science forming the evolving set of well-accepted scientific theories. Degree of belief in each micro-theory is influenced by factors such as: a. Repeated success of theory at prediction under trial against new observations b. Internal logical consistency of theory. c. Lack of inconsistency with new observations and with other micro-theories of possibly identical or constituent-sharing contexts. d. Generation of large numbers of general and specific propositions which are deductively derived from the assumptions of the theory, and which are independently verified as being corresponding to observations. e. Depth and longevity of embedding of the theory in the knowledge base. i.e. the extent to which repeated successful reasoning from the theory has resulted in the theory becoming a basis theory or theory justifying other extended or analogous theories in the knowledge base. 7. Creates alternative possible world models (counterfactuals or hypotheticals), by combining abstracted models with episodic models but with variations generated through the use of substitution of altered or alternative constituent entities, sequences of events, etc. Extra buzzwords: Counterfactuals, possible worlds, modal logic, dreaming 8. Generates, and ranks for likelihood, extensions of episodic models into the future, using stereotyped abstract situation models with associated probabilities to predict the next likely sequences of events, given the part of the situation that has been observed to unfold so far. 9. Uses the extended and altered models, (hypotheticals, counterfactuals), as a context in which to create and pre-evaluate through simulation the likely effectiveness of plans of action designed to alter the course of future events to the material advantage of the animal. 10. Chooses a plan. Acts on the world according to the plan, either indirectly, through communication with other motivated intelligent agents, or directly by controlling its own body and using tools. 10a. Communicates with other motivated intelligent agents to assist it in carrying out plans to affect the environment: Aspects of the communication process: - Model (represent and simulate) the knowledge, motivations and reasoning processes of
