Re: a description of you + a description of billiard ball can bruise you?
Le 01-juin-05, à 17:24, scerir a écrit : Bruno Marchal: To be clear I have only proved that IF COMP is taken seriously enough THEN the appearance of a pre-existing physical world, including its stability, lawfulness ... MUST BE derivable from the relation between numbers. This is done. Then I got results confirming in part that comp can be true, in proving that the logic of physical propositions is not boolean and even has a quantum smelling (to be short). Sorry for my naiveté. Has the above something to do with the quotation below? I mean, what is the main difference? The only laws of matter are those which our minds must fabricate, and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter. - James Clerk Maxwell It is perhaps not so different. The difference is perhaps that my proposition has been the object of a proof, where Maxwell looks like a poem. Also Maxwell's statement looks circular, he says that minds fabricate matter and matter fabricate minds, where I say that if we take comp seriously then we are lead to: numbers fabricate mind which fabricate matter, and then (but only then) matter fabricate mind which fabricate matter etc. I solve the logical initial condition problem. Put it in another way it is like Maxwell would say that the factorial function is given by the rule Factorial(n) = n*factorial(n-1) Where I say: factorial(n) = IF n = 0 THEN 1, ELSE (but only else) n*factorial(n-1). To sum up very shortly: I say numbers fabricate the mind matter dissociation, including all tergiversation's To sum up less shortly: I say numbers fabricate the web of numbers dreams, which are just the possible computations as seen from some internal (first person) view. Then incompleteness constraints can justify how and why stable and coherent computations emerges which make *us* capable of sharing partially some deep dream (making solipsism false as Stephen rightly insist it should be so). (or perhaps *not* but I would take that as a refutation of comp) Regards, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Julian Barbour (was: Re: objections to QTI)
I read his book a year or so ago, so may be a bit hazy, but: Pour Bruno: he definitely does not want to talk about space-time capsules. Partly this is motivated by his metaphysical ideas about time, partly by the technicalities of the 3+1 (i.e. space+time, not persons!) approach to GR and the Wheeler-De Witt equation which he advocates. This leads him into severe difficulties, and he has not successfully described how this can be reconciled with the relativity of simultaneity, which he also wants to assert. Barbour regards this as an open question within his theory; others regard it as a fatal objection. Of course when Barbour says that time is an illusion he really means that the *flow* of time is an illusion, or rather a category error, which is a pretty standard position (e.g. forcefully argued by Deutch in his book). Although he sometimes speaks as though he denies it, I think if push came to shove he would have to admit that there is an identifiable, objective, structural feature in his (or anybody's) theory of physics which corresponds to time. Reminds me of the opening of a history book: There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it. Paddy Leahy == Dr J. P. Leahy, University of Manchester, Jodrell Bank Observatory, School of Physics Astronomy, Macclesfield, Cheshire SK11 9DL, UK Tel - +44 1477 572636, Fax - +44 1477 571618
Re: objections to QTI
Hi All: In my view life is a component of the fastest path to heat death (equilibrium) in universes that have suitable thermodynamics. Thus there would be a built in pressure for such universes to contain life. Further I like Stephen Gould's idea that complex life arises because evolution is a random walk with a lower bound and no upper bound. The above pressure will always quickly jump start life at the lower bound in such universes by rolling the dice so to speak as much as necessary to do so. Hal Ruhl At 10:13 PM 5/31/2005, you wrote: Norman Samish wrote: [Responding to Russell Standish] This article, as you point out, asserts that the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth suggests that life is common in the Universe. This assertion is shown to be probably correct with some reasonable assumptions. One of the assumptions is that if life occurs here, it must also occur on other terrestrial planets. However, the part that I have trouble with is figuring out exactly how that first living organism was created. (Living means it has the ability to take in energy from the environment and transform the energy for growth and reproduction.) Living requires a highly organized and complex mechanism - that humans, so far, have not been able to create. I can't imagine how such an organism could occur accidentally. I would call that first living organism a miraculous circumstance. I don't see how anyone could say that life is or isn't common in the Universe on the basis of current evidence. It taxes astronomers to the limit at present to discover the existence of enormous gas giants orbiting stars relatively close to Earth. Even in our own solar system, how could we possibly know whether simple or even relatively complex lifeforms are not living in, for example, the huge and hugely complex atmosphere of Jupiter? --Stathis Papaioannou _ SEEK: Over 80,000 jobs across all industries at Australia's #1 job site. http://ninemsn.seek.com.au?hotmail
Re: objections to QTI
Norman Samish This scenario that you are discussing reminds me of this interview with Julian Barbour where he proposes that time is an illusion. This reminds me of a good paper by Carlo Rovelli (about quantum gravity, GR, space-time, etc.) http://ws5.com/copy/time2.pdf in which he suggests that the temporal aspects of our world have a statistical (thermodynamical) origin, rather than dynamical. Time is our incomplete knoweldge of (the state of) the world. Not sure, though, whether the motto Time is ignorance can solve the question, by SPK, about the quantum, or indeterministic, block universe. s.
Re: objections to QTI
- Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal To: Saibal Mitra Subject: Re: objections to QTI Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2005 15:24:56 +0200 Le 01-juin-05, à 15:00, Saibal Mitra a écrit : Hi Norman, I entirely agree with Julian Barbour. A fundamental notion of time would act as a pointer indicating what is real (things that are happening now) and what was real and what will be real. Most of us here on the everything list believe that in a certain sense 'everything exists', so the notion of a fundamental time would be contrary to this idea. I think that that most here on the list would consider time as a first person phenomena Barbour doesn't believe in time at all, let alone fundamental time. Barbour doesn't talk about space-time capsules because he doesn't believe that time exists. Indeed. (SGrz pour those who knows). I would like to know if Norman and Saibal and others agree that there is nothing special with time. Why does not Julian Barbour talk about space-time capsule? (Or does he?) I think space is also a first person phenomena. OK? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ I completely disagree with Barbour. Just for the record. -- ___ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
Re: objections to QTI
Hi Bruno, Patric has already explained Barbour's position (I didn't read his book). Separating space from time is not very natural... Perhaps one can use a similar method as presented here: http://arxiv.org/abs/math-ph/0008018 to derive the notion of space-time as a first person phenomena. Saibal - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Saibal Mitra [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Norman Samish [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2005 03:24 PM Subject: Re: objections to QTI Le 01-juin-05, à 15:00, Saibal Mitra a écrit : Hi Norman, I entirely agree with Julian Barbour. A fundamental notion of time would act as a pointer indicating what is real (things that are happening now) and what was real and what will be real. Most of us here on the everything list believe that in a certain sense 'everything exists', so the notion of a fundamental time would be contrary to this idea. I think that that most here on the list would consider time as a first person phenomena Indeed. (SGrz pour those who knows). I would like to know if Norman and Saibal and others agree that there is nothing special with time. Why does not Julian Barbour talk about space-time capsule? (Or does he?) I think space is also a first person phenomena. OK? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: objections to QTI
Hi Brent, There's no doubt that my imagination is not up to the task of coming up with reasonable explanations of all that I see. I could never imagine relativity, quantum mechanics, black holes, singularities, the Big Bang, infinite space, the multiverse, and Günter Wächtershäuser's recipe for life. (Boil water. Stir in the minerals iron sulfide and nickel sulfide. Bubble in carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide. Wait for proteins to form. - from http://www.resa.net/nasa/links_origins_life.htm#common%20origin). These explanations are too far-fetched for me to ever dream up. Yet if I'm asked to provide answers, these are the only ones I can offer. I think they all qualify as marvelous circumstances. Norman Samish ~~ (Norman writes) However, the part that I have trouble with is figuring out exactly how that first living organism was created. (Living means it has the ability to take in energy from the environment and transform the energy for growth and reproduction.) Living requires a highly organized and complex mechanism - that humans, so far, have not been able to create. I can't imagine how such an organism could occur accidentally. I would call that first living organism a miraculous circumstance. (Brent writes) Maybe it's just a failure of imagination. Could you have imagined quantum mechanics? There are several good theories of how life may have originated on Earth. See The Origins of Life by Maynard Smith and Szathmary and Origins of Life by Freeman Dyson for two of them. Brent Meeker
Re: objections to QTI
Hal, It is possible that miracles will be as uncommon and surprising in your QTI-guaranteed future as they seem to be today. If you live to 1000, unlikely as it sounds at present, shouldn't you expect it to happen in the *least* unlikely way? This may involve advances in medicine initially, then when you are, say, 200 and terminally ill, mind uploading may finally become possible. Your best chance of these things happening is to live in a world where life-prolonging technology becomes generally available (or at least available to the wealthy, which is nothing new), so you are probably *not* going to be unique in living to a very advanced age. So, in answer to your question, finding yourself miraculously alive at 1000 while everyone else dies young would be something extremely unlikely and surprising, no less so if QTI is true, and therefore not evidence in its favour. --Stathis Papaioannou Let me pose the puzzle like this, which is a form we have discussed before: Suppose you found yourself extremely old, due to a near-miraculous set of circumstances that had kept you alive. Time after time when you were about to die of old age or some other cause, something happened and you were able to continue living. Now you are 1000 years old in a world where no one else lives past 120. (We will ignore medical progress for the purposes of this thought experiment.) Now, one of the predictions of QTI is that in fact you will experience much this state, eventually. But the question is this: given that you find yourself in this circumstances, is this fact *evidence* for the truth of the QTI? In other words, should people who find themselves extremely old through miraculous circumstances take it as more likely that the QTI is true? Hal Finney _ REALESTATE: biggest buy/rent/share listings http://ninemsn.realestate.com.au
Re: objections to QTI
Hi Norman, I entirely agree with Julian Barbour. A fundamental notion of time would act as a pointer indicating what is real (things that are happening now) and what was real and what will be real. Most of us here on the everything list believe that in a certain sense 'everything exists', so the notion of a fundamental time would be contrary to this idea. I think that that most here on the list would consider time as a first person phenomena. Saibal -Defeat Spammers by launching DDoS attacks on Spam-Websites: http://www.hillscapital.com/antispam/ - Oorspronkelijk bericht - Van: Norman Samish Aan: everything-list@eskimo.com Verzonden: Monday, May 30, 2005 06:04 PM Onderwerp: Re: objections to QTI Hi Saibal and Stathis, This scenariothat you are discussing reminds me of this interview with Julian Barbour where he proposes that "time" is an illusion. If you agree or disagree with Barbour,I'd like to hear why. http://www.science-spirit.org/article_detail.php?article_id=183 Norman Samish - Original Message - From: "Saibal Mitra" [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: "Stathis Papaioannou" [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.comSent: Monday, May 30, 2005 8:28 AMSubject: Re: objections to QTIHi Stathis,I think that your example below was helpful to clarify the disagreement. You say that randomly sampling from all the files is not 'how real life works'. However, if you did randomly sample from all the files the result would not be different from the selective time ordered sampling you suggest, as long as the effect of dying (reducing the absolute measure) can be ignored. If I'm sampled by the computer, I'll have the recollection of having been a continuum of previous states, even though these states may not have been sampled for quite some while. I'll subjectively experience a linear time evolution. The order in which the computer chooses to generate me at various instances doesn't matter. There are a few reasons why I believe in the ''random sampling''. First of all, random sampling seems to be necessary to avoid the Doomsday Paradox. See this article written by Ken Olum: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0009081He explains here why you need the Self Indicating Assumption. The self indicating assumption amounts to adopting an absolute measure that is proportional to the number of observers. Another reason has to do with the notion of time. I don't believe that events that have happened or will happen are not real while events that are happening now are real. They have to be treated in the same way. The fact that I experience time evolution is a first person phenomena. Finally, QTI (which more or less follows if you adopt the time ordered picture), implies that for the most part of your life you should find yourself in an a-typical state (e.g. very old while almost everyone else is very young). -Saibal-- Oorspronkelijk bericht - Van: "Stathis Papaioannou" [EMAIL PROTECTED]Aan: everything-list@eskimo.comVerzonden: Monday, May 30, 2005 04:02 PMOnderwerp: objections to QTI I thought the following analogy might clarify the point I was trying to makein recent posts to the "Many Pasts? Not according to QM" thread, addressingone objection to QTI.You are a player in the computer game called the Files of Life. In this gamethe computer generates consecutively numbered folders which each containmultiple text files, representing the multiple potential histories of theplayer at that time point. Each folder F_i contains N_i files. The firstfolder, F_0, contains N_0 files each describing possible events soon afteryour birth. You choose one of the files in this folder at random, and fromthis the computer generates the next folder, F_1, and places in it N filesrepresenting N possible continuations of the story. If you die going fromF_0 to F_1, that file in F_1 corresponding to this event is blank, andblank files are deleted; so for the first folder N_0=N, but for the nextone N_1=N, allowing for deaths. The game then continues: you choose a fileat random from F_1, from this file the computer generates the next folderF_2 containing N_2 files, then you choose a file at random from F_2, and soon.It should be obvious that if the game is realistic, N_i should decrease withincreasing i, due to death from accidents (fairly constant) + death fromage related disease. The earlier folders will therefore on average containmany more files than the later folders. Now, it is argued that QTI isimpossible because a randomly sampled observer moment from your life is veryunlikely to be from a version of you who is 1000 years old, which has verylow measure compared with a younger
Re: objections to QTI
Le 01-juin-05, à 15:00, Saibal Mitra a écrit : Hi Norman, I entirely agree with Julian Barbour. A fundamental notion of time would act as a pointer indicating what is real (things that are happening now) and what was real and what will be real. Most of us here on the everything list believe that in a certain sense 'everything exists', so the notion of a fundamental time would be contrary to this idea. I think that that most here on the list would consider time as a first person phenomena Indeed. (SGrz pour those who knows). I would like to know if Norman and Saibal and others agree that there is nothing special with time. Why does not Julian Barbour talk about space-time capsule? (Or does he?) I think space is also a first person phenomena. OK? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: (offlist) RE: a description of you + a description of billiard ball can bruise you?
Dear Stephen, With your permission, I answer an offlist post you sended to me and some others, Bruno, you claim that I assume a physical world. While I would agree with that claim to some degree, it misses the point that I am trying to make, just as Lee's interpretation of my idea as being about an intersubjective reality. I am trying to start with those aspects that I can not coherently be skeptical of, the unassailables (to use Penrose's favorite term). (I am being a Curmudgeon!) I can not doubt that I have a 1st person experience and I can not dismiss that that 1st person experience has some content. Like me. We agree. Additionally I am lead by logic to not be able to doubt the existence of otherminds - there is no coherent solipsism for finite computations - thus it is necessary that any model of consciousness must include means and mechanism to explain and predict how the contents of multiple 1st person experiences are synchronized such that this conversation itself is not only allowed by the model but can also be shown to be unavoidable or inevitable; that, I think, satisfies my argument for necessity of a 1st person viewpoint. I completely agree with you. Bruno, it seems that you claim that you don't need a pre-existing physical world since such, you hope to prove, can be derived solely from the relations between numbers. To be clear I have only proved that IF COMP is taken seriously enough THEN the appearance of a pre-existing physical world, including its stability, lawfulness ... MUST BE derivable from the relation between numbers. This is done. Then I got results confirming in part that comp can be true, in proving that the logic of physical propositions is not boolean and even has a quantum smelling (to be short). I will agree, for the sake of discussion, that numbers can represent the content of any and all 1st person viewpoints at some level of Existence but my challenge to you is to shown how this Existence is stratified such that our unassailable experience of being-in-the-world is necessary. I completely agree with you again. It is easy to see that if we only consider a single mind the problems of synchronization and flow vanish - we have the ideal solipsist whose experiences are identified with the relations between numbers. But where does meaningfulness come from? Meaningfulness comes from the non triviality of our experiences. Suppose someone is cut and pasted in two exemplars in city A and in city B. From a third person point of view no bits are produced. From the personal point of view of each exemplar, when they localize themselves, they find no trivial answers (A or B) each of which produces one bit of information. It is genuine information because for each of them, their result *could* have been different. Note that such bits are not communicable to the outside observer. (Note the importance of the counterfactuals). How is it a coherent claim to have numbers representing everything when there is no way that the numbers can be distinguished. It seems to me that this distinguishability requires something more than just relations between numbers.. I don't understand. Please elaborate (when and if you have the time). I still don't get how Bruno bypasses the proofs that quantum logics can not be reduced to Boolean algebras... Maybe what I do not grasp is that Bruno is using a higher logical algebra that has quantum logics as a subgroup - of course we know that Boolean algebras are a subgroup of quantum... Quantum logic cannot be embedded by a truth preserving translation. It does not mean the quantum cannot be translated by some more general translation. I will say more on the everything-list because this is obviously a technical point. I use a theorem by Robert Goldblatt translating quantum logic in some modal logic. Goldblatt, R. I. (1974). Semantic Analysis of Orthologic. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 3:19-35 I am still troubled by the idea that we seem to think that Integers (recursively enumerable numbers more precisely?) are sufficient to code all possible experience - how do we get complex numbers? ... Wait a sec. I have an epiphany! Are all other forms of numbers, set, groups, categories, etc. embedded in the Integers by the identification of their descriptions with some bitstring, a Geodel numbering scheme? No. Perhaps it could be, and this would give a constructive version of my theorem, but I doubt it is possible. As a mathematician I use as tools any portion of Cantor paradise. I believe in all real numbers, even non-standard one. I am not at all a constructivist, and I certainly don't identify object with their description. On the contrary, I show explicitly that when the Universal dovetailer executes (mathematically in Platonia) his infinite computation, then, what emerge from the point of view of internal observer simulated all along, will forever prevent any such identification between observable object and their
Re: a description of you + a description of billiard ball can bruise you?
Bruno Marchal: To be clear I have only proved that IF COMP is taken seriously enough THEN the appearance of a pre-existing physical world, including its stability, lawfulness ... MUST BE derivable from the relation between numbers. This is done. Then I got results confirming in part that comp can be true, in proving that the logic of physical propositions is not boolean and even has a quantum smelling (to be short). Sorry for my naiveté. Has the above something to do with the quotation below? I mean, what is the main difference? The only laws of matter are those which our minds must fabricate, and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter. - James Clerk Maxwell Regards, -serafino
