Re: why can't we erase information?
On Sat, May 06, 2006 at 10:24:05PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Russell, my apologies for the approximate typing. I don't assign to your not following my comments to that awful new keyboard I tried to use (light grey letters on a slightly less light grey base - not visible and I am not a good 'blind'typist) with the YAHOO-mail spellchecker that garbles up the letters - I think your uncertainty stems from a different knowledge-base I use. No doubt. Classical thermodynamics I learned in 1942 when I identified it as the science which tells us how things would go wouldn't they go the way they do go meaning the game of isotherm and reversible equational craze in closed systems. Then later Prigogine et al improved upon it, but I still hold the field within the limited model of our epistemic - ever changing, enriching - interpretation of the (obsolete) historical bases from very primitive knowledge level times and accordingly primitive measurements by unsophisticated instrumentation, subject to an all ingenious explanation on THAT level. (Think about the dozen+ (and still counting) changing views about the 'entropy' conceptS). Indeed - you are thinking of the difference between equilibrium thermodynamics (which is classical in the sense of being a mature topic, but of extremely limited validity), and nonequilibrium thermodynamics which applies to much of the rest of reality, but which is very much an ongoing research topic. I have always eschewed equilibrium physics in favour of the more exciting nonequlibrium topics. Nevertheless, the concept of closed system applies in both equilibrium and nonequlibrium cases. * Singularity in my view is a no-system because there is no way we can extract any information about it - unless we give up the definition. This is how I view a 'closed' system, (not lawyerish: well, you can look at it as semi-closed, or even open, if you like,...) If it is closed, it is closed. Singularity is nice to speak about, I hold: there is no such thing only in sci-fi. We get usded to many sci-fi marvels and in the 15th step it looks like real. Singularities are one of the features of General Relativity, but are contradictory in the sense that GR is expected to break down (in the sense of failing to describe reality) near them. So perhaps singularities do or do not exist. In fact we really don't know much about how they should behave assuming they do exist. The business of event horizons (which would cloak singularities, as well as other high density regions of space - collectively known as black holes) and information flow is certainly a case in point. Unitarity is tied up with information conservation, and some studies indicate black holes violate unitarity. I'm personally sceptical that unitarity is ever violated, except as a process of observation (the creation of information). But I have no plans to work in this area. Russell, when I said good bye to my polymer science (1987) and started to think I tried to throw out things to be 'believed' (axioms, paradoxes, emergence, chaos). I retired with limited movablity and allowed myself to get away from conventional reductionism. You are in the profession, books projects, responsibility for what you said yesterday: I don't want to persuade you to think differently, especially since I am fully aware of the embryonic level of the 'new ways' I still try to find. I have questions, very few answers and I doubt them. John I'm well aware that you are following a deconstruction approach. A little of this is healthy of course, but too much leads to one getting lost. Is it not better to understand the language of science, to debate the topics using understood terms of science, and occasionally lob in the hand grenade that causes a radical change in understanding. -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: why can't we erase information?
Thanks, Russell, I really do not want to continue - seems side-line to you and side line to me. I just cannot keep my mouse shut. 1. The 'nonequilibrium' topics still identify a certain 'cut' within the boundaries of them, neglecting wider - maybe unobserved/able - effects from 'unrelated' sides. (see my '3' below) Pertinent to 'closed systems' as well. In (my) wholistic view nothing is shut of of anything in an intereffectiveness that may include unknown elements at the level of our present cognitive inventory. 2. Suppose singularity is not - where does the (alleged) GR break down? It is a 150th consequential idea from a questionable startup-figment and we just continue to build logically, quantitatively, formally - call it science. To be clear: I appreciate and USE the technological marvels based on such questionable theoretical background. I believe in human ingenuity even on wrong premises. 3.To your last par: one cannot have it both ways. Einstein (what a comparison to myself!!!) did not accept all Newton in his thinking and tackled only certain terms in a new view. Copernicus did not abide by the well proven Flat Earth and just 'included' at some points his new ideas. You cannot keep creationism when you think in evolution. I may get lost - as you say - but it won't last long. I won't either. In the meantime I have the luxury of tasting the new ideas. And I feel I am not alone in these ways John M - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2006 2:01 AM Subject: Re: why can't we erase information? On Sat, May 06, 2006 at 10:24:05PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Russell, my apologies for the approximate typing. I don't assign to your not following my comments to that awful new keyboard I tried to use (light grey letters on a slightly less light grey base - not visible and I am not a good 'blind'typist) with the YAHOO-mail spellchecker that garbles up the letters - I think your uncertainty stems from a different knowledge-base I use. No doubt. Classical thermodynamics I learned in 1942 when I identified it as the science which tells us how things would go wouldn't they go the way they do go meaning the game of isotherm and reversible equational craze in closed systems. Then later Prigogine et al improved upon it, but I still hold the field within the limited model of our epistemic - ever changing, enriching - interpretation of the (obsolete) historical bases from very primitive knowledge level times and accordingly primitive measurements by unsophisticated instrumentation, subject to an all ingenious explanation on THAT level. (Think about the dozen+ (and still counting) changing views about the 'entropy' conceptS). Indeed - you are thinking of the difference between equilibrium thermodynamics (which is classical in the sense of being a mature topic, but of extremely limited validity), and nonequilibrium thermodynamics which applies to much of the rest of reality, but which is very much an ongoing research topic. I have always eschewed equilibrium physics in favour of the more exciting nonequlibrium topics. Nevertheless, the concept of closed system applies in both equilibrium and nonequlibrium cases. * Singularity in my view is a no-system because there is no way we can extract any information about it - unless we give up the definition. This is how I view a 'closed' system, (not lawyerish: well, you can look at it as semi-closed, or even open, if you like,...) If it is closed, it is closed. Singularity is nice to speak about, I hold: there is no such thing only in sci-fi. We get usded to many sci-fi marvels and in the 15th step it looks like real. Singularities are one of the features of General Relativity, but are contradictory in the sense that GR is expected to break down (in the sense of failing to describe reality) near them. So perhaps singularities do or do not exist. In fact we really don't know much about how they should behave assuming they do exist. The business of event horizons (which would cloak singularities, as well as other high density regions of space - collectively known as black holes) and information flow is certainly a case in point. Unitarity is tied up with information conservation, and some studies indicate black holes violate unitarity. I'm personally sceptical that unitarity is ever violated, except as a process of observation (the creation of information). But I have no plans to work in this area. Russell, when I said good bye to my polymer science (1987) and started to think I tried to throw out things to be 'believed' (axioms, paradoxes, emergence, chaos). I retired with limited movablity and allowed myself to get away from conventional reductionism. You are in the profession, books projects, responsibility for what you said yesterday: I don't want to persuade you to
Re: Smullyan Shmullyan, give me a real example
Le 10-mai-06, à 04:19, Russell Standish a écrit : James Higgo published a web page describing the history of quantum suicide aka comp suicide. The notion obvious predates both Tegmark and Marchal - and there is some anecdotal evidence that Edward Teller knew about the argument in the early eighties. It appears to have been a dirty little secret, which has only really been considered acceptable talk in polite scientific circles in the last 10 years or so. I explain quantum suicide, and I use it to explain the comp immortality in: Marchal B., Informatique théorique et philosophie de l’esprit. Actes du 3ème colloque international de l’ARC, Toulouse 1988. I have presented orally the paper at Toulouse in 1987. The paper contains the movie graph argument, and a much earlier version of that paper contains the RE paradox, one of many version of the UDA. That earlier paper has been published in two parts later under the forms: Marchal B., Mechanism and Personal Identity, proceedings of WOCFAI 91, M. De Glas D. Gabbay (Eds), Angkor, Paris, 1991. Marchal B., 1992, Amoeba, Planaria, and Dreaming Machines, in Bourgine Varela (Eds), Artificial Life, towards a practice of autonomous systems, ECAL 91, MIT press. Look, you can see my work as the given of a purely arithmetical (more generally lobian) reconstruction of Lucas-Penrose type of argument against mechanism. Only, such argument does not show that we are not machine but only that *in case* we are machine *then* we cannot know which machine we are, nor can we know which computational paths support us, and there is already an indeterminacy there. Then I illustrate that we (I mean the (hopefully) lobian machines) can reflect that indeterminacy. You can see it as a generalization of Everett's embedding of the physicists in the physical world; where instead I embed the mathematician (actually some arithmetican) in the mathematical (arithmetical) world. In both case this makes sense only when we distinguished first person and third person discourse. But now, my preceding point was just that the existence of the discourse about quantum suicide or quantum immortality, which appears from empirical reasons, confirms the general statement that comp implies that any machine looking at herself below its substitution level should discover empirically the indetermination about which computations which support her, from which the comp immortality follows. Obviously (?) I am suspecting a big part of the physical emerges already from the impossible statistics on number relations once you mix addition and multiplication. The advantage of the self-referential approach (just made easier by comp, but it works on many type of non-machine or generalized infinite machines) is that it provides at its roots a difference between the truth and the true discourses on those questions (got through G* \ G and its intensional variants), the arithmetical Hypostases as I am tempted to call them since I read Plotinus. You can see what I am mainly trying to say as: oh look we can *already* interview a universal machine about fundamental questions. I illustrate this by interviewing a lobian machine on the logics of the communicable, knowable and bettable (by Universal Machines) pertaining on verifiable propositions (here verifiable = accessible by the Universal Dovetailer. The goal: extract the whole measure on the relative continuations. Not just the logic of certainty. The problem at this stage is mathematical and concerns the existence of not of some Hopf algebra of trees capable of explaining how to renormalize in front of the arithmetical white rabbits. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Smullyan Shmullyan, give me a real example
Bruno, Thank you for still working on my post. I am working on the reply, in particular designing the set of function or number that can be diagonalized to generate a large number. I shall be busy this weekend with family matters but I will reply to you in detail. I agree that the idea of quantum suicide did not originate with Tegmark, even though he is the one who popularized it. The idea also came to me independently in the early 1990's as I was pondering the Scroedinger cat experiment. What if I was the cat? How would I feel? What if I was the scientist conducting the experiment and I was inside a larger box enclosing the whole experiment? Would I feel the superposition? These are very obvious questions to ask. This Scroedinger cat experiment approximately dates to the 1920-1930's (?) and it is very well possible that others have had the same thought. George --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Smullyan Shmullyan, give me a real example
On who invented quantum suicide, the following is from the biography of Hugh Everett by Eugene B. Shikhovtsev and Kenneth W. Ford, at http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/everett/ Atheist or not, Everett firmly believed that his many-worlds theory guaranteed him immortality: His consciousness, he argued, is bound at each branching to follow whatever path does not lead to death --- and so on ad infinitum. (Sadly, Everett's daughter Liz, in her later suicide note, said she was going to a parallel universe to be with her father...) The reference is to Everett's views in 1979-80, but there is no reason to suppose that Everett had only just thought of it at the time. On a personal note, some time in the '80s I met one of Everett's co-workers who told me that Everett used to justify his very unhealthy lifestyle on exactly these grounds. In our world, Everett died of a heart attack aged 52. I have always assumed that John Bell was thinking along these lines when he commented on Everett's theory: But if such a theory was taken seriously it would hardly be possible to take anything else seriously. (1981, reprinted in _Speakable Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics). For that matter, this idea is implicit in Borges' story The Garden of Forking Paths (written before 1941), which provides the epigraph to the DeWitt Graham anthology on The Many Worlds Interpretation. == 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 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: why can't we erase information?
On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 09:28:44AM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks, Russell, I really do not want to continue - seems side-line to you and side line to me. I just cannot keep my mouse shut. Seems I'm the same :) 1. The 'nonequilibrium' topics still identify a certain 'cut' within the boundaries of them, neglecting wider - maybe unobserved/able - effects from 'unrelated' sides. The cuts appear in models to make them tractable. Experiments testing the models are set up to approximate the conditions of the model as well as is able. This is science. The models are applicable to describing reality only as far as how these conditions are approximated by the real system. This is easier in some systems than others - it fairly easy with respect to bridges and buildings, but much more difficult when it comes to figuring out what happens when we double atmospheric CO_2 concentration. In the latter system there are many interconnections, and figuring out what can be cut without invalidating the model is no easy task. 3.To your last par: one cannot have it both ways. Einstein (what a comparison to myself!!!) did not accept all Newton in his thinking and tackled only certain terms in a new view. Copernicus did not abide by the well proven Flat Earth and just 'included' at some points his new ideas. You cannot keep creationism when you think in evolution. Hence my comment about the hand grenade. Einstein was careful to only change one or two things at a time - he still stayed within scientific discourse. I may get lost - as you say - but it won't last long. I won't either. Well great, but your writings do give that impression... In the meantime I have the luxury of tasting the new ideas. And I feel I am not alone in these ways So do I, and I really think most scientists do as well. It's probably the teachers of science who miss out - and maybe that's what's missing from science education, the buzz of the new. I largely self-taught myself maths and science at school - I studied quantum mechanics in year 11, and general relativity in year 12. Mind you, I didn't have particularly good text books, so I had to unlearn some stuff later on :( -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Smullyan Shmullyan, give me a real example
On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 11:13:27PM +0100, Patrick Leahy wrote: On who invented quantum suicide, the following is from the biography of Hugh Everett by Eugene B. Shikhovtsev and Kenneth W. Ford, at http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/everett/ Atheist or not, Everett firmly believed that his many-worlds theory guaranteed him immortality: His consciousness, he argued, is bound at each branching to follow whatever path does not lead to death --- and so on ad infinitum. (Sadly, Everett's daughter Liz, in her later suicide note, said she was going to a parallel universe to be with her father...) Sadly, because this is based on a total misunderstanding of QTI, I guess. The reference is to Everett's views in 1979-80, but there is no reason to suppose that Everett had only just thought of it at the time. On a personal note, some time in the '80s I met one of Everett's co-workers who told me that Everett used to justify his very unhealthy lifestyle on exactly these grounds. In our world, Everett died of a heart attack aged 52. I have always assumed that John Bell was thinking along these lines when he commented on Everett's theory: But if such a theory was taken seriously it would hardly be possible to take anything else seriously. (1981, reprinted in _Speakable Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics). These dates all mesh with Don Page's anecdote about Ed Teller : immortality consequences widely known, but rarely talked about by the early '80s. For that matter, this idea is implicit in Borges' story The Garden of Forking Paths (written before 1941), which provides the epigraph to the DeWitt Graham anthology on The Many Worlds Interpretation. == 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 Very interesting. Its a shame my manuscript is already at the printers, I would have loved this for my background info on QTI. -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
