Re: Boltzmann brains
On 01/06/07, Hal Finney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The reference to Susskind is a paper we discussed here back in Aug 2002, Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant, http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0208013 . The authors argued that in current cosmological models the universe dies a heat death and falls into a steady state of exponential expansion which goes on forever. In that state, quantum gravity fluctuations will eventually cause macroscopic objects to appear. This is extremely rare but still with infinite time to work with, every object will appear an infinite number of times. That includes disembodied brains, the so-called Boltzmann brains, as well as planets and whole universes. But the smaller objects are vastly more common, hence it is most likely that our experiences are due to us being a Boltzmann brain. It isn't generally the case that given a non-zero probability of an event E occurring per trial (or per unit time period), then as the number of trials n approaches infinity the probability of E occurring approaches 1. For example, if Pr(E) = 1/2^n, then even though Pr(E) is always non-zero, the probability of ~E as n-inf is given by the infinite product of (1-1/2^n), which converges to approximately 0.288788, not zero. So if the exponential expansion is associated with a continuous decrease in the probability that an event of interest will occur during a unit time period, that event may still never occur given infinite time, even though at no point can the event be said to be impossible. This has a few bad implications; one is that our perceptions should end and not continue (but they do continue) and another is that brains would be just as likely to (falsely) remember chaotic universes as lawful ones (but we only remember lawful ones). So this model is not considered consistent with our experiences. Because they depend on fluctuations of particles, Boltzmann brains would be more common in regions of high entropy than low entropy. If the universe had started out in a state of high entropy, it would be more likely to be populated by Boltzmann brains than life forms like us, which suggests that the entropy of our early universe had to be low. As a low-entropy initial state is unlikely, though, this also implies that there are a huge number of other universes out there that are unsuitable for us. I don't think this reasoning makes sense, for two reasons. First, even though the universe did apparently start out in a low-entropy state, hence giving an opportunity for non-Boltzmann (ie not disembodied) brains like ours to form, still as argued above eventually it gets into a high-entropy state and you then still have the problem of an infinite number of Boltzmann brains. The choice then is between a universe that starts high-entropy and has only Boltzmann brains, and one that starts low-entropy and has a finite number of normal brains and an infinite number of Boltzmann brains. It's not clear that the latter choice really explains and justifies why we are non-Boltzmann. Second, even if so, as it says these ideas are usually applied in the context of multiverse theories, so there would be an infinite number of universes, some starting in low entropy and some in high entropy states. Again we would have an infinite number of Boltzmann brains in the multiverse compared with only a finite number of non-Boltzmann brains, so we haven't really explained why we find ourselves in one of the universes which has normal non-Boltzmann brains. I would suggest two ways out of the dilemma. The first is from physics. One of the things I learned in my reading last night is that this model of an infinite expanding universe may not actually work. This so-called de Sitter state does not have a consistent quantum explanation. The theory suggests that the de Sitter state may be inherently unstable and will somehow decay, perhaps by tunnelling into another vacuum state. This could happen fast enough that the total expected number of Boltzmann brains is finite, potentially resolving the paradox. The other is from our measure-based reasoning. For various reasons we might argue that the measure of brains existing in the extremely far future is less than that of brains existing today. Such brains are much smaller spatially in comparison to the universe as a whole than our brains are today, for one thing, so perhaps they deserve a lesser share of the universe's total measure. Also, the amount of information to specify the location of such a brain in terms of Planck moments since the Big Bang would be vastly greater than for brains like ours existing in the relative youth of the universe. A measure concept related to information might therefore reduce the measure of such brains to insignificance. Another possibility is that Boltzmann Brains arising out of chaos are the observer moments which associate to produce the first person
Re: Asifism
On 01/06/07, Torgny Tholerus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am unconscious. I have no mind. I have no feelings. I have no perceptions. I am not thinking. I am just a machine that claims that I am conscious. The only thing that happens is a lot of chemical reactions in my brain. (Or rather, there are a lot of mathematical relations...) I just behave AS IF I am conscious. If you interview me, I will answer that I am conscious. I will strongly claim that I am thinking, and that is the only thing I am really sure of. But that is a lie. The only thing that exists is a lot of protons, neutrons, and electrons reacting with each other inside my brain. I behave AS IF I am conscious because the natural selection has favored that type of behavior. Which implies you really are conscious, because otherwise why would evolution have gone to the trouble of making *me* conscious if it could have got away without it? -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Asifism
Stathis Papaioannou skrev: On 01/06/07, Torgny Tholerus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I behave AS IF I am conscious because the natural selection has favored that type of behavior. Which implies you really are conscious, because otherwise why would evolution have gone to the trouble of making *me* conscious if it could have got away without it? It did got away without it... ;-) -- Torgny Tholerus --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Asifism
On 01/06/07, Torgny Tholerus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Stathis Papaioannou skrev: On 01/06/07, Torgny Tholerus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I behave AS IF I am conscious because the natural selection has favored that type of behavior. Which implies you really are conscious, because otherwise why would evolution have gone to the trouble of making *me* conscious if it could have got away without it? It did got away without it... ;-) I assure you, at least one entity in the universe is conscious: me. If evolution could have made me a zombie, it would have. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that evolution couldn't help but grant me consciousness as a side-effect or epiphenomenon, the real prize being intelligent behaviour. There are some philosophers (eg. Daniel Dennett) who would argue that consciousness is *nothing but* this intelligent behaviour, and the idea of a zombie is logically incoherent, but I'm not entirely convinced that this is right. -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Asifism
Torgny: [[cute]] SAIS W H O I found Stathis' reply before I read your tirade. I agree and add: I think you 'are' a typical 'voter'. (in the political sense). Have a life! John M On 6/1/07, Torgny Tholerus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am unconscious. I have no mind. I have no feelings. I have no perceptions. I am not thinking. I am just a machine that claims that I am conscious. The only thing that happens is a lot of chemical reactions in my brain. (Or rather, there are a lot of mathematical relations...) I just behave AS IF I am conscious. If you interview me, I will answer that I am conscious. I will strongly claim that I am thinking, and that is the only thing I am really sure of. But that is a lie. The only thing that exists is a lot of protons, neutrons, and electrons reacting with each other inside my brain. I behave AS IF I am conscious because the natural selection has favored that type of behavior. -- Torgny Tholerus - --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Asifism
Le 01-juin-07, à 14:35, Torgny Tholerus a écrit : I am unconscious. I have no mind. I have no feelings. I have no perceptions. I am not thinking. I am just a machine that claims that I am conscious. The only thing that happens is a lot of chemical reactions in my brain. (Or rather, there are a lot of mathematical relations...) I just behave AS IF I am conscious. If you interview me, I will answer that I am conscious. I will strongly claim that I am thinking, and that is the only thing I am really sure of. But that is a lie. If you are unconscious, you should have said that it is WRONG, not that it is a lie. That would contradict your unconsciousness. By saying lie you did betray your consciousness, imo. Also, by saying I am not conscious, are you sure that you behave like if you were conscious? The only thing that exists is a lot of protons, neutrons, and electrons reacting with each other inside my brain. Are you *sure*? By the way, are you more sure about proton than about your belief in proton? What would that mean? I behave AS IF I am conscious because the natural selection has favored that type of behavior. OK, but this rise the question: why? Another question: if consciousness does not exist, what do you mean by behaving AS IF I am conscious? (but thanks you for actually saying this only about yourself and not us :) One more question: supposing you are correct, is it ethically wrong to torture you? Is it ethically wrong to torture an entity without consciousness (supposing we could be sure of that) even if it acts like it was conscious? 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Asifism
Bruno Marchal skrev: One more question: supposing you are correct, is it ethically wrong to torture you? Is it ethically wrong to torture an entity without consciousness (supposing we could be sure of that) even if it acts like it was conscious? This is an interesting question. And the answer is: When I am tortured, my pain center in my brain will be stimulated. This will cause me to try to avoid this situation (being tortured). One (good) way to archive this is to start talking about ethics. If I can make other human beings to believe that it is ethically wrong to torture objects, that behave as if they were conscious, then the probability that somebody will torture me decreases. This is all ethics is about: Trying to avoid stimulating the pain center in our brains. -- Torgny Tholerus --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Asifism
Bruno Marchal skrev: Le 01-juin-07, 14:35, Torgny Tholerus a crit : The only thing that exists is a lot of protons, neutrons, and electrons reacting with each other inside my brain. Are you *sure*? By the way, are you more sure about proton than about your belief in proton? What would that mean? I look at myself in the third person view. I then see a lot of protons reacting with eachother, and I see how they explain my behavior and the words I produce. I see how they cause me saying "I am conscious! I have a free will! I am happy!". This is all that is. This explains everything. -- Torgny Tholerus --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Asifism
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 01/06/07, *Torgny Tholerus* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am unconscious. I have no mind. I have no feelings. I have no perceptions. I am not thinking. I am just a machine that claims that I am conscious. The only thing that happens is a lot of chemical reactions in my brain. (Or rather, there are a lot of mathematical relations...) I just behave AS IF I am conscious. If you interview me, I will answer that I am conscious. I will strongly claim that I am thinking, and that is the only thing I am really sure of. But that is a lie. The only thing that exists is a lot of protons, neutrons, and electrons reacting with each other inside my brain. I behave AS IF I am conscious because the natural selection has favored that type of behavior. Which implies you really are conscious, because otherwise why would evolution have gone to the trouble of making *me* conscious if it could have got away without it? -- Stathis Papaioannou How do you know it was trouble - maybe it's a probable spandrel, or maybe it's even a necessary effect. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Asifism
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 01/06/07, *Torgny Tholerus* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Stathis Papaioannou skrev: On 01/06/07, *Torgny Tholerus* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I behave AS IF I am conscious because the natural selection has favored that type of behavior. Which implies you really are conscious, because otherwise why would evolution have gone to the trouble of making *me* conscious if it could have got away without it? It did got away without it... ;-) I assure you, at least one entity in the universe is conscious: me. If evolution could have made me a zombie, it would have. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that evolution couldn't help but grant me consciousness as a side-effect or epiphenomenon, the real prize being intelligent behaviour. There are some philosophers (eg. Daniel Dennett) who would argue that consciousness is *nothing but* this intelligent behaviour, and the idea of a zombie is logically incoherent, but I'm not entirely convinced that this is right. -- Stathis Papaioannou I'm with Dennett, except that I think logic is to weak a tool to rule out zombies. It would require proving a contradiction from X acts like a conscious human and X is not conscious. But all you really need is to show it's nomologically impossible - i.e. would imply a violation of presumed scientific knowledge. I think that may be possible. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Boltzmann brains
Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 01/06/07, Hal Finney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The reference to Susskind is a paper we discussed here back in Aug 2002, Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant, http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0208013 . The authors argued that in current cosmological models the universe dies a heat death and falls into a steady state of exponential expansion which goes on forever. In that state, quantum gravity fluctuations will eventually cause macroscopic objects to appear. This is extremely rare but still with infinite time to work with, every object will appear an infinite number of times. That includes disembodied brains, the so-called Boltzmann brains, as well as planets and whole universes. But the smaller objects are vastly more common, hence it is most likely that our experiences are due to us being a Boltzmann brain. It isn't generally the case that given a non-zero probability of an event E occurring per trial (or per unit time period), then as the number of trials n approaches infinity the probability of E occurring approaches 1. For example, if Pr(E) = 1/2^n, then even though Pr(E) is always non-zero, the probability of ~E as n-inf is given by the infinite product of (1-1/2^n), which converges to approximately 0.288788, not zero. So if the exponential expansion is associated with a continuous decrease in the probability that an event of interest will occur during a unit time period, that event may still never occur given infinite time, even though at no point can the event be said to be impossible. Right, but apparently the physics doesn't work this way. The papers just seem to take the size of the necessary object in Planck units and say the probability of it popping into existence is 1/e^size. This is constant and therefore it will happen an infinite number of times. This has a few bad implications; one is that our perceptions should end and not continue (but they do continue) and another is that brains would be just as likely to (falsely) remember chaotic universes as lawful ones (but we only remember lawful ones). So this model is not considered consistent with our experiences. Another possibility is that Boltzmann Brains arising out of chaos are the observer moments which associate to produce the first person appearance of continuity of consciousness and an orderly universe. Binding together observer moments thus generated is no more difficult than binding together observer moments generated in other multiverse theories. So how would this explain why we see an orderly universe? I think we would have to say that Boltzmann brains that remember an orderly universe are substantially smaller (take up fewer Planck units) than those that remember chaotic ones. I considered this possibility but I couldn't come up with a good justification. Now, keep in mind that the Boltzmann brain does not have to literally be a brain, with lobes and neurotransmitters and blood; it could be any equivalent computational system. Chances are that true Boltzmann brains would be small solid-state computers that happen to hold programs that are conscious. Shrinking the brain even a little increases its probability of existence tremendously. (I am assuming that probability makes sense even though we are speaking of events that happen a countably infinite number of times; both Boltzmann brains and whole universes like ours will appear infinitely often in the de Sitter state, but the smaller systems will be far more frequent. I assume that this means that we would be more likely to experience being the small systems then the big ones, even though both happen an infinite number of times.) So to explain the lawfulness we would have to argue that Boltzmann brains that remember lawful universes can be designed to be smaller than those that remember chaotic universes, as well as slightly lawless flying-rabbit universes. It's not completely implausible that the greater simplicity of a lawful universe would allow the memory store of the Boltzmann brain to be made smaller, as it would allow clever coding techniques to compress the data. However one would think that memories of universes even simpler than our own would then be that much more likely, as would memories of shorter lifetimes and other possibilities to simplify and shrink the device. This explanation doesn't really seem to work. Hal --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Asifism
On 02/06/07, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Which implies you really are conscious, because otherwise why would evolution have gone to the trouble of making *me* conscious if it could have got away without it? -- Stathis Papaioannou How do you know it was trouble - maybe it's a probable spandrel, or maybe it's even a necessary effect. That was the point I was trying to make: if it was any trouble, we wouldn't have it. So it probably is a spandrel or necessary side-effect of conscious-like behaviour. -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
