Re: QTI euthanasia
Hi Brent, On 09 Nov 2008, at 20:29, Brent Meeker wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: You don't get the point. Mechanism is incompatible with naturalism. To solve the mind body problem, keeping mechanism, the laws of physicist have to be explained from computer science, even from the gap between computer science and computer's computer science ... Physics is the fixed point of universal machine self observation. That would be a very impressive result if you could prove it - and you could prove that there is no other empirically equivalent model. I will try to explain, as simply as possible, that this has been proved. Indeed by UDA[1...8]. I've long been of the opinion that space and time are constructs. I also think the integers and arithmetic are constructs. But so far I understand your thesis to be that physics consists of certain relations among experiences regarded as mental events. You can say so, although this is already a simplification. Useful to give an idea to the layman, but also capable of making rise to non genuine objection for the expert. I will not try to un-simplify your point, if I can say, and I will interpret it favorably. This solves the mind-body problem by making the body a construct of the mind. So far, so good. OK. OK. (well, to be sure, consciousness remains to be explained, but consciousness will be explained by the gap between G and G*, but this is locally out of the current topic). Further, you hold that these relations are Turing computable and so exist in Platonia as a subset of all arithmetic. If by these relations you mean those related to my mind, then I am OK. I like this better than Tegmark's idea of our physics as a subset of all mathematics because your idea is more specific and leads to questions that may be answerable. I don't think it is a question of liking, but ... I share your liking. Remember that I pretend that all what I say is a direct consequence of the (digital) mechanist assumption. And then it is Church thesis which makes such an approach so robust. Nobody can know my opinion on the matter. (Except that once I said I don't know). But I still see some problems: First, it doesn't eliminate the possibility that some other subset of Platonia, e.g. geometry or topology, might also provide a representation of our physics. In fact, given that our knowledge of physics is imprecise, it seems likely that there are infinitely many subsets of Platonia that are models of our physics. No. To predict first person experiences, we have to integrate (sum on, taking into account of) ALL the representations occurring in the universal deployment. Ontologically, we have all computations. The UD generates, by dovetailing all those computations. Your next state is determined by a measure of uncertainty bearing on all computations going through your present state. What is obvious for the naturalist, i.e. the fact that your next state is determined by your present state by a simple computational equation (like SWE), is NOT obvious for the digital mechanist. There is already a continuum of (infinite) computations---involving white rabbits, white noise, and all computational and non computational beings--- going through your current state. If a physics emerges from that, it is just an open problem if that physics is computational or not, actually we just don't know yet if that physics even exists or not (with comp). What we know, is that IF a physics emerges THEN it takes into account, and sum up, infinities of computations. This follows by taking steps 5, 6 and 7, and 8 (when not executing the UD). Of course you can argue that even a non-computable model of physics may be approximated by a computable model to an adequate degree. But this just pushes the question off to what is adequate and it does not warrant rejecting materialism as explicated by Peter. The rejection of materialism is really step 8 (the movie graph). It explains why we don't have to run the UD, and why we can rely on the natural UD determined by all true (and provable, here) sentence of even just Robinson Arithmetic. Your current state of mind, and indeed the state of mind of all possible Loebian machines (far richer than Robinson Arithmetic) occurs in all finite or enumerable approximations of any possible model of physics rich enough to generate your states. But, mainly because you cannot be aware of the delay done by the UD, you, from your first person point of view, are living in the infinite union of all those finite approximations. Again: there is no reason a priori why they have to be computable (and giving the subdovetailing on the reals, they have to posses uncomputable aspects when we look at ourself below our level of substitution. Second, is the problem of finding the fixed point, or distinguishing the
Re: QTI euthanasia
Bruno Marchal skrev: On 09 Nov 2008, at 20:29, Brent Meeker wrote: Many physicists think that an ultimate theory would be discrete, This is highly implausible, assuming comp. I know that if we want quantize gravitation, then space and time should be quantized, but then I hope other things will remain continuous, like the statistics (hoping it is enough). But for the reason above, the first persons cannot escape the feeling or the appearances of continua (assuming mech.). You do not need anything continuous. When you look at a movie, you are shown 24 pictures every second, but you feel like it is a continuous movie. But in reality it is just 24 discrete events every second. -- 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: QTI euthanasia
On 10 Nov 2008, at 17:34, Jason Resch wrote: On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 5:39 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: PS I think I see the point that you are still missing. I will have to explain that whatever the physical universe is, in the case I am Turing emulable, the physical universe is NOT turing emulable. Bruno, this was the item I was asking (or at least had meant to ask) you about several days ago. But it was phrased differently, something like If I am the universe and the universe is not turning emulable then comp is false Here you are saying the universe is not turning emulable, so if comp is true that implies I != universe. I look forward to your explanation of why the universe is not Turing emulable. BTW: Does this apply to just the Everett Universe, or are there other conceivable universes which are emulable in addition to the observers they might contain? Hmmm... Normally, once you grasp all the steps up to 8, or grasp UDA(1...7) and accept provisorily #8 for the sake of the argument, you should worry if the notion of universe still make sense at all. How can you be sure all the computation going through your current state glues into a coherent physical reality? If you grasp 1...8 or 1...7, you should understand it is up to you to justify why a universe makes sense, or exists at all, and in case it makes sense, why should it be computable. If it was shown to be computable, it would mean the white rabbits have been evacuated already. If you agree that comp entails white rabbits, you already know that the comp physics is non computable. We cannot evacuate any of those white rabbits, they are there in arithmetic. We can only hope (if we want keep mechanism and the appearance of naturalism) that there is an explanation why the white rabbits are *relatively* rare. And I am not assuming Everett in any way, nor even QM. On the contrary, what I try to explain, is that, IF you take seriously the Mechanist Hypothesis into account, THEN you can no more assume the existence of a physical universe. If you still believe in lawful ways to predict and anticipate our neighborhoods' behaviors, you have to extract an explanation of those predictions from a theory of (gluing) computations. IF QM is true (which I tend to believe), then you have to justify QM entirely from computations or numbers. Including the geometrical and topological background. The role of QM and especially through Everett's formulation of QM, is that QM is a witness that the empirical observations already confirm some of the most startling prediction of comp, like the indirect many evidences for the many histories, and (with AUDA) the quantum logical behavior of the certain propositions. The universal dovetailer does dovevtail on the quantum Universal solutions of the SWE, and thanks to Feynman (and Everett, Deutsch) we know how those Universal Quantum solutions do evacuate the *quantum white rabbits*. But if we assume mechanism, we can no more postulate the SWE, we have to extract it from all computations, meaning evacuate vaster sets of white rabbits. We cannot, by 1-inedtermincay in front of the UD, localize ourselves in any computational histories, we belong to all of them, and nothing a priori indicates that the result is a computable things. The moral is this. Mechanism provides a cute theory of mind, roughly speaking it is computer science/mathematical logic. But then there is a big price, we have to (re)explain all what we know and observe about the body and the apparent universe. We can no more invoke the existence of a lawful structure, we have to explain it from the theory of mind/numbers. Do you are completely aware of the 1-3 distinction when doing the seven step of the thought experiment/experience? Don't hesitate to ask again if this does not help, I feel I miss what you don't understand. 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: QTI euthanasia
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Nov 2008, at 17:34, Jason Resch wrote: On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 5:39 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: PS I think I see the point that you are still missing. I will have to explain that whatever the physical universe is, in the case I am Turing emulable, the physical universe is NOT turing emulable. Bruno, this was the item I was asking (or at least had meant to ask) you about several days ago. But it was phrased differently, something like If I am the universe and the universe is not turning emulable then comp is false Here you are saying the universe is not turning emulable, so if comp is true that implies I != universe. I look forward to your explanation of why the universe is not Turing emulable. BTW: Does this apply to just the Everett Universe, or are there other conceivable universes which are emulable in addition to the observers they might contain? Hmmm... Normally, once you grasp all the steps up to 8, or grasp UDA(1...7) and accept provisorily #8 for the sake of the argument, you should worry if the notion of universe still make sense at all. How can you be sure all the computation going through your current state glues into a coherent physical reality? If you grasp 1...8 or 1...7, you should understand it is up to you to justify why a universe makes sense, or exists at all, and in case it makes sense, why should it be computable. If it was shown to be computable, it would mean the white rabbits have been evacuated already. If you agree that comp entails white rabbits, you already know that the comp physics is non computable. We cannot evacuate any of those white rabbits, they are there in arithmetic. We can only hope (if we want keep mechanism and the appearance of naturalism) that there is an explanation why the white rabbits are *relatively* rare. And I am not assuming Everett in any way, nor even QM. On the contrary, what I try to explain, is that, IF you take seriously the Mechanist Hypothesis into account, THEN you can no more assume the existence of a physical universe. If you still believe in lawful ways to predict and anticipate our neighborhoods' behaviors, you have to extract an explanation of those predictions from a theory of (gluing) computations. IF QM is true (which I tend to believe), then you have to justify QM entirely from computations or numbers. Including the geometrical and topological background. The role of QM and especially through Everett's formulation of QM, is that QM is a witness that the empirical observations already confirm some of the most startling prediction of comp, like the indirect many evidences for the many histories, and (with AUDA) the quantum logical behavior of the certain propositions. The universal dovetailer does dovevtail on the quantum Universal solutions of the SWE, and thanks to Feynman (and Everett, Deutsch) we know how those Universal Quantum solutions do evacuate the *quantum white rabbits*. Unfortunately, I don't think we do know that, c.f. the paper by Dowker and Kent on Griffith's Consistent Histories interpretation. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/9412/9412067v2.pdf Brent But if we assume mechanism, we can no more postulate the SWE, we have to extract it from all computations, meaning evacuate vaster sets of white rabbits. We cannot, by 1-inedtermincay in front of the UD, localize ourselves in any computational histories, we belong to all of them, and nothing a priori indicates that the result is a computable things. The moral is this. Mechanism provides a cute theory of mind, roughly speaking it is computer science/mathematical logic. But then there is a big price, we have to (re)explain all what we know and observe about the body and the apparent universe. We can no more invoke the existence of a lawful structure, we have to explain it from the theory of mind/numbers. Do you are completely aware of the 1-3 distinction when doing the seven step of the thought experiment/experience? Don't hesitate to ask again if this does not help, I feel I miss what you don't understand. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Plotinus' hypostases
Bruno, Thanks. I must say, there are all kinds of interesting parallels between the Plotinus' three gods and the Christian Trinity which is three persons in one God, the parallel's being noted by Augustine. Specifically 1) Plotinus' One and God the Father, being the source of Everything, all truth; 2) Plotinus' Intellect, logos, and God the Son, also called logos, spanning the gap between the divine and the terrestial (i.e. your modal logics G* and G); and 3) Plotinus' All Soul and God the Holy Spirit, the source of creativity,... Note that it is only through the second and third ones that any person can exist and can know God. More controversial, the Trinity needs all three persons in order to fully be who God really is, because God is love, which requires more than one person: two persons and a way for the two persons to relate (the third one). There is also a parallel between Plotinus' fall and the Fall in the Bible. Regarding your work, I am particularly focused on the third hypostase. I have read your SANE 2004 paper and your Plotinus paper. I have gone through part of Cutland's book Computability: An Introduction to Recursive Function Theory and convinced myself of the validity of the UDA Step 7 except for the 1st vs. 3rd person distinction. In particular, I am most interested in Step 6 and your later section Arithmetical Theaetetus of your SANE 2004 paper. (I have read Plato's Theaetetus.) This seems to depend on the third hypostase, the All Soul. I still have to contemplate just what my question is, but something just doesn't sit right with me as being a valid argument. I think that there is some additional hidden assumption being made here. I feel it is probably an assumption that would not be acceptable to the scientific community, which by the way doesn't make it false. I'll have to think about this more, or maybe it can be brought to light through conversation. Tom On Nov 9, 9:08 am, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 07 Nov 2008, at 18:53, Tom Caylor wrote: Anna, OK, I understand. Thomas, as another reference point for study, what I refer to as the point of view from the Plenitude, or Plotinus' One, has frequently been referred to as the God's eye point of view. (I didn't bring that up at first because I believe in a God who is different from the Plenitude or Plotinus' One, both of which are impersonal. By the way, the personal God is the only one in whom a person can possibly believe, but that could be another topic.) Tom Tom, Don't forget that for the Greek Theologians (and not just for them), there are three Gods. The ONE is impersonal. Sure. The second one, the INTELLECT is personal, although most mathematician and scientist does not completely realize this, and in math this can be seen as a consequence of incompleteness, as should be transparently clear if we assume mechanism (cf my plotinus paper). With mechanism, the intellect also splits in two parts (effective and terrestrial on one part (G) and ineffective and divine on the the other part (G*). In science, this can be seen a consequence of the fact that we cannot easily get rid of the presence of the observer (cf Galilee, Einstein, Everett ...) But then you have the third one. The third god of Plotinus, the UNIVERSAL SOUL, is the one compared with the eastern God and with the experience of mystics. And it is the one described by S4Grz and intuitionist logics (for those who reminds older posts 'course). This one is a person, it is even the roots of all possible first person knowledge. It is a creative subject, the maker and destroyer of realities, the creator of time an eventually space (with the help of the numbers). It is the one which already in Plotinus has a foot in the material world, a foot in the non computational structures emerging from the collection of all computational consistent extensions. It is the one which can (and will) fall and forget its roots and then come back (as Plotinus hopes for). (and then when the soul falls, both the intellect and the SOUL create matters: the intelligible matter, and the sensible matter respectively which also splits into terrestrial and divine parts (effective and true). Qualia and self-centered consciousness get ascribed goals and scenario here. Here matter matters for painful or joyful (with qualia) reasons. It is a matter of convention for not calling them gods. It is the secondary hypostases that Plotinus does not even range into the hypostases. Plotinus' attitude is related with the well known aversion of Platonists for matter. It is not just because this can hurt and perish, it is because when you attach your soul (or yourself) to it too much strongly, not only it can hurt more, but you delay and make harder the coming back (conversion) process, in which Plotinus hopes so much. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this
Re: Re: Re:
Now we have fun and you already want make it serious? I guess you are joking! B. On 11 Nov 2008, at 01:50, Kim Jones wrote: Yes - humour is according to thinking guru Edward de Bono The most significant activity of the human mind. If anyone is interested in why, we could start a thread over that. It relates, of course, to all the stuff on the mind and consciousness. Humour is occasionally deployed on this list as simple sarcasm. There are more evolved ways of using it cheers Kim Jones On 11/11/2008, at 11:42 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: first laugh on this list :) or maybe on this list and this universe only /o\ 2008/11/11 Michael Rosefield [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Look at it this way, you probably did unsubscribe. Just not in this universe. Sorry. -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. 2008/11/10 Joao Leao [EMAIL PROTECTED] unsubscribe -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. 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: QTI euthanasia
On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 12:23 PM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 10 Nov 2008, at 17:34, Jason Resch wrote: On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 5:39 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: PS I think I see the point that you are still missing. I will have to explain that whatever the physical universe is, in the case I am Turing emulable, the physical universe is NOT turing emulable. Bruno, this was the item I was asking (or at least had meant to ask) you about several days ago. But it was phrased differently, something like If I am the universe and the universe is not turning emulable then comp is false Here you are saying the universe is not turning emulable, so if comp is true that implies I != universe. I look forward to your explanation of why the universe is not Turing emulable. BTW: Does this apply to just the Everett Universe, or are there other conceivable universes which are emulable in addition to the observers they might contain? Hmmm... Normally, once you grasp all the steps up to 8, or grasp UDA(1...7) and accept provisorily #8 for the sake of the argument, you should worry if the notion of universe still make sense at all. How can you be sure all the computation going through your current state glues into a coherent physical reality? If you grasp 1...8 or 1...7, you should understand it is up to you to justify why a universe makes sense, or exists at all, and in case it makes sense, why should it be computable. If it was shown to be computable, it would mean the white rabbits have been evacuated already. I don't consider myself or any observer glued to any single reality, yet I still believe coherent realities exist. See below. How does the computability of the universe relate to the evacuation of white rabbits? If you agree that comp entails white rabbits, you already know that the comp physics is non computable. We cannot evacuate any of those white rabbits, they are there in arithmetic. We can only hope (if we want keep mechanism and the appearance of naturalism) that there is an explanation why the white rabbits are *relatively* rare. And I am not assuming Everett in any way, nor even QM. On the contrary, what I try to explain, is that, IF you take seriously the Mechanist Hypothesis into account, THEN you can no more assume the existence of a physical universe. If you still believe in lawful ways to predict and anticipate our neighborhoods' behaviors, you have to extract an explanation of those predictions from a theory of (gluing) computations. IF QM is true (which I tend to believe), then you have to justify QM entirely from computations or numbers. Including the geometrical and topological background. The role of QM and especially through Everett's formulation of QM, is that QM is a witness that the empirical observations already confirm some of the most startling prediction of comp, like the indirect many evidences for the many histories, and (with AUDA) the quantum logical behavior of the certain propositions. The universal dovetailer does dovevtail on the quantum Universal solutions of the SWE, and thanks to Feynman (and Everett, Deutsch) we know how those Universal Quantum solutions do evacuate the *quantum white rabbits*. But if we assume mechanism, we can no more postulate the SWE, we have to extract it from all computations, meaning evacuate vaster sets of white rabbits. We cannot, by 1-inedtermincay in front of the UD, localize ourselves in any computational histories, we belong to all of them, and nothing a priori indicates that the result is a computable things. I think we are in general agreement regarding the idea that a first person experience belongs to many (perhaps infinite) computational histories. I think the confusion may have come down to language, in particular how we defined universe. I see now you take universe to mean the perceived environment that appears as a first person experience to observers. I also see how this collection of possible histories can be incomputable/unknowable. Whereas, I was defining universe to mean a single consistent computational/mathematical history which may implement computations that form first person experiences. These first person view points, by mechanism, would not be unique to any particular history, but belong to all histories which implement the same computations. Individual histories, as I see it, may or may not be computable, but both can implement computational histories/information patterns that are the basis of consciousness. To me the non-existence of white rabbits might be explained by the much higher frequency of histories that have simple rules, and randomized initial states. A mathematical object is defined out there where the initial condition is this universe exactly as it is now, only a giant white rabbit is standing before you, but such mathematical objects that start at such a highly ordered state that contains all life on
Re: QTI euthanasia
John, I meant loosely a universe conceivable by anyone (that might conceivably exist [?]), not limited to human conceptions. Jason On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 1:30 PM, John Mikes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jason, I don't have anything against your question just pick one expression from your post: ---...or are there other conceivable universes...-- Are you meaning that conceivable (for us?) includes 'inconceivable' (for us) as well, or would you rather restrict your 'list' to such universes that are within the restrictions of our human concepts? John M On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 11:34 AM, Jason Resch [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 5:39 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: PS I think I see the point that you are still missing. I will have to explain that whatever the physical universe is, in the case I am Turing emulable, the physical universe is NOT turing emulable. Bruno, this was the item I was asking (or at least had meant to ask) you about several days ago. But it was phrased differently, something like If I am the universe and the universe is not turning emulable then comp is false Here you are saying the universe is not turning emulable, so if comp is true that implies I != universe. I look forward to your explanation of why the universe is not Turing emulable. BTW: Does this apply to just the Everett Universe, or are there other conceivable universes which are emulable in addition to the observers they might contain? Thanks, Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~--- inline: 347.png
