Re: Temporary Reality
On 07/05/2009, at 3:43 PM, daddycay...@msn.com wrote: I think that knowing what a person is is sort of like knowing what consciousness is. Good. Have you ever had the feeling/hunch/thought/intuition/ apprehension/revelation/vision (call it what you will) that you know a person to whom the best possible descriptive concept you could apply is God? I take it you are struck by the persona, the personability, the closeness, the life-like (in the human sense) character of what is called often God? We just have to go right ahead and be a person and relate to other persons, in faith. Yes. But how could we be un-persons toward each other? Rather like relating to my wife. I'd rather like to relate to your wife. I've given up trying to figure her out, Have you ever wondered if she has given up trying to figure you out? draw up a theory on who she is and why, and based on that theory algorithmically (is that word allowed in here?) Of course come up with what therefore I should do in each situation. But that's the only thing you could do if you feel you want to stay with your wife. Has she got algorithms locked in for dealing with you? It's the sensible thing for any person to do in dealing with another person. Humans are pretty predictable machines after a while. The other thing you can do is an OPV (other person's viewpoint) and tell each other what you think the other knows or understands about you. When you do this you can either correct each other's faulty perceptions (not recommended - danger of argument) or listen awestruck (highly recommended) as your worst fears are confirmed OR you are amazed at how well your partner does understand you. I have to just be me When were you NOT yourself Dear Tom? and it seems to usually work out, thankfully. Sorry I can't be more precise. You've been perfectly precise So - going back to God then, let's maybe do an OPV on him/her/it Hint: If I can't do an OPV on God, then I'm not convinced that: 1. God is a person (100% convinced) 2. There is a God (74% convinced) best regards, Kim 42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot. - Steven Wright Email: kmjco...@mac.com kimjo...@ozemail.com.au Web: http://web.mac.com/kmjcommp/Plenitude_Music Phone: (612) 9389 4239 or 0431 723 001 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Consciousness is information?
On 06 May 2009, at 11:35, Torgny Tholerus wrote: Bruno Marchal skrev: Something conscious cannot doubt about the existence of its consciousness, I think, although it can doubt everything else it can be conscious *about*. It is the unprovable (but coverable) fixed point of Descartes systematic doubting procedure (this fit well with the self-reference logics, taking consciousness as consistency). Someone unconscious cannot doubt either ... (A zombie can only fake doubts) Yes, you are right. I can only fake doubts... I suspect you are faking faking doubts, but of course I cannot provide any argument. I mean it is hard for me to believe that you are a zombie, still less a zombie conscious to be a zombie! We live on the overlap of a subjective un-sharable certainty (the basic first person knowledge) and an objective doubtful but sharable possible reality (the third person belief). To keep 3-comp, and to abandon consciousness *is* the correct materialist step, indeed. But you cannot keep 1-comp(*) then, because it is defined by reference to consciousness. When you say yes to the doctor, we assume the yes is related to the belief that you will survive. This means you believe that you will not loose consciousness, not become a zombie, nor will you loose (by assumption) your own consciousness, by becoming someone else you can't identify with. I can say yes to the doctor, because it will not be any difference for me, I will still be a zombie afterwards... I don't know if you do this to please me, but you illustrate quite well the Löbian consciousness theory. Indeed the theory says that consciousness can be very well approximated logically by consistency. So a human (you are human, all right?) who says I am a zombie, means I am not conscious, which can mean I am not consistent. By Gödel's second theorem, you remain consistent(*), but you loose arithmetical soundness, which is quite coherent with your ultrafinitism. If I remember well, you don't believe that there is an infinity of natural numbers, right? We knew already you are not arithmetically sound. Nevertheless it is amazing that you pretend that you are a zombie. This confirms, in the lobian frame, that you are a zombie. I doubt all ultrafinitists are zombie, though. It is coherent with what I tell you before: I don't think a real ultrafinitist can know he/she is an ultrafinitist. No more than a zombie can know he is a zombie, nor even give any meaning to a word like zombie. My diagnostic: you are a consistent, but arithmetically unsound, Löbian machine. No problem. There are not many zombies around me, still fewer argue that they are zombie, so I have some questions for you, if I may. 1) Do you still answer yes to the doctor if he proposes to substitute your brain by a sponge? 2) Do humans have the right to torture zombie? 3) Do you have any sort-of feeling, insight, dreams, impression, sensations, subjective or mental life, ... ? 4) Does the word pain have a meaning for you? In particular, what if the doctor, who does not know that you are a zombie, proposes to you a cheaper artificial brain, but warning you that it produces often unpleasant hard migraine? Still saying yes? Bruno (*) For example: Peano Arithmetic + Peano Arithmetic is inconsistent gives a consistent theory. If not, Peano Arithmetic + Peano Arithmetic is inconsistent would prove 0=1, and thus PA would prove ~(provable Peano Arithmetic is inconsistent ), and thus PA would prove its own consistency, contradicting Gödel II. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Consciousness is information?
Bruno Marchal skrev: On 06 May 2009, at 11:35, Torgny Tholerus wrote: Bruno Marchal skrev: Someone unconscious cannot doubt either ... (A zombie can only fake doubts) Yes, you are right. I can only fake doubts... I suspect you are faking faking doubts, but of course I cannot provide any argument. I mean it is hard for me to believe that you are a zombie, still less a zombie conscious to be a zombie! I am a zombie that behaves AS IF it knows that it is a zombie. When you say yes to the doctor, we assume the yes is related to the belief that you will survive. This means you believe that you will not loose consciousness, not become a zombie, nor will you loose (by assumption) your own consciousness, by becoming someone else you can't identify with. I can say yes to the doctor, because it will not be any difference for me, I will still be a zombie afterwards... I don't know if you do this to please me, but you illustrate quite well the Löbian consciousness theory. Indeed the theory says that consciousness can be very well approximated logically by consistency. So a human (you are human, all right? I look exactly as a human. When you look at me, you will not be able to know if I am a human or a zombie, because I behave exacly like a human. ) who says I am a zombie, means I am not conscious, which can mean I am not consistent. By Gödel's second theorem, you remain consistent(*), but you loose arithmetical soundness, which is quite coherent with your ultrafinitism. If I remember well, you don't believe that there is an infinity of natural numbers, right? Yes it is right. There is no infinity of natural numbers. But the natural numbers are UNLIMITED, you can construct as many natural numbers as you want. But how many numbers you construct, the number of numbers will always be finite. You can never construct an infinite number of natural numbers. We knew already you are not arithmetically sound. Nevertheless it is amazing that you pretend that you are a zombie. This confirms, in the lobian frame, that you are a zombie. I doubt all ultrafinitists are zombie, though. It is coherent with what I tell you before: I don't think a real ultrafinitist can know he/she is an ultrafinitist. No more than a zombie can know he is a zombie, nor even give any meaning to a word like zombie. My diagnostic: you are a consistent, but arithmetically unsound, Löbian machine. No problem. An ordinary computer can never be arithmetically unsound. So I am not arithmetically unsound. I am build by a finite number of atoms, and the atoms are build by a finite number of elementary parts. (And these elementary parts are just finite mathematics...) There are not many zombies around me, still fewer argue that they are zombie, so I have some questions for you, if I may. 1) Do you still answer yes to the doctor if he proposes to substitute your brain by a sponge? If the sponge behaves exactly in the same way as my current brain, then it will be OK. 2) Do humans have the right to torture zombie? Does an ordinary computer have the right to do anything? I do not want to be tortured, I behave as if I try to avoid that as strongly as I can. Because I behave in this way, I answer no to your question, because that answer will decrease the probability of you torturing me. 3) Do you have any sort-of feeling, insight, dreams, impression, sensations, subjective or mental life, ... ? I behave as if I have sort-of feelings, I behave as if I have insights, I behave as if I have dreams, I behave as if I have impressions, I behave as if I have sensations, I behave as if I have a subjective or mental life, ... 4) Does the word pain have a meaning for you? In particular, what if the doctor, who does not know that you are a zombie, proposes to you a cheaper artificial brain, but warning you that it produces often unpleasant hard migraine? Still saying yes? No, I will say no in this case, because I avoid things that causes pain. I have an avoiding center in my brain, and when this center in my brain is stimulated, then my behavior will be to avoid those things that causes this center to be stimulated. Stimulating this center will cause me to say: I feel pain. -- 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 everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Temporary Reality
On May 7, 1:42 am, Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote: So - going back to God then, let's maybe do an OPV on him/her/it Hint: If I can't do an OPV on God, then I'm not convinced that: 1. God is a person (100% convinced) 2. There is a God (74% convinced) People here keep thinking that I am trying to convince people that God is a person and/or that there is a God. Let me give you a hint that that's not the kind of thing that I would think is worthwhile to try to convince people about my wife. (convince Wow, we westerners sure thing we have a lot of power.) And even if I thought that it was worthwhile, I certainly wouldn't go about try to accomplish that by doing an OPV with that person about my wife. But thanks, this brings up something I forgot to mention explicitly about what I think is essential about being a person: relationship with other people. Not OPVs, too third-person for personhood. It takes two to tango. Sorry to all of us who have been caught up in individualism. I am a rock, I am an island. Islands do too die. Perhaps this is what you were trying to get at with your own take on a belief that God is a person, a feeling that it's somehow more symmetrical than organized religion has tried to keep us believing. Tom best regards, Kim 42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot. - Steven Wright Email: kmjco...@mac.com kimjo...@ozemail.com.au Web:http://web.mac.com/kmjcommp/Plenitude_Music Phone: (612) 9389 4239 or 0431 723 001 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Artificial Hippocampus
Perhaps it won't be long before real life yes/no doctor scenarios are realized: http://wireheading.com/misc/brain-prosthesis.html Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Artificial Hippocampus
Another good one: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8012496.stm --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Consciousness is information?
Perhaps apropos. Common let's do de zombie rock All around de zombie block http://www.dailypaul.com/node/90682 -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com]on Behalf Of Bruno Marchal Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 11:10 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Consciousness is information? On 06 May 2009, at 11:35, Torgny Tholerus wrote: Bruno Marchal skrev: Something conscious cannot doubt about the existence of its consciousness, I think, although it can doubt everything else it can be conscious *about*. It is the unprovable (but coverable) fixed point of Descartes systematic doubting procedure (this fit well with the self-reference logics, taking consciousness as consistency). Someone unconscious cannot doubt either ... (A zombie can only fake doubts) Yes, you are right. I can only fake doubts... I suspect you are faking faking doubts, but of course I cannot provide any argument. I mean it is hard for me to believe that you are a zombie, still less a zombie conscious to be a zombie! We live on the overlap of a subjective un-sharable certainty (the basic first person knowledge) and an objective doubtful but sharable possible reality (the third person belief). To keep 3-comp, and to abandon consciousness *is* the correct materialist step, indeed. But you cannot keep 1-comp(*) then, because it is defined by reference to consciousness. When you say yes to the doctor, we assume the yes is related to the belief that you will survive. This means you believe that you will not loose consciousness, not become a zombie, nor will you loose (by assumption) your own consciousness, by becoming someone else you can't identify with. I can say yes to the doctor, because it will not be any difference for me, I will still be a zombie afterwards... I don't know if you do this to please me, but you illustrate quite well the Löbian consciousness theory. Indeed the theory says that consciousness can be very well approximated logically by consistency. So a human (you are human, all right?) who says I am a zombie, means I am not conscious, which can mean I am not consistent. By Gödel's second theorem, you remain consistent(*), but you loose arithmetical soundness, which is quite coherent with your ultrafinitism. If I remember well, you don't believe that there is an infinity of natural numbers, right? We knew already you are not arithmetically sound. Nevertheless it is amazing that you pretend that you are a zombie. This confirms, in the lobian frame, that you are a zombie. I doubt all ultrafinitists are zombie, though. It is coherent with what I tell you before: I don't think a real ultrafinitist can know he/she is an ultrafinitist. No more than a zombie can know he is a zombie, nor even give any meaning to a word like zombie. My diagnostic: you are a consistent, but arithmetically unsound, Löbian machine. No problem. There are not many zombies around me, still fewer argue that they are zombie, so I have some questions for you, if I may. 1) Do you still answer yes to the doctor if he proposes to substitute your brain by a sponge? 2) Do humans have the right to torture zombie? 3) Do you have any sort-of feeling, insight, dreams, impression, sensations, subjective or mental life, ... ? 4) Does the word pain have a meaning for you? In particular, what if the doctor, who does not know that you are a zombie, proposes to you a cheaper artificial brain, but warning you that it produces often unpleasant hard migraine? Still saying yes? Bruno (*) For example: Peano Arithmetic + Peano Arithmetic is inconsistent gives a consistent theory. If not, Peano Arithmetic + Peano Arithmetic is inconsistent would prove 0=1, and thus PA would prove ~(provable Peano Arithmetic is inconsistent ), and thus PA would prove its own consistency, contradicting Gödel II. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Temporary Reality
On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 11:30 AM, daddycay...@msn.com wrote: On May 7, 1:42 am, Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote: So - going back to God then, let's maybe do an OPV on him/her/it Hint: If I can't do an OPV on God, then I'm not convinced that: 1. God is a person (100% convinced) 2. There is a God (74% convinced) People here keep thinking that I am trying to convince people that God is a person and/or that there is a God. Let me give you a hint that that's not the kind of thing that I would think is worthwhile to try to convince people about my wife. (convince Wow, we westerners sure thing we have a lot of power.) And even if I thought that it was worthwhile, I certainly wouldn't go about try to accomplish that by doing an OPV with that person about my wife. If we on this list believe that everything (or at least everything with a self consistent definition) exists, then we must also believe that all possible gods exist. Be they artificial intelligences that occur in the universal dovetailer with access to unbounded computing power and memory, an evolved species who reaches an omega point or technological singularity, or anything else you might imagine. What can we say about the personalities, behaviors and abilities of these gods? It is said that when intelligent people disagree, it is often due to a difference in available data. Assuming these gods all possess superior intellects, then they should all come to the same conclusion when presented with the same data. Mathematics, containing universal truths and accessible regardless of the physical universe or environment one finds his or her self in, might serve as a platform for all gods to reach identical conclusions regarding everything. Perhaps they would also conclude or even prove the existence of all else as we on the everything list believe. If it is possible, I would expect those gods would develop a model for consciousness, which would likely lead to the idea that other self-aware structures in math exist, and perceive. Though no god would have the power to eliminate what inevitably exists in math (thus explaining the problem of evil), they would still be able to run simulations of their own over which they may exercise full control. Perhaps the gods explore reality and the limits of consciousness by instantiating universes and the observers they contain, but for the god to really 'know' what it is like to be someone else, that persons memories and experiences must somehow be merged into the mind of that god, not simply simulated (Like Mary the color scientist). Thus whatever gods are simulating this universe (and inevitably some explanations for our universe include a higher level simulation) then we might be able to conclude some beliefs or properties of that god if we assume that whatever truth we may find, the mind of God has already come upon. This is just one narrow definition of god as a creator, yet there are certainly others. A monotheistic God might have to be equivalent to the everything, as it would be the only object for which there are no others, and would be the ultimate source of the existence of all else including the 'lesser gods' discussed above. We could also choose to define God as the collection of all first person experiences, meaning each of us is a small part of God. Interestingly you can somewhat map these different god definitions to the trinity from Christianity. Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Temporary Reality
On 08/05/2009, at 2:30 AM, daddycay...@msn.com wrote: People here keep thinking that I am trying to convince people that God is a person and/or that there is a God. OK - we will stop it! I don't really think that, but if you are anything like me Tom, you have gone through periods in your life where you believed, then you didn't believe, then you believed again, then you didn't believe again etc. Then I ran into this guy called Richard Dawkins and I really really didn't believe after that. Then I ran into this guy called Bruno Marchal and now I am sort of believing again although in what I would be rather hard put to say. Sorry I can't be more precise As Edward de Bono says Left to themselves things only ever get more and more complex. Simplicity has to be worked at. I think the corollary of this is, the older you get, the more you know but the less you feel you understand. This whole issue sounds like nonsense when you are young but has become somewhat more important the older I get. cheers, K --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Temporary Reality
Fabulous post, Jason. Enthralling stuff. Kim On 08/05/2009, at 9:20 AM, Jason Resch wrote: If we on this list believe that everything (or at least everything with a self consistent definition) exists, then we must also believe that all possible gods exist. Be they artificial intelligences that occur in the universal dovetailer with access to unbounded computing power and memory, an evolved species who reaches an omega point or technological singularity, or anything else you might imagine. What can we say about the personalities, behaviors and abilities of these gods? It is said that when intelligent people disagree, it is often due to a difference in available data. Assuming these gods all possess superior intellects, then they should all come to the same conclusion when presented with the same data. Mathematics, containing universal truths and accessible regardless of the physical universe or environment one finds his or her self in, might serve as a platform for all gods to reach identical conclusions regarding everything. Perhaps they would also conclude or even prove the existence of all else as we on the everything list believe. If it is possible, I would expect those gods would develop a model for consciousness, which would likely lead to the idea that other self-aware structures in math exist, and perceive. Though no god would have the power to eliminate what inevitably exists in math (thus explaining the problem of evil), they would still be able to run simulations of their own over which they may exercise full control. Perhaps the gods explore reality and the limits of consciousness by instantiating universes and the observers they contain, but for the god to really 'know' what it is like to be someone else, that persons memories and experiences must somehow be merged into the mind of that god, not simply simulated (Like Mary the color scientist). Thus whatever gods are simulating this universe (and inevitably some explanations for our universe include a higher level simulation) then we might be able to conclude some beliefs or properties of that god if we assume that whatever truth we may find, the mind of God has already come upon. This is just one narrow definition of god as a creator, yet there are certainly others. A monotheistic God might have to be equivalent to the everything, as it would be the only object for which there are no others, and would be the ultimate source of the existence of all else including the 'lesser gods' discussed above. We could also choose to define God as the collection of all first person experiences, meaning each of us is a small part of God. Interestingly you can somewhat map these different god definitions to the trinity from Christianity. Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
