Re: Autonomy?
On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 Bruno Marchal wrote: > > Something is not primitive if you can derive it from something simpler. > You don't think the electron is primitive, so show me how to derive its mass, spin, and electrical charge from something simpler. John K Clark -- 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: Autonomy?
On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 Stephen P. King wrote: > > This quantization of time is easily seen as problematic when we consider > that SR tells us that any granulation of time is equivalent to a grnulation > of space which has observable effect. > All physicists agree that neither Special Relativity nor General Relativity can be the last word on the subject because neither theory takes Quantum Mechanics into account, and even the laws of mathematics agree that Relativity theories can not be valid at the singularity at the center of a Black Hole because at that point you'd have infinite density and infinite curvature of spacetime yielding nonsensical results for any calculations made there. By the way, before 1900 calculations about the way hot objects give off light yielded the same sort of nonsensical results, Planck solved the problem by introducing the idea that energy was not continuous but existed as a series of small jumps, perhaps calculations about the singularity can make sense if another quantity is quantized, like time or space or both. Relativity works well for things that are very large and very massive and Quantum Mechanics works well for things that are very small and very light, but to understand what happens when things are very small and very massive, like a Black Hole singularity, we need a quantum theory of gravity and we don't have one. > Basically it predicts violations of Lorentz invariance by ultra high > energy photons. So far observations have not shown any violations, even in > very high gamma rays from GRBs. see: : http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.4927 > I know, that's why I didn't say there was no experimental evidence, I said "there is little or no experimental evidence"; that report is almost 3 years old (a eon for science) and since then there has been little or no confirmation or follow through. > Ordered collections alone do not have transitions. > They have discontinuous jumps, but they would look just like smooth transitions to you if they were small enough and stuff at the Planck level is very very small indeed. But maybe time is continuous after all, but then again maybe not. John K Clark -- 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: 1p-indeterminacy and brains
On 6/23/2012 1:53 AM, meekerdb wrote: On 6/22/2012 10:21 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 6/23/2012 12:37 AM, meekerdb wrote: On 6/22/2012 6:49 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 6/22/2012 8:04 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 6/22/2012 4:49 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: Hameroff is a crackpot. If microtubles were the source of consciousness my finger would be conscious; microtubles are in almost all cells. OK, that solves it, just call him a crackpot and sit back and wonder why no progress occurs. I think that the sensitivity might be set too high on your crackpot meter. ;-) Or yours is set too low. What difference would it make if one found quantum computation in microtubles? Not quantum computation per se, phenomena that becomes possible when one has coherent states available. Quantum computation is one use of this feature of coherence of entanglement. It allows one to use the EPR effect to alter the duration of an interaction event such that measurements of its conjugate are possible. The canonical conjugate to transition duration is Energy. I still don't see the relevance to consciousness. EPR is just an example of the non-locality of interactions. Hi Brent, Each and every instance of an interaction is an instance of consciousness for a pan-psychic! Having to account for that formidable field is quite a challenge, no? Then your problem is to account for non-consciousness. How is that a problem? The panpsychist stance might allow too much, but at least one can explain the failures to pass the Turing test as failures to communicate the ability that is inherent. Decoherence is also produced by the non-locality of interactions. "also"? That word does not apply,. Decoherence involves all possible interactions, otherwise the density matrix representation would not aplpy! ?? You can use a density matrix representation of any system, isolated or not. Sure, but we have to distinguish the real world stuff that we are trying to represent from the purely abstract stuff. Explanations, models and theories that we might be able to consistently argue to not make contanct with the physical world are exactly those explanations, models and theories that are not falsifiable, but at some point we have to make judgement calls as to what is actually is unphysical and what it just outside of our technical means to test. I am trying to get at the implications of decoherence. AFAIK, decoherence does not make the world classical, it merely hides all the "spooky" stuff of a world that is actually quantum mechanical. The phase information is distributed into the environment - that doesn't make it consciousness or even computation (except in the metaphorical sense that physics can be thought of as computing itself). You are missing the point. It is about differences between two that make a difference to a third. You need to think for a moment about what exactly it means for an observer to be isolated. If isolation is not possible then a clear notion of differences between systems is not possible. A non-sequitur. I specifically referred to "distributed into the environment". I didn't say anything about isolation. You seem to be responding to voices in your head. LOL, could be! The only relevance I can see this might have to consciousness is in the question of counterfactuals (Bruno's 323 example). Exactly. That is where it matters. and for some reason only in the microtubles in brain cells. Those particular structures have the necessry topological properties required to implement a topological quantum computer, Except they are not particular to brain cells. "Particular" to a specific set of brains cells with unique position, momenta, scattering duration, spin directions, etc. Except he did nothing to see whether or not brain cells have any of those specificities different from other cells. The complete set of observables that exactly define the state of those brain cells is not subject to being copied or cloned. You can't clone any quantum state - nothing to do with brain cells. Where are the cells and there are the states of those cells. What is your measure of the difference between them? What I am trying to get you to see here is that the world is simply *not* classical and neither is anything in it. The point is whether or not entanglement effects can be or cannot be used. By Hameroff's standard any complex molecular system has the properties necessary to implement a quantum computer. No, It requires several things that you are not mentioning. You seems to have not been paying attention to his talk. The question is whether it does so. Why exactly are you skeptical that it happens? It worries me that you are very interested in the explanation that puts you in the philosophical position of not having any responsibility for your actions. How wonderful
Re: truth
On 23 Jun 2012, at 09:47, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 22.06.2012 08:03 Stephen P. King said the following: On 6/22/2012 1:50 AM, Brian Tenneson wrote: I have many questions. One is "what if truth were malleable?" -- HI Brian, If it was malleable, how would we detect the modifications? If our "standards" of truth varied, how could we tell? This reminds me of the debate between Leibniz and Newton regarding the notion of absolute space. If one assumes the correspondence theory of truth, then the question would be if a reality were malleable. Right. Which leads to the question; what does Brian mean by "truth is malleable"? Would this entail that arithmetical truth is malleable? What would it mean that the truth of "17 is prime" is malleable. It looks like we need a more solid truth than arithmetic in which we can make sense of the malleability of the truth in arithmetic, but I cannot see anything more solid than elementary arithmetic. Some truth can be malleable in some operational sense, but this will be only metaphorical. For example the "truth" that cannabis is far more safe than alcohol, appears to be quite malleable, but this is just because special interest exploits the lack of education in logic. People driven by power are used to mistreat truth, but it is just errors or lies. I guess Brian's question is more metaphysical, but then in which non malleable context can we make sense of metaphysically malleable truth? Perhaps Brian should elaborate on what he means by "truth is malleable"? It seems to me that such an idea is similar to complete relativism, which defeats itself by not allowing that very idea to be relativized. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: 1p-indeterminacy and brains
On 22 Jun 2012, at 20:55, meekerdb wrote: On 6/22/2012 11:42 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: You don't need 1p-indeterminacy for this. The independance requires only that if a brain support consciousness in a particular computation not using neuron 323, and if physical supervenience is true, then consciousness can be said to be supported by the same brain, doing the same computation with the neuron 323 being eliminated. Do you agree with this? That doesn't follow. You are treating consciousness as though it were a single thing to be either 'supported' or 'not supported'. Eliminating 323 would only show that those particular conscious thoughts did not depend on 323, not that 'consciousness' is independent of 323. Some other conscious thoughts may be impossible after eliminating 323. You quote me here, not Stephen. Here we are in step 8, where, for the reduction ad absurdo, we assume both comp and physical supervenience. It is obvious that, by eliminating the piece 323, we loss the counterfactualness, and that some conscious thought will be impossible if the machine is put in a different context. But that is not the case: the question was asked for the same context. If consciousness disappear, because 323 might be needed in some different context, this introduces enough "magic" for losing the comp idea to say "yes" to a doctor for reason of being Turing emulable. The role of "323" becomes magical, and a priori not Turing emulable. Comp is just false. If we keep comp, we just abandon the idea that consciousness is supported by a physically active device, and so, physical device can only become what numbers perceive statistically in arithmetic (with the other steps of UDA). 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: truth
On 22.06.2012 08:03 Stephen P. King said the following: On 6/22/2012 1:50 AM, Brian Tenneson wrote: I have many questions. One is "what if truth were malleable?" -- HI Brian, If it was malleable, how would we detect the modifications? If our "standards" of truth varied, how could we tell? This reminds me of the debate between Leibniz and Newton regarding the notion of absolute space. If one assumes the correspondence theory of truth, then the question would be if a reality were malleable. Evgenii -- 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: 1p-indeterminacy and brains
On 22 Jun 2012, at 20:42, Stephen P. King wrote: On 6/22/2012 4:12 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Jun 2012, at 21:32, Stephen P. King wrote: What does first person indeterminacy show other than the independence of the process that generates the 1p from any particular case of physical system? You don't need 1p-indeterminacy for this. The independance requires only that if a brain support consciousness in a particular computation not using neuron 323, and if physical supervenience is true, then consciousness can be said to be supported by the same brain, doing the same computation with the neuron 323 being eliminated. Do you agree with this? It is a known fact that the brain is a "connection" machine. We do not fully understand how it works and many people are only assuming (based on a cartoon of a proof by Tegmark) that it is just a classical machine. I do not, and often insist that classicality is not part of comp. All quantum computers are Turing emulable, and thus are arithmetically emulated. The additive-multiplicative structure of arithmetic implements (in the original math sense, not in Deutsch revised sense) all quantum computations. If there is any dependence on quantum entanglement at all involved in the "generation" of the physical correlate of consciousness then the elimination of neural 323 will make a difference. In that case the 323 register has a role in the computation, and it means only we have not chosen the right substitution level. We simply are entertaining conjectures at this point with COMP. Comp is the "conjectural postulate" (theory). The rest is logic. I cannot comprehend how you minimize the role of the physical in computations to the point of irrelevance and ignore the consequences of this. I don't minimize it, I nullify its role in consciousness, as a consequence of comp. But I show the price, which is a discovery by itself: the physical laws originates from a pure arithmetical statistics. I see your result as an important part of the overall advancement of our understanding of consciousness, but I simply do not see the idea that Integers and arithmetic (assuming a particular set of axioms) is primitive ontologically. So, comp has to be false for you. But that is just your opinion. You don't provide an argument why comp should be false, or if you prefer, why we need primitive matter. I suspect that we will merely have to agree to disagree on this. An unicellular is simultaneously a digestive system, a muscle, a liver, a kidney and without doubt a neuron. It does not need an axon because the brain of the unicellular has only one neuron. I am very open with the idea that a unicellular is already conscious. I am agnostic on Hammerov, but it is a red herring (as Hammerov confirmed to me in private) as a tool against comp. Penrose disagrees with Hammerof and me on this, as Penrose want us being not Turing emulable at all. Penrose is genuinely non-computationalist. Not Hammerof. Hammerof just assumes that the comp level is very low. Now, even if each individual neuron is a microtubular conscious quantum machine, this does not entail that our own level is that low. But again, even if that is that case, and we are quantum computer, this changes nothing in the reasoning. The UD does simulate all quantum computers. Not in real time relatively to us, but the physics comes from the 1-indeterminacy, which is delay-invariant, so it does not matter, from our internal points of view that the emulation of the quantum behavior is super-exponentially slowed down. Now, if we extract exactly QM from comp (and the current evidences are that that is the case), then we have reason to believe that we are classical machine defined by the Heisenberg uncertainty level. The quantum would be the digital as seen from the first person pov. If our level is lower than the quantum level, comp remains exact, but the comp matter will no more be described entirely by QM: the theory will be incomplete (which I doubt). 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Autonomy?
On 22 Jun 2012, at 20:24, meekerdb wrote: On 6/22/2012 12:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 2) The fact that there is no algorithm to decide if a program compute some function does not ential that we cannot recognize what do some program. You mean there is no algorithm that, given any program, the algorithm can always answer "yes" or "no" to the question "Does this program compute the factorial function." Right? Right. It doesn't mean that an algorithm cannot answer the question for some programs. Yes. That's the point. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
