Re: The Unreality of Time

[Alberto G. Corona]

Evgenii, great questions

2012/7/30 Evgenii Rudnyi 

> On 30.07.2012 11:19 Alberto G. Corona said the following:
>
>>
>>
> What do you mean by "the world of the mind is different form the
> phisico-mathematical world"? Is this as by Descartes res cogitans vs. res
> extensa?
>
>
As you said, it is a matter of common sense and Descartes had it.  But it
can be also derived from the Computational hypothesis in virtue of it, even
monist materialists have to accept the world of the mind, (and I need the
opinion of Bruno) because two different "material substrates" can support
the same mind. Materialism is a monism but has a hidden dualism that is
converted back into monism by the process of avoiding delicate questions,
for example the nature of perceptions and the nature of the suppossedly
"external" phenomenons that they affirm that they study, This i suspect,
does not resist a deep examination. Within the monist sceintist,  It
resurfaces in the mathematical nature of reality that implies a dualism
between matter and (some) mathematics. That is because matter ,and
 perceived phenomenons of "reality" are nothing but mental categories like
electron, Person, among other more abstract like USA or Vanity or Essence,
 all of them have some correspondence with the outer world, that I argue,
is purely mathematical. This is the world outside of the mind. Any way you
take it, wether the mind is a product of the matter or the opposite or
something else, there are two different realities. no matter if you put
both in a single substance, or you divide them


>
>>> [Our phenomenology conform a common, communicable reality among us
>>>
 because it is the product of a common mind, that is a product of
 a common brain architecture, that is a result of a common brain
 development program that is a result of a common genetic
 inheritance]


>>> Let me ask Max Velmans' question again. According to neuroscience,
>>> all conscious experience including visual is in the brain. Hence,
>>> according to the ultimate causes, is the brain in the world or the
>>> world in the brain? What would you say?
>>>
>>>
>> Again, this question is quite important, as we have to define what
>>
>>> observation is. Does for example observation happens in the brain
>>>
>>
>>
>> The activity of the brain is the mind and the mind is a separate
>> world that includes all that can be perceived. What is outside of the
>> mind may just plain mathematics. What we call phisical world is in
>> reality set of phenomenons perceived by the mind. Observations happen
>> in the mind. We can repeat and verify experiments because we live in
>> the same mathematical reality outside of the mind, and because our
>> minds have similar architecture and experience, so we have the same
>> language, interests, experimental machines, procedures, so, as Eric
>> Voegelin said, we live in a shared social mind.
>>
>
> I am not sure if I understand. How do you connect these two assumptions:
>
>
> "What we call phisical world is in reality set of phenomenons perceived by
> the mind."
>
> "because we live in the same mathematical reality outside of the mind"
>
> Do you mean that the world outside of the mind is congruent with the
> perceived world by the mind?
>
> Yes. This is not magical, but a product of natural selection. Our mental
world is made to support life, and life is the art of maintaining and
reproducing our bodies, that live outside of the mind. A computer can
simulate anythnig we want, but our brains are dedicated computers devoted
full time to carefully examine the external reality that appear to our
perception as phenomenons or else, we would not survive. Some irrealities
can be accepted  when they are in a trade-off with other more valuable
knowledge, or the perception is too expensive. We do not see individual
dangerous bacterias for example, but we avoid  them by smell and taste and
some visual clues,  well before we noticed its existence.

So when we have in front of our eyes  an arrangement of atoms that has
direct or indirect meaning for our purposes, we identifty and classify it
according with his "use": men, women, disgusting, pleasing, horses,
experiments, countries..but also atoms, electrons and so on. And we proceed
acordingly. None of these things exist outside of the mind, but what we are
sure of is that outside there is something that make all of us perceive the
same things and it respond with certain laws that we have discovered that
are mathematical. So both are congruent because the mind evolved to be
congruent, but not only congruent, but congruent in  certain defined ways.
There is a branch called evolutionary epistemology that study the
epistemological consequences of the evolved nature of our mind.

>
>  However, The COMP hypothesis it is possible to parsimoniously
>> substitute every component of the brain by a silicon analogue without
>> the mind being aware of the change. this , for me, makes the question
>> "were our minds 

Re: Remarks on an idea on First-Order Logical Duality

[Bruno Marchal]

On 30 Jul 2012, at 15:34, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

"Computations are not proof. There are similarities, and there are a  
lot of interesting relationships between the two concepts, but we  
cannot use proof theory for computation theory"


What goes to Another intriging duality : The Curry-Howard  
isomorphism between computer programs and mathematical proofs. It  
seems that both have the same structure after all.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%E2%80%93Howard_correspondence

And, as the Stephen mentioned paper makes use of Category theory and  
Topos Theory (That is a variation of CT) to discover the duality  ,  
The curry howard isomorphism can be reshaped in terms of category  
theory.


What all these dualities say is that math structures can be  
expressed as particular cases of a few, more encompassing  
categories. And 2) since the human mind arrange his knowledge in  
categories, according with the Phillips paper I mention a few posts  
ago, this bring light about the nature of reality . No only the  
phisical world is mathematical, but this mathematical world has a  
few patterns after all. That economy may say something about  the  
reality, that for me is related with the process of discovery both  
conscious and mechanical discovery: the natural evolution has  
discovered the mathematical essence of reality and organized the  
brain in categories. And scientist create hypotheses by applying  
their categorical intuitions to new fields of knowledge, for example  
to discover new mathematical structures or new relations between  
existing structures. At the same time, if the mathematical reality  
is not so simple, it would have been not discoverable in the first  
place, and it would not exist.



Actually I wrote, and did not send a reply on some of your remark on  
category theory. I agree that category is very interesting. But  
category are nice and smooth only around the first person notion. In  
fact in the math part of AUDA, categories and non boolean toposes can  
be used to model the arithmetical first person (the one we can  
canonically associate to self-referential machine). They are solipsist  
by nature, not by doctrine, and this correspond to the simple fact  
that we build our own private mental space, so the first person is  
intuitionist. category unfortunately don't handle well the second  
recursion theorem, and the whole intensional part of non constructive  
math, which makes them hard to use for the non "first person"  
hypostases.
Also, category theory is abstract and difficult. It is already hard to  
find people with some maturity simultaneously in quantum physics,  
mathematical logic and "philosophy-of-mind-computer-science", so  
adding the category notion tends to make the intersecting set empty.


Category are useful for the functional part of comp, and awkward for  
the intensional part of computer science.


The Curry-Howard isomorphism is *very* interesting, and was the main  
reason I made a little teaching on the combinators (and lambda terms)  
some year ago on this list, but of course that kind of things tend to  
be quickly technical, so I have come back with the numbers instead.
For those who remember the combinators S and K, the typing of SKK  
gives the "well known" proof of "A -> A" from the axioms A->(B->A),  
and A->(B->C) ->. (A->B)->(A->C) which gives the "types" of K and S  
respectively.


Note that the Curry-Howard isomorphism highlights the fact that proof  
and computations are different concept, as the proof are related to  
the programs and not the execution, and this does not fit well with  
the measure problem on the computations, where we can use instead the  
correspondence between some proofs of sigma_1 proposition and the  
computations, but we can still relate all this in some categories  
indeed. All this is a bit too much technical, and there are many  
technical open problems.


Note also that the Curry-Howard isomorphism was also at the start only  
linking constructive proof with programs, but people like Jean Louis  
Krivine (and some others) have extended it on non constructive proofs,  
and this might be useful in the future of the "AUDA" program. No doubt  
on this, even if I am not sure of Jean-Louis Krivine choice of the way  
to extend it.


Bruno

PS I am re-connected!




2012/7/30 Bruno Marchal 

Le 29-juil.-12, à 07:34, Stephen P. King a écrit :


 Dear Bruno,

 From http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/awodey/preprints/fold.pdf
 First-Order Logical Duality
 we read:
 "In the propositional case, one passes from a propositional theory   
to a Boolean algebra by
 constructing the Lindenbaum-Tarski algebra of the theory, a  
construction
 which identifies provably equivalent formulas (and orders them by  
provable
 implication). Thus any two complete theories, for instance, are  
‘algebraically
 equivalent’ in the sense of having isomorphic Lindenbaum-Tarski  
algebras.

 The situation is precisely analogous to a present

Re: Contra Step 8 of UDA

[Bruno Marchal]

On 30 Jul 2012, at 16:20, David Nyman wrote:


On 30 July 2012 13:11, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

 If we are removing ourselves from the object of our study we must  
remove all things that are implied. It is the observer that acts,   
not the object alone. All of the properties, such as reflexivity,  
transitivity, symmetry, do freeze and cease to be anything active.



You come back with your solipsist anthropomorphic conception of the  
arithmetical truth. It does not work with comp at the start.


This seems moot to me.  Could you be more precise about why we might  
be justified in thinking of arithmetical truth as eternal but  
nonetheless subject to change?


I think it is better to say that the arithmetical truth are atemporal,  
for they are not depending on time or on space at all.


So arithmetical truth, as opposed to our human (or any machine)  
knowledge of it, is not subject to change.


"We" and most machines are subject to change, relatively to our most  
probable supporting universal system, which themselves might be  
subject to change, relatively to some other universal system, ll this  
up to the once we choose as a basis (of the phi_i).


The changes are relative, and entirely defined relatively to universal  
numbers (the arithmetical computer existing in arithmetic).


A computation is a sequence of states related by computational steps  
through the operation of some universal number, like phi_i(j)^0,  
phi_i(j)^1, phi_i(j)^2, etc. (that is, the computation of the ith  
program on the input j). Such a computation, which can be defined in  
arithmetic, might support a self-referential universal program (Bp),  
which will develop discourses on its conditions and possible  
expectations. As far as that program is self-referentially correct, it  
will inherit a distinct (from its code/body) first person notion (Bp &  
p), which obeys a logic of subjective time, where time is an ordering  
on some of its individuating accessible knowledge states. But it will  
also inherit the first person indeterminism on its arithmetically  
consistent personal continuations.
All this contribute to its illusion of change and time (and space),  
despite everything is statical and relational in the big picture  
(arithmetical truth). Time and space are mental indexical  
constructions that numbers naturally develop relatively to local  
universal structure(s).


I was just opposing Stephen's idea with the comp idea that numbers and  
arithmetical truth is a (human) mental construct necessitating some  
primitive time, space or physical reality. With comp, I argue that  
arithmetical truth is simpler and can explain why the numbers (or  
better the person associated to those numbers) construct ideas of time  
and space, and why they can believe in some genuine way in them, and  
be deluded in believing that they are primitive.


Bruno




http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[Bruno Marchal]

On 30 Jul 2012, at 19:42, John Clark wrote:


On Mon, Jul 30, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> religious people defined it [free will] often by the ability to  
choose consciously


And those very same religious people define consciousness as the  
ability to have free will, and around and around we go.


> and people from the law can invoke it as a general precondition  
for making sense of the responsibility idea.


That is precisely what it does NOT do and is why the "free will"  
noise turns the idea of responsibility, which is needed for any  
society to work, into ridiculous self contradictory idiocy.


Only for those defending idiotic definition in idiotic theories, but  
without making precise such theories we can not refute them.






> The "Free" prefix  is just an emphasis, and I don't take it too  
much seriously.


You say that but I don't believe it


?  (what can I say to such an assertion?)

Does it matter I say anything, if you believe I am not saying what I  
think. This is ridiculous.





and I don't think even you really believe it, otherwise you'd just  
say "will" means you want to do some things and don't want to do  
other things and we'd move on and talk about other things, but you  
can't seem to do that and keep inserting more bafflegab into the  
free will "idea" and not the will idea.


I don't care at all about free-will. The notion is not used in my  
derivation and work. It is just a simple application of the comp  
theory. It illustrates that the argument against mechanism based on  
the free-will absence for machine" is not valid, for it confuse  
absolute and relative self-indeterminacy.






> It can be mean things like absence of coercion.

In other words I can't do everything I want to do. I don't need a  
philosopher to figure that out and doesn't deserve the many many  
millions of words they have written about "free will"?


You are doing a confusion level. I could say I don't need artificial  
intelligence to be able to think. It necessitate many thousand years  
of evolution and interaction for you to be able to do what you want to  
do, and the question here is could machine do that, and how, and what  
does it mean, etc.






> I never said that such a definition makes everything clear, nor do  
I have said it was marvelous, nor even self-consistent. I did say  
that you ignore it, for reason which eludes me,


I don't ignore "it",  in fact in post after post after post I have  
asked you, almost begged you, to tell me even approximately if  
that's the best you can do, what "it" is; but  for reasons which  
eludes me you will not do so.


?
I have done so, each time you asked. Free will is the ability to make  
a willing choice among alternatives we can be partially conscious of.







> The first person indeterminacy has nothing to do with free will.

I don't know what  "first person indeterminacy" is


You have oscillate between non sense and trivial. I was hoping you  
were in the "trivial" mode. If you are will you be kind enough to tell  
us if you agree with the step 4 (in sane04)?




but I know that your above statement is true because nothing has  
anything to do with free will.


I think that I do not believe in your conception of free will.





> In "Conscience et Mécanisme" I even use it to explain that free  
will has nothing to do with absolute determinacy or indeterminacy.


In other words free will has nothing to do with things that happen  
for a reason and free will has nothing to do with things that do not  
happen for a reason. I agree, and that means that free will is  
something that doesn't do anything, so free will does have one  
property, infinite dullness.


The absolute was bearing on the or. Free-will can be said to have  
anything to do with determinacy. Without determinacy, even the notion  
of machine (and thus person, with comp) stops doing sense.





> In the human fundamental sense, most of the time we don't have  
definition,


That is very true. Except for mathematics and formal logic precise  
definitions are usually not very important because we have something  
better, examples. If you can't provide a definition then give me a  
set containing examples of things that have free will and a set  
containing examples of things that don't have free will; and be  
consistent about it, explain why elements like Bruno Marchal and  
John K Clark belong in the same set but elements like Cuckoo Clocks  
and Roulette Wheels belong in the other set.


Well thanks for answering for me. I give you another example. Pebble  
and butterflies. Pebble have plausibly no (free) will, as they obey to  
simple computable laws. Butterflies  have plausibly free will, because  
they obey high level complex computable laws making them possible to  
hesitate, between different nectars, flowers, etc.
Of course we can never be sure for another creature than oneself. It  
can only be a personal feeling after observations of many pebbles and  
but

Re: The Unreality of Time

[Bruno Marchal]

On 30 Jul 2012, at 19:57, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/30/2012 2:19 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
The Boltzman brains , according with what i have read, are  
completely different beasts. Boltzman pressuposes, that , since no  
random arrangement of matter is statistically impossible, and  
Boltzman demonstrated it in certain conditions (ergodic  
conditions) , with enough time, some arrangements of matter would  
simulate minds, or even worlds and civilizations. But 15.000  
Million years, that is the age of the universe is not enough.


Boltzman was considering the question of how the universe came to be  
in its state of low entropy.  I could be due to a random  
fluctuation.  And it was more probable that the random fluctuation  
simply produced the universe as we see than a fluctuation that  
produced a big bang universe which then evolved into what we see.


Actually I doubt this, like the probability that life appears on earth  
and leads to us, is plausibly bigger than the probability that "I"  
appears here just now, in my exact current state.



And extending this line of thought further, a fluctuation that  
merely created a brain along with the illusion of this universe was  
still more probable (i.e. less improbable).


If that were true, that could be used to put more doubt on the  
existence of the 1-person indeterminacy measure, I think.


In the UD, or arithmetic, this reflects the competition between little  
numbers (simple explanation) and big numbers (algorithmically complex  
explanation). But the indeterminacy bears on all numbers, so the  
little one have to multiply much more than the complex one, in some  
ways. Linearity at the physical bottom might be explained by that  
phenomenon, qualitatively.





Sean Carroll has a good discussion of this and why this argument  
does not hold for a multiverse, in his book "From Infinity to Here".


Looks interesting. I guess this can be very easily extended to the  
"many dreams" occurring in arithmetic.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[Bruno Marchal]

On 30 Jul 2012, at 20:08, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/30/2012 4:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


Le 28-juil.-12, à 18:46, John Clark a écrit :



On Sat, Jul 28, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> You goal does not seem in discussing ideas, but in mocking people.

That is not true, my goal has two parts:

1) Figuring out what you mean by "free will".


Free-will is an informal term use in many informal setting.  
religious people defined it often by the ability to choose  
consciously between doing bad things or not, and people from the  
law can invoke it as a general precondition for making sense of the  
responsibility idea. In cognitive science we can at least  
approximate it in different ways, and basically, with  
computationalism it is the ability to make choice in absence of  
complete information, and knowledge of that incomplete feature.


I'm not clear on why you emphasize incomplete information?  What  
would constitute complete information? and why how would that  
obviate 'free will'.  Is it coercive?


I agree with Russell's answer. If the information was complete (with  
respect to what is relevant), then there would be no choice at all. I  
would know that right I will make a cup of coffee, or perhaps not,  
instead of hesitating about it.







The "Free" prefix  is just an emphasis, and I don't take it too  
much seriously. It can be mean things like absence of coercion.





2) Figuring out if what you say about "free will" is true.


We cannot know truth, but can propose hypotheses and definition,  
and then reason from there.





I have never completed the first goal, so it's a bit maddening  
when you keep claiming over and over and over that sometime in the  
unspecified past you provided a marvelous exact self consistent  
definition of "free will" that makes everything clear and that for  
some unspecified reason, or perhaps for no reason at all, I am  
ignoring it.


I never said that such a definition makes everything clear, nor do  
I have said it was marvelous, nor even self-consistent. I did say  
that you ignore it, for reason which eludes me, but which I guess  
is a lack of interest in the corresponding mundane notions, which  
is the object of many studies, books, debate, etc.





>The onoly question is in solving problem. To say "free will" is  
noise just hides problems.


Before I can solve a problem I need to know what the problem is  
and I don't, and you don't know either.


You just seem to be unaware of all the questions in the foundation  
of the cognitive science. May be you could read tthe book by  
Micahel Tye: "eight problems on consciousness".


I don't find any link to either the book or the author.  Can you  
point to a source?


http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=5670

(yes "ten problems", not eight!, and it is "Michael", not Micahel  
'course).






Free will is one of them. It is clear and quite readable. Of course  
the author is not aware that comp is incompatible with physicalism.






> You really talk like a pseudo-priest having answers to all  
questions.


Wow, calling a guy who doesn't like religion religious! Never  
heard that one before, at least not before the sixth grade.


If you don't believe in some fundamental reality, then we are just  
wasting time when discussing with you, given that this list is  
devoted in the search of a theory of everything. If you believe in  
some fundamental reality, then you are religious in the larger (non  
necessarily christian) sense that I have already given.
In the fundamental science, those who pretend not doing religion  
are the most religious, but probably they are not aware of this.


I'd say that you are more wedded to the words 'religion' and 'God'  
than the concepts which they formerly denoted.  :-)


Yeah ... machines have necessarily a rational part, and a non-rational  
part, and religion is an attempt to makes them dialog (at least) or  
fuse, eventually. All machine get religious.


Atheists are doubly religious believer, as they
- 1) seem to give sense to Christian-like  and Saints, and  
believe that they don't exist, and
- 2) they believe in the Aristotelian Primary Matter, which is a sort  
of God too, in the former sense of theology as used by the greeks one  
thousand years before religion get mainly political brainswashing tool.


Amusigly I discover recently a book describing quite similar debate  
about the question that philosophy is part or not of theology among  
some neoplatonists.


Theology is just the science of what transcend us. Only solipsist can  
believe that does not exist.


Science will resume when theology will come back in the academy.  
Today's science is mainly "don't ask and make money or wait retirement".


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[R AM]

On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:19 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>> I'm not clear on why you emphasize incomplete information?  What would
>> constitute complete information? and why how would that obviate 'free will'.
>> Is it coercive?
>
>
> I agree with Russell's answer. If the information was complete (with respect
> to what is relevant), then there would be no choice at all. I would know
> that right I will make a cup of coffee, or perhaps not, instead of
> hesitating about it.

Then, the less we know, the freer is our will?

When making decisions, what we want is to make the right decision. And
therefore, we need as much information as possible. The best situation
is when we have so much knowledge that there is no alternative. That's
the best situation (not the worst)!

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Re: Contra Step 8 of UDA

[David Nyman]

On 31 July 2012 11:05, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

With comp, I argue that arithmetical truth is simpler and can explain why
> the numbers (or better the person associated to those numbers) construct
> ideas of time and space, and why they can believe in some genuine way in
> them, and be deluded in believing that they are primitive.


So your view, expressed above, seems to be that the subject of the
spatio-temporal illusion is the "person associated with those numbers".  If
this be the case, how can we categorise such a subject, as distinct from
the numbers that locally encode its logic?  Doesn't it rather naturally fit
with Bitbol's sense of a generalised Mind, logically conditioned by - but
not identical to - the specifics of an underlying "real system"?  And if
so, does not this subjective intuition, generalised in such terms, seem
ultimately to denote a universal, rather than an individual, category?

David

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Re: The Unreality of Time

[David Nyman]

On 31 July 2012 10:08, Alberto G. Corona  wrote:

 Materialism is a monism but has a hidden dualism that is converted back
> into monism by the process of avoiding delicate questions, for example the
> nature of perceptions and the nature of the suppossedly "external"
> phenomenons that they affirm that they study, This i suspect, does not
> resist a deep examination. Within the monist sceintist,  It resurfaces in
> the mathematical nature of reality that implies a dualism between matter
> and (some) mathematics. That is because matter ,and  perceived phenomenons
> of "reality" are nothing but mental categories like electron, Person, among
> other more abstract like USA or Vanity or Essence,  all of them have some
> correspondence with the outer world, that I argue, is purely mathematical.
> This is the world outside of the mind. Any way you take it, wether the mind
> is a product of the matter or the opposite or something else, there are two
> different realities. no matter if you put both in a single substance, or
> you divide them
>

Well said.

David

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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[Bruno Marchal]

On 31 Jul 2012, at 13:37, R AM wrote:

On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:19 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:
I'm not clear on why you emphasize incomplete information?  What  
would
constitute complete information? and why how would that obviate  
'free will'.

Is it coercive?



I agree with Russell's answer. If the information was complete  
(with respect
to what is relevant), then there would be no choice at all. I would  
know

that right I will make a cup of coffee, or perhaps not, instead of
hesitating about it.


Then, the less we know, the freer is our will?


The less we know about the local future. A bit like we would no go to  
the movie if we are told the end of the story (except that in a non  
interacting movie we are not free, but the pleasure of the movie  
originates in part from the fact  that we can somehow identify our  
free will with the hero's one, by a sort of projection).






When making decisions, what we want is to make the right decision. And
therefore, we need as much information as possible. The best situation
is when we have so much knowledge that there is no alternative. That's
the best situation (not the worst)!


I agree with you. Free will is not a gift. Like consciousness it can  
be very disagreeable at times.
Nevertheless, it can make you surviving when lacking knowledge, by  
accelerating the decision process, and then it allows and encourage  
dreaming on alternatives.
Free will is rarely needs when there is a right decision, but when  
there are many more or less similar (in advantages/disadvantages)  
alternatives.
Typically, free-will will be used by people when they do the wrong  
decision, knowingly, by self-selfishness, like when coming back to  
smoking, or when raping someone knowing that it is bad. That is why  
some people sometimes define free-will by the ability to do bad things  
knowingly, but I use the term in a slightly more general sense.


Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: The Unreality of Time

[smitra]

Citeren Bruno Marchal :



On 30 Jul 2012, at 19:57, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/30/2012 2:19 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
The Boltzman brains , according with what i have read, are  
completely different beasts. Boltzman pressuposes, that , since no  
random arrangement of matter is statistically impossible, and  
Boltzman demonstrated it in certain conditions (ergodic  
conditions) , with enough time, some arrangements of matter would  
simulate minds, or even worlds and civilizations. But 15.000  
Million years, that is the age of the universe is not enough.


Boltzman was considering the question of how the universe came to be 
 in its state of low entropy.  I could be due to a random  
fluctuation.  And it was more probable that the random fluctuation  
simply produced the universe as we see than a fluctuation that  
produced a big bang universe which then evolved into what we see.


Actually I doubt this, like the probability that life appears on 
earth  and leads to us, is plausibly bigger than the probability that 
"I"  appears here just now, in my exact current state.



And extending this line of thought further, a fluctuation that  
merely created a brain along with the illusion of this universe was  
still more probable (i.e. less improbable).


If that were true, that could be used to put more doubt on the  
existence of the 1-person indeterminacy measure, I think.


In the UD, or arithmetic, this reflects the competition between 
little  numbers (simple explanation) and big numbers (algorithmically 
complex  explanation). But the indeterminacy bears on all numbers, so 
the  little one have to multiply much more than the complex one, in 
some  ways. Linearity at the physical bottom might be explained by 
that  phenomenon, qualitatively.





Sean Carroll has a good discussion of this and why this argument  
does not hold for a multiverse, in his book "From Infinity to Here".


Looks interesting. I guess this can be very easily extended to the  
"many dreams" occurring in arithmetic.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



The problem is to explain also why the entropy of the early universe 
was so low. If you just accept that this is the case and also don't 
bother about the very distant future, there is no problem. But if you 
assume that time goes on from the infinite distant past and/or to the 
infinite distant future, you have a problem, because smaller local low 
entropy states are then more likely than the whole observable universe 
being in some low entropy state.


And Sean Carroll's argument amounts to simply hiding the problem in an 
ever expanding state space, it's not that he has shown that in a 
multiverse the problem doesn't occur.



Saibal

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Re: The Unreality of Time

[Bruno Marchal]

Hi Alberto,

On 31 Jul 2012, at 11:08, Alberto G. Corona wrote:


Evgenii, great questions

2012/7/30 Evgenii Rudnyi 
On 30.07.2012 11:19 Alberto G. Corona said the following:


What do you mean by "the world of the mind is different form the  
phisico-mathematical world"? Is this as by Descartes res cogitans  
vs. res extensa?



As you said, it is a matter of common sense and Descartes had it.   
But it can be also derived from the Computational hypothesis in  
virtue of it, even monist materialists have to accept the world of  
the mind, (and I need the opinion of Bruno) because two different  
"material substrates" can support the same mind. Materialism is a  
monism but has a hidden dualism that is converted back into monism  
by the process of avoiding delicate questions, for example the  
nature of perceptions and the nature of the suppossedly "external"  
phenomenons that they affirm that they study, This i suspect, does  
not resist a deep examination. Within the monist sceintist,  It  
resurfaces in the mathematical nature of reality that implies a  
dualism between matter and (some) mathematics. That is because  
matter ,and  perceived phenomenons of "reality" are nothing but  
mental categories like electron, Person, among other more abstract  
like USA or Vanity or Essence,  all of them have some correspondence  
with the outer world, that I argue, is purely mathematical. This is  
the world outside of the mind. Any way you take it, wether the mind  
is a product of the matter or the opposite or something else, there  
are two different realities. no matter if you put both in a single  
substance, or you divide them


I agree with all what is said here. I comment rarely your post because  
I usually agree with them.


I do think there is a phenomenological dualism between mind and  
matter, and I do think we can retrieve it from computationalism, where  
such dualism (and others) arise from the fact that all the points of  
view of the self-observing machine obeys different logics, and  
generates different structures in the mind.









[Our phenomenology conform a common, communicable reality among us
because it is the product of a common mind, that is a product of
a common brain architecture, that is a result of a common brain
development program that is a result of a common genetic
inheritance]


Let me ask Max Velmans' question again. According to neuroscience,
all conscious experience including visual is in the brain. Hence,
according to the ultimate causes, is the brain in the world or the
world in the brain? What would you say?


Again, this question is quite important, as we have to define what
observation is. Does for example observation happens in the brain


The activity of the brain is the mind and the mind is a separate
world that includes all that can be perceived. What is outside of the
mind may just plain mathematics. What we call phisical world is in
reality set of phenomenons perceived by the mind. Observations happen
in the mind. We can repeat and verify experiments because we live in
the same mathematical reality outside of the mind, and because our
minds have similar architecture and experience, so we have the same
language, interests, experimental machines, procedures, so, as Eric
Voegelin said, we live in a shared social mind.

I am not sure if I understand. How do you connect these two  
assumptions:



"What we call phisical world is in reality set of phenomenons  
perceived by the mind."


"because we live in the same mathematical reality outside of the mind"

Do you mean that the world outside of the mind is congruent with the  
perceived world by the mind?


Yes. This is not magical, but a product of natural selection. Our  
mental world is made to support life, and life is the art of  
maintaining and reproducing our bodies, that live outside of the  
mind. A computer can simulate anythnig we want, but our brains are  
dedicated computers devoted full time to carefully examine the  
external reality that appear to our perception as phenomenons or  
else, we would not survive. Some irrealities can be accepted  when  
they are in a trade-off with other more valuable knowledge, or the  
perception is too expensive. We do not see individual dangerous  
bacterias for example, but we avoid  them by smell and taste and  
some visual clues,  well before we noticed its existence.


So when we have in front of our eyes  an arrangement of atoms that  
has direct or indirect meaning for our purposes, we identifty and  
classify it according with his "use": men, women, disgusting,  
pleasing, horses, experiments, countries..but also atoms, electrons  
and so on. And we proceed acordingly. None of these things exist  
outside of the mind, but what we are sure of is that outside there  
is something that make all of us perceive the same things and it  
respond with certain laws that we have discovered that are  
mathematical. So both are congruent because the mind evolved to 

Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 4:44 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

> So you understand 'will'.
>

Yes, I want to do some things and don't want to do other things.

> Do you also understand 'coercion'?
>

Yes, sometimes things prevent me from doing what I want to do.

  John K Clark

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Re: Contra Step 8 of UDA

[Bruno Marchal]

On 31 Jul 2012, at 14:36, David Nyman wrote:


On 31 July 2012 11:05, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

With comp, I argue that arithmetical truth is simpler and can  
explain why the numbers (or better the person associated to those  
numbers) construct ideas of time and space, and why they can believe  
in some genuine way in them, and be deluded in believing that they  
are primitive.


So your view, expressed above, seems to be that the subject of the  
spatio-temporal illusion is the "person associated with those  
numbers".


Yes.



If this be the case, how can we categorise such a subject, as  
distinct from the numbers that locally encode its logic?


By the logics of its multiple points of view, I would say. Most of  
them arise from the (8) logics of self-reference.





Doesn't it rather naturally fit with Bitbol's sense of a generalised  
Mind, logically conditioned by - but not identical to - the  
specifics of an underlying "real system"?


But what is that "real system" and how does it select the observers?  
Comp answers this, but the price is that we have to abandon the idea  
that there is some primitive real system. Only the computations are  
real, and the rest is a statistically emergent pattern in the first  
person (singular and plural) view.
The "real system" can exist, but it is more overlaying than  
underlying. It is not primitive.





And if so, does not this subjective intuition, generalised in such  
terms, seem ultimately to denote a universal, rather than an  
individual, category?


Comp gives or should give a very universal physics entirely based on  
arithmetic (or the universal system you wish). It comes from a  
competition between all universal numbers, and empirically we have  
some reason to believe that some type of universal numbers win the  
game, like quantum computers. So yes, but without any "real system" to  
postulate (which cannot work by step 8). The mind-body problem is  
reduced to the derivation of the "real system" from the number's  
"illusions". We must explain it (the qubits probably) from the bits as  
Wheeler suggested.


Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: The Unreality of Time

[Bruno Marchal]

On 31 Jul 2012, at 17:36, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote:


Citeren Bruno Marchal :



On 30 Jul 2012, at 19:57, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/30/2012 2:19 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
The Boltzman brains , according with what i have read, are   
completely different beasts. Boltzman pressuposes, that , since  
no  random arrangement of matter is statistically impossible,  
and  Boltzman demonstrated it in certain conditions (ergodic   
conditions) , with enough time, some arrangements of matter  
would  simulate minds, or even worlds and civilizations. But  
15.000  Million years, that is the age of the universe is not  
enough.


Boltzman was considering the question of how the universe came to  
be  in its state of low entropy.  I could be due to a random   
fluctuation.  And it was more probable that the random  
fluctuation  simply produced the universe as we see than a  
fluctuation that  produced a big bang universe which then evolved  
into what we see.


Actually I doubt this, like the probability that life appears on  
earth  and leads to us, is plausibly bigger than the probability  
that "I"  appears here just now, in my exact current state.



And extending this line of thought further, a fluctuation that   
merely created a brain along with the illusion of this universe  
was  still more probable (i.e. less improbable).


If that were true, that could be used to put more doubt on the   
existence of the 1-person indeterminacy measure, I think.


In the UD, or arithmetic, this reflects the competition between  
little  numbers (simple explanation) and big numbers  
(algorithmically complex  explanation). But the indeterminacy bears  
on all numbers, so the  little one have to multiply much more than  
the complex one, in some  ways. Linearity at the physical bottom  
might be explained by that  phenomenon, qualitatively.





Sean Carroll has a good discussion of this and why this argument   
does not hold for a multiverse, in his book "From Infinity to Here".


Looks interesting. I guess this can be very easily extended to the   
"many dreams" occurring in arithmetic.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



The problem is to explain also why the entropy of the early universe  
was so low. If you just accept that this is the case and also don't  
bother about the very distant future, there is no problem. But if  
you assume that time goes on from the infinite distant past and/or  
to the infinite distant future, you have a problem, because smaller  
local low entropy states are then more likely than the whole  
observable universe being in some low entropy state.


And Sean Carroll's argument amounts to simply hiding the problem in  
an ever expanding state space, it's not that he has shown that in a  
multiverse the problem doesn't occur.


But with comp I don't see how we could avoid the ever expanding state  
space. That is what a UD is, notably, and its existence is a  
consequence of simple laws (+ and *).
Should not a quantum multiverse also contains some quantum universal  
dovetailer and avoids the problem in the Sean Carroll way? (as far as  
I can imagine it)


Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: The Unreality of Time

[Alberto G. Corona]

Thnks Bruno, Specially your agreement on dualism make me feel more
confident.

2012/7/31 Bruno Marchal 

> Hi Alberto,
>
> On 31 Jul 2012, at 11:08, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
>
> Evgenii, great questions
>
> 2012/7/30 Evgenii Rudnyi 
>
>> On 30.07.2012 11:19 Alberto G. Corona said the following:
>>
>>>
>>>
>> What do you mean by "the world of the mind is different form the
>> phisico-mathematical world"? Is this as by Descartes res cogitans vs. res
>> extensa?
>>
>>
> As you said, it is a matter of common sense and Descartes had it.  But it
> can be also derived from the Computational hypothesis in virtue of it, even
> monist materialists have to accept the world of the mind, (and I need the
> opinion of Bruno) because two different "material substrates" can support
> the same mind. Materialism is a monism but has a hidden dualism that is
> converted back into monism by the process of avoiding delicate questions,
> for example the nature of perceptions and the nature of the suppossedly
> "external" phenomenons that they affirm that they study, This i suspect,
> does not resist a deep examination. Within the monist sceintist,  It
> resurfaces in the mathematical nature of reality that implies a dualism
> between matter and (some) mathematics. That is because matter ,and
>  perceived phenomenons of "reality" are nothing but mental categories like
> electron, Person, among other more abstract like USA or Vanity or Essence,
>  all of them have some correspondence with the outer world, that I argue,
> is purely mathematical. This is the world outside of the mind. Any way you
> take it, wether the mind is a product of the matter or the opposite or
> something else, there are two different realities. no matter if you put
> both in a single substance, or you divide them
>
>
> I agree with all what is said here. I comment rarely your post because I
> usually agree with them.
>
> I do think there is a phenomenological dualism between mind and matter,
> and I do think we can retrieve it from computationalism, where such dualism
> (and others) arise from the fact that all the points of view of the
> self-observing machine obeys different logics, and generates different
> structures in the mind.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>
 [Our phenomenology conform a common, communicable reality among us

> because it is the product of a common mind, that is a product of
> a common brain architecture, that is a result of a common brain
> development program that is a result of a common genetic
> inheritance]
>
>
 Let me ask Max Velmans' question again. According to neuroscience,
 all conscious experience including visual is in the brain. Hence,
 according to the ultimate causes, is the brain in the world or the
 world in the brain? What would you say?


>>> Again, this question is quite important, as we have to define what
>>>
 observation is. Does for example observation happens in the brain

>>>
>>>
>>> The activity of the brain is the mind and the mind is a separate
>>> world that includes all that can be perceived. What is outside of the
>>> mind may just plain mathematics. What we call phisical world is in
>>> reality set of phenomenons perceived by the mind. Observations happen
>>> in the mind. We can repeat and verify experiments because we live in
>>> the same mathematical reality outside of the mind, and because our
>>> minds have similar architecture and experience, so we have the same
>>> language, interests, experimental machines, procedures, so, as Eric
>>> Voegelin said, we live in a shared social mind.
>>>
>>
>> I am not sure if I understand. How do you connect these two assumptions:
>>
>>
>> "What we call phisical world is in reality set of phenomenons perceived
>> by the mind."
>>
>> "because we live in the same mathematical reality outside of the mind"
>>
>> Do you mean that the world outside of the mind is congruent with the
>> perceived world by the mind?
>>
>> Yes. This is not magical, but a product of natural selection. Our mental
> world is made to support life, and life is the art of maintaining and
> reproducing our bodies, that live outside of the mind. A computer can
> simulate anythnig we want, but our brains are dedicated computers devoted
> full time to carefully examine the external reality that appear to our
> perception as phenomenons or else, we would not survive. Some irrealities
> can be accepted  when they are in a trade-off with other more valuable
> knowledge, or the perception is too expensive. We do not see individual
> dangerous bacterias for example, but we avoid  them by smell and taste and
> some visual clues,  well before we noticed its existence.
>
> So when we have in front of our eyes  an arrangement of atoms that has
> direct or indirect meaning for our purposes, we identifty and classify it
> according with his "use": men, women, disgusting, pleasing, horses,
> experiments, countries..but also atoms, electrons and so on. And we procee

Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 7:05 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

With complete information, a totally rational being makes optimal choices,


There is no rational reason to pick life over death, I happen to prefer
life but others have, or rather had, a different opinion and there is no
disputing matters of taste. Rationality can tell you the way to pursue
goals that gives you the best chance of achieving them but it can not pick
goals for you, you must pick them yourself and you pick them for a reason
or you pick them for no reason.

> and has no free will


And has no klogknee either, and my proof of that is every bit as good as
yours is about "free will".

> but always beats an irrational being.
>

Yes if he uses induction, statistics and rules of thumb, he will not always
be right but will be so more than random chance.

> Conversely, with incomplete information, a rational being will make a
> wrong choice


He might make a wrong choice but he might get lucky and he will get lucky
more often if he is rational. Luck favors a prepared mind.

> or simply fail to make a choice at all


Sometimes walking away from a bet would be the rational choice if the
reward for being right is small and the penalty for being wrong is large;
and sometimes any choice is better than no choice at all, so if you can't
do better the rational thing to do would be flip a coin.

  John K Clark

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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 31.07.2012 01:05 Russell Standish said the following:

...



With complete information, a totally rational being makes optimal
choices, and has no free will, but always beats an irrational being.


To this end, one has first to define the sense of life formally.

The goal to survive is clear but what would as the next step?

Evgenii

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Re: The Unreality of Time

[Alberto G. Corona]

"The problem is to explain also why the entropy of the early universe was
so low. If you just accept that this is the case and also don't bother
about the very distant future, there is no problem. But if you assume that
time goes on from the infinite distant past and/or to the infinite distant
future, you have a problem, because smaller local low entropy states are
then more likely than the whole observable universe being in some low
entropy state."

That make me think about the people that try to discover the whys of the
arrow of time by taking concepts like "beginning of the universe".  That
presuposses the arrow of time that he is trying to demonstrate how it
arises in the first place. this is a circular reasoning.   All that he can
demonstrate empirically is that it follows entropy, an then, he is puzzled
by the fact that  entropy was so low at the "beginning"

but if we take the idea of a block universe shaped as a four dimensional
bell  with a singularity in the left ( see the figure that I linked), there
is no arrow of time here. is our life that goes along very  short  segments
from left to right in the middle of  this figure. what  we do is to
extrapolate this sort segment to the whole figure. But this is not right.
first, time is local, according with general relativity. How we extrapolate
it? by assuming that time progress in the universe in the  direction that
we perceive causality, that is, in the direction of entropy increase.

but even so, there is not a single arrow of time where entropy increases.
there are infinite lines of  entropy increase/arrows of  time departin from
the singularity, which diverge radially trough the bell and extend to the
right in the figure.

If i´m right, the existence of a gradient of entropy and, thus the
existence of a singularity with maximum entropy somewhere, at a point which
we consider "origin of the universe", is a pre-requisite for natural
selection and life. Natural selection (as I said before) select "good
correlations" which deal with macroscopical events, to design life and
observers. That is why we see this universe with such unavoidable notion of
beginning and not other in other ways.

A boltzman brain is just a curiosity, unless the bolzman fluctionation
create not a single brain but a local portion of the universe that develop
in a way that maintain intellgent beings. In this case, it
is indistinguishable if the universe is or not the product of a boltzman
fluctuation.


2012/7/31 Bruno Marchal 

>
> On 31 Jul 2012, at 17:36, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote:
>
>  Citeren Bruno Marchal :
>>
>>
>>> On 30 Jul 2012, at 19:57, meekerdb wrote:
>>>
>>>  On 7/30/2012 2:19 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

> The Boltzman brains , according with what i have read, are  completely
> different beasts. Boltzman pressuposes, that , since no  random 
> arrangement
> of matter is statistically impossible, and  Boltzman demonstrated it in
> certain conditions (ergodic  conditions) , with enough time, some
> arrangements of matter would  simulate minds, or even worlds and
> civilizations. But 15.000  Million years, that is the age of the universe
> is not enough.
>

 Boltzman was considering the question of how the universe came to be
  in its state of low entropy.  I could be due to a random  fluctuation.
  And it was more probable that the random fluctuation  simply produced the
 universe as we see than a fluctuation that  produced a big bang universe
 which then evolved into what we see.

>>>
>>> Actually I doubt this, like the probability that life appears on earth
>>>  and leads to us, is plausibly bigger than the probability that "I"
>>>  appears here just now, in my exact current state.
>>>
>>>
>>>  And extending this line of thought further, a fluctuation that  merely
 created a brain along with the illusion of this universe was  still more
 probable (i.e. less improbable).

>>>
>>> If that were true, that could be used to put more doubt on the
>>>  existence of the 1-person indeterminacy measure, I think.
>>>
>>> In the UD, or arithmetic, this reflects the competition between little
>>>  numbers (simple explanation) and big numbers (algorithmically complex
>>>  explanation). But the indeterminacy bears on all numbers, so the  little
>>> one have to multiply much more than the complex one, in some  ways.
>>> Linearity at the physical bottom might be explained by that  phenomenon,
>>> qualitatively.
>>>
>>>
>>>
 Sean Carroll has a good discussion of this and why this argument  does
 not hold for a multiverse, in his book "From Infinity to Here".

>>>
>>> Looks interesting. I guess this can be very easily extended to the
>>>  "many dreams" occurring in arithmetic.
>>>
>>> Bruno
>>>
>>>
>>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~**marchal/ 
>>>
>>>
>> The problem is to explain also why the entropy of the early universe was
>> so low. If you just accept that this 

Re: Free will: a definition

[Stephen P. King]

Dear Russell,

In our definition of the concept of "free will", it seems that we 
need to elaborate a bit on the notions of coercion, autonomy and choice. 
From what I have studied, the concept of a player used in game theory 
works well. Free will is the ability for an autonomous agent to make 
uncoercered choices from a set of simultaneously inspectable choices.



On 7/30/2012 7:05 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 11:08:29AM -0700, meekerdb wrote:

On 7/30/2012 4:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Free-will is an informal term use in many informal setting.
religious people defined it often by the ability to choose
consciously between doing bad things or not, and people from the
law can invoke it as a general precondition for making sense of
the responsibility idea. In cognitive science we can at least
approximate it in different ways, and basically, with
computationalism it is the ability to make choice in absence of
complete information, and knowledge of that incomplete feature.

I'm not clear on why you emphasize incomplete information?  What
would constitute complete information? and why how would that
obviate 'free will'.  Is it coercive?


With complete information, a totally rational being makes optimal
choices, and has no free will, but always beats an irrational being.

Conversely, with incomplete information, a rational being will make a
wrong choice, or simply fail to make a choice at all, and so is
usually beaten by an irrational being.

This is where the idea that free will is the capability to act
irrationally (or as I put it "do something stupid") comes from. There
are definite evolutionary advantages to acting irrationally some of
the time (though not all the time :).





--
Onward!

Stephen

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon


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Re: Free will: a definition

[R AM]

> On 7/30/2012 7:05 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
>> With complete information, a totally rational being makes optimal
>> choices, and has no free will, but always beats an irrational being.
>>
>> Conversely, with incomplete information, a rational being will make a
>> wrong choice, or simply fail to make a choice at all, and so is
>> usually beaten by an irrational being.

With incomplete information, a rational being will make the best
choice under the available information and would beat an irrational
being most of the time.

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Re: Contra Step 8 of UDA

[Stephen P. King]

Dear Bruno,

Your statement here demonstrates that I have entirely failed to 
communicate my thoughts so that you could understand them. You are 
arguing against a straw man.  What you write here as "Stephen's idea" is 
as Wolfgang Pauli might say: "not even wrong". I am proposing that 
numbers and arithmetical truth are (at least) relational structures 
within the realm of the mind, the mind of observers which are not 
exclusive to humans. *Any system* that can implement a unitary 
transformation would have a mind by my definition. The dualism that I am 
advocating is explained in Vaughan Pratt's paper 
http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/ratmech.pdf and is a rehabilitation of 
Descartes failed version by dropping the idea of a "primitive substance" 
and using the natural duality of Categories to co-define "minds" and 
"bodies". Becoming is considered to be the fundamental primitive. This 
idea of becoming is explained 
here:http://www.metasciences.ac/time_XIV.pdf 




On 7/31/2012 6:05 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I was just opposing Stephen's idea with the comp idea that numbers and 
arithmetical truth is a (human) mental construct necessitating some 
primitive time, space or physical reality. With comp, I argue that 
arithmetical truth is simpler and can explain why the numbers (or 
better the person associated to those numbers) construct ideas of time 
and space, and why they can believe in some genuine way in them, and 
be deluded in believing that they are primitive.





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Stephen

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon

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Re: The Unreality of Time

[meekerdb]

On 7/31/2012 8:36 AM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote:

Citeren Bruno Marchal :



On 30 Jul 2012, at 19:57, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/30/2012 2:19 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
The Boltzman brains , according with what i have read, are  completely different 
beasts. Boltzman pressuposes, that , since no  random arrangement of matter is 
statistically impossible, and  Boltzman demonstrated it in certain conditions 
(ergodic  conditions) , with enough time, some arrangements of matter would  simulate 
minds, or even worlds and civilizations. But 15.000  Million years, that is the age 
of the universe is not enough.


Boltzman was considering the question of how the universe came to be  in its state of 
low entropy.  I could be due to a random  fluctuation.  And it was more probable that 
the random fluctuation  simply produced the universe as we see than a fluctuation 
that  produced a big bang universe which then evolved into what we see.


Actually I doubt this, like the probability that life appears on earth  and leads to 
us, is plausibly bigger than the probability that "I"  appears here just now, in my 
exact current state.



And extending this line of thought further, a fluctuation that  merely created a brain 
along with the illusion of this universe was  still more probable (i.e. less improbable).


If that were true, that could be used to put more doubt on the  existence of the 
1-person indeterminacy measure, I think.


In the UD, or arithmetic, this reflects the competition between little  numbers (simple 
explanation) and big numbers (algorithmically complex  explanation). But the 
indeterminacy bears on all numbers, so the  little one have to multiply much more than 
the complex one, in some  ways. Linearity at the physical bottom might be explained by 
that  phenomenon, qualitatively.





Sean Carroll has a good discussion of this and why this argument  does not hold for a 
multiverse, in his book "From Infinity to Here".


Looks interesting. I guess this can be very easily extended to the  "many dreams" 
occurring in arithmetic.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



The problem is to explain also why the entropy of the early universe was so low. If you 
just accept that this is the case and also don't bother about the very distant future, 
there is no problem. But if you assume that time goes on from the infinite distant past 
and/or to the infinite distant future, you have a problem, because smaller local low 
entropy states are then more likely than the whole observable universe being in some low 
entropy state.


And Sean Carroll's argument amounts to simply hiding the problem in an ever expanding 
state space, it's not that he has shown that in a multiverse the problem doesn't occur.


As I understand it, his argument is that the multiverse can be past eternal and yet each 
person will find themselves in a universe that started in a low entropy big-bang because 
bubble universes are most probable when they start small.


Brent

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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[meekerdb]

On 7/31/2012 9:18 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 4:44 PM, meekerdb > wrote:


> So you understand 'will'.


Yes, I want to do some things and don't want to do other things.

> Do you also understand 'coercion'?


Yes, sometimes things prevent me from doing what I want to do.


No, that's not the meaning of coercion.  Gravity doesn't coerce you to not fly.  Coercion 
is someone else imposing their will on you by threat, i.e. causing you to take some action 
you would not otherwise take by threatening you.  Of course there are degrees of coercion 
from threatening never to invite you to a party again to threatening to kill you and your 
family.


Brent

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Re: The Unreality of Time

[meekerdb]

On 7/31/2012 10:48 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
"The problem is to explain also why the entropy of the early universe was so low. If you 
just accept that this is the case and also don't bother about the very distant future, 
there is no problem. But if you assume that time goes on from the infinite distant past 
and/or to the infinite distant future, you have a problem, because smaller local low 
entropy states are then more likely than the whole observable universe being in some low 
entropy state."


That make me think about the people that try to discover the whys of the arrow of time 
by taking concepts like "beginning of the universe".  That presuposses the arrow of time 
that he is trying to demonstrate how it arises in the first place. this is a circular 
reasoning.


No, it's not circular.  Beginning is just the low entropy state.

All that he can demonstrate empirically is that it follows entropy, an then, he is 
puzzled by the fact that  entropy was so low at the "beginning"


The interesting question is why there is there uniformity in the different 'arrows of 
time'.  Why does the local increase in thermodynamic entropy match the expansion of the 
universe?  Why does the radiation AoT match the quantum branching of MWI?




but if we take the idea of a block universe shaped as a four dimensional bell  with a 
singularity in the left ( see the figure that I linked), there is no arrow of time here. 
is our life that goes along very  short  segments from left to right in the middle of 
 this figure. what  we do is to extrapolate this sort segment to the whole figure. But 
this is not right. first, time is local, according with general relativity. How we 
extrapolate it? by assuming that time progress in the universe in the  direction that we 
perceive causality, that is, in the direction of entropy increase.


but even so, there is not a single arrow of time where entropy increases. there are 
infinite lines of  entropy increase/arrows of  time departin from the singularity, 
which diverge radially trough the bell and extend to the right in the figure.


If i´m right, the existence of a gradient of entropy and, thus the existence of a 
singularity with maximum entropy somewhere, at a point which we consider "origin of the 
universe", is a pre-requisite for natural selection and life. Natural selection (as I 
said before) select "good correlations" which deal with macroscopical events, to design 
life and observers. That is why we see this universe with such unavoidable notion of 
beginning and not other in other ways.


A boltzman brain is just a curiosity, unless the bolzman fluctionation create not a 
single brain but a local portion of the universe that develop in a way that maintain 
intellgent beings. In this case, it is indistinguishable if the universe is or not the 
product of a boltzman fluctuation.


The problem is that statistical mechanical estimates of probabilities favor the random 
occurrence of the curiosity over the universe.


Brent

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Re: Free will: a definition

[meekerdb]

On 7/31/2012 11:10 AM, R AM wrote:

On 7/30/2012 7:05 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

With complete information, a totally rational being makes optimal
choices, and has no free will, but always beats an irrational being.

Conversely, with incomplete information, a rational being will make a
wrong choice, or simply fail to make a choice at all, and so is
usually beaten by an irrational being.

With incomplete information, a rational being will make the best
choice under the available information and would beat an irrational
being most of the time.



Right. I don't think 'complete information' is even a well defined concept.  It's only a 
good approximation in games like chess, but in life all decisions are made on incomplete 
information with finite future horizons and uncertainty about the value of different outcomes.


Brent

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Re: Free will: a definition

[John Mikes]

Stephen,
just a brief remark to the discussion:

if the 'agent' has complete info (it never occurs) it naturally coerces its
decision (*will, choice*). We call *good-bad* according to OUR incomplete
thinking. Same goes for the *"rational - irrational"* pair.
We can NEVER have complete information - we are restricted in our mental
capabilities from exploiting the total infinite complexity.
All is condensed into: (as *R RAM wrote:*
*With incomplete information, a rational being will make the best choice
under the available information and would beat an irrational being most of
the time )*
(ambient lingo wording).

My position stands: there is NO free will, only ALMOST(!)
and maybe considered 'some freedom carrying' will, (just as I did deny
'random' and got an 'almost': "under certain (given) circumstances").
The term YOUR FREE WILL arose from the faith-based authoritarian
requirement to raise responsibility - hence a guilt feeling for a
make-believe punishment (in eternity!).

John M

**




On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:55 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

> Dear Russell,
>
> In our definition of the concept of "free will", it seems that we need
> to elaborate a bit on the notions of coercion, autonomy and choice. From
> what I have studied, the concept of a player used in game theory works
> well. Free will is the ability for an autonomous agent to make uncoercered
> choices from a set of simultaneously inspectable choices.
>
>
> On 7/30/2012 7:05 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 11:08:29AM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
>>
>>> On 7/30/2012 4:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
 Free-will is an informal term use in many informal setting.
 religious people defined it often by the ability to choose
 consciously between doing bad things or not, and people from the
 law can invoke it as a general precondition for making sense of
 the responsibility idea. In cognitive science we can at least
 approximate it in different ways, and basically, with
 computationalism it is the ability to make choice in absence of
 complete information, and knowledge of that incomplete feature.

>>> I'm not clear on why you emphasize incomplete information?  What
>>> would constitute complete information? and why how would that
>>> obviate 'free will'.  Is it coercive?
>>>
>>> With complete information, a totally rational being makes optimal
>> choices, and has no free will, but always beats an irrational being.
>>
>> Conversely, with incomplete information, a rational being will make a
>> wrong choice, or simply fail to make a choice at all, and so is
>> usually beaten by an irrational being.
>>
>> This is where the idea that free will is the capability to act
>> irrationally (or as I put it "do something stupid") comes from. There
>> are definite evolutionary advantages to acting irrationally some of
>> the time (though not all the time :).
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
>
> "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
> ~ Francis Bacon
>
>
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Re: The Unreality of Time

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

Alberto,

Thank you for your answers. I will make one comment now. I plan to read 
Schneider on molecular machines (thanks for the link) and then I may 
make more comments.


On 31.07.2012 11:08 Alberto G. Corona said the following:

Evgenii, great questions

2012/7/30 Evgenii Rudnyi


On 30.07.2012 11:19 Alberto G. Corona said the following:



...


The activity of the brain is the mind and the mind is a separate
world that includes all that can be perceived. What is outside of the
mind may just plain mathematics. What we call phisical world is in
reality set of phenomenons perceived by the mind. Observations happen
in the mind. We can repeat and verify experiments because we live in
the same mathematical reality outside of the mind, and because our
minds have similar architecture and experience, so we have the same
language, interests, experimental machines, procedures, so, as Eric
Voegelin said, we live in a shared social mind.



I am not sure if I understand. How do you connect these two assumptions:


"What we call phisical world is in reality set of phenomenons perceived by
the mind."

"because we live in the same mathematical reality outside of the mind"

Do you mean that the world outside of the mind is congruent with the
perceived world by the mind?

Yes. This is not magical, but a product of natural selection. Our mental

world is made to support life, and life is the art of maintaining and
reproducing our bodies, that live outside of the mind. A computer can
simulate anythnig we want, but our brains are dedicated computers devoted
full time to carefully examine the external reality that appear to our
perception as phenomenons or else, we would not survive. Some irrealities
can be accepted  when they are in a trade-off with other more valuable
knowledge, or the perception is too expensive. We do not see individual
dangerous bacterias for example, but we avoid  them by smell and taste and
some visual clues,  well before we noticed its existence.

So when we have in front of our eyes  an arrangement of atoms that has
direct or indirect meaning for our purposes, we identifty and classify it
according with his "use": men, women, disgusting, pleasing, horses,
experiments, countries..but also atoms, electrons and so on. And we proceed
acordingly. None of these things exist outside of the mind, but what we are
sure of is that outside there is something that make all of us perceive the
same things and it respond with certain laws that we have discovered that
are mathematical. So both are congruent because the mind evolved to be
congruent, but not only congruent, but congruent in  certain defined ways.
There is a branch called evolutionary epistemology that study the
epistemological consequences of the evolved nature of our mind.


The world in the brain that is congruent with the world outside of the 
brain brings us a paradox, as described by Max Velmans:


“Lehar (2003), however, points out that if the phenomenal world is 
inside the brain, the real skull must be outside the phenomenal world 
(the former and the latter are logically equivalent). Let me be clear: 
if one accepts that


a) The phenomenal world appears to have spatial extension to the 
perceived horizon and dome of the sky.

b) The phenomenal world is really inside the brain.

It follows that

c) The real skull (as opposed to the phenomenal skull) is beyond the 
perceived horizon and dome of the sky.“


Some problem here is that science that we know has started with 
observations and we make these observations in the three dimensional 
world that we observe outside of our body/brain. Now if we say that 
actually what we consciously observe is in the brain, then we should 
reconsider as well what observation is.


Hence my interest to skeptic arguments. For example, see famous ‘Proof 
of an External World’ by Moore


http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moore/

"How? By holding up my two hands, and saying, as I make a certain 
gesture with the right hand, ‘Here is one hand’, and adding, as I make a 
certain gesture with the left, ‘and here is another’ (‘Proof of an 
External World’ 166)."


"I knew that there was one hand in the place indicated by combining a 
certain gesture with my first utterance of ‘here’ and that there was 
another in the different place indicated by combining a certain gesture 
with my second utterance of ‘here’. How absurd it would be to suggest 
that I did not know it, but only believed it, and that perhaps it was 
not the case! You might as well suggest that I do not know that I am now 
standing up and talking — that perhaps after all I'm not, and that it's 
not quite certain that I am! (‘Proof of an External World’ 166)"


With the picture as described by you, this does not work any more.

Evgenii


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Re: The Unreality of Time

[Alberto G. Corona]

2012/7/31 meekerdb 

>  On 7/31/2012 10:48 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
>
> "The problem is to explain also why the entropy of the early universe was
> so low. If you just accept that this is the case and also don't bother
> about the very distant future, there is no problem. But if you assume that
> time goes on from the infinite distant past and/or to the infinite distant
> future, you have a problem, because smaller local low entropy states are
> then more likely than the whole observable universe being in some low
> entropy state."
>
>  That make me think about the people that try to discover the whys of the
> arrow of time by taking concepts like "beginning of the universe".  That
> presuposses the arrow of time that he is trying to demonstrate how it
> arises in the first place. this is a circular reasoning.
>
>
> No, it's not circular.  Beginning is just the low entropy state.
>

It depends.
It is circular if as you said, we postulate that Beginning is just the low
entropy state when   if inmediately after we ask ourselves why in the
beginning the entropy was low. That is precisely the situation that I
mentioned.

>
>
>  All that he can demonstrate empirically is that it follows entropy, an
> then, he is puzzled by the fact that  entropy was so low at the "beginning"
>
>
> The interesting question is why there is there uniformity in the different
> 'arrows of time'.  Why does the local increase in thermodynamic entropy
> match the expansion of the universe?  Why does the radiation AoT match the
> quantum branching of MWI?
>
>
>
>  but if we take the idea of a block universe shaped as a four dimensional
> bell  with a singularity in the left ( see the figure that I linked), there
> is no arrow of time here. is our life that goes along very  short  segments
> from left to right in the middle of  this figure. what  we do is to
> extrapolate this sort segment to the whole figure. But this is not right.
> first, time is local, according with general relativity. How we extrapolate
> it? by assuming that time progress in the universe in the  direction that
> we perceive causality, that is, in the direction of entropy increase.
>
>  but even so, there is not a single arrow of time where entropy
> increases. there are infinite lines of  entropy increase/arrows of  time
> departin from the singularity, which diverge radially trough the bell and
> extend to the right in the figure.
>
>  If i´m right, the existence of a gradient of entropy and, thus the
> existence of a singularity with maximum entropy somewhere, at a point which
> we consider "origin of the universe", is a pre-requisite for natural
> selection and life. Natural selection (as I said before) select "good
> correlations" which deal with macroscopical events, to design life and
> observers. That is why we see this universe with such unavoidable notion of
> beginning and not other in other ways.
>
>  A boltzman brain is just a curiosity, unless the bolzman fluctionation
> create not a single brain but a local portion of the universe that develop
> in a way that maintain intellgent beings. In this case, it
> is indistinguishable if the universe is or not the product of a boltzman
> fluctuation.
>
>
> The problem is that statistical mechanical estimates of probabilities
> favor the random occurrence of the curiosity over the universe.
>
> Brent
>
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