Re: Our Creator Is A Cosmic Computer Programmer
In my humle opinion, This is a sign of the times. In an era of nomadism, God was a shepherd . Peasants thought that the world was the God vineyard. During the XVIII XIX where most of the cities were expanded,God was an architect. Apparently the mecanicist metaphor of the industrial revolution was not clean enough as an image of God, but some saw in the animation of the dirty steam-driven gears a principle alternative to the unmoved mover, so that atheism had a ground. This suggestion seems so naive today that we do not realize how naive is to assign the same God or anti-God image on anything new. Now, s it is a Computer programmer., or alternatively, God does not exist because programs exists. Amont these two you can choose your actualized religion. I think that, in the deep, there are many explanatory principles that are true, Although apparently contradictory they may have isomorphic dualities: computationalist and mathematical explanations may be dual, for example. God and Godless reality may also be dual. A God which creates a universe absent from contradictions, among other possible universes, in the way that Saint Thomas Aquinas proposed, is undistinguisable from an impersonal creation principle, and its creation becomes a Revelation, written in the laws of nature. 2012/9/3 Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com FYI Our Creator Is A Cosmic Computer Programmer - Says JPL Scientist 3 September, 2012 Share this story: Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on email Share on print More Sharing Services 5 Follow us: MessageToEagle.com - Are we just a computer simulation? Who or what is the creator? More and more scientists are now seriously considering the possibility that we might live in a matrix, and they say that evidence could be all around us. Rich Terrell, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology has helped design missions to Mars, discovered four new moons around Saturn, Neptune and Uranus and taken pictures of the distant solar system. Terrell has his opinion about our creator who most refer to as God. One has to think what are the requirements for God? God is an inter-dimensional being connected with everything in the Universe, a creator that is responsible for the Universe and in some way can change the laws of physics, if he wanted to. I think those are good requirements for what God ought to be, Terrell says. This is the same as programmers creating simulations, Terrell explains. Rich Terrell goes through his argument using Moore's Law and the Turing Test. Terrell wondered, how much computing power would a simulation of the Earth require? Humans are doubling the computing power every 13 months and Terrell says that computers already match the human brain in computational speed. Right now our fastest computers on the planer are capable of one million billion operations per second Terrell says. At this rate, in 10 years, Terrell believes computers will be able to create a photo real simulation of all that we see around us - the Earth. But can a computer populate such a simulation with thinking beings, artificially intelligent simulated beings, like humans? Terrell thinks so and that humans are on the verge of creating worlds inside computers populated by sentient beings. Terrell says he has found evidence that God is a programmer in nature. Look at the way the Universe behaves, it's quantized, it's made of pixels. Space is quantitized, matter is quantitized, energy is quantitized, everything is made of individual pixels. Which means the Universe has a finite number of components. Which means a finite number of states. Which means it's computer. That infers the Universe could be created by lines of code in a computer, Terrell says. Our creator is a cosmic computer programmer, says Rich Terrell. Is there evidence of computer processing of our objective reality? One clue is an experiment in the physics laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. A 1928 experiment (the Thomson experiment plus the Davisson-Germer experiment) provide evidence. Using an electron beam transmitted through a piece of graphite with a screen behind is set up. The background screen records how the electrons ricochet off the graphite. At this subatomic level, the pattern is not random, as might be expected, but is a diffraction pattern. The idea that we might live in a computer simulation ahs been suggested by a number of scientists. Terrell notes, The experiment shows something really rather extraordinary, that matter, even though it behaves when you are looking at it, measuring it, as individual particles, when you are not looking at it, matter is diffuse. It spreads out, it doesn't have a finite form in the Universe. When observed they are dots, when we look away, they lose their physical form. Is this behavior of matter similar, or parallel, to the behavior in a
Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
At this moment this is true. Another thing is if the computer could become intelligent enough. It is not easy to admit that the belief in the possibility of making something intelligent exist well before computers. Since the industrial revolution, some people believed in the possibility of making intelligent automatas only with steam, weels and wires. This seems naive if not stupid not, but the theorical possibility still holds. I wonder how far the theory is from reality in the case of computers. Up to now, even the most pessimistic previsions have been ridicule. The gap between computer and a bacteria is inmense, galactic. This is inherent to the limitations of any rational design in comparison with the abundance and almost omniscence of natural selection (That I explained somewhere else). Moreover, a natural design is almost impossible to reverse engineer to the last detail since it don´t attain to the rules of god design, because they are rules of limited design (explained somewhere else). 2012/9/3 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net: Hi benjayk Computers have no intelligence --not a whit, since intelligence requires ability to choose, choice requires awareness or Cs, which in term requires an aware subject. Thus only living entities can have ingtelligence. A bacterium thus has more intel;ligence than a computer, even the largest in the world. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: benjayk Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 10:12:46 Subject: Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Aug 2012, at 15:12, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 24 Aug 2012, at 12:04, benjayk wrote: But this avoides my point that we can't imagine that levels, context and ambiguity don't exist, and this is why computational emulation does not mean that the emulation can substitute the original. But here you do a confusion level as I think Jason tries pointing on. A similar one to the one made by Searle in the Chinese Room. As emulator (computing machine) Robinson Arithmetic can simulate exactly Peano Arithmetic, even as a prover. So for example Robinson arithmetic can prove that Peano arithmetic proves the consistency of Robinson Arithmetic. But you cannot conclude from that that Robinson Arithmetic can prove its own consistency. That would contradict G鰀el II. When PA uses the induction axiom, RA might just say huh, and apply it for the sake of the emulation without any inner conviction. I agree, so I don't see how I confused the levels. It seems to me you have just stated that Robinson indeed can not substitue Peano Arithmetic, because RAs emulation of PA makes only sense with respect to PA (in cases were PA does a proof that RA can't do). Right. It makes only first person sense to PA. But then RA has succeeded in making PA alive, and PA could a posteriori realize that the RA level was enough. Sorry, but it can't. It can't even abstract itself out to see that the RA level would be enough. I see you doing this all the time; you take some low level that can be made sense of by something transcendent of it and then claim that the low level is enough. This is precisely the calim that I don't understand at all. You say that we only need natural numbers and + and *, and that the rest emerges from that as the 1-p viewpoint of the numbers. Unfortunately the 1-p viewpoint itself can't be found in the numbers, it can only be found in what transcends the numbers, or what the numbers really are / refer to (which also completely beyond our conception of numbers). That's the problem with G鰀el as well. His unprovable statement about numbers is really a meta-statement about what numbers express that doesn't even make sense if we only consider the definition of numbers. He really just shows that we can reason about numbers and with numbers in ways that can't be captured by numbers (but in this case what we do with them has little to do with the numbers themselves). I agree that computations reflect many things about us (infinitely many things, even), but we still transcend them infinitely. Strangely you agree for the 1-p viewpoint. But given that's what you *actually* live, I don't see how it makes sense to than proceed that there is a meaningful 3-p point of view where this isn't true. This point of view is really just an abstraction occuring in the 1-p of view. Bruno Marchal wrote: Like I converse with Einstein's brain's book (� la Hofstatdter), just by manipulating the page of the book. I don't become Einstein through my making of that process, but I can have a genuine conversation with Einstein through it. He will know that he has survived, or that he survives through that process. On some level, I agree. But not far from the
Re: Re: Monads with power steering
Hi Richard Ruquist Good question. My response is that the monads only refer as a whole to physical entities. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Richard Ruquist Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 11:48:22 Subject: Re: Monads with power steering How can monads store information without any internal parts? On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 11:01 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Richard Ruquist My claim was a bit over simplified. Although numbers do not have parts, my thinking was of monads as numbers not numbers as monads. So they have history, context, desires, etc. Monads have all kinds of accessories. Power steering anti-skid brakes, you name it. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Richard Ruquist Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 10:07:37 Subject: Re: Re: A Dialog comparing Comp with Leibniz's metaphysics Roger, Every natural number is distinct from all others. So your characterization of them as simple with no internal parts has to be incorrect. Leibniz himself says that every monad is distinct: In a confused way they all strive after [vont a] the infinite, the whole; but they are limited and differentiated through the degrees of their distinct perceptions. http://www.rbjones.com/rbjpub/philos/classics/leibniz/monad.htm Also nowhere in the Monadology do the words extend, inextended, unextended or nonextended appear. So could you give us a link to where he says they are inextended. Richard On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 9:36 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Natural numbers are monads because 1) the are inextended substances, which is redundant to say. 2) they have no parts. That's a definition of a monad. Except to add that monads are alive, except that numbers are not very alive. I imagine one could write an entire scholarly paper on this issue. OK-- thanks-- there is a level of description that is comp Yes, there are a number of differences between Aristotle's substances and Leibniz's. I would go so far as tpo say that they have little in common: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance/#DesSpiLei Leibniz's substances, however, are the bearers of change (criterion (iv)) in a very different way from Aristotle's individual substances. An Aristotelian individual possesses some properties essentially and some accidentally. The accidental properties of an object are ones that can be gained and lost over time, and which it might never have possessed at all: its essential properties are the only ones it had to possess and which it possesses throughout its existence. The situation is different for Leibniz's monads梬hich is the name he gives to individual substances, created or uncreated (so God is a monad). Whereas, for Aristotle, the properties that an object has to possess and those that it possesses throughout its existence coincide, they do not do so for Leibniz. That is, for Leibniz, even the properties that an object possesses only for a part of its existence are essential to it. Every monad bears each of its properties as part of its nature, so if it were to have been different in any respect, it would have been a different entity. Furthermore, there is a sense in which all monads are exactly similar to each other, for they all reflect the whole world. They each do so, however, from a different perspective. For God, so to speak, turns on all sides and considers in all ways the general system of phenomena which he has found it good to produce匒nd he considers all the faces of the world in all possible ways卼he result of each view of the universe, as looked at from a certain position, is卆 substance which expresses the universe in conformity with that view. (1998: 66) So each monad reflects the whole system, but with its own perspective emphasised. If a monad is at place p at time t, it will contain all the features of the universe at all times, but with those relating to its own time and place most vividly, and others fading out roughly in accordance with temporal and spatial distance. Because there is a continuum of perspectives on reality, there is an infinite number of these substances. Nevertheless, there is internal change in the monads, because the respect in which its content is vivid varies with time and with action. Indeed, the passage of time just is the change in which of the monad's contents are most vivid. It is not possible to investigate here Leibniz's reasons for these apparently very strange views. Our present concern is with whether, and in what sense, Leibniz's substances are subjects of change. One can say that, in so far as, at
consciousness as the experiencre of time
Hi Craig Weinberg The experience of time is called consciousness, the simplest kind. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-04, 00:48:59 Subject: Re: Personally I call the Platonic realm anything inextended.Anything outside of spacetime. On Monday, September 3, 2012 8:33:34 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg Personally I call the Platonic realm anything inextended. Time necessarily drops out if space drops out. I see the opposite. If space drops out, all you have is time. I can count to 10 in my mind without invoking any experience of space. I can listen to music for hours without conjuring any spatial dimensionality. I think that space is the orthogonal reflection of experience, and that time, is that reflection (space) reflected again back into experience a spatially conditioned a posteriori reification of experience. Craig Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-31, 16:32:54 Subject: Re: Re: Technological (Machine) Thinking and Lived Being (Erlebnis) On Friday, August 31, 2012 5:53:24 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg You're on the right track, but everybody from Plato on says that the Platonic world is timeless, eternal. And nonextended or spaceless (nonlocal). Leibniz's world of monads satisfies these requirements. But there is more, there is the Supreme Monad, which experiences all. And IS the All. Hegel and Spinoza have the Totality, Kabbala has Ein Sof, There's the Tao, Jung's collective unconscious, there's Om, Brahman, Logos, Urgrund, Urbild, first potency, ground of being, the Absolute, synthetic a prori, etc. I call it the Totality-Singularity or just Everythingness. It's what there is when we aren't existing as a spatiotemporally partitioned subset. It is by definition nonlocal and a-temporal as there is nothing to constrain its access to all experiences. Craig Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 8/31/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-30, 13:53:09 Subject: Re: Technological (Machine) Thinking and Lived Being (Erlebnis) I think that the Platonic realm is just time, and that time is nothing but experience. Thought is the experience of generating hypothetical experience. The mistake is presuming that because we perceive exterior realism as a topology of bodies that the ground of being must be defined in those terms. In fact, the very experience you are having right now - with your eyes closed or half asleep...this is a concretely and physically real part of the universe, it just isn't experienced as objects in space because you are the subject of the experience. If anything, the outside world is a Platonic realm of geometric perspectives and rational expectations. Interior realism is private time travel and eidetic fugues; metaphor, irony, anticipations, etc. Not only Platonic, but Chthonic. Thought doesn't come from a realm, realms come from thought. Craig On Thursday, August 30, 2012 11:54:32 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: What is thinking ? Parmenides thought that thinking and being are one, which IMHO I agree with. Thoughts come to us from the Platonic realm, which I personally, perhaps mistakenly, associate with what would be Penrose's incomputable realm. Here is a brief discussion of technological or machine thinking vs lived experience. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ref/10.1080/00201740310002398#tabModule IMHO Because computers cannot have lived experience, they cannot think. Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy Volume 46, Issue 3, 2003 Thinking and Being: Heidegger and Wittgenstein on Machination and Lived-Experience Version of record first published: 05 Nov 2010 Heidegger's treatment of 'machination' in the Beitr? e zur Philosophie begins the critique of technological thinking that would centrally characterize his later work. Unlike later discussions of technology, the critique of machination in Beitr? e connects its arising to the predominance of 'lived-experience' ( Erlebnis ) as the concealed basis for the possibility of a pre-delineated, rule-based metaphysical understanding of the world. In this essay I explore this connection. The unity of machination and lived-experience becomes intelligible when both are traced to their common root in the primordial Greek attitude of techne , originally a basic attitude of wondering knowledge of nature. But with this common root revealed, the basic
Semiotics and 1p
Hi Craig Weinberg I think that Peirce came closest to giving a useful account of 1p is in his triadic diagrams and in his categories. The three categories expand into a 3x3 matrix (below) which breaks down 1p experience into 9 categories of interactions of self with symbols. This science of symbols is called semiotics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotic_elements_and_classes_of_signs which has the following 3x3 diagram: Phenomenological category: Sign is distinguished by phenomenological category of...1. Quality of feeling. Possibility. Reference to a ground. OR 2. Reaction, resistance. Brute fact. Reference to a correlate. OR 3. Representation, mediation. Habit, law. Reference to an interpretant. I. ...the SIGN ITSELF:QUALISIGN (Tone, Potisign) OR SINSIGN (Token, Actisign) OR LEGISIGN (Type, Famisign) AND II. ...the sign's way of denoting its OBJECT:ICON (Likeness, etc.) OR INDEX (Sign*) OR SYMBOL (General sign*) AND III. ...the sign's way — as represented in the INTERPRETANT — of denoting the sign's object:RHEME (Sumisign, Seme; e.g., a term) OR DICISIGN (Dicent sign, Pheme; e.g., a proposition) OR ARGUMENT (Suadisign, Delome) Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-04, 00:30:03 Subject: Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer On Monday, September 3, 2012 12:22:48 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 9:28 AM, Roger Clough rcl...@verizon.net wrote: Hi benjayk Computers have no intelligence --not a whit, since intelligence requires ability to choose, choice requires awareness or Cs, which in term requires an aware subject. Thus only living entities can have ingtelligence. A bacterium thus has more intel;ligence than a computer, even the largest in the world. Your proof is missing a step: showing why computers cannot have an aware subject Another problem is that your assumption that the ability to choose requires consciousness means that deep blue (which chooses optimum chess moves), and Watson (who chose categories and wagers in Jeopardy) are conscious. I don't dispute that they may be conscious, but if they are that contradicts the objective of your proof. If you still maintain that they are not conscious, despite their ability to choose, then there must be some error in your argument. Its circular reasoning to look for proof of consciousness since consciousness is a first person experience only, and by definition cannot be demonstrated as an exterior phenomenon. You can't prove to me that you exist, so why would you be able to prove that anything has or does not have an experience, or what that experience might be like. Instead, we have to go by what we have seen so far, and what we know of the differences between computers and living organisms. While the future of computation is unknowable, we should agree that thus far: 1) Machines and computers have not demonstrated any initiative to survive or evolve independently of our efforts to configure them to imitate that behavior. 2) Our innate prejudices of robotic and mechanical qualities defines not merely an unfamiliar quality of life but the embodiment of the antithesis of life. I am not saying this means it is a fact, but we should not ignore this enduring and universal response which all cultures have had toward the introduction of mechanism. The embodiment of these qualities in myth and fiction present a picture of materialism and functionalism as evacuated of life, soul, authenticity, emotion, caring, etc. Again, it is not in the negativity of the stereotype, but the specific nature of the negativity (Frankenstein, HAL) or positivity (Silent Running robots, Star Wars Droids) which reveals at best a pet-like, diminutive objectified pseudo-subjectivity rather than a fully formed bio-equivalence. 3) Computers have not evolved along a path of increasing signs toward showing initiative. Deep Blue never shows signs that it wants to go beyond Chess. All improvements in computer performance can easily be categorized as quantitative rather than qualitative. They have not gotten smarter, we have just sped up the stupid until it seems more impressive. 4) Computers are fundamentally different than any living organism. They are assembled by external agents rather than produce themselves organically through division of a single cell. None of these points prove that the future of AI won't invalidate them, but at the same time, they constitute reasonable grounds for skepticism. To me, the preponderance of evidence we have thus far indicates that any assumption of computing devices as they have been executed up to this point developing characteristics associated with biological feeling and spontaneous sensible initiative is purely religious faith. Craig
Re: Re: Re: Hating the rich
Hi Craig Weinberg It's tribal thinking on both sides. Still, although it's pointless, I'll throw a spear occcasionally. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-04, 00:08:17 Subject: Re: Re: Hating the rich On Monday, September 3, 2012 8:11:54 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg It's OK as far as the left goes to hate the rich. To them, nothing the left does is ever wrong. Is there any ideology in which the members think that what they do is wrong? You can criticize the left about a lot of things, but that it might be blind to its own faults isn't really one of them. If anything, the left is does all of the hand-wringing while the right seems to capitalize on its ability to forget its failures and rationalize the successes of its opponents. Craig Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-31, 13:24:34 Subject: Re: Hating the rich On Friday, August 31, 2012 4:46:40 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hating the rich is the new racism. Is it? http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-richest-woman-20120830,0,3323996.story Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/2YtUpBZTti4J. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/pOSNemvIfnQJ. 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. -- 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: Re: Our Creator Is A Cosmic Computer Programmer
Hi Alberto G. Corona I agree. I would say that God is not a computer program, rather, God is the programmer (as in preestablished harmony). Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-04, 04:53:49 Subject: Re: Our Creator Is A Cosmic Computer Programmer In my humle opinion, This is a sign of the times.? In an era of nomadism, God was a?shepherd?. Peasants thought that the world was the God vineyard. During the XVIII XIX where most of the cities were expanded,God was an architect. Apparently the mecanicist metaphor of the industrial revolution was not clean enough as an image of God, but some saw in the animation of the dirty steam-driven gears a principle alternative to the unmoved mover, so that atheism had a ground. This suggestion seems so naive today that we do not realize how naive is to assign the same God or anti-God image on anything new. ?ow, s it is a Computer programmer., or alternatively, God does not exist because programs exists. Amont these two you can choose your actualized religion. I think that, in the deep, there are many ?xplanatory principles that are true, Although apparently contradictory they may have isomorphic dualities: ?omputationalist and mathematical ?xplanations may be dual, for example.? God and Godless reality may also be dual. A God which creates a universe absent from contradictions, among other possible universes, in the way that Saint Thomas Aquinas proposed, is undistinguisable from an impersonal creation principle, and its creation becomes a Revelation, written in the laws of nature. 2012/9/3 Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com FYI Our Creator Is A Cosmic Computer Programmer - Says JPL Scientist 3 September, 2012 Share this story: Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on email Share on print More Sharing Services 5 Follow us: MessageToEagle.com - Are we just a computer simulation? Who or what is the creator? More and more scientists are now seriously considering the possibility that we might live in a matrix, and they say that evidence could be all around us. Rich Terrell, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology has helped design missions to Mars, discovered four new moons around Saturn, Neptune and Uranus and taken pictures of the distant solar system. Terrell has his opinion about our creator who most refer to as God. One has to think what are the requirements for God? God is an inter-dimensional being connected with everything in the Universe, a creator that is responsible for the Universe and in some way can change the laws of physics, if he wanted to. I think those are good requirements for what God ought to be, Terrell says. This is the same as programmers creating simulations, Terrell explains. Rich Terrell goes through his argument using Moore's Law and the Turing Test. Terrell wondered, how much computing power would a simulation of the Earth require? ? ? ? ? ?umans are doubling the computing power every 13 months and Terrell says that computers already match the human brain in computational speed. Right now our fastest computers on the planer are capable of one million billion operations per second Terrell says. At this rate, in 10 years, Terrell believes computers will be able to create a photo real simulation of all that we see around us - the Earth. But can a computer populate such a simulation with thinking beings, artificially intelligent simulated beings, like humans? Terrell thinks so and that humans are on the verge of creating worlds inside computers populated by sentient beings. Terrell says he has found evidence that God is a programmer in nature. Look at the way the Universe behaves, it's quantized, it's made of pixels. Space is quantitized, matter is quantitized, energy is quantitized, everything is made of individual pixels. Which means the Universe has a finite number of components. Which means a finite number of states. Which means it's computer. That infers the Universe could be created by lines of code in a computer, Terrell says. Our creator is a cosmic computer programmer, says Rich Terrell. Is there evidence of computer processing of our objective reality? One clue is an experiment in the physics laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. A 1928 experiment (the Thomson experiment plus the Davisson-Germer experiment) provide evidence. Using an electron beam transmitted through a piece of graphite with a screen behind is set up. The background screen records how the electrons ricochet off the graphite. At this subatomic level, the pattern is not random, as might be expected, but is a diffraction pattern. The idea that we might live in a computer simulation ahs been suggested by a number of scientists. Terrell notes, The
Re: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
Hi Bruno Marchal In 1) you left out the someone to be conscious. Consciousness needs a subject. In 2) you left out the our. Consciousness needs a subject. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 11:06:47 Subject: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On 03 Sep 2012, at 13:48, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. ? Falsifiable means can be falsified. here the gravity can be falsfied: you drop the apple and gravity pulls it up. Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO and for what it's worth, if you don't at least give a rough definition of consciousness, you might leave out something some of us consider essential, such as a subject: Cs = subject + object If you don't include the subject, then: Cs = object which makes it a noun. Persponally I believe that it's a dipole. I have no definition of consciousness. With comp I can show why there are none. But this does not prevent us to reason on it, once we can agree on some principles about it. To get the consequences of comp, about consciousness, you need only to agree with this: 1) that you are conscious (or that the humans are conscious) 2) that our consciousness is invariant for digital functional change made at *some* description level of the brain or body or local environment or even some physical universe. All the rest follows from arithmetic and Church thesis if you agree on 1) and 2). 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. Hi Richard Ruquist There is no god in comp. Here I disagree. If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp. Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, then you are very plausibly right. A little more on this in my reply to Richard. 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: Re: Hating the rich
Hi Richard Ruquist The fundamentalists are wrong in thinking that the Bible is a science textbook. The scientists are wrong in believing that they need to disprove a spiritual, nonscientific message. Let science be science and the Bible be the Bible. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Richard Ruquist Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 15:37:31 Subject: Re: Hating the rich Stephan, You seem to agree with me but missed my point. Scientists are willing to adjust their thinking when new information is available. Fundamentalists are not because all the important information is ancient. You may argue correctly that not all scientists are left wing and not all fundamentalists are right wing. You may also argue correctly that important information such as economics is not ancient. But I claim that my broad brush characterizations are more accurate that Roger's. Richard On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 2:17 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 9/3/2012 8:26 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote: Roger, On the contrare, science is a product of the left, more or less, whereas anti-evolution is a product of the right, more or less. Science is selfcorrecting and so the left is constantly re-examining its conclusions whether in science or sociology. Whereas the right is unable to correct itself because it is based on the bible or some such tradition. So as a result, the right thinks it cannot be wrong because everything they believe is ordained by God. The left has no such limitation, thank god. Richard Dear Richard, As I read your post above I was filled with a large diversity of emotions and ruminated a long time over whether or not to respond to it. I think that you might appreciate a different point of view. I happened to have been raised by a family that was a prototypical Bible Thumper even to the point that my parents where missionaries to a foreign country where I learned via home schooling. I discovered after many years that it is only a very small minority of people that actually live their lives under the belief that everything is ordained by a person-like God. I also discovered, as I have continued my education, that there is another minority that believe that everything is ordained but not by some kind of person but instead by inhuman entities named boundary conditions and initial conditions. What is the real difference other than naming conventions? Could you stop for a moment and think about the idea that nothing at all is ordained and that the concept is a fiction that we have habituated ourselves into believing merely because it gives us a comfortable illusion of control. Humans are strange creatures, if they can't control things themselves they will accept that someone else that is a friend controls things, but get all crazy angry at even the hint that someone else could control things to the disadvantage of the home team. Control freaks, we are such control freaks that we are entirely missing the point of it all. Laws of Nature are merely a concept we invented to explain things to ourselves, no one has the power to control all things. Power is a delusion. I challenge you to write about one example of a real person that is well known as a Leftist that does not believe that everything is ordained by something. You should spend a little time thinking hard about what you are saying here as it is a massive exercise in self-contradiction. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. -- 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. -- 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: Re: monads as numbers
Hi Craig Weinberg I can't see any usefulness for a computer or calculator where the same number is recalculated over and over. Think of a Turing tape running through a processor. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 11:12:36 Subject: Re: monads as numbers Hi Roger, I think of number as the conceptual continuity between the behaviors of physical things - whether it is the interior view of things as experiences through time or the exterior view of experiences as things. Numbers don't fly by in a computation, that's a cartoon. All that happens is that something which is much smaller and faster than we are, like a semiconductor or neuron, is doing some repetitive, sensorimotive behavior which tickles our own sense and motive in a way that we can understand and control. Computation doesn't exist independently as an operation in space, it is a common sense of matter, just as we are - but one does not reduce to the other. Feeling, emotion, and thought does not have to be made of computations, they can be other forms of sensible expression. Counting is one of the things that we, and most everything can do in one way or another, but nothing can turn numbers into anything other than more numbers except non-numerical sense. Craig On Monday, September 3, 2012 9:53:21 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg Sorry. I guess I should call them monadic numbers. Not numbers as monads, but monads as numbers. The numbers I am thinking of as monads are those flying by in a particular computation. Monads are under constant change. As to history, perceptions, appetites, those would be some king of context as in a subprogram which coud be stored in files. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-02, 08:28:10 Subject: Re: Toward emulating life with a monadic computer On Sunday, September 2, 2012 2:20:49 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Toward emulating life with a monadic computer In a previous discussion we showed that the natural numbers qualify as Leibnizian monads, suggesting the possibility that other mathematical forms might similarly be treated as monadic structures. At the same time, Leibniz's monadology describes a computational architecture that is capable of emulating not only the dynamic physical universe, but a biological universe as well. In either case, the entire universe might be envisioned as a gigantic digital golem, a living figure whose body consists of a categorical nonliving substructure and whose mind/brain is the what Leibniz called the supreme monad. The supreme monad might be thought of as a monarch, since it governs the operation of its passive monadic substructures according to a preestablished harmony. In addition, each monad in the system would possess typical monadic substructures, and possibly further monadic substructures wuithin this, depending spending on the level of complexity desired. Without going into much detail at this point, Leibniz's monadology might be considered as the operating system of such a computer, with the central processing chip as its supreme monad. This CPU continually updates all of the monads in the system according the following scheme. Only the CPU is active, while all of the sub-structure monads (I think in a logical, tree-like structure) are passive. Each monad contains a dynamically changing image (a reflection) of all of the other monads, taken from its particular point of view. These are called its perceptions, which might be thought of as records of the state of any given monad at any given time. This state comprising an image of the entire universe of monads, constantly being updated by the Supreme monad or CPU. In addition to the perceptions, each monad also has a constantly changing set of appetites. And all of these are coorddinated to fit a pre-established harmony. It might be that the pre-established harmony is simply what is happening in the world outside the computer. Other details of this computer should be forthcoming. First I would say that numbers are not monads because numbers have no experience. They have no interior or exterior realism, but rather are the interstitial shadows of interior-exterior events. Numbers are a form of common sense, but they are not universal sense and they are limited to a narrow channel of sense which is dependent upon solid physicality to propagate. You can't count with fog. Secondly I think that the monadology makes more sense as the world outside the computer. Time and space are computational constructs generated by the meta-juxtaposition
Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
I mean good design not god design 2012/9/4 Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com: At this moment this is true. Another thing is if the computer could become intelligent enough. It is not easy to admit that the belief in the possibility of making something intelligent exist well before computers. Since the industrial revolution, some people believed in the possibility of making intelligent automatas only with steam, weels and wires. This seems naive if not stupid not, but the theorical possibility still holds. I wonder how far the theory is from reality in the case of computers. Up to now, even the most pessimistic previsions have been ridicule. The gap between computer and a bacteria is inmense, galactic. This is inherent to the limitations of any rational design in comparison with the abundance and almost omniscence of natural selection (That I explained somewhere else). Moreover, a natural design is almost impossible to reverse engineer to the last detail since it don´t attain to the rules of god design, because they are rules of limited design (explained somewhere else). 2012/9/3 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net: Hi benjayk Computers have no intelligence --not a whit, since intelligence requires ability to choose, choice requires awareness or Cs, which in term requires an aware subject. Thus only living entities can have ingtelligence. A bacterium thus has more intel;ligence than a computer, even the largest in the world. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: benjayk Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 10:12:46 Subject: Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Aug 2012, at 15:12, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 24 Aug 2012, at 12:04, benjayk wrote: But this avoides my point that we can't imagine that levels, context and ambiguity don't exist, and this is why computational emulation does not mean that the emulation can substitute the original. But here you do a confusion level as I think Jason tries pointing on. A similar one to the one made by Searle in the Chinese Room. As emulator (computing machine) Robinson Arithmetic can simulate exactly Peano Arithmetic, even as a prover. So for example Robinson arithmetic can prove that Peano arithmetic proves the consistency of Robinson Arithmetic. But you cannot conclude from that that Robinson Arithmetic can prove its own consistency. That would contradict G鰀el II. When PA uses the induction axiom, RA might just say huh, and apply it for the sake of the emulation without any inner conviction. I agree, so I don't see how I confused the levels. It seems to me you have just stated that Robinson indeed can not substitue Peano Arithmetic, because RAs emulation of PA makes only sense with respect to PA (in cases were PA does a proof that RA can't do). Right. It makes only first person sense to PA. But then RA has succeeded in making PA alive, and PA could a posteriori realize that the RA level was enough. Sorry, but it can't. It can't even abstract itself out to see that the RA level would be enough. I see you doing this all the time; you take some low level that can be made sense of by something transcendent of it and then claim that the low level is enough. This is precisely the calim that I don't understand at all. You say that we only need natural numbers and + and *, and that the rest emerges from that as the 1-p viewpoint of the numbers. Unfortunately the 1-p viewpoint itself can't be found in the numbers, it can only be found in what transcends the numbers, or what the numbers really are / refer to (which also completely beyond our conception of numbers). That's the problem with G鰀el as well. His unprovable statement about numbers is really a meta-statement about what numbers express that doesn't even make sense if we only consider the definition of numbers. He really just shows that we can reason about numbers and with numbers in ways that can't be captured by numbers (but in this case what we do with them has little to do with the numbers themselves). I agree that computations reflect many things about us (infinitely many things, even), but we still transcend them infinitely. Strangely you agree for the 1-p viewpoint. But given that's what you *actually* live, I don't see how it makes sense to than proceed that there is a meaningful 3-p point of view where this isn't true. This point of view is really just an abstraction occuring in the 1-p of view. Bruno Marchal wrote: Like I converse with Einstein's brain's book (� la Hofstatdter), just by manipulating the page of the book. I don't become Einstein through my making of that process, but I can have a genuine conversation with Einstein through it. He will know that he has
Re: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 7:55 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal In 1) you left out the someone to be conscious. Consciousness needs a subject. In 2) you left out the our. Consciousness needs a subject. Consciousness needs a subjective point of view but if you think of how we experience being deeply engrossed in a movie or book, or how we 'lose ourselves' in Flow states, it seems that the necessity of a subject in the human sense is an open question - although the existence of human subjectivity certainly suggests that such a subject is inherently possible through consciousness. I remember having dreams in which I was not present, but rather just aware of events and people as they were interacting. Not even a voyeur, but no sense of there being anything other than the people and their activities. Maybe dream consciousness doesn't qualify as consciousness, but that's a separate semantic issue. It could also be the case that such dreams and self-transcendence are only possible as an a posteriori imagination which arises from a fully formed human self...hard to know. Craig Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - *From:* Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be *Receiver:* everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com *Time:* 2012-09-03, 11:06:47 *Subject:* Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On 03 Sep 2012, at 13:48, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. ? Falsifiable means can be falsified. here the gravity can be falsfied: you drop the apple and gravity pulls it up. Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO and for what it's worth, if you don't at least give a rough definition of consciousness, you might leave out something some of us consider essential, such as a subject: Cs = subject + object If you don't include the subject, then: Cs = object which makes it a noun. Persponally I believe that it's a dipole. I have no definition of consciousness. With comp I can show why there are none. But this does not prevent us to reason on it, once we can agree on some principles about it. To get the consequences of comp, about consciousness, you need only to agree with this: 1) that you are conscious (or that the humans are conscious) 2) that our consciousness is invariant for digital functional change made at *some* description level of the brain or body or local environment or even some physical universe. All the rest follows from arithmetic and Church thesis if you agree on 1) and 2). 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. Hi Richard Ruquist There is no god in comp. Here I disagree. If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp. Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, then you are very plausibly right. A little more on this in my reply to Richard. 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. -- 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.
Semiosis of the monad
Semiosis of the monad This is very very speculative. I'm no mathematician. THESIS: Somehow there ought to be a connection between Peirce's semiotics and Leibniz's monads. Let these be given as forms of computation, a) the columns being the STAGES of computation b) the rows being the TYPE of computation performed at that stage. The first column represents INPUT: the perception or reading stage. The second column represents PROCESSING : database comparisons, thinking The third column represents OUTPUT in various forms: INPUT (Column 1) (first read the entire program): First Row: Qualisign would be dealing with the aesthetic or feeling input Second Row: Sinsign would be database comparisons (guesses as to outcome) Third Row: Legisign would be dealing with rational or reason aspects. PROCESSING (Column 2) The second column represents types of PROCESSING (what is done with above) : First Row: Icon would deal with images (database lookup, direct comparisons) Second Row: Index would deal with particular meanings Third Row: Symbol would be more general categories of meaning (metaphors) OUTPUT (Column 3) First Row- Rheme would be an actual term or word Second Row- Decisign would be a proposition Third Row- Argument would be a logical conclusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotic_elements_and_classes_of_signs Words in parentheses in the table are alternate names for the same kinds of signs. Phenomenological category: Sign is distinguished by phenomenological category of...1. Quality of feeling. Possibility. Reference to a ground. OR 2. Reaction, resistance. Brute fact. Reference to a correlate. OR 3. Representation, mediation. Habit, law. Reference to an interpretant. I. ...the SIGN ITSELF:QUALISIGN (Tone, Potisign) OR SINSIGN (Token, Actisign) OR LEGISIGN (Type, Famisign) AND II. ...the sign's way of denoting its OBJECT:ICON (Likeness, etc.) OR INDEX (Sign*) OR SYMBOL (General sign*) AND III. ...the sign's way — as represented in the INTERPRETANT — of denoting the sign's object:RHEME (Sumisign, Seme; e.g., a term) OR DICISIGN (Dicent sign, Pheme; e.g., a proposition) OR ARGUMENT (Suadisign, Delome) Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. -- 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: Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
Hi Alberto G. Corona IMHO you can't have intelligence without a 1p perceiver. Only life can do that. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-04, 06:57:09 Subject: Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer At this moment this is true. Another thing is if the computer could become intelligent enough. It is not easy to admit that the belief in the possibility of making something intelligent exist well before computers. Since the industrial revolution, some people believed in the possibility of making intelligent automatas only with steam, weels and wires. This seems naive if not stupid not, but the theorical possibility still holds. I wonder how far the theory is from reality in the case of computers. Up to now, even the most pessimistic previsions have been ridicule. The gap between computer and a bacteria is inmense, galactic. This is inherent to the limitations of any rational design in comparison with the abundance and almost omniscence of natural selection (That I explained somewhere else). Moreover, a natural design is almost impossible to reverse engineer to the last detail since it don't attain to the rules of god design, because they are rules of limited design (explained somewhere else). 2012/9/3 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net: Hi benjayk Computers have no intelligence --not a whit, since intelligence requires ability to choose, choice requires awareness or Cs, which in term requires an aware subject. Thus only living entities can have ingtelligence. A bacterium thus has more intel;ligence than a computer, even the largest in the world. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: benjayk Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 10:12:46 Subject: Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Aug 2012, at 15:12, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 24 Aug 2012, at 12:04, benjayk wrote: But this avoides my point that we can't imagine that levels, context and ambiguity don't exist, and this is why computational emulation does not mean that the emulation can substitute the original. But here you do a confusion level as I think Jason tries pointing on. A similar one to the one made by Searle in the Chinese Room. As emulator (computing machine) Robinson Arithmetic can simulate exactly Peano Arithmetic, even as a prover. So for example Robinson arithmetic can prove that Peano arithmetic proves the consistency of Robinson Arithmetic. But you cannot conclude from that that Robinson Arithmetic can prove its own consistency. That would contradict G?el II. When PA uses the induction axiom, RA might just say huh, and apply it for the sake of the emulation without any inner conviction. I agree, so I don't see how I confused the levels. It seems to me you have just stated that Robinson indeed can not substitue Peano Arithmetic, because RAs emulation of PA makes only sense with respect to PA (in cases were PA does a proof that RA can't do). Right. It makes only first person sense to PA. But then RA has succeeded in making PA alive, and PA could a posteriori realize that the RA level was enough. Sorry, but it can't. It can't even abstract itself out to see that the RA level would be enough. I see you doing this all the time; you take some low level that can be made sense of by something transcendent of it and then claim that the low level is enough. This is precisely the calim that I don't understand at all. You say that we only need natural numbers and + and *, and that the rest emerges from that as the 1-p viewpoint of the numbers. Unfortunately the 1-p viewpoint itself can't be found in the numbers, it can only be found in what transcends the numbers, or what the numbers really are / refer to (which also completely beyond our conception of numbers). That's the problem with G?el as well. His unprovable statement about numbers is really a meta-statement about what numbers express that doesn't even make sense if we only consider the definition of numbers. He really just shows that we can reason about numbers and with numbers in ways that can't be captured by numbers (but in this case what we do with them has little to do with the numbers themselves). I agree that computations reflect many things about us (infinitely many things, even), but we still transcend them infinitely. Strangely you agree for the 1-p viewpoint. But given that's what you *actually* live, I don't see how it makes sense to than proceed that there is a meaningful 3-p point of view where this isn't true. This point of view is really
Re: Re: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
Hi Craig Weinberg I'm not talking about subjectivity in everyday terms, but rather in logical terms. Cs = subject + object Where's the subject ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-04, 08:28:48 Subject: Re: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 7:55 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal ? In 1) you left out the someone to be conscious. Consciousness needs a subject. In 2) you left out the our.? Consciousness needs a subject. Consciousness needs a subjective point of view but if you think of how we experience being deeply engrossed in a movie or book, or how we 'lose ourselves' in Flow states, it seems that the necessity of a subject in the human sense is an open question - although the existence of human subjectivity certainly suggests that such a subject is inherently possible through consciousness. I remember having dreams in which I was not present, but rather just aware of events and people as they were interacting. Not even a voyeur, but no sense of there being anything other than the people and their activities. Maybe dream consciousness doesn't qualify as consciousness, but that's a separate semantic issue. It could also be the case that such dreams and self-transcendence are only possible as an a posteriori imagination which arises from a fully formed human self...hard to know. Craig ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 11:06:47 Subject: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On 03 Sep 2012, at 13:48, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb ? I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. ? Falsifiable means can be falsified. here the gravity can be falsfied: you drop the apple and gravity pulls it up. Hi Bruno Marchal ? IMHO and for what it's worth, if you don't at least give a rough definition of consciousness, you might leave out something some of us consider essential, such as a subject: ? Cs = subject + object ? If you don't include the subject, then: ? ? Cs = object ? ? which makes it a noun. Persponally I believe that it's a dipole. I have no definition of consciousness. With comp I can show why there are none. But this does not prevent us to reason on it, once we can agree on some principles about it.? To get the consequences of comp, about consciousness, you need only to agree with this: 1) that you are conscious (or that the humans ?re conscious) 2) that our consciousness is invariant for digital functional change made at *some* description level of the brain or body or local environment or even some physical universe. All the rest follows from arithmetic and Church thesis if you agree on 1) and 2).? 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately ?oesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve.? A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. Hi Richard Ruquist ? There is no god in comp. Here I disagree. If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by? 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp. Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, then you are very plausibly right. A little more on this in my reply to Richard. 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. -- 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
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
causality exist in the world of the mind, not in the external world. In a block universe where the universe is a mathematical manifold, where time is embedded, and thus has nothing but a local meaning, causality also has no meaning, except for the living being that go along a line of maximum gradient of entropy and feel itself at each point of this line as going trough time. Natural selection is not causal, it chooses gene sequences form the pool of available mutations whose phenothypic results produce good outcomes. It select the genetic sequence that open the mouth of the fish after seeing the prey, others sequences are not selected, but at a psychological level it seems causal (the fish open the mouth because'`it see the prey). Thus, causality in the psychological sense exist, so it exist for social life, moral, law, personal responsibility etc. In mathematical terms, in a block universe out of time where there is not a privileged direction of event production, this has no meaning. In a physical term, microscopical laws are reversible and causality can be inverted. Even the events can be looked at laterally as if time progressed perpendicular to the usual direction of time. Macroscopical laws seem causal because they use time, but time is a product of the way we observe the world as living beings, in the direction of entropy increase, so the macroscopic laws are valid IF the premise of observation from a maximum gradient of entropy direction holds. It is amazing to remember that the gas laws, the Archimedes principle, the chemical laws etc are statistical and probability laws which are true because the second principle of thermodynamic holds, but this principle holds only along the direction of the living beings which observe them. 2012/9/3 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net: Hi meekerdb I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. You can't turn off the gravity to falsify it, at least in that situation. And any one-time event isn't falsifiable. Death, for example. Actually, Hume discussed cause and effect to some great length. He said that there's no such thing, you merely observe that something follows another and assume cause and effect. There's no proof. There's no real certainty said Hume, that just because the sun comes up every morning that it will do so tomorrow. Leibniz also believed as Hume did. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: meekerdb Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-02, 15:28:15 Subject: Re: No Chinese Room Necessary On 9/2/2012 9:09 AM, John Clark wrote: 6) Evolution has no foresight: This is the most important reason of all. A jet engine works better than a prop engine in an airplane. I give you a prop engine and tell you to turn it into a jet, but you must do it while the engine is running, you must do it in one million small steps, and you must do it so every one of those small steps immediately improves the operation of the engine. Eventually you would get an improved engine of some sort, but it wouldn't look anything like a jet. Good exposition. But it's not the case every small step must be an improvement. It's sufficient that it not be a degradation. Brent What designer would put a recreational area between two waste disposal sites? --- Woody Allen, on Intelligent Design -- 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. -- 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. -- 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: Re: Where Chalmers went wrong
Hi Stephen P. King I probably knew that but forgot. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 14:57:49 Subject: Re: Where Chalmers went wrong On 9/3/2012 10:09 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stathis Papaioannou IMHO Chalmer's biggest error has been not to recognize that the self does not appear in all of neurophilosophy. This IMHO is the glaring shortcoming of materialism. The lights are on, but nobody's home. Hi Roger, You might wish to red Chalmer's book as he makes this exact point. Chalmers argues forcefully against materialism. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stathis Papaioannou Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-02, 07:17:41 Subject: Re: No Chinese Room Necessary On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: That implies that T-cells need a feeling to guide them not to kill friendly cells. That H2O needs a feeling to guide it not to dissolve non-polar molecules. If you believe in functionalism, then all feeling is a metaphysical epiphenomenon. I think the opposite makes more sense - everything is feeling, function is the result of sense, not the other way around. T-cells do feel. Molecules do feel. How could it be any other way? Panpsychism is not inconsistent with functionalism. David Chalmers is a functionalist and panpsychist. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to 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. -- 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. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence
On 03 Sep 2012, at 21:24, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 03 Sep 2012, at 15:11, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: If you disagree, please tell me why. I don't disagree. I just point on the fact that you don't give any justification of your belief. If you are correct, there must be something in cells and brains that is not Turing emulable, and this is speculative, as nobody has found anything not Turing emulable in nature. You say this often, Bruno, yet I have never seen an emulation of any living system that functions the same as the original. This is not a valid argument. I have never seen a man walking on Mars, but this does not make it impossible. No, but we have no big gaps of belief to bridge if we consider a man walking on Mars. It's not much different than the moon. Yet emulating a natural system is something which we haven't even remotely suceeded in. But this confirms comp, as comp predicts that material system are not emulable, only simulable. Only digital being can be emulated, and comp assume that we are digital, unlike our bodies. Yes, we simulated some systems, but they couldn't perform the same function. A pump does the function of an heart. We also substituted some parts with non-living matter, but not with a mere computer. Comp does not say that we do that, nor even that we can do that. Only that it can be done in principle. And then another, much bigger step is required in order to say *everything*/everyone/every part can be emulated. Indeed. Comp makes this impossible, as the environment is the result of a comptetion between infinities of universal machine in arithmetic. See my other post to you sent yesterday. It is like saying that we can walk on all things, because we can walk on the moon. We most certainly can't walk on the sun, though. Sure. Bruno Bruno Marchal wrote: With comp we cannot emulate a rock, so we can't certainly emulate a living creature, as it is made of the apparent matter, which needs the complete UD*. But with comp all universal machine can emulate any universal machine, so if I am a program, at some levcel of description, the activity of that program, responsible for my consciousness here and now, can be emulated exactly. But why would you be a program? Why would you be more finite than a rock? I can't follow your logic behind this. Yes, assuming COMP your reasoning makes some sense, but then we are confronted with the absurd situation of our local me's being computational, yet everything we can actually observe being non-computational. Bruno Marchal wrote: The default position is that it is not emulable. On the contrary. Having no evidence that there is something non Turing emulable playing a role in the working mind, We do have evidence. We can't even make sense of the notion of emulating what is inherently indeterminate (like all matter, and so the brain as well). How to emulate something which has no determinate state with machines using (practically) determinate states? We can emulate quantum computers, but they still work based on definite/discrete states (though it allows for superposition of them, but they are collapsed at the end of the computation). Even according to COMP, it seems that matter is non-emulable. That this doesn't play a role in the working of the brain is just an assumption (I hope we agree there is a deep relation between local mind and brain). When we actually look into the brain we can't find anything that says whatever is going on that is not emulable doesn't matter. Bruno Marchal wrote: beyond its material constitution which by comp is only Turing recoverable in the limit (and thus non emulable) But that is the point. Why would its material constitution not matter? For all we know it matters very much, as the behaviour of the matter in the brain (and outside of it) determines its function. Bruno Marchal wrote: to bet that we are not machine is like speculating on something quite bizarre, just to segregationate negatively a class of entities. I don't know what you arguing against. I have never negatively segregationated any entity. It is just that computers can't do everything humans can, just as adults can't do everything children can (or vice versa) or plants can't do everything animals do (and vice versa) or life can't do what lifeless matter does (and vice versa). I have never postulated some moral hierarchy in there (though computers don't seem to mind always doing what they are told to do, which we might consider slavery, but that is just human bias). Also, I don't speculate on us not being machines. We have no a priori reason to assume we are machines in the first place, anymore than we have a reason to assume we are plants. Bruno Marchal wrote: This is almost akin to saying that the Indians have no souls, as if they would, they would know about Jesus, or
Re: Where Chalmers went wrong
On 03 Sep 2012, at 20:57, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/3/2012 10:09 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stathis Papaioannou IMHO Chalmer's biggest error has been not to recognize that the self does not appear in all of neurophilosophy. This IMHO is the glaring shortcoming of materialism. The lights are on, but nobody's home. Hi Roger, You might wish to red Chalmer's book as he makes this exact point. Chalmers argues forcefully against materialism. But he still keep weak materialism. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stathis Papaioannou Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-02, 07:17:41 Subject: Re: No Chinese Room Necessary On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: That implies that T-cells need a feeling to guide them not to kill friendly cells. That H2O needs a feeling to guide it not to dissolve non- polar molecules. If you believe in functionalism, then all feeling is a metaphysical epiphenomenon. I think the opposite makes more sense - everything is feeling, function is the result of sense, not the other way around. T-cells do feel. Molecules do feel. How could it be any other way? Panpsychism is not inconsistent with functionalism. David Chalmers is a functionalist and panpsychist. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything- l...@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 . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything- l...@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 . -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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 . 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: Our Creator Is A Cosmic Computer Programmer
On 03 Sep 2012, at 22:51, Richard Ruquist wrote: FYI Our Creator Is A Cosmic Computer Programmer - Says JPL Scientist 3 September, 2012 Share this story: Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on email Share on print More Sharing Services 5 Follow us: MessageToEagle.com - Are we just a computer simulation? Who or what is the creator? More and more scientists are now seriously considering the possibility that we might live in a matrix, and they say that evidence could be all around us. Rich Terrell, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology has helped design missions to Mars, discovered four new moons around Saturn, Neptune and Uranus and taken pictures of the distant solar system. Terrell has his opinion about our creator who most refer to as God. One has to think what are the requirements for God? God is an inter-dimensional being connected with everything in the Universe, a creator that is responsible for the Universe and in some way can change the laws of physics, if he wanted to. I think those are good requirements for what God ought to be, Terrell says. This is the same as programmers creating simulations, Terrell explains. Rich Terrell goes through his argument using Moore's Law and the Turing Test. Terrell wondered, how much computing power would a simulation of the Earth require? Humans are doubling the computing power every 13 months and Terrell says that computers already match the human brain in computational speed. Right now our fastest computers on the planer are capable of one million billion operations per second Terrell says. At this rate, in 10 years, Terrell believes computers will be able to create a photo real simulation of all that we see around us - the Earth. But can a computer populate such a simulation with thinking beings, artificially intelligent simulated beings, like humans? Terrell thinks so and that humans are on the verge of creating worlds inside computers populated by sentient beings. Terrell says he has found evidence that God is a programmer in nature. Look at the way the Universe behaves, it's quantized, it's made of pixels. Space is quantitized, matter is quantitized, energy is quantitized, everything is made of individual pixels. Which means the Universe has a finite number of components. Which means a finite number of states. Which means it's computer. That infers the Universe could be created by lines of code in a computer, Terrell says. Our creator is a cosmic computer programmer, says Rich Terrell. Is there evidence of computer processing of our objective reality? One clue is an experiment in the physics laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. A 1928 experiment (the Thomson experiment plus the Davisson-Germer experiment) provide evidence. Using an electron beam transmitted through a piece of graphite with a screen behind is set up. The background screen records how the electrons ricochet off the graphite. At this subatomic level, the pattern is not random, as might be expected, but is a diffraction pattern. The idea that we might live in a computer simulation ahs been suggested by a number of scientists. Terrell notes, The experiment shows something really rather extraordinary, that matter, even though it behaves when you are looking at it, measuring it, as individual particles, when you are not looking at it, matter is diffuse. It spreads out, it doesn't have a finite form in the Universe. When observed they are dots, when we look away, they lose their physical form. Is this behavior of matter similar, or parallel, to the behavior in a simulation? Terrell says this is the case! As in a simulation, The Universe gives you what you are looking at when you look at it. Further, When you are not looking at it, it's not necessarily there. This results in a Universe that is pixelated and only assumes definite form when observed. This is how computer simulations operate. Terrell's idea is not really new and he is not the only scientist who has suggested we might be living in a computer simulation. In his science paper The Simulation Argument Professor Nick Bostrom of Oxford University, suggested it is likely we are already in a simulation being run by a post human civilization in our own future. We discussed Bostrom's ideas in our article Do We Live In A Computer Simulation Created By An Advanced Alien Civilization? Research conducted by other scientists such as for example David Bohm, Karl Pribram and Alain Aspect suggest that Our Universe Is A Gigantic And Wonderfully Detailed Holographic Illusion. The idea that our creator is a computer programmer is controversial and can even be offending to religious people, but Terrell has his own views on religion, spiritultiy and science. Our world bears all the hallmarks of one that is simulated. Who would be more likely to simulate humans than humans from the future, our descendants? They would be god-like beings able
Re: Re: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence
On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 8:39 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: From: Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net God can be thought of as cosmic intelligence And if humans are the only intelligence in the cosmos (and they might be) then the human race is God. or life itself. If as you say God is life then we know 2 things: 1) God exists. 2) You are more interested in the ASCII characters G-o-d than you are in the idea of God. As to what he can do, there are some limitations in the world he created, I'm not talking about the world God created, I'm interested in the limitations of God Himself, I'm interested in how God can do what He can do and why He can't do what He can't do, and if God really does exist then I have no doubt He would be even more interested in how He works than I am. And if the God theory can not even come close to explain one bit of that (and it can't) then it has not explained anything at all, it just adds pointless wheels within wheels that accomplish absolutely nothing. 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: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On 04 Sep 2012, at 13:55, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal In 1) you left out the someone to be conscious. Consciousness needs a subject. In 1) the subject is you. In 2) you left out the our. Consciousness needs a subject. In 2) the our is not left, as I mention it explicitly. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 11:06:47 Subject: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On 03 Sep 2012, at 13:48, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. ? Falsifiable means can be falsified. here the gravity can be falsfied: you drop the apple and gravity pulls it up. Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO and for what it's worth, if you don't at least give a rough definition of consciousness, you might leave out something some of us consider essential, such as a subject: Cs = subject + object If you don't include the subject, then: Cs = object which makes it a noun. Persponally I believe that it's a dipole. I have no definition of consciousness. With comp I can show why there are none. But this does not prevent us to reason on it, once we can agree on some principles about it. To get the consequences of comp, about consciousness, you need only to agree with this: 1) that you are conscious (or that the humans are conscious) 2) that our consciousness is invariant for digital functional change made at *some* description level of the brain or body or local environment or even some physical universe. All the rest follows from arithmetic and Church thesis if you agree on 1) and 2). 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. Hi Richard Ruquist There is no god in comp. Here I disagree. If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp. Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, then you are very plausibly right. A little more on this in my reply to Richard. 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 . 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: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On 03 Sep 2012, at 21:29, meekerdb wrote: On 9/3/2012 8:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. I'm not sure what is meant by 'taxing the rich doesn't ultimately work'? I did not say that. I was meaning to distributed the wellfare. On the contrary: taxing the rich and the poor is a good idea, for the public sector. If it means it doesn't produce equality and prosperity, I'd agree. But in the U.S. the tax rate paid by the rich has been higher (even much higher) in the past and at the same time there was prosperity and economic growth. Now the rich (by which I mean people who live comfortably solely on their investments) pay a lower tax rate than the poorest working person. So 'taxing the rich' can certainly work in the sense of fairness. I agree. Sorry if I was not clear. Bruno Brent -- 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 . 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: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On 03 Sep 2012, at 18:22, John Mikes wrote: Bruno wrote: ... If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp... Is it fair to say that you substitute (= use) the G O D word in a sense paraphrasable (by me) into an imaginary description 'what we cannot even imagine'? Hmm... OK. (- believed mostly in the 'religious-biblical(?)' format of the following part of your post: ...Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, ... ) Such word-play would have not much merit in reasonable thinking. It would not counteract the 'faith-based' religious superstition now so widely spread among many human minds. That was not the goal. Bruno John M On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 11:06 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 03 Sep 2012, at 13:48, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. ? Falsifiable means can be falsified. here the gravity can be falsfied: you drop the apple and gravity pulls it up. Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO and for what it's worth, if you don't at least give a rough definition of consciousness, you might leave out something some of us consider essential, such as a subject: Cs = subject + object If you don't include the subject, then: Cs = object which makes it a noun. Persponally I believe that it's a dipole. I have no definition of consciousness. With comp I can show why there are none. But this does not prevent us to reason on it, once we can agree on some principles about it. To get the consequences of comp, about consciousness, you need only to agree with this: 1) that you are conscious (or that the humans are conscious) 2) that our consciousness is invariant for digital functional change made at *some* description level of the brain or body or local environment or even some physical universe. All the rest follows from arithmetic and Church thesis if you agree on 1) and 2). 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. Hi Richard Ruquist There is no god in comp. Here I disagree. If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp. Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, then you are very plausibly right. A little more on this in my reply to Richard. 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 . -- 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 . 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: Good is that which enhances life
On 03 Sep 2012, at 17:45, Richard Ruquist wrote: My experience is that canabis increases my motivation and creativity. Am I an exception? You are certainly not, as the guitar boy provided a sample of people inspired by cannabis. Cannabis is also useful to break negative connotations that life can build. In my case cannabis has helped me a long time ago, to cure a nausea I did have just thinking about math and logic. It makes me coming back to it, after a 5 years of abandon. Two year ago, one week of intense cannabis consumption has cured a sciatica, completely, where two month of heavy medication did not succeed to improve the situation. The doctor did not understand how that was possible, as he thought an operation was unavoidable. It was a strong sciatica with a big hernia, and the paralysis of the left leg, but it disappears completely. Cannabis is crazily efficacious in the medical domain. Bruno On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 10:36 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy multiplecit...@gmail.com wrote: I agree with those statements. I just found the discussion a bit biased towards the dangers of Cannabis and lacking in perspective. For instance, it was claimed, and still is often claimed Cannabis reduces motivation. The notorious British pot writer Howard Marks replies to this in his book Mr. Nice, as a very motivated trafficker and smoker of marijuana in the 70s and 80s, that (I paraphrase) when on Cannabis, its just very difficult to do the things you really don't want to do. It's the plants way of reminding us that we are free to pursue the things we want to, and if we're just more serious about being lazy enough, we can probably devise ways of securing our lives with less effort. But doing the things we like, Cannabis is a motivator. It's natural that somebody working in an job-environment exploiting them, will not want to work if they take a couple of puffs. I don't think they're demotivated, but if stagnation and depression persists, they should probably relax more, reorient their lives to making a more enjoyable living, more easily. And if not they should forget Cannabis. It also forces teens to become inventive with their laziness, as they go seek out liminal cracks between the edifices of civilization and nature. The places teenagers retreat to, when they get stoned: forest edges, panoramic vistas in nature, some magical hidden spot in a park. In the age of getting lost in Facebook and fancy mobile phones, this escapist behavior is relatively benign, if not positive for development of mind. Sure it can be dangerous when people get locked in their own boredom and don't pick up the sense of letting go of fixed ideals, to pursue something better; but mostly they do and relative to background of other addictions and the behavioral modifications they produce, the dangers are relatively small, and that a cannabis ideology paired with an open mind, is one of the few dependencies, that reverberate beyond personal satisfaction and create benefits for society, as all the books, poetry, art, thinking, and music it has inspired, are aimed at relaxing our fixations with threats, evils, making judgements and instead, chilling us out a bit. This type of dis-inhibition is more benign than alcohol. I find media consumption, gambling, and nursing of the majority of obsessions and fetishes to some form of fixed ideal people lock themselves up with, much more problematic. So yes, we agree on the prohibition things, that there are danger etc. but I thought it should be noted equally, that there are benefits for more than billionaires and rich people, and that these are not exceptional in any way. It's just not talked about for obvious reasons, even though we all benefit from the creative attitudes of beatles, stones, hendrix, or pink floyd etc. once in awhile. On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 9:22 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 02 Sep 2012, at 16:38, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: It depends what standards for and quality of information you have on something. People shouldn't judge what they do not understand. Bruno you understand what Krokodil entails, with solid information, so trying it is nonsense. But I don't think most understand what Cannabis entails because of misinformation. To most people what Krokodil entails is the same as Cannabis. I let a singer songwriter make the point lacking in this thread http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhKq9JvssB8 :) Paraphrasing old Nietsche: Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all. To which I would add: They should be asked to leave, or at least get out of the way. I think we agree, OK? (or I miss something?). Prohibition is exactly what makes information impossible. If all drugs were legal, Krokodil would never have appeared, and everybody would know that cannabis is less toxic (if toxic at all)
Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
On Sep 4, 2012, at 6:55 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Jason Resch Where is the aware subject in the computer ? Where is the aware subject in you? What color eyes does he have ? A blind and deaf person still has a subject, no? Jason Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Jason Resch Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 12:22:47 Subject: Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 9:28 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi benjayk � Computers have no intelligence --not a whit, 爏ince intelligence requ ires ability to choose, choice requires awareness or Cs, which in term requires an aware subject. Thus only living entities can have ingtelligence. A bacterium thus has more intel;ligence than a computer, even the largest in the world. � � Your proof is missing a step: showing why computers cannot have an aware subject Another problem is that your assumption that the ability to choose requires consciousness means that deep blue (which chooses optimum chess moves), and Watson (who chose categories and wagers in燡eopardy ) are conscious. 營 don't dispute that they may be燾onscious, but if they are that contradicts the objective of your proof. 營f you sti ll maintain that they are not conscious, despite their ability to ch oose, then there must be some error in your argument. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email toeverything-list@googlegroups.com . To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- 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 . -- 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: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO God is the All, or better said, the uncreated intelligence behind all creation. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-04, 10:28:05 Subject: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On 03 Sep 2012, at 18:22, John Mikes wrote: Bruno wrote: ... If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp... Is it fair to say that you substitute (= use) the G O D word in a sense paraphrasable (by me) into an imaginary description 'what we cannot even imagine'? Hmm... OK. (- believed mostly in the 'religious-biblical(?)' format of the following part of your post: ...Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, ... ) Such word-play would have not much merit in reasonable thinking. It would not counteract the 'faith-based' religious superstition now so widely spread among many human minds. That was not the goal. Bruno John M On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 11:06 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 03 Sep 2012, at 13:48, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. ? Falsifiable means can be falsified. here the gravity can be falsfied: you drop the apple and gravity pulls it up. Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO and for what it's worth, if you don't at least give a rough definition of consciousness, you might leave out something some of us consider essential, such as a subject: Cs = subject + object If you don't include the subject, then: Cs = object which makes it a noun. Persponally I believe that it's a dipole. I have no definition of consciousness. With comp I can show why there are none. But this does not prevent us to reason on it, once we can agree on some principles about it. To get the consequences of comp, about consciousness, you need only to agree with this: 1) that you are conscious (or that the humans are conscious) 2) that our consciousness is invariant for digital functional change made at *some* description level of the brain or body or local environment or even some physical universe. All the rest follows from arithmetic and Church thesis if you agree on 1) and 2). 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. Hi Richard Ruquist There is no god in comp. Here I disagree. If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp. Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, then you are very plausibly right. A little more on this in my reply to Richard. 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. -- 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. 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: Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
Hi Jason Resch Good point, but I was thinking of a perceiving/feeling subject. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Jason Resch Receiver: everything-list@googlegroups.com Time: 2012-09-04, 10:44:18 Subject: Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer On Sep 4, 2012, at 6:55 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Jason Resch Where is the aware subject in the computer ? Where is the aware subject in you? What color eyes does he have ? A blind and deaf person still has a subject, no? Jason Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Jason Resch Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 12:22:47 Subject: Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 9:28 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi benjayk Computers have no intelligence --not a whit, ?ince intelligence requires ability to choose, choice requires awareness or Cs, which in term requires an aware subject. Thus only living entities can have ingtelligence. A bacterium thus has more intel;ligence than a computer, even the largest in the world. Your proof is missing a step: showing why computers cannot have an aware subject Another problem is that your assumption that the ability to choose requires consciousness means that deep blue (which chooses optimum chess moves), and Watson (who chose categories and wagers in?eopardy) are conscious. ? don't dispute that they may be?onscious, but if they are that contradicts the objective of your proof. ?f you still maintain that they are not conscious, despite their ability to choose, then there must be some error in your argument. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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. -- 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: Re: Re: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence
Hi John Clark No, God created the human race. So the human race cannot be God. IMHO God is the uncreated infinite intelligence behind/before/beyond/within Creation itself. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: John Clark Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-04, 10:20:44 Subject: Re: Re: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 8:39 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: From: Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net God can be thought of as cosmic intelligence And if humans are the only intelligence in the cosmos (and they might be) then the human race is God. or life itself. If as you say God is life then we know 2 things: 1) God exists. 2) You are more interested in the ASCII characters G-o-d than you are in the idea of God. As to what he can do, there are some limitations in the world he created, I'm not talking about the world God created, I'm interested in the limitations of God Himself, I'm interested in how God can do what He can do and why He can't do what He can't do, and if God really does exist then I have no doubt He would be even more interested in how He works than I am. And if the God theory can not even come close to explain one bit of that (and it can't) then it has not explained anything at all, it just adds pointless wheels within wheels that accomplish absolutely nothing. 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. -- 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: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
On Sep 4, 2012, at 5:57 AM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: At this moment this is true. Another thing is if the computer could become intelligent enough. It is not easy to admit that the belief in the possibility of making something intelligent exist well before computers. Since the industrial revolution, some people believed in the possibility of making intelligent automatas only with steam, weels and wires. This seems naive if not stupid not, but the theorical possibility still holds. I wonder how far the theory is from reality in the case of computers. Up to now, even the most pessimistic previsions have been ridicule. The gap between computer and a bacteria is inmense, galactic. This is inherent to the limitations of any rational design in comparison with the abundance and almost omniscence of natural selection (That I explained somewhere else). Moreover, a natural design is almost impossible to reverse engineer to the last detail since it don´t attain to the rules of god design, because they are rules of limited design (explained somewhere else). You can look at us and our technology as natural selections way to get over hurdles it otherwise could not to create the next stage of life. Evolutionary processes become stuck at local maxima, and relies on minute changes to what currently exists. Compared to electronics, neurons are a million times slower, but we aren't likely to evolve carbon nanotube brains any time soon. Evolution may be using us to usher in the age of life that is vastly more intelligent and capable of leaving this planet. Search for the ted talk by danny hillis. He explains these ideas better than I. Jason 2012/9/3 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net: Hi benjayk Computers have no intelligence --not a whit, since intelligence requires ability to choose, choice requires awareness or Cs, which in term requires an aware subject. Thus only living entities can have ingtelligence. A bacterium thus has more intel;ligence than a computer, even the largest in the world. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: benjayk Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 10:12:46 Subject: Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Aug 2012, at 15:12, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 24 Aug 2012, at 12:04, benjayk wrote: But this avoides my point that we can't imagine that levels, context and ambiguity don't exist, and this is why computational emulation does not mean that the emulation can substitute the original. But here you do a confusion level as I think Jason tries pointing on. A similar one to the one made by Searle in the Chinese Room. As emulator (computing machine) Robinson Arithmetic can simulate exactly Peano Arithmetic, even as a prover. So for example Robinson arithmetic can prove that Peano arithmetic proves the consistency of Robinson Arithmetic. But you cannot conclude from that that Robinson Arithmetic can prove its own consistency. That would contradict G鰀el II. When PA uses the induction axiom, RA might just say huh, and apply it for the sake of the emulation without any inner conviction. I agree, so I don't see how I confused the levels. It seems to me you have just stated that Robinson indeed can not substitue Peano Arithmetic, because RAs emulation of PA makes only sense with respect to PA (in cases were PA does a proof that RA can't do). Right. It makes only first person sense to PA. But then RA has succeeded in making PA alive, and PA could a posteriori realize that the RA level was enough. Sorry, but it can't. It can't even abstract itself out to see that the RA level would be enough. I see you doing this all the time; you take some low level that can be made sense of by something transcendent of it and then claim that the low level is enough. This is precisely the calim that I don't understand at all. You say that we only need natural numbers and + and *, and that the rest emerges from that as the 1-p viewpoint of the numbers. Unfortunately the 1-p viewpoint itself can't be found in the numbers, it can only be found in what transcends the numbers, or what the numbers really are / refer to (which also completely beyond our conception of numbers). That's the problem with G鰀el as well. His unprovable statement ab out numbers is really a meta-statement about what numbers express that doesn't even make sense if we only consider the definition of numbers. He really just shows that we can reason about numbers and with numbers in ways that can't be captured by numbers (but in this case what we do with them has little to do with the numbers themselves). I agree that computations reflect many things about us (infinitely many things, even), but we
Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers
On 03 Sep 2012, at 16:12, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Aug 2012, at 15:12, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 24 Aug 2012, at 12:04, benjayk wrote: But this avoides my point that we can't imagine that levels, context and ambiguity don't exist, and this is why computational emulation does not mean that the emulation can substitute the original. But here you do a confusion level as I think Jason tries pointing on. A similar one to the one made by Searle in the Chinese Room. As emulator (computing machine) Robinson Arithmetic can simulate exactly Peano Arithmetic, even as a prover. So for example Robinson arithmetic can prove that Peano arithmetic proves the consistency of Robinson Arithmetic. But you cannot conclude from that that Robinson Arithmetic can prove its own consistency. That would contradict Gödel II. When PA uses the induction axiom, RA might just say huh, and apply it for the sake of the emulation without any inner conviction. I agree, so I don't see how I confused the levels. It seems to me you have just stated that Robinson indeed can not substitue Peano Arithmetic, because RAs emulation of PA makes only sense with respect to PA (in cases were PA does a proof that RA can't do). Right. It makes only first person sense to PA. But then RA has succeeded in making PA alive, and PA could a posteriori realize that the RA level was enough. Sorry, but it can't. It can't even abstract itself out to see that the RA level would be enough. Why? I see you doing this all the time; you take some low level that can be made sense of by something transcendent of it and then claim that the low level is enough. For the ontology. Yes. This is precisely the calim that I don't understand at all. You say that we only need natural numbers and + and *, and that the rest emerges from that as the 1-p viewpoint of the numbers. I say that this follows from comp. Unfortunately the 1-p viewpoint itself can't be found in the numbers, it can only be found in what transcends the numbers, or what the numbers really are / refer to (which also completely beyond our conception of numbers). ? That's the problem with Gödel as well. His unprovable statement about numbers is really a meta-statement about what numbers express that doesn't even make sense if we only consider the definition of numbers. He really just shows that we can reason about numbers and with numbers in ways that can't be captured by numbers (but in this case what we do with them has little to do with the numbers themselves). Gödel already knew that the numbers (theories) can do that. He bet that the second incompleteness theorem is a theorem of PA. This will be proved by Hilbert and Bernays later. Then Löb generalized this, etc. I agree that computations reflect many things about us (infinitely many things, even), but we still transcend them infinitely. Numbers can do that to, relatively to universal numbers. It is the whole (technical) point. Strangely you agree for the 1-p viewpoint. But given that's what you *actually* live, I don't see how it makes sense to than proceed that there is a meaningful 3- p point of view where this isn't true. This point of view is really just an abstraction occuring in the 1-p of view. Yes. Bruno Marchal wrote: Like I converse with Einstein's brain's book (à la Hofstatdter), just by manipulating the page of the book. I don't become Einstein through my making of that process, but I can have a genuine conversation with Einstein through it. He will know that he has survived, or that he survives through that process. On some level, I agree. But not far from the level that he survives in his quotes and writings. He does not survive in writing and quotes. That is only a metaphor. But he does survive in the usual sense in the emulation, assuming comp. Bruno Marchal wrote: That is, it *needs* PA to make sense, and so we can't ultimately substitute one with the other (just in some relative way, if we are using the result in the right way). Yes, because that would be like substituting a person by another, pretexting they both obeys the same role. But comp substitute the lower process, not the high level one, which can indeed be quite different. Which assumes that the world is divided in low-level processes and high-level processes. Like arithmetic. Bruno Marchal wrote: It is like the word apple cannot really substitute a picture of an apple in general (still less an actual apple), even though in many context we can indeed use the word apple instead of using a picture of an apple because we don't want to by shown how it looks, but just know that we talk about apples - but we still need an actual apple or at least a picture to make sense of it. Here you make an invalid jump, I think. If I play chess on a computer, and make a backup of it, and then continue on a totally
Re: Where Chalmers went wrong
On 03 Sep 2012, at 16:09, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stathis Papaioannou IMHO Chalmer's biggest error has been not to recognize that the self does not appear in all of neurophilosophy. This IMHO is the glaring shortcoming of materialism. The lights are on, but nobody's home. The self is a high level construct of the brain. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stathis Papaioannou Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-02, 07:17:41 Subject: Re: No Chinese Room Necessary On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: That implies that T-cells need a feeling to guide them not to kill friendly cells. That H2O needs a feeling to guide it not to dissolve non- polar molecules. If you believe in functionalism, then all feeling is a metaphysical epiphenomenon. I think the opposite makes more sense - everything is feeling, function is the result of sense, not the other way around. T-cells do feel. Molecules do feel. How could it be any other way? Panpsychism is not inconsistent with functionalism. David Chalmers is a functionalist and panpsychist. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to 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 . -- 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 . 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: Re: Toward emulating life with a monadic computer
Hi Stephen P. King IMHO I would put it that life begets life, no means required. Just as at Christmas time in church we pass a flame from one candle to another. Creation was like an ignition of life like a flame, like lighting a match. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 15:00:45 Subject: Re: Toward emulating life with a monadic computer On 9/3/2012 10:22 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King 1) The pre-established harmony is beyond the laws of physics. For nothing is perfect in this contingent world. The preestablished harmony was designed before the beginning of gthe world, and since God is good, presumably gthe pre-established harmony is the best possible one in a contingent world. Hi Roger, One cannot make claims that are self-contradictions. Creation can not happen if the means that allow the creation are not available prior to the creation. One indication is the sheer improbability of the structure of the physical universe so that life is possible. I liken it to a divine musical composition with God as the conductor, and various objects playing parts in harmony. 2) The monads have no windows, so they are all blind. The perceptions are images are provided by God, or the Supreme monad, the only one able to see all and know all. Each monad is provided with a continually updated view of the perceptions\ all all of the mother monad perceptions, so it k nows everything in the universe from its own point of view. 3) I have been criticized for calling the monadic structure as tree-like, and I could be wrong. But as I understand them, the monads can be described by category theory if that's the right word, since each substance can be desribed by its predicates and presumably the predicates have predicates and so on. Since all of the monads necessarily are within the supreme monad, it would be the root of the tree. Of course a tree with an infinite number of branches and subbranches, etc. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
Anybody who believes that we are all born equal probably doesn't have any children. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: meekerdb Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 15:29:14 Subject: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On 9/3/2012 8:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. I'm not sure what is meant by 'taxing the rich doesn't ultimately work'? If it means it doesn't produce equality and prosperity, I'd agree. But in the U.S. the tax rate paid by the rich has been higher (even much higher) in the past and at the same time there was prosperity and economic growth. Now the rich (by which I mean people who live comfortably solely on their investments) pay a lower tax rate than the poorest working person. So 'taxing the rich' can certainly work in the sense of fairness. Brent -- 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: Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
Hi Jason Resch IMHO Not to disparage the superb work that computers can do, but I think that it is a mistake to anthropo-morphise the computer. It has no intelligence, no life, no awareness, there's nothing magic about it. It's just a complex bunch of diodes and transistors. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Jason Resch Receiver: everything-list@googlegroups.com Time: 2012-09-04, 10:53:11 Subject: Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer On Sep 4, 2012, at 5:57 AM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: At this moment this is true. Another thing is if the computer could become intelligent enough. It is not easy to admit that the belief in the possibility of making something intelligent exist well before computers. Since the industrial revolution, some people believed in the possibility of making intelligent automatas only with steam, weels and wires. This seems naive if not stupid not, but the theorical possibility still holds. I wonder how far the theory is from reality in the case of computers. Up to now, even the most pessimistic previsions have been ridicule. The gap between computer and a bacteria is inmense, galactic. This is inherent to the limitations of any rational design in comparison with the abundance and almost omniscence of natural selection (That I explained somewhere else). Moreover, a natural design is almost impossible to reverse engineer to the last detail since it don't attain to the rules of god design, because they are rules of limited design (explained somewhere else). You can look at us and our technology as natural selections way to get over hurdles it otherwise could not to create the next stage of life. Evolutionary processes become stuck at local maxima, and relies on minute changes to what currently exists. Compared to electronics, neurons are a million times slower, but we aren't likely to evolve carbon nanotube brains any time soon. Evolution may be using us to usher in the age of life that is vastly more intelligent and capable of leaving this planet. Search for the ted talk by danny hillis. He explains these ideas better than I. Jason 2012/9/3 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net: Hi benjayk Computers have no intelligence --not a whit, since intelligence requires ability to choose, choice requires awareness or Cs, which in term requires an aware subject. Thus only living entities can have ingtelligence. A bacterium thus has more intel;ligence than a computer, even the largest in the world. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: benjayk Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 10:12:46 Subject: Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Aug 2012, at 15:12, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 24 Aug 2012, at 12:04, benjayk wrote: But this avoides my point that we can't imagine that levels, context and ambiguity don't exist, and this is why computational emulation does not mean that the emulation can substitute the original. But here you do a confusion level as I think Jason tries pointing on. A similar one to the one made by Searle in the Chinese Room. As emulator (computing machine) Robinson Arithmetic can simulate exactly Peano Arithmetic, even as a prover. So for example Robinson arithmetic can prove that Peano arithmetic proves the consistency of Robinson Arithmetic. But you cannot conclude from that that Robinson Arithmetic can prove its own consistency. That would contradict G?el II. When PA uses the induction axiom, RA might just say huh, and apply it for the sake of the emulation without any inner conviction. I agree, so I don't see how I confused the levels. It seems to me you have just stated that Robinson indeed can not substitue Peano Arithmetic, because RAs emulation of PA makes only sense with respect to PA (in cases were PA does a proof that RA can't do). Right. It makes only first person sense to PA. But then RA has succeeded in making PA alive, and PA could a posteriori realize that the RA level was enough. Sorry, but it can't. It can't even abstract itself out to see that the RA level would be enough. I see you doing this all the time; you take some low level that can be made sense of by something transcendent of it and then claim that the low level is enough. This is precisely the calim that I don't understand at all. You say that we only need natural numbers and + and *, and that the rest emerges from that as the 1-p viewpoint of the numbers. Unfortunately the 1-p viewpoint itself can't be found in the numbers, it can only be
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 12:59 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: The idea that someone considers the sum total of human thought irrelevant What on earth are you talking about? The scribblings of Hume and Leibniz were not the sum total of human thought even 300 years ago when they wrote their stuff, much less today. in the face of the achievements of recent physics Yes, the idea that these people could teach a modern physicist anything about the nature of matter is idiotic. Is it possible that the architects of the pyramids might have known something that the architects of large hotels don't? No. And the reasons to build a modern hotel were much much better than the reasons to build a big stone pyramid 4500 years ago were. And the hotels were successful in doing what they were built to do, giving thousands of people shelter when they were in a foreign city; the pyramids were built to protect the body of the Pharaoh for eternity but in every case they were looted by grave robbers within a decade of their completion. Could Shakespeare know something about writing in English that J.K. Rowling doesn't? The difference between art and science is that there is only one correct scientific theory, we may not ever find it but over the years we get closer and closer to it, and there is a objective standard to tell the difference between a good theory and a bad one; but in art there is not just one good book and the difference between a good one and a bad one is subjective. Personally I enjoy the writing of J.K. Rowling more than that of Shakespeare because I don't know Elizabethan English and Shakespeare didn't know modern English, but J.K. Rowling does. But I'm talking about art so that's just my opinion, your mileage may vary. The philosophers who you dismiss have a lot more to do with why you know the words cause and effect than does the work of any contemporary physicist. Bullshit, Hume and Leibniz knew nothing about Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, and even if they did I'm quite certain they would not have liked it, but the universe doesn't care what the preferences of 2 members of the species Homo sapiens are, the world just keeps behaving that way anyway and if those people don't like it they can lump it. They formulated the way that we think about it to this day, far more successfully I might add, then the muddle of conflicting interpretations and shoulder shrugging mysticism that has come out of quantum mechanics. They were successful in formulating ideas that seemed intuitively true to most people, but unfortunately nature found the ideas much less intuitive than people do. Philosophers churned out ideas that seemed reasonable but it turned out the Universe didn't give a damn about being reasonable or if human beings thought the way it operated was crazy or not. Those philosophers said things that made people comfortable but that's just not the way things are and being fat dumb and happy is no way to live your life. I don't care much for elevating the past either, but the more I see of the originality and vision of philosophers Originality and vision philosophers may have had but they were also dead wrong. Regardless of how appealing those philosophers ideas were if they don't fit the facts they have to go because just one stubborn fact can destroy even the most beautiful theory. 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: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers
On 9/4/2012 10:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 24 Aug 2012, at 12:04, benjayk wrote: Strangely you agree for the 1-p viewpoint. But given that's what you *actually* live, I don't see how it makes sense to than proceed that there is a meaningful 3-p point of view where this isn't true. This point of view is really just an abstraction occuring in the 1-p of view. Yes. Hi Bruno, So do you agree that the 3-p point of view is just an abstraction (a simulation even!) of a 1-p? It seems to me that this would similar to having a model S that is part of a theory T such that T would change its beliefs as X - X' changes, all while preserving the Bpp term, p would be a variable of or in X, X', ... . -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
Here is the link I mentioned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdg4mU-wuhI On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Jason Resch IMHO Not to disparage the superb work that computers can do, but I think that it is a mistake to anthropo-morphise the computer. It has no intelligence, no life, no awareness, I have given my argument for why computers can be intelligent, aware, etc. What is your argument that they cannot? there's nothing magic about it. So your argument is that they have no magic, but we do? Why do you believe (only?) we have this magic? It's just a complex bunch of diodes and transistors. And life is just a complex bunch of chemicals and solutions. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Toward emulating life with a monadic computer
On 9/4/2012 10:58 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King IMHO I would put it that life begets life, no means required. Just as at Christmas time in church we pass a flame from one candle to another. Creation was like an ignition of life like a flame, like lighting a match. Hi Roger, But you are still not seeing the point that there is a difference between ontologies that postulate a special initial event that holds globally for all worlds and ontologies that consider initial events as the dual of event horizons, e.g they are local events and not global absolutes. I am inclined to believe in an Infinite and eternal Omniverse within which our local universe is just a finite projection of the whole. This includes the idea that it will appear to have an initial event simply because the observers in this universe cannot look back any further than our common event horizon. What Life is or is not is a debate for some other time. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - *From:* Stephen P. King mailto:stephe...@charter.net *Receiver:* everything-list mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com *Time:* 2012-09-03, 15:00:45 *Subject:* Re: Toward emulating life with a monadic computer On 9/3/2012 10:22 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King 1) The pre-established harmony is beyond the laws of physics. For nothing is perfect in this contingent world. The preestablished harmony was designed before the beginning of gthe world, and since God is good, presumably gthe pre-established harmony is the best possible one in a contingent world. Hi Roger, One cannot make claims that are self-contradictions. Creation can not happen if the means that allow the creation are not available prior to the creation. One indication is the sheer improbability of the structure of the physical universe so that life is possible. I liken it to a divine musical composition with God as the conductor, and various objects playing parts in harmony. 2) The monads have no windows, so they are all blind. The perceptions are images are provided by God, or the Supreme monad, the only one able to see all and know all. Each monad is provided with a continually updated view of the perceptions\ all all of the mother monad perceptions, so it k nows everything in the universe from its own point of view. 3) I have been criticized for calling the monadic structure as tree-like, and I could be wrong. But as I understand them, the monads can be described by category theory if that's the right word, since each substance can be desribed by its predicates and presumably the predicates have predicates and so on. Since all of the monads necessarily are within the supreme monad, it would be the root of the tree. Of course a tree with an infinite number of branches and subbranches, etc. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: There is no such thing as cause and effect
Hear Hear! I recommend the movieHarrison Bergeron http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmEOI5zwFMM as a demonstration of the ill effects that follow attempts to generate equality in a population. On 9/4/2012 11:05 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Anybody who believes that we are all born equal probably doesn't have any children. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - *From:* meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net *Receiver:* everything-list mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com *Time:* 2012-09-03, 15:29:14 *Subject:* Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On 9/3/2012 8:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. I'm not sure what is meant by 'taxing the rich doesn't ultimately work'? If it means it doesn't produce equality and prosperity, I'd agree. But in the U.S. the tax rate paid by the rich has been higher (even much higher) in the past and at the same time there was prosperity and economic growth. Now the rich (by which I mean people who live comfortably solely on their investments) pay a lower tax rate than the poorest working person. So 'taxing the rich' can certainly work in the sense of fairness. Brent -- 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. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence
On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 9:11 AM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.comwrote: Showing scientifically that nature is infinite isn't really possible. Maybe not. In Turing's proof he assumed that machines could not operate with infinite numbers, so if there is a theory of everything (and there might not be) and if you know it and if you can use nothing but that to show independently of Turing that no machine can solve the Halting Problem then that would prove that irrational numbers with a infinite number of digits play no part in the operation of the universe; on the other hand if this new physical theory shows you how to make such a machine then we'd know that nature understands and uses infinity. I admit that I used the word if a lot in all that. 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: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
On 9/4/2012 11:17 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Jason Resch IMHO Not to disparage the superb work that computers can do, but I think that it is a mistake to anthropo-morphise the computer. It has no intelligence, no life, no awareness, there's nothing magic about it. It's just a complex bunch of diodes and transistors. Hi Roger, Please leave magic out of this, as any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws. The trouble is that the stuff in our skulls does not appear to be that much different from a bunch of diodes and transistors. Our brains obey the very same physical laws! What makes the brain special? I suspect that the brain uses quantum entanglement effects to both synchronize and update sense content in ways that cannot obtain from purely classical physical methods. Our mechanical machines lack the ability to report on their 1p content thus we are using their disability to argue against their possible abilities. A computer that could both generate an internal self-model and report on it would lead us to very different conclusions! -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence
Seems funny that Turing .assumed that machines could not operate with infinite numbers. given that the tape is assumed to be infinite. wrb From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2012 8:59 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 9:11 AM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com wrote: Showing scientifically that nature is infinite isn't really possible. Maybe not. In Turing's proof he assumed that machines could not operate with infinite numbers, so if there is a theory of everything (and there might not be) and if you know it and if you can use nothing but that to show independently of Turing that no machine can solve the Halting Problem then that would prove that irrational numbers with a infinite number of digits play no part in the operation of the universe; on the other hand if this new physical theory shows you how to make such a machine then we'd know that nature understands and uses infinity. I admit that I used the word if a lot in all that. 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. -- 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: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence
2012/9/4 William R. Buckley bill.buck...@gmail.com Seems funny that Turing “…assumed that machines could not operate with infinite numbers…” given that the tape is assumed to be infinite. Not really infinite but it has no boundaries, it can always extend if needed. At any given time the used tape is of finite length. Quentin ** ** wrb ** ** *From:* everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto: everything-list@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *John Clark *Sent:* Tuesday, September 04, 2012 8:59 AM *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com *Subject:* Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence* *** ** ** On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 9:11 AM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com wrote: ** ** Showing scientifically that nature is infinite isn't really possible.*** * Maybe not. In Turing's proof he assumed that machines could not operate with infinite numbers, so if there is a theory of everything (and there might not be) and if you know it and if you can use nothing but that to show independently of Turing that no machine can solve the Halting Problem then that would prove that irrational numbers with a infinite number of digits play no part in the operation of the universe; on the other hand if this new physical theory shows you how to make such a machine then we'd know that nature understands and uses infinity. I admit that I used the word if a lot in all that. 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. -- 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. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- 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: Re: Re: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence
On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: God created the human race. And when God asks Himself the question Why have I always existed, why haven't I always not existed? what answer in his omniscience does He come up with? God is the uncreated infinite intelligence There was once a patent issued for a combination rat trap and potato peeler and people laugh about that, but using the exact same organ for both excretory and reproductive purposes does not seem very intelligent to me either, much less infinitely intelligent. And putting the blood vessels and nerves for the retina of the eye in front not in the back so the light must pass through them to get to the light sensitive cells also does not seem very smart; no engineer in his right mind would place the gears to move the film in a camera so that the light must pass through the gears before hitting the film. That's not the sort of thing you'd expect God to do, but it's exactly what you'd expect Evolution to do. 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: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence
While at any moment the tape may be finite, that it can at need grow is the fundamental notion of infinite. One can hardly take a set of LARGE size (like half of the infinite set) and, say by weighing or by volumetric scale, determine if it is different from any truly infinite set. The point you make is a subjective one. The net result of Turing's specification is that the tape is infinite, effective (functional) though the definition may be. wrb From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Quentin Anciaux Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2012 9:10 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence 2012/9/4 William R. Buckley bill.buck...@gmail.com Seems funny that Turing .assumed that machines could not operate with infinite numbers. given that the tape is assumed to be infinite. Not really infinite but it has no boundaries, it can always extend if needed. At any given time the used tape is of finite length. Quentin wrb From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2012 8:59 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 9:11 AM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com wrote: Showing scientifically that nature is infinite isn't really possible. Maybe not. In Turing's proof he assumed that machines could not operate with infinite numbers, so if there is a theory of everything (and there might not be) and if you know it and if you can use nothing but that to show independently of Turing that no machine can solve the Halting Problem then that would prove that irrational numbers with a infinite number of digits play no part in the operation of the universe; on the other hand if this new physical theory shows you how to make such a machine then we'd know that nature understands and uses infinity. I admit that I used the word if a lot in all that. 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. -- 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 mailto:everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- 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. -- 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: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 9/4/2012 11:17 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Jason Resch IMHO Not to disparage the superb work that computers can do, but I think that it is a mistake to anthropo-morphise the computer. It has no intelligence, no life, no awareness, there's nothing magic about it. It's just a complex bunch of diodes and transistors. Hi Roger, Please leave magic out of this, as any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magichttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws. The trouble is that the stuff in our skulls does not appear to be that much different from a bunch of diodes and transistors. Our brains obey the very same physical laws! What makes the brain special? I agree with what you say above. I suspect that the brain uses quantum entanglement effects to both synchronize and update sense content in ways that cannot obtain from purely classical physical methods. What leads you to suspect this? Our mechanical machines lack the ability to report on their 1p content thus we are using their disability to argue against their possible abilities. A computer that could both generate an internal self-model and report on it would lead us to very different conclusions! I agree. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence
Well, the fact that at *any* moment the tape is of finite length explains why it can't handle *infinite* numbers... there is nothing funny about that. Quentin 2012/9/4 William R. Buckley bill.buck...@gmail.com While at any moment the tape may be finite, that it can at need grow is the fundamental notion of infinite. One can hardly take a set of LARGE size (like half of the infinite set) and, say by weighing or by volumetric scale, determine if it is different from any truly infinite set. The point you make is a subjective one. The net result of Turing’s specification is that the tape is infinite, effective (functional) though the definition may be. ** ** wrb ** ** *From:* everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto: everything-list@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *Quentin Anciaux *Sent:* Tuesday, September 04, 2012 9:10 AM *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com *Subject:* Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence* *** ** ** ** ** 2012/9/4 William R. Buckley bill.buck...@gmail.com Seems funny that Turing “…assumed that machines could not operate with infinite numbers…” given that the tape is assumed to be infinite. Not really infinite but it has no boundaries, it can always extend if needed. At any given time the used tape is of finite length. Quentin wrb *From:* everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto: everything-list@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *John Clark *Sent:* Tuesday, September 04, 2012 8:59 AM *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com *Subject:* Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence* *** On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 9:11 AM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com wrote: Showing scientifically that nature is infinite isn't really possible.*** * Maybe not. In Turing's proof he assumed that machines could not operate with infinite numbers, so if there is a theory of everything (and there might not be) and if you know it and if you can use nothing but that to show independently of Turing that no machine can solve the Halting Problem then that would prove that irrational numbers with a infinite number of digits play no part in the operation of the universe; on the other hand if this new physical theory shows you how to make such a machine then we'd know that nature understands and uses infinity. I admit that I used the word if a lot in all that. 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. -- 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. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- 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. -- 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. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- 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.
The All
Hi Bruno Marchal According to Leibniz there is only one live perceiver, and that he calls the Supreme Monad. Actually, not the monad itself, but what sees through the monad.Then when we see individually we all must be seeing through that one eye. I believe it's Plato's All, or in my terms, Jehovah. Indian philosophy has a similar idea except that one must merge one's consciousness with Brahma or whatever through meditation. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-04, 10:17:02 Subject: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence On 03 Sep 2012, at 21:24, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 03 Sep 2012, at 15:11, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: If you disagree, please tell me why. I don't disagree. I just point on the fact that you don't give any justification of your belief. If you are correct, there must be something in cells and brains that is not Turing emulable, and this is speculative, as nobody has found anything not Turing emulable in nature. You say this often, Bruno, yet I have never seen an emulation of any living system that functions the same as the original. This is not a valid argument. I have never seen a man walking on Mars, but this does not make it impossible. No, but we have no big gaps of belief to bridge if we consider a man walking on Mars. It's not much different than the moon. Yet emulating a natural system is something which we haven't even remotely suceeded in. But this confirms comp, as comp predicts that material system are not emulable, only simulable. Only digital being can be emulated, and comp assume that we are digital, unlike our bodies. Yes, we simulated some systems, but they couldn't perform the same function. A pump does the function of an heart. We also substituted some parts with non-living matter, but not with a mere computer. Comp does not say that we do that, nor even that we can do that. Only that it can be done in principle. And then another, much bigger step is required in order to say *everything*/everyone/every part can be emulated. Indeed. Comp makes this impossible, as the environment is the result of a comptetion between infinities of universal machine in arithmetic. See my other post to you sent yesterday. It is like saying that we can walk on all things, because we can walk on the moon. We most certainly can't walk on the sun, though. Sure. Bruno Bruno Marchal wrote: With comp we cannot emulate a rock, so we can't certainly emulate a living creature, as it is made of the apparent matter, which needs the complete UD*. But with comp all universal machine can emulate any universal machine, so if I am a program, at some levcel of description, the activity of that program, responsible for my consciousness here and now, can be emulated exactly. But why would you be a program? Why would you be more finite than a rock? I can't follow your logic behind this. Yes, assuming COMP your reasoning makes some sense, but then we are confronted with the absurd situation of our local me's being computational, yet everything we can actually observe being non-computational. Bruno Marchal wrote: The default position is that it is not emulable. On the contrary. Having no evidence that there is something non Turing emulable playing a role in the working mind, We do have evidence. We can't even make sense of the notion of emulating what is inherently indeterminate (like all matter, and so the brain as well). How to emulate something which has no determinate state with machines using (practically) determinate states? We can emulate quantum computers, but they still work based on definite/discrete states (though it allows for superposition of them, but they are collapsed at the end of the computation). Even according to COMP, it seems that matter is non-emulable. That this doesn't play a role in the working of the brain is just an assumption (I hope we agree there is a deep relation between local mind and brain). When we actually look into the brain we can't find anything that says whatever is going on that is not emulable doesn't matter. Bruno Marchal wrote: beyond its material constitution which by comp is only Turing recoverable in the limit (and thus non emulable) But that is the point. Why would its material constitution not matter? For all we know it matters very much, as the behaviour of the matter in the brain (and outside of it) determines its function. Bruno Marchal wrote: to bet that we are not machine is like speculating on something quite bizarre, just to segregationate negatively a class of entities. I don't know what you arguing against. I have never negatively
Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
On 9/4/2012 1:19 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 9/4/2012 11:17 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Jason Resch IMHO Not to disparage the superb work that computers can do, but I think that it is a mistake to anthropo-morphise the computer. It has no intelligence, no life, no awareness, there's nothing magic about it. It's just a complex bunch of diodes and transistors. Hi Roger, Please leave magic out of this, as any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws. The trouble is that the stuff in our skulls does not appear to be that much different from a bunch of diodes and transistors. Our brains obey the very same physical laws! What makes the brain special? I agree with what you say above. I suspect that the brain uses quantum entanglement effects to both synchronize and update sense content in ways that cannot obtain from purely classical physical methods. What leads you to suspect this? The weird delay effect that Libet et al observed as discussed here http://www.dichotomistic.com/mind_readings_chapter%20on%20libet.html. Quantum entanglement allows for a variable window of duration via the EPR effect. If we look at a QM system, there is no delay in changes of the state of the system. All of the parts of it operate simultaneously, not matter how far apart them might be when we think of them as distributed in space time. This is the spooky action at a distance that has upset the classical scientists for so long. It has even been shown that one can derive the appearance of classical type signaling from the quantum pseudo-telepathy effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_pseudo-telepathy. Our mechanical machines lack the ability to report on their 1p content thus we are using their disability to argue against their possible abilities. A computer that could both generate an internal self-model and report on it would lead us to very different conclusions! I agree. Jason -- The point that I am making is that our brain seems to be continuously generating a virtual reality model of the world that includes our body and what we are conscious of is that model. Does a machine made up of gears, springs and levers do this? Could one made of diodes and transistors do it? Maybe... -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 11:37:37 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 12:59 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: The idea that someone considers the sum total of human thought irrelevant What on earth are you talking about? The scribblings of Hume and Leibniz were not the sum total of human thought even 300 years ago when they wrote their stuff, much less today. Ah, so you are singling out those philosophers in particular as being irrelevant. in the face of the achievements of recent physics Yes, the idea that these people could teach a modern physicist anything about the nature of matter is idiotic. In any sufficiently large group of people tasked with remembering details of an environment, even the person who remembers the most details doesn't remember more details than the rest of a group put together. What you are effectively saying is that whoever knows more than anyone else doesn't need to listen to anyone else. This isn't a scientific strategy. It only serves to reinforce orthodoxy and suppress innovation. Is it possible that the architects of the pyramids might have known something that the architects of large hotels don't? No. And the reasons to build a modern hotel were much much better than the reasons to build a big stone pyramid 4500 years ago were. Let's see, average survival of a Las Vegas hotel is what, 30 years? Then they blow them up. The pyramids of Egypt have been a wonder of the world for 45 centuries, attracting tourism and representing one of the most ostentatious achievements of the history of the human species. Yeah, that's lame, we need more disposable dormitories. Screw monuments like Notre Dame, the Alhambra, and Hagia Sophia, they are taking up valuable real estate that could host things like strip malls and gas stations, since they have better reasons to be built. And the hotels were successful in doing what they were built to do, giving thousands of people shelter when they were in a foreign city; the pyramids were built to protect the body of the Pharaoh for eternity but in every case they were looted by grave robbers within a decade of their completion. It doesn't mean that Donald Trump knows how to build a pyramid or a Gothic cathedral. Could Shakespeare know something about writing in English that J.K. Rowling doesn't? The difference between art and science is that there is only one correct scientific theory, To quote Francis Crick what everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks will believe tomorrow. Every scientific theory seems like it is the one correct theory, right up until it is proved to be one of many less-than-completely-correct theories. we may not ever find it but over the years we get closer and closer to it, and there is a objective standard to tell the difference between a good theory and a bad one; but in art there is not just one good book and the difference between a good one and a bad one is subjective. Personally I enjoy the writing of J.K. Rowling more than that of Shakespeare because I don't know Elizabethan English and Shakespeare didn't know modern English, but J.K. Rowling does. But I'm talking about art so that's just my opinion, your mileage may vary. Whether you like Shakespeare or not doesn't change his contribution to the English language. The philosophers who you dismiss have a lot more to do with why you know the words cause and effect than does the work of any contemporary physicist. Bullshit, Hume and Leibniz knew nothing about Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, We are talking about defining cause and effect, not Relativity or QM. To get to the latter, you need to have already considered the former. and even if they did I'm quite certain they would not have liked it, but the universe doesn't care what the preferences of 2 members of the species Homo sapiens are, the world just keeps behaving that way anyway and if those people don't like it they can lump it. Why would you be certain about such a ridiculous thing? Have a look at these estimates of the IQ of historical figures (http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/cox300.aspx) Note: Goethe: 210. Leibniz: 205...down much farther...Darwin: 165 Had Leibniz been born in the 20th century, he would, by these estimates, have run circles around any living physicist. But you go ahead and go on believing that 'new and improved' always means just that. They formulated the way that we think about it to this day, far more successfully I might add, then the muddle of conflicting interpretations and shoulder shrugging mysticism that has come out of quantum mechanics. They were successful in formulating ideas that seemed intuitively true to most people, but unfortunately nature found the ideas much less intuitive than people do. Philosophers churned out ideas that seemed
Re: Re: Re: Hating the rich
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7d8fykSPB1qz4sr8o1_500.jpg On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 7:56:38 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg It's tribal thinking on both sides. Still, although it's pointless, I'll throw a spear occcasionally. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net javascript: 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - *From:* Craig Weinberg javascript: *Receiver:* everything-list javascript: *Time:* 2012-09-04, 00:08:17 *Subject:* Re: Re: Hating the rich On Monday, September 3, 2012 8:11:54 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg It's OK as far as the left goes to hate the rich. To them, nothing the left does is ever wrong. Is there any ideology in which the members think that what they do is wrong? You can criticize the left about a lot of things, but that it might be blind to its own faults isn't really one of them. If anything, the left is does all of the hand-wringing while the right seems to capitalize on its ability to forget its failures and rationalize the successes of its opponents. Craig Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - *From:* Craig Weinberg *Receiver:* everything-list *Time:* 2012-08-31, 13:24:34 *Subject:* Re: Hating the rich On Friday, August 31, 2012 4:46:40 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hating the rich is the new racism. Is it? http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-richest-woman-20120830,0,3323996.story Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/2YtUpBZTti4J. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/pOSNemvIfnQJ. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/CT2_PjxBEjoJ. 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: Re: monads as numbers
Hi Roger, Not sure what you are getting at. We can't see any usefulness for eating chocolate until the bar is gone, but we still do it. On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 7:56:45 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg I can't see any usefulness for a computer or calculator where the same number is recalculated over and over. Think of a Turing tape running through a processor. Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net javascript: 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - *From:* Craig Weinberg javascript: *Receiver:* everything-list javascript: *Time:* 2012-09-03, 11:12:36 *Subject:* Re: monads as numbers Hi Roger, I think of number as the conceptual continuity between the behaviors of physical things - whether it is the interior view of things as experiences through time or the exterior view of experiences as things. Numbers don't fly by in a computation, that's a cartoon. All that happens is that something which is much smaller and faster than we are, like a semiconductor or neuron, is doing some repetitive, sensorimotive behavior which tickles our own sense and motive in a way that we can understand and control. Computation doesn't exist independently as an operation in space, it is a common sense of matter, just as we are - but one does not reduce to the other. Feeling, emotion, and thought does not have to be made of computations, they can be other forms of sensible expression. Counting is one of the things that we, and most everything can do in one way or another, but nothing can turn numbers into anything other than more numbers except non-numerical sense. Craig On Monday, September 3, 2012 9:53:21 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg Sorry. I guess I should call them monadic numbers. Not numbers as monads, but monads as numbers. The numbers I am thinking of as monads are those flying by in a particular computation. Monads are under constant change. As to history, perceptions, appetites, those would be some king of context as in a subprogram which coud be stored in files. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - *From:* Craig Weinberg *Receiver:* everything-list *Time:* 2012-09-02, 08:28:10 *Subject:* Re: Toward emulating life with a monadic computer On Sunday, September 2, 2012 2:20:49 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: *Toward emulating life with a monadic computer* ** In a previous discussion we showed that the natural numbers qualify as Leibnizian monads, suggesting the possibility that other mathematical forms might similarly be treated as monadic structures. At the same time, Leibniz's monadology describes a computational architecture that is capable of emulating not only the dynamic physical universe, but a biological universe as well. In either case, the entire universe might be envisioned as a gigantic digital golem, a living figure whose body consists of a categorical nonliving substructure and whose mind/brain is the what Leibniz called the supreme monad. The supreme monad might be thought of as a monarch, since it governs the operation of its passive monadic substructures according to a preestablished harmony. In addition, each monad in the system would possess typical monadic substructures, and possibly further monadic substructures wuithin this, depending spending on the level of complexity desired. Without going into much detail at this point, Leibniz's monadology might be considered as the operating system of such a computer, with the central processing chip as its supreme monad. This CPU continually updates all of the monads in the system according the following scheme. Only the CPU is active, while all of the sub-structure monads (I think in a logical, tree-like structure) are passive. Each monad contains a dynamically changing image (a reflection) of all of the other monads, taken from its particular point of view. These are called its perceptions, which might be thought of as records of the state of any given monad at any given time. This state comprising an image of the entire universe of monads, constantly being updated by the Supreme monad or CPU. In addition to the perceptions, each monad also has a constantly changing set of appetites. And all of these are coorddinated to fit a pre-established harmony. It might be that the pre-established harmony is simply what is happening in the world outside the computer. Other details of this computer should be forthcoming. First I would say that numbers are not monads because numbers have no experience. They have no interior or exterior realism, but rather are the interstitial shadows of
Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence
John Clark-12 wrote: On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 9:11 AM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.comwrote: Showing scientifically that nature is infinite isn't really possible. Maybe not. In Turing's proof he assumed that machines could not operate with infinite numbers, so if there is a theory of everything (and there might not be) and if you know it and if you can use nothing but that to show independently of Turing that no machine can solve the Halting Problem then that would prove that irrational numbers with a infinite number of digits play no part in the operation of the universe; on the other hand if this new physical theory shows you how to make such a machine then we'd know that nature understands and uses infinity. I admit that I used the word if a lot in all that. Even the usual computer can use infinite numbers, like omega. Really going from 1 to omega is no more special or difficult than going from 1 to 2. We just don't do it that often because it (apparently) isn't of much use. Transfinite numbers mostly don't express much more than finite numbers, or at least we haven't really found the use for them. Irrational numbers don't really have digits. We just approximately display them using digits. Computers can also reason with irrational numbers (for example computer algebra systems can find irrational solutions of equations and express them precisely using terms like sqrt(n) ). With regards to nature, it seems that it in some ways it does use irrational numbers. Look at the earth and tell me that it has nothing to do with pi. It is true though that it doesn't use precise irrational numbers, but there doesn't seem to exist anything totally precise in nature at all - precision is just an abstraction. So according to your standard, clearly nature is infinite, because we can calculate using transfinite numbers. But of course this is a quite absurd conclusion, mainly because what we really mean by infinite has nothing to do with mathematically describable infinities like big ordinal or cardinal numbers. With regards to our intuitive notion of infiniteness, these are pretty finite, just like all other numbers. What we usually mean by infinite means more something like (absolutely) boundless or incompletable or inexhaustable or unbound or absolute. All of these have little do with what we can measure or describe and thus it falls outside the realm of science or math. We can only observe that we can't find a boundary to space, or an end of time, or an end to math, but it is hard to say how this could be made precise or how to falsify it (I'd say it is impossible). My take on it is simply that the infinite is too absolute to be scrutinized. You can't falsify something which can't be conceived to be otherwise. It's literally impossible to imagine something like an absolute boundary (absolute finiteness). It is a nonsense concept. Nature simply is inherently infinite and the finite is simply an expression of the infinite, and is itself also the infinite (like the number 1 also has infinity in it 1=1*1*1*1*1*1*1* ). benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Simple-proof-that-our-intelligence-transcends-that-of-computers-tp34330236p34388985.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- 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: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence
Bruno Marchal wrote: Yes, we simulated some systems, but they couldn't perform the same function. A pump does the function of an heart. No. A pump just pumps blood. The heart also performs endocrine functions, it can react dynamically to the brain, it can grow, it can heal, it can become infected, etc... Bruno Marchal wrote: And then another, much bigger step is required in order to say *everything*/everyone/every part can be emulated. Indeed. Comp makes this impossible, as the environment is the result of a comptetion between infinities of universal machine in arithmetic. See my other post to you sent yesterday. Yes, OK, I understand that. But this also means that COMP relies on the assumption that whatever is not emulable about our brains (or whatever else) does not matter at all to what we (locally) are, only what is emulable matters. I find this assumption completely unwarranted and I have yet to see evidence for it or a reasoning behind it. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Simple-proof-that-our-intelligence-transcends-that-of-computers-tp34330236p34389041.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- 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: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 1:33 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 9/4/2012 1:19 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 9/4/2012 11:17 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Jason Resch IMHO Not to disparage the superb work that computers can do, but I think that it is a mistake to anthropo-morphise the computer. It has no intelligence, no life, no awareness, there's nothing magic about it. It's just a complex bunch of diodes and transistors. Hi Roger, Please leave magic out of this, as any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magichttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws. The trouble is that the stuff in our skulls does not appear to be that much different from a bunch of diodes and transistors. Our brains obey the very same physical laws! What makes the brain special? I agree with what you say above. I suspect that the brain uses quantum entanglement effects to both synchronize and update sense content in ways that cannot obtain from purely classical physical methods. What leads you to suspect this? The weird delay effect that Libet et al observed as discussed herehttp://www.dichotomistic.com/mind_readings_chapter%20on%20libet.html. If I understand your point correctly, the phenomenon that needs explanation is the apparent simultaneity of various sensations which tests have indicated take varying amounts of time to process. Is this right? If so, I don't see how instantaneous communication can solve this problem. If it takes 100 ms to process auditory sensations, and 200 ms to process visual sensations, then even with some form of instant communication, or synchronization, one element still has to wait for the processing to complete. There are lots of things our brain conveniently covers up. We have a fairly large blind spot near the middle of our vision, but our brain masks that. Our blinks periodically pull a dark shroud over our world, but they go unnoticed. Our eyes and orientation of our heads are constantly changed, but it doesn't feel to us like the world is spinning when we turn our heads. Our eyes can only focus on a small (perhaps 3 degree) area, but it doesn't feel as though we are peering through a straw. So I do not find it very surprising that the brain might apply yet another trick on us, making us think different sense data was finished processing at the same time when it was not. Quantum entanglement allows for a variable window of duration via the EPR effect. If we look at a QM system, there is no delay in changes of the state of the system. All of the parts of it operate simultaneously, not matter how far apart them might be when we think of them as distributed in space time. This is the spooky action at a distance that has upset the classical scientists for so long. It has even been shown that one can derive the appearance of classical type signaling from the quantum pseudo-telepathy effecthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_pseudo-telepathy . I don't quite follow how EPR helps in this case. EPR doesn't communicate any information, and there is no need for FTL spooky action at a distance unless one assumes there can only be a single outcome for a measurement (CI). Even if FTL is involved in creating an illusion of simultaneity, couldn't light speed be fast enough, or even 200 feet per second of nerve impulses? If one runs an emulation of a mind, it doesn't matter if it takes 500 years to finish the computation, or 500 nanoseconds. The perceived first person experience of the mind will not differ. So the difference between delays in processing time and resulting perceptions may be a red herring in the search for theories of the brain's operation. Our mechanical machines lack the ability to report on their 1p content thus we are using their disability to argue against their possible abilities. A computer that could both generate an internal self-model and report on it would lead us to very different conclusions! I agree. Jason -- The point that I am making is that our brain seems to be continuously generating a virtual reality model of the world that includes our body and what we are conscious of is that model. I like this description of a brain: that of a dreaming / reality creating machine. Does a machine made up of gears, springs and levers do this? Could one made of diodes and transistors do it? Maybe... No one has shown me a cogent argument that they could not. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
First to Bruno's response to *(R):3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimately doesn''t work, it lowers every body's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work.* ** *I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars.* ** It is a 'trap' to falsify the adequate taxing of the 'rich' as a *leftist attempt to distributing richness*. It does not include more than a requirement for THEM to pay their FAIR share - maybe more than the not-so-rich layers (e.g. higher use of transportation, foreign connections, financial means, etc. - all costing money to the country) in spite of their lower share in the present unjust taxation-scheme. The rest of your reply is appreciable, however the 'crumbling' down may only follow a total disaster for the not-so-rich people. The said 'taxing' is not a 'trickle down' trick, it is providing the (missing) means to society to stay healthy and sane. (JM) Now to Brent's addendum: I agree - although Brent, too, has fallen into the trap of a misidentified problem-view: the equalization of wealth, a 200 year obsolete idea that cannot work for several reasons. Socialism (not to even mentioning communism) are never realized (realizable?) dreams of idealists (calling themselves materialists). Then again I would not identify 'the rich' as *...**people who live comfortably solely on their investments... * which may not be objectionable (ppensioners, etc.) but the USERS of *wealth*in directing the life of the country. Though they may do so, they should contribute from their share of fortune to the expenses. And PLEASE, Brent, do not even utter in econo-political discussion the word *FAIRNESS! * John M ** On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 3:29 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/3/2012 8:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. I'm not sure what is meant by 'taxing the rich doesn't ultimately work'? If it means it doesn't produce equality and prosperity, I'd agree. But in the U.S. the tax rate paid by the rich has been higher (even much higher) in the past and at the same time there was prosperity and economic growth. Now the rich (by which I mean people who live comfortably solely on their investments) pay a lower tax rate than the poorest working person. So 'taxing the rich' can certainly work in the sense of fairness. Brent -- -- 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: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On 9/4/2012 1:12 PM, John Mikes wrote: *//* It is a 'trap' to falsify the adequate taxing of the 'rich' as a *leftist attempt to distributing richness*. It does not include more than a requirement for THEM to pay their FAIR share - maybe more than the not-so-rich layers (e.g. higher use of transportation, foreign connections, financial means, etc. - all costing money to the country) in spite of their lower share in the present unjust taxation-scheme. ... And PLEASE, Brent, do not even utter in econo-political discussion the word *_FAIRNESS!_* So is it OK if I use FAIR and unjust? Brent -- 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: There is no such thing as cause and effect
What struck me is that the the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. seem to be exporting jobs overseas and hiding their money there as well. Richard On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 4:12 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: First to Bruno's response to (R):3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimately doesn''t work, it lowers every body's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. It is a 'trap' to falsify the adequate taxing of the 'rich' as a leftist attempt to distributing richness. It does not include more than a requirement for THEM to pay their FAIR share - maybe more than the not-so-rich layers (e.g. higher use of transportation, foreign connections, financial means, etc. - all costing money to the country) in spite of their lower share in the present unjust taxation-scheme. The rest of your reply is appreciable, however the 'crumbling' down may only follow a total disaster for the not-so-rich people. The said 'taxing' is not a 'trickle down' trick, it is providing the (missing) means to society to stay healthy and sane. (JM) Now to Brent's addendum: I agree - although Brent, too, has fallen into the trap of a misidentified problem-view: the equalization of wealth, a 200 year obsolete idea that cannot work for several reasons. Socialism (not to even mentioning communism) are never realized (realizable?) dreams of idealists (calling themselves materialists). Then again I would not identify 'the rich' as ...people who live comfortably solely on their investments... which may not be objectionable (ppensioners, etc.) but the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. Though they may do so, they should contribute from their share of fortune to the expenses. And PLEASE, Brent, do not even utter in econo-political discussion the word FAIRNESS! John M On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 3:29 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/3/2012 8:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. I'm not sure what is meant by 'taxing the rich doesn't ultimately work'? If it means it doesn't produce equality and prosperity, I'd agree. But in the U.S. the tax rate paid by the rich has been higher (even much higher) in the past and at the same time there was prosperity and economic growth. Now the rich (by which I mean people who live comfortably solely on their investments) pay a lower tax rate than the poorest working person. So 'taxing the rich' can certainly work in the sense of fairness. Brent -- -- 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. -- 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: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers
Bruno Marchal wrote: Right. It makes only first person sense to PA. But then RA has succeeded in making PA alive, and PA could a posteriori realize that the RA level was enough. Sorry, but it can't. It can't even abstract itself out to see that the RA level would be enough. Why? No system can reason as if it did not exist, because to be coherent it would than have to cease to reason. If PA realizes that RA is enough, then this can only mean that RA + its own realization about RA is enough. Bruno Marchal wrote: I see you doing this all the time; you take some low level that can be made sense of by something transcendent of it and then claim that the low level is enough. For the ontology. Yes. I honestly never understood what you mean by ontology and epistemology. For me it seems that it is exactly backwards. We need the 1-p as the ontology, because it is what necessarily primitively exists from the 1-p view. Arithmetic is one possible epistemology. I don't even get what it could mean that numbers are ontologically real, as we know them only as abstractions (so they are epistemology). If we try to talk as if numbers are fundamentally real - independent of things - we can't even make sense of numbers. What is the abstract difference between 1 and 2 for example. What is the difference between 0s and 0ss? What's the difference between the true statement that 1+1=2 and the false statement that 1+2=2? How is any of it more meaningful than any other abitrary string of symbols? We can only make sense of them as we see that they refer to numbers *of objects* (like for example the string s). If we don't do that we could as well embrace axioms like 1=2 or 1+1+1=1 or 1+9=2343-23 or 1+3=*?ABC or whatever else. Bruno Marchal wrote: Strangely you agree for the 1-p viewpoint. But given that's what you *actually* live, I don't see how it makes sense to than proceed that there is a meaningful 3- p point of view where this isn't true. This point of view is really just an abstraction occuring in the 1-p of view. Yes. If this is true, how does it make sense to think of the abstraction as ontologically real and the non-abstraction as mere empistemology? It seems like total nonsense to me (sorry). Bruno Marchal wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: With comp, to make things simple, we are high level programs. Their doing is 100* emulable by any computer, by definition of programs and computers. OK, but in this discussion we can't assume COMP. I understand that you take it for granted when discussing your paper (because it only makes sense in that context), but I don't take it for granted, and I don't consider it plausible, or honestly even meaningful. Then you have to tell me what is not Turing emulable in the functioning of the brain. *everything*! Rather show me *what is* turing emulable in the brain. Even according to COMP, nothing is, since the brain is material and matter is not emulable. As I see it, the brain as such has nothing to do with emulability. We can do simulations, sure, but these have little to do with an actual brain, except that they mirror what we know about it. It seems to me you are simply presuming that everything that's relevant in the brain is turing emulable, even despite the fact that according to your own assumption nothing really is turing emulable about the brain. Bruno Marchal wrote: Also, I don't take comp for granted, I assume it. It is quite different. I am mute on my personal beliefs, except they change all the time. But you seems to believe that comp is inconsistent or meaningless, but you don't make your point. I don't know how to make it more clear. COMP itself leads to the conclusion that our brains fundamentally can't be emulated, yet it starts with the assumption that they can be emulated. We can only somehow try to rescue COMPs consistency by postulating that what the brain is doesn't matter at all, only what an emulation of it would be like. I genuinely can't see the logic behind this at all. Bruno Marchal wrote: In which way does one thing substitute another thing if actually the correct interpretation of the substitution requires the original? It is like saying No you don't need the calculator to calculate 24,3^12. You can substitute it with pen and pencil, where you write down 24,3^12=X and then insert the result of the calculation (using your calculator) as X. If COMP does imply that interpreting a digital einstein needs a real einstein (or more) than it contradicts itself (because in this case we can't *always* say YES doctor, because then there would be no original left to interpret the emulation). Really it is quite a simple point. If you substitute the whole universe with an emulation (which is possible according to COMP) It is not. You are right, it is not, if we take the conclusions of your reasoning into account. Yet COMP itself strongly seems to
Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 4:06:06 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: The point that I am making is that our brain seems to be continuously generating a virtual reality model of the world that includes our body and what we are conscious of is that model. I like this description of a brain: that of a dreaming / reality creating machine. What is it the brain creating this dream/reality out of? Non-reality? Intangible mathematical essences? The problem with representational qualia is that in order to represent something, there has to be something there to begin with to represent. Why would the brain need to represent the data that it already has to itself in some fictional layer of abstraction? Why convert the quantitative data of the universe into made up qualities and then hide that conversion process from itself? Does a machine made up of gears, springs and levers do this? Could one made of diodes and transistors do it? Maybe... No one has shown me a cogent argument that they could not. They question isn't why they could, it is why they would. What possible function would be served by a cuckoo clock having an experience of being a flying turnip? Craig Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/gsHN6DCowPUJ. 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: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
On 9/4/2012 4:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 1:33 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 9/4/2012 1:19 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 9/4/2012 11:17 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Jason Resch IMHO Not to disparage the superb work that computers can do, but I think that it is a mistake to anthropo-morphise the computer. It has no intelligence, no life, no awareness, there's nothing magic about it. It's just a complex bunch of diodes and transistors. Hi Roger, Please leave magic out of this, as any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws. The trouble is that the stuff in our skulls does not appear to be that much different from a bunch of diodes and transistors. Our brains obey the very same physical laws! What makes the brain special? I agree with what you say above. I suspect that the brain uses quantum entanglement effects to both synchronize and update sense content in ways that cannot obtain from purely classical physical methods. What leads you to suspect this? The weird delay effect that Libet et al observed as discussed here http://www.dichotomistic.com/mind_readings_chapter%20on%20libet.html. If I understand your point correctly, the phenomenon that needs explanation is the apparent simultaneity of various sensations which tests have indicated take varying amounts of time to process. Is this right? Hi Jason, Yes, but think of it as a window where everything in it is effectively simultaneous. If so, I don't see how instantaneous communication can solve this problem. If it takes 100 ms to process auditory sensations, and 200 ms to process visual sensations, then even with some form of instant communication, or synchronization, one element still has to wait for the processing to complete. Right, but all are put together so that the audio and the video are always in synch. Problems with this mechanism are conjectured to cause schizophrenia. David Eagleman is looking into this kind of stuff but isn't considering the quantum possibility. There are lots of things our brain conveniently covers up. We have a fairly large blind spot near the middle of our vision, but our brain masks that. Our blinks periodically pull a dark shroud over our world, but they go unnoticed. Our eyes and orientation of our heads are constantly changed, but it doesn't feel to us like the world is spinning when we turn our heads. Our eyes can only focus on a small (perhaps 3 degree) area, but it doesn't feel as though we are peering through a straw. So I do not find it very surprising that the brain might apply yet another trick on us, making us think different sense data was finished processing at the same time when it was not. Exactly. The point is that all sensations are given as synchronized with each other even though that cannot happen. Imagine a loom that used many different threads each of which takes different speed processes to be generated. It is as if they could be speed up or slowed down such that the overall tapestry is always flowing at a single steady pace. Think of the lag effect that we see with our smartphones. Is there something like a waiting for sender to respond in our brains? Quantum entanglement allows for a variable window of duration via the EPR effect. If we look at a QM system, there is no delay in changes of the state of the system. All of the parts of it operate simultaneously, not matter how far apart them might be when we think of them as distributed in space time. This is the spooky action at a distance that has upset the classical scientists for so long. It has even been shown that one can derive the appearance of classical type signaling from the quantum pseudo-telepathy effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_pseudo-telepathy. I don't quite follow how EPR helps in this case. EPR doesn't communicate any information, and there is no need for FTL spooky action at a distance unless one assumes there can only be a single outcome for a measurement (CI). Even if FTL is involved in creating an illusion of simultaneity, couldn't light speed be fast enough, or even 200 feet per second of nerve impulses? No copyable information is involved. The literature of quantum games (where the pseudo-telepathy effect shows up) explain this. If one runs an emulation of a mind, it doesn't matter if it takes 500 years to finish the computation, or 500 nanoseconds. The perceived first person experience of the mind will not differ. So the
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On 9/4/2012 4:23 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote: What struck me is that the the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. seem to be exporting jobs overseas and hiding their money there as well. Richard OK, let us confiscate all capital and distribute it evenly to every one. Then what? On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 4:12 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: First to Bruno's response to (R):3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimately doesn''t work, it lowers every body's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. It is a 'trap' to falsify the adequate taxing of the 'rich' as a leftist attempt to distributing richness. It does not include more than a requirement for THEM to pay their FAIR share - maybe more than the not-so-rich layers (e.g. higher use of transportation, foreign connections, financial means, etc. - all costing money to the country) in spite of their lower share in the present unjust taxation-scheme. The rest of your reply is appreciable, however the 'crumbling' down may only follow a total disaster for the not-so-rich people. The said 'taxing' is not a 'trickle down' trick, it is providing the (missing) means to society to stay healthy and sane. (JM) Now to Brent's addendum: I agree - although Brent, too, has fallen into the trap of a misidentified problem-view: the equalization of wealth, a 200 year obsolete idea that cannot work for several reasons. Socialism (not to even mentioning communism) are never realized (realizable?) dreams of idealists (calling themselves materialists). Then again I would not identify 'the rich' as ...people who live comfortably solely on their investments... which may not be objectionable (ppensioners, etc.) but the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. Though they may do so, they should contribute from their share of fortune to the expenses. And PLEASE, Brent, do not even utter in econo-political discussion the word FAIRNESS! John M -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: consciousness as the experiencre of time
That's what I'm saying. You can have ideal consciousness without space. On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 7:56:36 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg The experience of time is called consciousness, the simplest kind. Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net javascript: 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - *From:* Craig Weinberg javascript: *Receiver:* everything-list javascript: *Time:* 2012-09-04, 00:48:59 *Subject:* Re: Personally I call the Platonic realm anything inextended.Anything outside of spacetime. On Monday, September 3, 2012 8:33:34 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg Personally I call the Platonic realm anything inextended. Time necessarily drops out if space drops out. I see the opposite. If space drops out, all you have is time. I can count to 10 in my mind without invoking any experience of space. I can listen to music for hours without conjuring any spatial dimensionality. I think that space is the orthogonal reflection of experience, and that time, is that reflection (space) reflected again back into experience a spatially conditioned a posteriori reification of experience. Craig Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - *From:* Craig Weinberg *Receiver:* everything-list *Time:* 2012-08-31, 16:32:54 *Subject:* Re: Re: Technological (Machine) Thinking and Lived Being (Erlebnis) On Friday, August 31, 2012 5:53:24 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg You're on the right track, but everybody from Plato on says that the Platonic world is timeless, eternal. And nonextended or spaceless (nonlocal). Leibniz's world of monads satisfies these requirements. But there is more, there is the Supreme Monad, which experiences all. And IS the All. Hegel and Spinoza have the Totality, Kabbala has Ein Sof, There's the Tao, Jung's collective unconscious, there's Om, Brahman, Logos, Urgrund, Urbild, first potency, ground of being, the Absolute, synthetic a prori, etc. I call it the Totality-Singularity or just Everythingness. It's what there is when we aren't existing as a spatiotemporally partitioned subset. It is by definition nonlocal and a-temporal as there is nothing to constrain its access to all experiences. Craig Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 8/31/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - *From:* Craig Weinberg *Receiver:* everything-list *Time:* 2012-08-30, 13:53:09 *Subject:* Re: Technological (Machine) Thinking and Lived Being (Erlebnis) I think that the Platonic realm is just time, and that time is nothing but experience. Thought is the experience of generating hypothetical experience. The mistake is presuming that because we perceive exterior realism as a topology of bodies that the ground of being must be defined in those terms. In fact, the very experience you are having right now - with your eyes closed or half asleep...this is a concretely and physically real part of the universe, it just isn't experienced as objects in space because you are the subject of the experience. If anything, the outside world is a Platonic realm of geometric perspectives and rational expectations. Interior realism is private time travel and eidetic fugues; metaphor, irony, anticipations, etc. Not only Platonic, but Chthonic. Thought doesn't come from a realm, realms come from thought. Craig On Thursday, August 30, 2012 11:54:32 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: What is thinking ? Parmenides thought that thinking and being are one, which IMHO I agree with. Thoughts come to us from the Platonic realm, which I personally, perhaps mistakenly, associate with what would be Penrose's incomputable realm. Here is a brief discussion of technological or machine thinking vs lived experience. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ref/10.1080/00201740310002398#tabModule IMHO Because computers cannot have lived experience, they cannot think. Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy Volume 46http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/sinq20?open=46#vol_46, Issue 3 http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/sinq20/46/3, 2003 Thinking and Being: Heidegger and Wittgenstein on Machination and Lived-Experience Version of record first published: 05 Nov 2010 Heidegger's treatment of 'machination' in the Beitr锟� e zur Philosophie begins the critique of technological thinking that would centrally characterize his later work. Unlike later discussions of technology, the critique of machination in Beitr锟�e connects its arising to the predominance of
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
Don't be silly. On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 8:49 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 9/4/2012 4:23 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote: What struck me is that the the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. seem to be exporting jobs overseas and hiding their money there as well. Richard OK, let us confiscate all capital and distribute it evenly to every one. Then what? On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 4:12 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: First to Bruno's response to (R):3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimately doesn''t work, it lowers every body's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. It is a 'trap' to falsify the adequate taxing of the 'rich' as a leftist attempt to distributing richness. It does not include more than a requirement for THEM to pay their FAIR share - maybe more than the not-so-rich layers (e.g. higher use of transportation, foreign connections, financial means, etc. - all costing money to the country) in spite of their lower share in the present unjust taxation-scheme. The rest of your reply is appreciable, however the 'crumbling' down may only follow a total disaster for the not-so-rich people. The said 'taxing' is not a 'trickle down' trick, it is providing the (missing) means to society to stay healthy and sane. (JM) Now to Brent's addendum: I agree - although Brent, too, has fallen into the trap of a misidentified problem-view: the equalization of wealth, a 200 year obsolete idea that cannot work for several reasons. Socialism (not to even mentioning communism) are never realized (realizable?) dreams of idealists (calling themselves materialists). Then again I would not identify 'the rich' as ...people who live comfortably solely on their investments... which may not be objectionable (ppensioners, etc.) but the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. Though they may do so, they should contribute from their share of fortune to the expenses. And PLEASE, Brent, do not even utter in econo-political discussion the word FAIRNESS! John M -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. -- 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.
Sane2004 Step One
Taking another look at Sane2004. This isn't so much as a challenge to Bruno, just sharing my notes of why I disagree. Not sure how far I will get this time, but here are my objections to the first step and the stipulated assumptions of comp. I understand that the point is to accept the given definition of comp, and in that respect, I have no reason to doubt that Bruno has accomplished what he sets out to as far as making a good theory within comp, and if he has not, I wouldn't be qualified to comment on it anyhow. From my perspective however, this is all beside the point, since the only point that matters is the actual truth of what consciousness actually is, and what is it's actual relation to physics and information. Given the fragile and precious nature of our own survival, I think that implications for teleportation and AI simulation/personhood which are derived from pure theory rather than thorough consideration of realism would be reckless to say the least. *Step one* talks about teleportation in terms of being reconstructed with ambient organic materials. If comp were true though, no organic materials or reconstructions would be necessary. The scanning into a universal machine would be sufficient. Taking this to the China Brain level, the universal machine could be a trillion people with notebooks, pencils, paper, and erasers, talking to each other over cell phones. This activity would have to collectively result in the teleported person now being conjured as if by incantation as a consequence of...what? The writing and erasing on paper? The calling and speaking on cell phones? Where does the experience of the now disembodied person come in? Step one talks about annihilation as well, but it is not clear what role this actually plays in the process, except to make it seem more like teleportation and less like what it actually would be, which is duplication. If I scan an original document and email the scan, I have sent a duplicate, not teleported the original. I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions: *yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the entire thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain function and that your brain function can be replaced by the functioning of non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human individuality is a universal commodity. *Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of resources, supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from realism from the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does data enter or exit a computation? *Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self justifying independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in the dark. Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of that. Wouldn't computers tend to be self-correcting by virtue of the pull toward arithmetic truth within each logic circuit? Where do errors come from? Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/Pc173EEJR4IJ. 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: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 7:42 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 9/4/2012 4:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 1:33 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 9/4/2012 1:19 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 9/4/2012 11:17 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Jason Resch IMHO Not to disparage the superb work that computers can do, but I think that it is a mistake to anthropo-morphise the computer. It has no intelligence, no life, no awareness, there's nothing magic about it. It's just a complex bunch of diodes and transistors. Hi Roger, Please leave magic out of this, as any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magichttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws. The trouble is that the stuff in our skulls does not appear to be that much different from a bunch of diodes and transistors. Our brains obey the very same physical laws! What makes the brain special? I agree with what you say above. I suspect that the brain uses quantum entanglement effects to both synchronize and update sense content in ways that cannot obtain from purely classical physical methods. What leads you to suspect this? The weird delay effect that Libet et al observed as discussed herehttp://www.dichotomistic.com/mind_readings_chapter%20on%20libet.html. If I understand your point correctly, the phenomenon that needs explanation is the apparent simultaneity of various sensations which tests have indicated take varying amounts of time to process. Is this right? Hi Jason, Yes, but think of it as a window where everything in it is effectively simultaneous. Perhaps this is the content of a certain computational state? If so, I don't see how instantaneous communication can solve this problem. If it takes 100 ms to process auditory sensations, and 200 ms to process visual sensations, then even with some form of instant communication, or synchronization, one element still has to wait for the processing to complete. Right, but all are put together so that the audio and the video are always in synch. Problems with this mechanism are conjectured to cause schizophrenia. David Eagleman is looking into this kind of stuff but isn't considering the quantum possibility. There are lots of things our brain conveniently covers up. We have a fairly large blind spot near the middle of our vision, but our brain masks that. Our blinks periodically pull a dark shroud over our world, but they go unnoticed. Our eyes and orientation of our heads are constantly changed, but it doesn't feel to us like the world is spinning when we turn our heads. Our eyes can only focus on a small (perhaps 3 degree) area, but it doesn't feel as though we are peering through a straw. So I do not find it very surprising that the brain might apply yet another trick on us, making us think different sense data was finished processing at the same time when it was not. Exactly. The point is that all sensations are given as synchronized with each other even though that cannot happen. Imagine a loom that used many different threads each of which takes different speed processes to be generated. It is as if they could be speed up or slowed down such that the overall tapestry is always flowing at a single steady pace. Think of the lag effect that we see with our smartphones. Is there something like a waiting for sender to respond in our brains? Maybe the qualia isn't related to the processing of the sense information, but in sharing the results with the other parts of the brain (see modularity of mind http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modularity-mind/ ). Then by delaying the output by the appropriate amount, or by matching results at a higher level integration, the synchronization can be made. I think modularity of mind explains well many aspects of consciousness, and also how anesthesia works. Quantum entanglement allows for a variable window of duration via the EPR effect. If we look at a QM system, there is no delay in changes of the state of the system. All of the parts of it operate simultaneously, not matter how far apart them might be when we think of them as distributed in space time. This is the spooky action at a distance that has upset the classical scientists for so long. It has even been shown that one can derive the appearance of classical type signaling from the quantum pseudo-telepathy effecthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_pseudo-telepathy . I don't quite follow how EPR helps in this case. EPR doesn't communicate any information, and there is no need for FTL spooky action at a distance unless one assumes there can only be a single outcome for a measurement (CI). Even if FTL is involved in creating an illusion of simultaneity, couldn't light speed be fast enough, or even 200 feet per
Re: Sane2004 Step One
On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 06:48:58PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote: I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions: *yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the entire thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain function and that your brain function can be replaced by the functioning of non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human individuality is a universal commodity. Calling it a sleight of hand is a bit rough. It is the meat of the comp assumption, and spelling it out this way makes it very explicit. Either you agree you can be copied (without feeling a thing), or you don't. If you do, you must face up to the consequences of the argument, if you don't, then you do not accept computationalism, and the consequences of the UDA do not apply to your worldview. *Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of resources, supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from realism from the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does data enter or exit a computation? It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two questions simply are relevant. *Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self justifying independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in the dark. Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of that. AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural numbers. In fact, for COMP, and the UDA, Turing completeness of primitive reality is sufficient, but Bruno chose the natural numbers as his base reality because it is more familiar to his correspondents. Wouldn't computers tend to be self-correcting by virtue of the pull toward arithmetic truth within each logic circuit? Where do errors come from? Again, these two questions seem irrelevant. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/Pc173EEJR4IJ. 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. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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: Sane2004 Step One
On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 10:09:45 PM UTC-4, Russell Standish wrote: On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 06:48:58PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote: I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions: *yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the entire thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain function and that your brain function can be replaced by the functioning of non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human individuality is a universal commodity. Calling it a sleight of hand is a bit rough. Maybe. In the sense that sleight of hand implies intentional deception. More of a de facto sleight of hand. It is the meat of the comp assumption, and spelling it out this way makes it very explicit. Either you agree you can be copied (without feeling a thing), or you don't. If you do, you must face up to the consequences of the argument, if you don't, then you do not accept computationalism, and the consequences of the UDA do not apply to your worldview. If they do not apply to my worldview, then they compete with my worldview, so I am entitled to debunk the premises, if not the consequences of the argument. *Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of resources, supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from realism from the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does data enter or exit a computation? It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two questions simply are relevant. That's begging the question. Why are mathematical theses necessarily abstract? My point is that if we assume abstraction is possible from the start, then physics and subjective realism become irrelevant and redundant appendages. *Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self justifying independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in the dark. Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of that. AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural numbers. What is that implication or commitment based on? Naive preference for logic over sensation? In fact, for COMP, and the UDA, Turing completeness of primitive reality is sufficient, but Bruno chose the natural numbers as his base reality because it is more familiar to his correspondents. Wouldn't computers tend to be self-correcting by virtue of the pull toward arithmetic truth within each logic circuit? Where do errors come from? Again, these two questions seem irrelevant. Why? They are counterfactuals for comp. If primitive realism is modeled on natural numbers, why does physically originated noise and entropy distort the execution of arithmetic processes but arithmetic processes do not, by themselves, counter things like signal attenuation? Good programs should heal bad wiring. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/kN-nRb3us5MJ. 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: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
On 9/4/2012 8:39 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 4:06:06 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: The point that I am making is that our brain seems to be continuously generating a virtual reality model of the world that includes our body and what we are conscious of is that model. I like this description of a brain: that of a dreaming / reality creating machine. What is it the brain creating this dream/reality out of? Non-reality? Intangible mathematical essences? The problem with representational qualia is that in order to represent something, there has to be something there to begin with to represent. Why would the brain need to represent the data that it already has to itself in some fictional layer of abstraction? Why convert the quantitative data of the universe into made up qualities and then hide that conversion process from itself? Does a machine made up of gears, springs and levers do this? Could one made of diodes and transistors do it? Maybe... No one has shown me a cogent argument that they could not. They question isn't why they could, it is why they would. What possible function would be served by a cuckoo clock having an experience of being a flying turnip? Craig Hi Craig, The absence of Proof is not Proof of absence + If it is not impossible, it is is compulsory = Best assume that it can and does happen. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On 9/4/2012 9:07 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 8:49:45 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 9/4/2012 4:23 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote: What struck me is that the the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. seem to be exporting jobs overseas and hiding their money there as well. Richard OK, let us confiscate all capital and distribute it evenly to every one. Then what? then we have democracy? No, because people always congregate into groups, it is their nature. And from there it is Lord of the Flies all over. It has happened many times before. Why do we never learn? wouldn't even need to confiscate all capital, and I don't think that anyone is suggesting that. Just make hoarding wealth more expensive. Sure! A tax credit for investing. Oh way, that already exists! It is why the investment tax is so low as it is! Maybe follow the Scandinavian model on a trial basis for 20 years in a handful of cities. Scandinavia is a bad place to build a model because it has a homogeneous population. Such populations behave, on average, very different from highly diverse populations. Segregation into polarized groups happens much slower in homogenous populations. You might check out the meme flow in such conditions, its amazing. Craig -- -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Sane2004 Step One
On 9/4/2012 9:48 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: Taking another look at Sane2004. This isn't so much as a challenge to Bruno, just sharing my notes of why I disagree. Not sure how far I will get this time, but here are my objections to the first step and the stipulated assumptions of comp. I understand that the point is to accept the given definition of comp, and in that respect, I have no reason to doubt that Bruno has accomplished what he sets out to as far as making a good theory within comp, and if he has not, I wouldn't be qualified to comment on it anyhow. From my perspective however, this is all beside the point, since the only point that matters is the actual truth of what consciousness actually is, and what is it's actual relation to physics and information. Given the fragile and precious nature of our own survival, I think that implications for teleportation and AI simulation/personhood which are derived from pure theory rather than thorough consideration of realism would be reckless to say the least. Hi Craig, Excellent post! *Step one* talks about teleportation in terms of being reconstructed with ambient organic materials. If comp were true though, no organic materials or reconstructions would be necessary. The scanning into a universal machine would be sufficient. Yep, the assumption is that the function that gives rise to Sense is exactly representable as countable and recursively enumerable functions. The trick is finding the machine configuration that matches each of these. That's where the engineers come in and the theorists go out the door. Taking this to the China Brain level, the universal machine could be a trillion people with notebooks, pencils, paper, and erasers, talking to each other over cell phones. This activity would have to collectively result in the teleported person now being conjured as if by incantation as a consequence of...what? The writing and erasing on paper? The calling and speaking on cell phones? Where does the experience of the now disembodied person come in? The person rides the computation, it is not located any particular place. But all this is predicated on the condition that consciousness is, at its more rubimentary level, nothing but countable and recursively enumerable functions. THe real question that we need to ask is: Might there be a point where we no longer are dealing with countable and recursively enumerable functions? What about countable and recursively enumerable functions that are coding for other countable and recursively enumerable functions? Are those still computable? So far the answer seems to be: Yes, they are. But what about the truth of the statements that those countable and recursively enumerable functions encode? Are they countable and recursively enumerable functions? Nope! Those are something else entirely! Step one talks about annihilation as well, but it is not clear what role this actually plays in the process, except to make it seem more like teleportation and less like what it actually would be, which is duplication. If I scan an original document and email the scan, I have sent a duplicate, not teleported the original. Notice that both the duplication and the teleportation, as discussed, assume that the information content is exactly copyable. This is not qubits that are involved... The point here is that this comp model assume that Reality is, at is ground level, classical. This is where my head starts spinning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO9FD7zI7k0 with Bruno's ideas I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions: *yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the entire thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain function and that your brain function can be replaced by the functioning of non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human individuality is a universal commodity. Ummhummm, but it is! Why is that is so amazing?! Out notion of individuality is tied to the autonomously moving and detecting and feeding and reproducing machine that our minds inhabit! Why does its precise constitution matter? All that matters is that it can exactly carry our the necessary functions. Individual minds are just different versions of one and the same mind! To steal an idea from Deutsch, Other histories are just different universes are just different minds... The hard question is: How the hell do they get synchronized with each other? We know that the synchronization cannot exist ahead of time, simply because that is a massive contradiction! What if the synchronization is just accidental (like Bruno proposes)? Well, not sure about how that would solve the problem! Why? Because the chances of an accidental synchronization of an arbitrarily long sequence of matchings between arbitrarily many minds (each defined in terms of infinitely many computations
Re: Sane2004 Step One
On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: yes, doctor: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the entire thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain function and that your brain function can be replaced by the functioning of non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human individuality is a universal commodity. We knew you didn't accept this, so the rest of the argument is irrelevant to you. However, I'm still not sure despite multiple posts what your position is on how much of your brain function could be replaced by an appropriate machine. Presumably you agree that some of it can. For example, if your job is to repeatedly push a button then a computer could easily control a robot to perform this function. And this behaviour could be made incrementally more complicated, so that for example the robot would press the button faster if it heard the command faster, if that were also part of your job. With a good enough computer, good enough I/O devices and good enough programming the robot could perform very complex tasks. You would say it still does only what it's programmed to do, but how far do you think given the most advanced technology it could get slotting into human society and fooling everyone into believing that it is human? What test would you devise in order to prove that it was not? Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to 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: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
On 9/4/2012 9:54 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 7:42 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote: Hi Jason, Yes, but think of it as a window where everything in it is effectively simultaneous. Perhaps this is the content of a certain computational state? It cannot be just one. Even dovetailing many of them together does not achieve simultaneity. We have to keep up with all the other computations occurring all over the place. We must not think of the brain as an Isolated entity. If so, I don't see how instantaneous communication can solve this problem. If it takes 100 ms to process auditory sensations, and 200 ms to process visual sensations, then even with some form of instant communication, or synchronization, one element still has to wait for the processing to complete. Right, but all are put together so that the audio and the video are always in synch. Problems with this mechanism are conjectured to cause schizophrenia. David Eagleman is looking into this kind of stuff but isn't considering the quantum possibility. There are lots of things our brain conveniently covers up. We have a fairly large blind spot near the middle of our vision, but our brain masks that. Our blinks periodically pull a dark shroud over our world, but they go unnoticed. Our eyes and orientation of our heads are constantly changed, but it doesn't feel to us like the world is spinning when we turn our heads. Our eyes can only focus on a small (perhaps 3 degree) area, but it doesn't feel as though we are peering through a straw. So I do not find it very surprising that the brain might apply yet another trick on us, making us think different sense data was finished processing at the same time when it was not. Exactly. The point is that all sensations are given as synchronized with each other even though that cannot happen. Imagine a loom that used many different threads each of which takes different speed processes to be generated. It is as if they could be speed up or slowed down such that the overall tapestry is always flowing at a single steady pace. Think of the lag effect that we see with our smartphones. Is there something like a waiting for sender to respond in our brains? Maybe the qualia isn't related to the processing of the sense information, but in sharing the results with the other parts of the brain (see modularity of mind http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modularity-mind/ ). Then by delaying the output by the appropriate amount, or by matching results at a higher level integration, the synchronization can be made. I think modularity of mind explains well many aspects of consciousness, and also how anesthesia works. Sure, but how does that account for the rest of the world? Think about how is it that two people can hold a conversation. How does the brain of one of the converses keep up and even anticipate the response to the other person's words? If it takes up to 1/2 a sec to hear - process - respond, where is the lag effect that should obviously occur? The brains of people engaged in a conversation are somehow synchronized so that the 1/2 sec lag time vanishes. How the hell does this happen? If what is really going on is happening at the quantum level and the world around us is just a classical illusion that it is generating, then the problem vanishes! Why? Because time vanishes in a pure state QM system! There is no delay or lag involved at all! My hunch is that what we think is reality is just a puppet show of what is really going on under the binary classical surface. Quantum entanglement allows for a variable window of duration via the EPR effect. If we look at a QM system, there is no delay in changes of the state of the system. All of the parts of it operate simultaneously, not matter how far apart them might be when we think of them as distributed in space time. This is the spooky action at a distance that has upset the classical scientists for so long. It has even been shown that one can derive the appearance of classical type signaling from the quantum pseudo-telepathy effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_pseudo-telepathy. I don't quite follow how EPR helps in this case. EPR doesn't communicate any information, and there is no need for FTL spooky action at a distance unless one assumes there can only be a single outcome for a measurement (CI). Even if FTL is involved in creating an illusion of simultaneity, couldn't light speed be fast enough, or even 200 feet per second of nerve impulses? No copyable information is involved. The literature of quantum games (where the pseudo-telepathy effect shows up) explain this.
Re: Sane2004 Step One
On 9/4/2012 10:19 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 06:48:58PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote: I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions: *yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the entire thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain function and that your brain function can be replaced by the functioning of non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human individuality is a universal commodity. Calling it a sleight of hand is a bit rough. It is the meat of the comp assumption, and spelling it out this way makes it very explicit. Either you agree you can be copied (without feeling a thing), or you don't. If you do, you must face up to the consequences of the argument, if you don't, then you do not accept computationalism, and the consequences of the UDA do not apply to your worldview. Hi Russel, In Craig's defense. When did ontological considerations become a matter of contingency? You cannot Choose what is Real! That is the entire point of Reality. It is not up to the choice of any one. It is that which is incontrovertible for All of us. The Moon does not vanish when you stop looking at it, simply because you're not its only onlooker! *Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of resources, supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from realism from the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does data enter or exit a computation? It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two questions simply are relevant. The issue of I/O is not irrelevant. *Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self justifying independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in the dark. Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of that. AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural numbers. Note quite. AR is the stipulation that primitive reality = the natural numbers. The idea has been around for a long time. We silly humans simply cannot wrap our minds around the possibility that more exists than we can count! We must be able to count what we can communicate about in the context of any one message, but this does not place an upper finite bound on the host of possible messages. In fact, for COMP, and the UDA, Turing completeness of primitive reality is sufficient, but Bruno chose the natural numbers as his base reality because it is more familiar to his correspondents. Sure, but this results in a consistent solipsism of a single mind. It is a prison of reflections of itself, over and over, a Ground Hog Day http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_yDWQsrajA where there is no possible escape. I am interested in a non-prison version of comp. Wouldn't computers tend to be self-correcting by virtue of the pull toward arithmetic truth within each logic circuit? Where do errors come from? Again, these two questions seem irrelevant. No, you just don't understand him. Craig -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Sane2004 Step One
On 9/4/2012 8:59 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: Notice that both the duplication and the teleportation, as discussed, assume that the information content is exactly copyable. Not exactly. Only sufficiently accurately to maintain your consciousness. This is not qubits that are involved... The point here is that this comp model assume that Reality is, at is ground level, classical. It doesn't assume that. A fully quantum computation can be performed on a classical, i.e. Turing, computer. Bruno would just say it just takes a lower level of substitution. Brent This is where my head starts spinning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO9FD7zI7k0 with Bruno's ideas.. -- 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: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 11:14:17 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 9/4/2012 9:07 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 8:49:45 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 9/4/2012 4:23 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote: What struck me is that the the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. seem to be exporting jobs overseas and hiding their money there as well. Richard OK, let us confiscate all capital and distribute it evenly to every one. Then what? then we have democracy? No, because people always congregate into groups, it is their nature. And from there it is Lord of the Flies all over. It has happened many times before. Why do we never learn? I think that's why Jefferson was keen on periodic revolutions. If inequality is inevitable though, it makes sense to mediate that tendency to some extent if we can, rather than giving carte blanche to the winning savages. It's like saying we should learn that there is always crime so why bother with police. Isn't civilization based upon the effort to tame our innate tendencies toward self interest? Or at least to agree to conspire against the barbarians outside of the walls. wouldn't even need to confiscate all capital, and I don't think that anyone is suggesting that. Just make hoarding wealth more expensive. Sure! A tax credit for investing. Oh way, that already exists! It is why the investment tax is so low as it is! Investing in guaranteed payouts is what makes hoarding of wealth possible. Why would we want to give tax breaks for the wealthy to find ways of taking more money out of the economy faster? At the plutocrat level, you should be rewarded only for investing in non-profit enterprises that lose money. Being able to invest huge amounts of money, especially unearned money from a dynastic fortune, is a privilege that should be taxed, not rewarded. Maybe follow the Scandinavian model on a trial basis for 20 years in a handful of cities. Scandinavia is a bad place to build a model because it has a homogeneous population. Such populations behave, on average, very different from highly diverse populations. Segregation into polarized groups happens much slower in homogenous populations. You might check out the meme flow in such conditions, its amazing. If by homogeneous you mean financially homogeneous, then a plan which tilts the economy in favor of the middle class should by definition make any place into a more homogeneous society - in which case the Scandinavian model would be expected to perform as it does for them now. If you are talking about anything else, then I suspect it's just a coded racism. This country was built in large part by slaves. We exploit poor migrant workers. There may not be a choice ultimately for us but to choose whether to become slaves and disposable workers ourselves (assuming we are not already) in a feudal plantation-prison society or to settle the score and go after those who continue to benefit the most from the system as it is. In any case, there is no reason to think that experimenting with a Scandinavian type system, or even Canadian, British, etc, when it comes to health care would not be better than what we have now. The biggest problem is that our political assumptions are unfalsifiable. No matter how far our standard of living plummets and how the far-too-rich get richer at everyone else's expense, it can always be suggested that it could be worse had we not done what we did. Only through experimentation in a scientific way will we ever learn anything. Craig Craig -- -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/TCkITfdw-KcJ. 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: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer
On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 11:23 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 9/4/2012 9:54 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 7:42 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: Hi Jason, Yes, but think of it as a window where everything in it is effectively simultaneous. Perhaps this is the content of a certain computational state? It cannot be just one. Even dovetailing many of them together does not achieve simultaneity. We have to keep up with all the other computations occurring all over the place. We must not think of the brain as an Isolated entity. If so, I don't see how instantaneous communication can solve this problem. If it takes 100 ms to process auditory sensations, and 200 ms to process visual sensations, then even with some form of instant communication, or synchronization, one element still has to wait for the processing to complete. Right, but all are put together so that the audio and the video are always in synch. Problems with this mechanism are conjectured to cause schizophrenia. David Eagleman is looking into this kind of stuff but isn't considering the quantum possibility. There are lots of things our brain conveniently covers up. We have a fairly large blind spot near the middle of our vision, but our brain masks that. Our blinks periodically pull a dark shroud over our world, but they go unnoticed. Our eyes and orientation of our heads are constantly changed, but it doesn't feel to us like the world is spinning when we turn our heads. Our eyes can only focus on a small (perhaps 3 degree) area, but it doesn't feel as though we are peering through a straw. So I do not find it very surprising that the brain might apply yet another trick on us, making us think different sense data was finished processing at the same time when it was not. Exactly. The point is that all sensations are given as synchronized with each other even though that cannot happen. Imagine a loom that used many different threads each of which takes different speed processes to be generated. It is as if they could be speed up or slowed down such that the overall tapestry is always flowing at a single steady pace. Think of the lag effect that we see with our smartphones. Is there something like a waiting for sender to respond in our brains? Maybe the qualia isn't related to the processing of the sense information, but in sharing the results with the other parts of the brain (see modularity of mind http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modularity-mind/ ). Then by delaying the output by the appropriate amount, or by matching results at a higher level integration, the synchronization can be made. I think modularity of mind explains well many aspects of consciousness, and also how anesthesia works. Sure, but how does that account for the rest of the world? Think about how is it that two people can hold a conversation. How does the brain of one of the converses keep up and even anticipate the response to the other person's words? If it takes up to 1/2 a sec to hear - process - respond, where is the lag effect that should obviously occur? The brains of people engaged in a conversation are somehow synchronized so that the 1/2 sec lag time vanishes. How the hell does this happen? The brain can process data as it is listening (like buffering a video download) and likely predict the final word before it is done being uttered. To prove the brain somehow overcomes this half second delay in a convincing way, you would need to engineer an experiment where a number flashes on a screen and a person has to push the right button in under half a second. If you need two brains involved, then put a screen between them with a computer screen and number pad facing each one. Each time one person enters the right number, a new number appears on the other person's screen. And it goes back and forth which each person pressing the button as quickly as they can after the new number appears. If this experiment shows the interaction can take place faster than the video processing of the visual centers in the brain then this would become a problem worth trying to solve. I'm not convinced there is any problem here that can't be explained using classical means. Jason If what is really going on is happening at the quantum level and the world around us is just a classical illusion that it is generating, then the problem vanishes! Why? Because time vanishes in a pure state QM system! There is no delay or lag involved at all! My hunch is that what we think is reality is just a puppet show of what is really going on under the binary classical surface. Quantum entanglement allows for a variable window of duration via the EPR effect. If we look at a QM system, there is no delay in changes of the state of the system. All of the parts of it operate simultaneously, not matter how far apart them might be
Re: Sane2004 Step One
On 9/4/2012 9:37 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: Hi Russel, In Craig's defense. When did ontological considerations become a matter of contingency? You cannot Choose what is Real! But you choose what is real in your theory of the world. Then you see how well your theory measures up. The Standard Model is a theory of energy and matter that has passed thousands of empirical tests to very high accuracy. Its ontology is elementary particles. It replaced a lot of other theories that had different ontologies. That is the entire point of Reality. It is not up to the choice of any one. It is that which is incontrovertible for All of us. The Moon does not vanish when you stop looking at it, simply because you're not its only onlooker! So you think somebody has to be looking at the Moon for it to exist? Brent -- 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: Sane2004 Step One
On 9/5/2012 12:14 AM, meekerdb wrote: On 9/4/2012 7:19 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 06:48:58PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote: I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions: *yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the entire thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain function and that your brain function can be replaced by the functioning of non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human individuality is a universal commodity. Calling it a sleight of hand is a bit rough. It is the meat of the comp assumption, and spelling it out this way makes it very explicit. Either you agree you can be copied (without feeling a thing), or you don't. If you do, you must face up to the consequences of the argument, if you don't, then you do not accept computationalism, and the consequences of the UDA do not apply to your worldview. I suppose I can be copied. But does it follow that I am just the computations in my brain. It seems likely that I also require an outside environment/world with which I interact in order to remain conscious. Bruno passes this off by saying it's just a matter of the level of substitution, perhaps your local environment or even the whole galaxy must be replaced by a digital representation in order to maintain your consciousness unchanged. But this bothers me. Suppose it is the whole galaxy, or the whole observed universe. Does it really mean anything then to say your brain has been replaced ALONG WITH EVERYTHING ELSE? It's just the assertion that everything is computable. Hear Hear! And if it is computable then it is nothing but countable and recursively enumerable functions. But can functions generate I/O from themselves? We see nice examples of entire computable universes in MMORP games that have many people addicted to them. One thing about them, we require resources to be run. Nothing happens if you don't pay the fee. *Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of resources, supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from realism from the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does data enter or exit a computation? It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two questions simply are relevant. *Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self justifying independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in the dark. Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of that. AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural numbers. ISTM that Bruno rejects any reality behind the natural numbers (or other system of computation). If often argues that the natural numbers exist, because they satisfy true propositions: There exists a prime number between 1 and 3, therefore 2 exists. This assumes a Platonist view of mathematical objects, which Peter D. Jones has argued against. Platonism fails because it cannot explain how many minds interact. It is a wonderful ontology theory of a single mind, but not of many differing minds. Brent -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Sane2004 Step One
On 9/5/2012 12:38 AM, meekerdb wrote: On 9/4/2012 8:59 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: Notice that both the duplication and the teleportation, as discussed, assume that the information content is exactly copyable. Not exactly. Only sufficiently accurately to maintain your consciousness. If the copy is not exact then functional equivalence is not exact either and this is fatal for the model. This is not qubits that are involved... The point here is that this comp model assume that Reality is, at is ground level, classical. It doesn't assume that. A fully quantum computation can be performed on a classical, i.e. Turing, computer. Bruno would just say it just takes a lower level of substitution. Yes, a classical computer can emulate a finite quantum computation given sufficient resources. This is not the same thing as the EPR effect that I am considering. The idea that I am considering is more like this: Consider the visible physical universe. We know from observation that not only is it open on one end and that it's expansion is accelerating. People want to put this off on some Dark Energy. I think that it is something else, driving it. Consider a classical computer that needs to emulate a quantum computation. It has to have even increasing resources to keep up with the QC if the QC is modeling an expanding universe. It we take Bruno's AR literally, where are these resources coming from? Let's turn the tables and make Reality Quantum in its essence. The classical computation may just be something that the QC is running. What is most interesting is that the QC can run an arbitrary number of classical computations, all at the same time. The CC can only barely compute the emulation of a single QC. What if we have an infinite and eternal QC running infinitely many finite CCs and each of these CC's is trying to emulate a single QC. Map this idea out and look at the nice self-referential loop that this defines! Could the brain be a CC that is running on a QC. It would make the many drafts model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_drafts_model work! Dennett would be so proud. (Not really!) Brent -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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.
