date:20120915


On 9/15/2012 10:13 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:


I like this conversation! I am interested in the materials required for the vessel 
and the plumbing. Some kind of ceramic coated titanium or zirconium? Alumina reinforced 
steel ? 


I think most reactors using Hastelloy plumbing (one of several nickel alloys).  The 
containment vessels are steel and concrete.  They differ a lot depending on whether they 
are pressurized water reactors, boiling water reactors, sodium cooled,...  One advantage 
of molten-salt reactors is that they aren't pressurized.


Brent

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Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over the past 420,000 years


On 9/15/2012 11:16 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote:

That should have happened from the get go (thorium reactors),
except that a bomb cannot be made from thorium.

Hi Richard,

I noticed that as well. It seems that the more uses something has 
the more likely it is to happen.




On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 11:07 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:


On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 3:11 PM, meekerdb  wrote:


I'm giving a talk Monday on why we should be building molten-salt thorium
reactors to replace the burning of fossil fuels for electrical power.


Brent,

That sounds awesome.  Where will this talk be, will the presentation be put
online?

I think the move from fossil fuels to Thorium reactors will have a
stabilizing effect on world politics.  The U.S. would have little interest
in the middle east if not for its concern over energy resources.  There is
10X the energy in the Thorium contained in coal than we get from burning it,
and the release of radioactive Thorium (from burning coal) leads to the
deaths of untold thousands each year.

I think if humanity can survive the next 50 years without destroying
ourselves, or setting ourselves back into a new dark age, we will be in the
clear, having surpassed what Carl Sagan called a civilizations technological
adolescence.  In 50 years from now, it is likely (given current trends) that
the computational power necessary to emulate a human brain will be very
cheap and very efficient (more efficient than our current brains which
require 20 watts of food energy).

Yet, if we can power brains directly with energy (bypassing the
photosynthesis cycle), we move from needing 1 acre of farmland per person,
to a 6 by 6 inch square worth of sunlight to power each human brain.
Instead of using 40% of the Earth's photosynthetic capacity, we would use a
fraction of a percent, and we would live richer lives than any billionaire
does today: we could experience anything that anyone might imagine.
Regenerative medicine (the ability to re-grow tissues and organs) is
predicted to become mainstream by 2025, so those that can survive the next
10 - 15 years could survive for eons.

Jason

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Re: Thorium!

On 9/16/2012 12:20 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Sat, Sep 15 meekerdb > wrote:

> in the present case there is no mystery about where the CO2
comes from and whether it's a natural cycle - it's us.

Probably, but I'm not terribly concerned about it, the increase in CO2 
over the last century is really just a blip; in fact at NO time in the 
last 600 million years has CO2 levels been significantly lower than 
now and during most of that time it was about 10 times higher than 
now, sometimes closer to 15 or even 20. And yet life thrived. And I 
think people sometimes forget that CO2 is not the most important 
greenhouse gas, water vapor is.

> I'm giving a talk Monday on why we should be building
molten-salt thorium reactors to replace the burning of fossil
fuels for electrical power.

Excellent! I think Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors are the best hope 
for replacing fossil fuels which will run out eventually. Consider the 
advantages:

*Thorium is much more common than Uranium, almost twice as common as 
Tin. And Thorium is easier to extract from its ore than Uranium. It 
would only take 2000 tons of Thorium to equal the energy in 6 billion 
tons of coal that the world uses each year. There is 120 TRILLION tons 
of Thorium in the earth's crust and if the world needs 10 times as 
much energy as we get from just coal then we will run out of Thorium 
in the crust of this planet in 6 billion years

* A Thorium reactor burns up all the Thorium in it; A conventional 
light water reactor only burns .7% of the Uranium in it, the U235.

* To burn the remaining 99.3% of Uranium, the U238, you'd have to use 
a exotic fast neutron breeder reactor, Thorium reactors use slow 
neutrons and so are inherently more stable because you have much more 
time to react if something goes wrong. Also breeders produce massive 
amounts of Plutonium which is a bad thing if you're worried about 
people making bombs. Thorium reactors produce an insignificant amount 
of Plutonium.

* Thorium reactors do produce Uranium 233 and theoretically you could 
make a bomb out of that, but it would be contaminated with Uranium 232 
which is a powerful gamma ray emitter which would make it suicidal to 
work with unless extraordinary precautions were taken, and even then 
the unexploded bomb would be so radioactive it would give away its 
presents if you tried to hide it, destroy its electronic firing 
circuits and degrade its chemical explosives. For these reasons even 
after 65 years nobody has a Uranium 233 bomb in its stockpile.

*A Thorium reactor only produces about 1% as much waste as a 
conventional reactor and the stuff it does make is not as nasty, after 
about 5 years 87% of it would be safe and the remaining 13% in 300 
years; a conventional reactor would take 100,000 years.

*A Thorium reactor has an inherent safety feature, the fuel is in 
liquid form (Thorium dissolved in un-corrosive molten Fluoride salts) 
so if for whatever reason things get too hot the liquid expands and so 
the fuel gets less dense and the reaction slows down.

*There is yet another fail safe device. At the bottom of the reactor 
is something called a "freeze plug", fans blow on it to freeze it 
solid, if things get too hot the plug melts and the liquid drains out 
into a holding tank and the reaction stops; also if all electronic 
controls die due to a loss of electrical power the fans will stop the 
plug will melt and the reaction will stop.

*Thorium reactors work at much higher temperatures than conventional 
reactors so you have better energy efficiency; in fact they are so hot 
the waste heat could be used to desalinate sea water or generate 
hydrogen fuel from water.

* Although the liquid Fluoride salt is very hot it is not under 
pressure so that makes the plumbing of the thing much easier, and even 
if you did get a leak it would not be the utter disaster it would be 
in a conventional reactor; that is also why the containment building 
in common light water reactors need to be so much larger than the 
reactor itself. With Thorium nothing is under pressure and there is no 
danger of a disastrous phase change so the expensive containment 
building can be made much more compact.

  John K Clark

I like this conversation! I am interested in the materials required 
for the vessel and the plumbing. Some kind of ceramic coated titanium or 
zirconium? Alumina reinforced steel 
? 
A quasi-crystal material coating in the interior of the pipes would be 
nice to minimize friction and dampen unwanted heat dissipation if such 
existed that was stable at high temperatures...

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Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html

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Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over the past 420,000 years

2012-09-15 Thread John Clark

On Sat, Sep 15 meekerdb  wrote:

> in the present case there is no mystery about where the CO2 comes from
> and whether it's a natural cycle - it's us.
>

Probably, but I'm not terribly concerned about it, the increase in CO2 over
the last century is really just a blip; in fact at NO time in the last 600
million years has CO2 levels been significantly lower than now and during
most of that time it was about 10 times higher than now, sometimes closer
to 15 or even 20. And yet life thrived. And I think people sometimes forget
that CO2 is not the most important greenhouse gas, water vapor is.

> I'm giving a talk Monday on why we should be building molten-salt thorium
> reactors to replace the burning of fossil fuels for electrical power.
>

Excellent! I think Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors are the best hope for
replacing fossil fuels which will run out eventually. Consider the
advantages:

*Thorium is much more common than Uranium, almost twice as common as Tin.
And Thorium is easier to extract from its ore than Uranium. It would only
take 2000 tons of Thorium to equal the energy in 6 billion tons of coal
that the world uses each year. There is 120 TRILLION tons of Thorium in the
earth's crust and if the world needs 10 times as much energy as we get from
just coal then we will run out of Thorium in the crust of this planet in 6
billion years

* A Thorium reactor burns up all the Thorium in it; A conventional light
water reactor only burns .7% of the Uranium in it, the U235.

* To burn the remaining 99.3% of Uranium, the U238, you'd have to use a
exotic fast neutron breeder reactor, Thorium reactors use slow neutrons and
so are inherently more stable because you have much more time to react if
something goes wrong. Also breeders produce massive amounts of Plutonium
which is a bad thing if you're worried about people making bombs. Thorium
reactors produce an insignificant amount of Plutonium.

* Thorium reactors do produce Uranium 233 and theoretically you could make
a bomb out of that, but it would be contaminated with Uranium 232 which is
a powerful gamma ray emitter which would make it suicidal to work with
unless extraordinary precautions were taken, and even then the unexploded
bomb would be so radioactive it would give away its presents if you tried
to hide it, destroy its electronic firing circuits and degrade its chemical
explosives. For these reasons even after 65 years nobody has a Uranium 233
bomb in its stockpile.

*A Thorium reactor only produces about 1% as much waste as a conventional
reactor and the stuff it does make is not as nasty, after about 5 years 87%
of it would be safe and the remaining 13% in 300 years; a conventional
reactor would take 100,000 years.

*A Thorium reactor has an inherent safety feature, the fuel is in liquid
form (Thorium dissolved in un-corrosive molten Fluoride salts) so if for
whatever reason things get too hot the liquid expands and so the fuel gets
less dense and the reaction slows down.

*There is yet another fail safe device. At the bottom of the reactor is
something called a "freeze plug", fans blow on it to freeze it solid, if
things get too hot the plug melts and the liquid drains out into a holding
tank and the reaction stops; also if all electronic controls die due to a
loss of electrical power the fans will stop the plug will melt and the
reaction will stop.

*Thorium reactors work at much higher temperatures than conventional
reactors so you have better energy efficiency; in fact they are so hot the
waste heat could be used to desalinate sea water or generate hydrogen fuel
from water.

* Although the liquid Fluoride salt is very hot it is not under pressure so
that makes the plumbing of the thing much easier, and even if you did get a
leak it would not be the utter disaster it would be in a conventional
reactor; that is also why the containment building in common light water
reactors need to be so much larger than the reactor itself. With Thorium
nothing is under pressure and there is no danger of a disastrous phase
change so the expensive containment building can be made much more compact.

  John K Clark

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Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over the past 420,000 years


On 9/15/2012 8:07 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 3:11 PM, meekerdb > wrote:





I'm giving a talk Monday on why we should be building molten-salt thorium 
reactors
to replace the burning of fossil fuels for electrical power.


Brent,

That sounds awesome.  Where will this talk be, will the presentation be put 
online?


No, but I'm using a lot of material from here: 
http://www.thoriumenergyalliance.com/downloads/AimHigh.pdf

and the book "Superfuel" by Richard Martin.



I think the move from fossil fuels to Thorium reactors will have a stabilizing effect on 
world politics.  The U.S. would have little interest in the middle east if not for its 
concern over energy resources.  There is 10X the energy in the Thorium contained in coal 
than we get from burning it,


Of course some people think giving humans unlimited power is like giving a 7 year-old a 
machine gun.


and the release of radioactive Thorium (from burning coal) leads to the deaths of untold 
thousands each year.


I think if humanity can survive the next 50 years without destroying ourselves, or 
setting ourselves back into a new dark age, we will be in the clear, having surpassed 
what Carl Sagan called a civilizations technological adolescence.  In 50 years from now, 
it is likely (given current trends) that the computational power necessary to emulate a 
human brain will be very cheap and very efficient (more efficient than our current 
brains which require 20 watts of food energy).


Yet, if we can power brains directly with energy (bypassing the photosynthesis cycle), 
we move from needing 1 acre of farmland per person, to a 6 by 6 inch square worth of 
sunlight to power each human brain.


So ignorant people being 'in the dark' wouldn't just be a figure of speech!

Brent

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Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over the past 420,000 years

2012-09-15 Thread Richard Ruquist

That should have happened from the get go (thorium reactors),
except that a bomb cannot be made from thorium.

On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 11:07 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 3:11 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>>
>> I'm giving a talk Monday on why we should be building molten-salt thorium
>> reactors to replace the burning of fossil fuels for electrical power.
>>
>
> Brent,
>
> That sounds awesome.  Where will this talk be, will the presentation be put
> online?
>
> I think the move from fossil fuels to Thorium reactors will have a
> stabilizing effect on world politics.  The U.S. would have little interest
> in the middle east if not for its concern over energy resources.  There is
> 10X the energy in the Thorium contained in coal than we get from burning it,
> and the release of radioactive Thorium (from burning coal) leads to the
> deaths of untold thousands each year.
>
> I think if humanity can survive the next 50 years without destroying
> ourselves, or setting ourselves back into a new dark age, we will be in the
> clear, having surpassed what Carl Sagan called a civilizations technological
> adolescence.  In 50 years from now, it is likely (given current trends) that
> the computational power necessary to emulate a human brain will be very
> cheap and very efficient (more efficient than our current brains which
> require 20 watts of food energy).
>
> Yet, if we can power brains directly with energy (bypassing the
> photosynthesis cycle), we move from needing 1 acre of farmland per person,
> to a 6 by 6 inch square worth of sunlight to power each human brain.
> Instead of using 40% of the Earth's photosynthetic capacity, we would use a
> fraction of a percent, and we would live richer lives than any billionaire
> does today: we could experience anything that anyone might imagine.
> Regenerative medicine (the ability to re-grow tissues and organs) is
> predicted to become mainstream by 2025, so those that can survive the next
> 10 - 15 years could survive for eons.
>
> Jason
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
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Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over the past 420,000 years

On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 3:11 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>
> I'm giving a talk Monday on why we should be building molten-salt thorium
> reactors to replace the burning of fossil fuels for electrical power.
>
>
Brent,

That sounds awesome.  Where will this talk be, will the presentation be put
online?

I think the move from fossil fuels to Thorium reactors will have
a stabilizing effect on world politics.  The U.S. would have little
interest in the middle east if not for its concern over energy resources.
 There is 10X the energy in the Thorium contained in coal than we get from
burning it, and the release of radioactive Thorium (from burning coal)
leads to the deaths of untold thousands each year.

I think if humanity can survive the next 50 years
without destroying ourselves, or setting ourselves back into a new dark
age, we will be in the clear, having surpassed what Carl Sagan called a
civilizations technological adolescence.  In 50 years from now, it is
likely (given current trends) that the computational power necessary to
emulate a human brain will be very cheap and very efficient (more efficient
than our current brains which require 20 watts of food energy).

Yet, if we can power brains directly with energy (bypassing the
photosynthesis cycle), we move from needing 1 acre of farmland per person,
to a 6 by 6 inch square worth of sunlight to power each human brain.
 Instead of using 40% of the Earth's photosynthetic capacity, we would use
a fraction of a percent, and we would live richer lives than
any billionaire does today: we could experience anything that anyone might
imagine.  Regenerative medicine (the ability to re-grow tissues and organs)
is predicted to become mainstream by 2025, so those that can survive the
next 10 - 15 years could survive for eons.

Jason

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Re: science only works with half a brain

On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 9:46 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 9/15/2012 7:36 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 2:50 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  On 9/15/2012 8:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>>  On 14 Sep 2012, at 18:36, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 8:32 AM, Stephen P. King 
>> wrote:
>>
>>>   I contend that universality is the independence of computations to
>>> any particular machine but there must be at least one physical system that
>>> can implement a given computation for that computation to be knowable. This
>>> is just a accessibility question, in the Kripke sense of accessible
>>> worlds .
>>>
>>>
>> Stephen,
>>
>>  Could you provide a definition of what you mean by 'physical system'?
>>
>>  Do you think it is possible, even in theory, for entities to
>> distinguish whether they are in a physical system or a mathematical one?
>>  If so, what difference would they test to make that distinction?
>>
>>
>>  I am "philosophically" pretty well convinced by this argument.
>>
>>  But there is still a logical problem, pointed by Peter Jones (1Z) on
>> this list.
>>
>>  Peter believes that comp makes sense only for primitively material
>> machine, period.
>>
>>  So he would answer to you that the mathematical machine is just not
>> conscious, and that the distinction you ask is the difference between being
>> conscious (and material) and being non conscious at all (and immaterial).
>>
>>  I don't see any way to reply to this which does not bring the movie
>> graph, the 323 principles, and that kind of stuff into account.
>>
>>  But of course I can understand that the idea that arithmetic is full of
>> immaterial philosophical zombies is rather weird, notably because they have
>> also endless discussion on zombie, and that arithmetic contains P. Jones
>> counterpart defending in exactly his way, that *he* is material, but Peter
>> does not care as they are zombie and are not conscious, in his theory.
>>
>>
>>  In Peter's ontology, with which I have considerable empathy, they simply
>> don't exist.  "Exist" is what distinguishes material things from Platonia's
>> abstractions - of course that doesn't play so well on something called the
>> *EVERYTHING-LIST*.  :-)
>>
>>
>  Brent,
>
>  Under what theory do you (or Peter) operate under to decide whether or
> not an abstraction in platonia "exists"?
>
>
> It's not arbitrary.  None of them exist.  That's what 'abstract' means.
>
>

Your assertion that they exist only abstractly (not concretely from
anyone's perspective) is arbitrary.

Jason

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Re: science only works with half a brain


On 9/15/2012 7:36 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 2:50 PM, meekerdb > wrote:


On 9/15/2012 8:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 14 Sep 2012, at 18:36, Jason Resch wrote:




On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 8:32 AM, Stephen P. King mailto:stephe...@charter.net>> wrote:

 I contend that universality is the independence of computations to any
particular machine but there must be at least one physical system that 
can
implement a given computation for that computation to be knowable. This 
is
just a accessibility question, in the Kripke sense of accessible worlds
.


Stephen,

Could you provide a definition of what you mean by 'physical system'?

Do you think it is possible, even in theory, for entities to distinguish 
whether
they are in a physical system or a mathematical one?  If so, what 
difference would
they test to make that distinction?


I am "philosophically" pretty well convinced by this argument.

But there is still a logical problem, pointed by Peter Jones (1Z) on this 
list.

Peter believes that comp makes sense only for primitively material machine, 
period.

So he would answer to you that the mathematical machine is just not 
conscious, and
that the distinction you ask is the difference between being conscious (and
material) and being non conscious at all (and immaterial).

I don't see any way to reply to this which does not bring the movie graph, 
the 323
principles, and that kind of stuff into account.

But of course I can understand that the idea that arithmetic is full of 
immaterial
philosophical zombies is rather weird, notably because they have also 
endless
discussion on zombie, and that arithmetic contains P. Jones counterpart 
defending
in exactly his way, that *he* is material, but Peter does not care as they 
are
zombie and are not conscious, in his theory.


In Peter's ontology, with which I have considerable empathy, they simply 
don't
exist.  "Exist" is what distinguishes material things from Platonia's 
abstractions -
of course that doesn't play so well on something called the 
*EVERYTHING-LIST*.  :-)


Brent,

Under what theory do you (or Peter) operate under to decide whether or not an 
abstraction in platonia "exists"?


It's not arbitrary.  None of them exist.  That's what 'abstract' means.

Brent

It seems arbitrary and rather biased to confer this property only to those abstractions 
that happen to be nearest to us.


Why should this additional property, namely "existence", make any difference regarding 
which structures in platonia can have the property of conscious?  It seems like this 
would lead to abstract objects that are only "abstractly conscious" and concrete objects 
which have the full-fledged "concrete consciousness".  After all, we say that 2 is even, 
not that it is "abstractly even".  If some program in platonia is conscious, is it 
abstractly conscious or just conscious?


I think our existence in this universe makes the conclusion clear.  In other branch of 
the wave function, or in other physical universes predicted by string theory, our 
universe exists only as an abstraction, yet our relative abstraction (to some entities) 
does not makes us into zombies.  Why should there be no symmetry in this regard?  How 
can our abstractions be zombies, while their abstractions are conscious?


Jason
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Re: science only works with half a brain

Stephen,

I'm not sure if you might have missed this message.  You have made other
replies in this thread, but not to the below message:

Thanks,

Jason

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 1:43 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 12:43 PM, Stephen P. King 
> wrote:
>
>>  On 9/14/2012 12:36 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 8:32 AM, Stephen P. King 
>> wrote:
>>
>>>   I contend that universality is the independence of computations to
>>> any particular machine but there must be at least one physical system that
>>> can implement a given computation for that computation to be knowable. This
>>> is just a accessibility question, in the Kripke sense of accessible
>>> worlds .
>>>
>>>
>> Stephen,
>>
>>  Could you provide a definition of what you mean by 'physical system'?
>>
>>
>> Hi Jason,
>>
>> Sure! A physical system is a scheme of invariant relata
>>
>
> I had to look up the definition of relata, and found: plural of relatum,
> and relatum = "one of the objects between which a relation is said to
> hold"
>
> So is it an accurate translation of "invariant relata" a "set of fixed
> relations that exist between objects"?
>
>
>> that has some non-invertible dynamic
>>
>
> I am not sure what you mean by "non-invertible dynamic".  As the dynamics
> of our universe appear to be invertible, I assume you mean something else,
> right?
>
>
>> that can be functionally equivalent to some computation.
>>
>>
> I think I understand what you mean here.
>
>
>>
>>
>>  Do you think it is possible, even in theory, for entities to
>> distinguish whether they are in a physical system or a mathematical one?
>>
>>
>> Not if we remove the means to distinguish self from "not-self".
>>
>
> I don't know why or how we could do this, or even fully understand what
> you mean by it.
>
> In any case, I asked if there is a way to make this distinction "even in
> theory".  So in theory, we don't have to remove the means to distinguish
> self from not-self, correct?  In that case, how would we make the
> distinction between physical universe and mathematical universe?
>
>
>>
>>
>>   If so, what difference would they test to make that distinction?
>>
>>
>> Physical systems have the capacity to be "located".
>>
>
> Where is our universe located?  What could its location be relative to?
>
>
>>  This is a difference over and beyond the internal distinctions of things.
>>
>
> Things can be located (relative to each other) in a mathematical universe
> too.
>
>
>>  I am trying to point out that one cannot just assume that other minds
>> exist to solve the "other minds" problem.
>>
>
> What problems arise if there is one mind or many?
>
>
>>  One has to have a sufficient reason to assume that "I am not just the
>> sum of things that I can imagine".
>>
>>
> I don't think this goes against what Bruno's UDA suggests.  It is wrong, I
> think, to interpret the UDA as implying we are a bunch of
> computational Boltzmann brains existing independently in the UD.  Instead,
> there may be an infinite number of "universes" (not what Bruno typically
> means by universe) which are mutually isolated and possibly digital or
> computational.  Observers may exist (in effect, as sub-programs) within
> these universes and interact with each other.  The trouble begins when any
> observer tries to determine which of these universes they exist in.  In
> effect, there may be an infinite number, and it is impossible to ever lock
> down which one it is.  Each measurement an observer performs changes the
> answer to that question.
>
> Jason
>
>

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Re: science only works with half a brain

On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 2:50 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 9/15/2012 8:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
>  On 14 Sep 2012, at 18:36, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 8:32 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:
>
>>   I contend that universality is the independence of computations to any
>> particular machine but there must be at least one physical system that can
>> implement a given computation for that computation to be knowable. This is
>> just a accessibility question, in the Kripke sense of accessible 
>> worlds
>> .
>>
>>
> Stephen,
>
>  Could you provide a definition of what you mean by 'physical system'?
>
>  Do you think it is possible, even in theory, for entities to distinguish
> whether they are in a physical system or a mathematical one?  If so, what
> difference would they test to make that distinction?
>
>
>  I am "philosophically" pretty well convinced by this argument.
>
>  But there is still a logical problem, pointed by Peter Jones (1Z) on
> this list.
>
>  Peter believes that comp makes sense only for primitively material
> machine, period.
>
>  So he would answer to you that the mathematical machine is just not
> conscious, and that the distinction you ask is the difference between being
> conscious (and material) and being non conscious at all (and immaterial).
>
>  I don't see any way to reply to this which does not bring the movie
> graph, the 323 principles, and that kind of stuff into account.
>
>  But of course I can understand that the idea that arithmetic is full of
> immaterial philosophical zombies is rather weird, notably because they have
> also endless discussion on zombie, and that arithmetic contains P. Jones
> counterpart defending in exactly his way, that *he* is material, but Peter
> does not care as they are zombie and are not conscious, in his theory.
>
>
> In Peter's ontology, with which I have considerable empathy, they simply
> don't exist.  "Exist" is what distinguishes material things from Platonia's
> abstractions - of course that doesn't play so well on something called the
> *EVERYTHING-LIST*.  :-)
>
>
Brent,

Under what theory do you (or Peter) operate under to decide whether or not
an abstraction in platonia "exists"?  It seems arbitrary and rather biased
to confer this property only to those abstractions that happen to be
nearest to us.

Why should this additional property, namely "existence", make any
difference regarding which structures in platonia can have the property of
conscious?  It seems like this would lead to abstract objects that are only
"abstractly conscious" and concrete objects which have the full-fledged
"concrete consciousness".  After all, we say that 2 is even, not that it is
"abstractly even".  If some program in platonia is conscious, is it
abstractly conscious or just conscious?

I think our existence in this universe makes the conclusion clear.  In
other branch of the wave function, or in other physical universes predicted
by string theory, our universe exists only as an abstraction, yet our
relative abstraction (to some entities) does not makes us into zombies.
 Why should there be no symmetry in this regard?  How can our abstractions
be zombies, while their abstractions are conscious?

Jason

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Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.


On 9/15/2012 8:32 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
It's doubtful that there has ever been such a pristine market. The 
basic exchange between free agents is in all real cases weighted by 
those interests which control and manipulate the market. Look at how 
Microsoft created their monopoly. It made crappy imitations of all of 
their potential competitors software and gave it away for free to 
drive them out of business - which they did. They knew that as long as 
their deal with IBM to distribute Windows with PCs, all they had to do 
was starve everyone else out.


Look at how CEOs sit on the each others board of directors and vote 
each other gigantic salary increases despite poor performance and 
blatant conflicts of interest.


At best, price always equals cost plus rent plus tax plus interest, so 
even if there were free agents who somehow had fair access to the 
market, their profit is still influenced by banks, government, and 
property owners. As soon as a new market is born however, all real 
opportunity to compete shakes out rapidly as business relations are 
consolidated and become entrenched. Innovators tend to be ripped off, 
bought, or shut out of the market.


The assumption of a free market is no less of a fantasy than the 
assumption of a communist utopia. They are two sides of the same coin.


Craig


I completely agree, but never assume that the perfect is the 
adversary of the possible. The "real world" involves only that which is 
consistent with all that are involved, that includes the good the bad 
and the ugly. Any market will have cheaters and knaves. That is factored 
into the prices. It is the "discount" factor.


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Stephen

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A comp model of the brain as a Maxwell Demon organizing experience


Setting aside the notion of metaphors, one might instead consider the brain as 
a 
Maxwell Demon organizing disorganized experience or raw perceptions 
(quale or entropy) into ordered thought (quanta or energy) by combining
Boltzman's theorem with Peirce's categories:


FIRSTNESS = raw experience or quale, whose measure is entropy
SECONDNESS = the organizing process (using intelligence)- Boltzmann theorem
THIRDNESS = quanta or order or energy, which is information as wprds or thought

The comp model would use all three of these entities- with all expressed as 
ergs,
no need for the metaphors. This view of the brain as converting 
entropy(experience)
into energy (thought) follows the path of other life processes.



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
9/15/2012  
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him  
so that everything could function."

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Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.

2012-09-15 Thread Craig Weinberg

It's doubtful that there has ever been such a pristine market. The basic 
exchange between free agents is in all real cases weighted by those 
interests which control and manipulate the market. Look at how Microsoft 
created their monopoly. It made crappy imitations of all of their potential 
competitors software and gave it away for free to drive them out of 
business - which they did. They knew that as long as their deal with IBM to 
distribute Windows with PCs, all they had to do was starve everyone else 
out.

Look at how CEOs sit on the each others board of directors and vote each 
other gigantic salary increases despite poor performance and blatant 
conflicts of interest.

At best, price always equals cost plus rent plus tax plus interest, so even 
if there were free agents who somehow had fair access to the market, their 
profit is still influenced by banks, government, and property owners. As 
soon as a new market is born however, all real opportunity to compete 
shakes out rapidly as business relations are consolidated and become 
entrenched. Innovators tend to be ripped off, bought, or shut out of the 
market.

The assumption of a free market is no less of a fantasy than the assumption 
of a communist utopia. They are two sides of the same coin.

Craig


On Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:37:04 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote:
>
>  Hi Alberto G. Corona 
>  
> At the heart of a market economy (which has existed since the cave man),
> there is a fundamental freedom, you can buy or sell if the price is right,
> where price = value = what you are willing to pay or sell for. So the 
> market
> is basically psychological and free and  is as old as man.
>  
>  
> Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
> 9/15/2012 
> 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:* 2012-09-15, 07:37:44
> *Subject:* Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.
>
>   Hi Roger,
> But neither Darwin nor Spencer discovered darwinism. a selection
> between alternatives is at the heart of every creative process (that
> creates order). It is a form of creative destruction. The market and
> the war are examples of such process. But it is also running now in
> this discussion. It is in our mind, that select and discard ideas
> depending on their consequences. It is in the political organization
> of the society etc.
>
> One of the first things that a darwinian process develops is a way to
> protect the created order from its own destructive nature. Capitalism
> in a democracy with the rule of law is a very sophisticated
> organization that run above a human nature that is deeply social. And
> this human nature is naturally selected. Probably the highest
> satisfaction that a man may have, abobe money, is to be helpful to
> others.
>
> Probably the natural human instincts of compassion would be enough
> without the inefficient artificial state-run welfare systems. A simple
> traditional religious commandments would suffice to remember our
> personal responsibilities with the others and would make these corrupt
> structures innecessary. This has been that way until few centuries
> ago. It would be more that enough in a society with so much resources
> like this. The problem in the actual situation is that the narrow
> selfishness that is being promoted in the "modern society" is not only
> dysfunctional at the social level, because it also makes necessary
> the externalization of the compassion away from the individual,
> because it is incompatible with the narrow selfish concept of freedom
> as absence of obligations. Not only that, because it is also
> dysfunctional at the individual level, because we as humans need to
> help others . We need to feel useful to others to be happy.
>
> 2012/9/14 Roger Clough >:
> > Hi Craig Weinberg
> >
> > Fortunately or unfortunately, capitalism is Darwinism, pure and simple.
> > So it can prepare for a better future, although it can be painful
> > at present. My own take on this is that there needs to be
> > a calculus of pleasure and pain. Jeremy Bentham suggested
> > perhaps an impfect one.
> >
> > In lieu of that, I am all for food stamps and safety
> > nets.
> >
> >
> > Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net 
> > 9/14/2012
> > 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: 2012-09-13, 12:28:09
> > Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Racism ? How's that implied ?
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thursday, September 13, 2012 8:33:47 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Craig Weinberg
> >>
> >> The fact is that the only incentive businesses look to is profit.
> >> So demonizing profit doesn't do any good.
> >> And urging them to hire workers doesn't work.
> >>
> >
> > Sounds exactly like cancer. T

Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-09-15 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

Just saw this article quite relevant to our discussion:

Researchers have used a neural implant to recapture a lost
decision-making process in monkeys—demonstrating that a neural
prosthetic can recover cognitive function in a primate brain.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429204/a-brain-implant-that-thinks/?nlid=nldly&nld=2012-09-14

On Saturday, 15 September 2012, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

> On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 2:55 AM, Craig Weinberg 
> >
> wrote:
>
> > What you think third party observable behavior means is the set of all
> > properties which are externally discoverable. I am saying that is a
> > projection of naive realism, and that in reality, there is no such set,
> and
> > that in fact the process of discovery of any properties supervenes on the
> > properties of all participants and the methods of their interaction.
>
> Of course there is a set of all properties that are externally
> discoverable, even if you think this set is very small! Moreover, this
> set has subsets, and we can limit our discussion to these subsets. For
> example, if we are interested only in mass, we can simulate a human
> perfectly using the right number of rocks. Even someone who believes
> in an immortal soul would agree with this.
>
> > My point of using cats in this thought experiment is to specifically
> point
> > out our naivete in assuming that instruments which extend our perception
> in
> > only the most deterministic and easy to control ways are sufficient to
> > define a 'third person'. If we look at the brain with a microscope, we
> see
> > those parts of the brain that microscopes can see. If we look at New York
> > with a swarm of cats, then we see the parts of New York that cats can
> see.
>
> Yes, but there are properties of the brain that may not be relevant to
> behaviour. Which properties are in fact important is determined by
> experiment. For example, we may replace the myelin sheath with a
> synthetic material that has similar electrical properties and then
> test an isolated nerve to see if action potentials propagate in the
> same way. If they do, then the next step is to incorporate the nerve
> in a network and see if the pattern of firing in the network looks
> normal. The step after that is to replace the myelin in the brain of a
> rat to see if the animal's behaviour changes. The modified rats are
> compared to unmodified rats by a blinded researcher to see if he can
> tell the difference. If no-one can consistently tell the difference
> then it is announced that the synthetic myelin appears to be a
> functionally identical substitute for natural myelin. As is the nature
> of science, another team of researchers may then find some deficit in
> the behaviour of the modified rats under conditions the first team did
> not examine. Scientists then make modifications to the formula of the
> synthetic myelin and do the experiments again.
>
> > This is the point of the thought experiment. The limitations of all
> forms of
> > measurement and perception preclude all possibility of there ever being a
> > such thing as an exhaustively complete set of third person behaviors of
> any
> > system.
> >
> > What is it that you don't think I understand?
>
> What you don't understand is that an exhaustively complete set of
> behaviours is not required. I don't access an exhaustively complete
> set of behaviours to determine if my friends are the same people from
> day to day, and in fact they are *not* the same systems from day to
> day, as they change both physically and psychologically. I have in
> mind a rather vague set of behavioural behavioural limits and if the
> people who I think are my friends deviate significantly from these
> limits I will start to worry.
>
>
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
>


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: US elections

2012-09-15 Thread John Clark

On Tue, Sep 11,  Russell Standish  wrote:

> I know this might be an impossible dream, but could we keep the list
> clear of parochial US election discussion, as it is clearly off-topic.
>

How could anything be off topic on the everything list?

  John K Clark

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Re: Re: Re: the "nothing but" fallacy.

2012-09-15 Thread John Clark

On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 7:22 AM, Roger Clough  wrote:

>Intelligence ? I don't think the word was available back then (Bible days).
>

Well, they certainly behaved as the didn't know what it meant to be
intelligent, but then why is the bible worth reading today? Why not read
something with a little more intellectual meat on its bones, like a Donald
Duck comic book?

>To understand the Bible you have to read it as a little child,
>

And there can be no better place for a child to start reading the Bible
than "And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of
their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend";
stories about how God likes to force people to eat their children and
friends makes such charming bedtime stories.

 > God did order a few massacres.

But only a *few* massacres, and hey God is just like the rest of us, He
sometimes does things He will regret when He gets into a hissy fit. I mean
we all have bad days.

> Those slaughter statements are mostly based on the old jewish laws in
> leviticus and numbers.
>

I will say this, the God of the Old testament may be the most unpleasant
character in all of fiction and He may have enjoyed forced cannibalism and
torture but at least once you were dead you were dead and He was finished
playing with you; but not so in the New Testament of Jesus the Prince of
Peace, Jesus is going to use all His skill to torture you as horribly as He
can for all of eternity if you take just one step out of line.

 > Jesus did away with them.
>

So you look at Jesus as a mass murderer who has reformed, or says He has.

> The forgiveness of Jesus also did away with the need for them. The Old
> Testament is the problem. The New Testament is the solution.
>

Christ was a jerk. I refer to the character portrayed in the bible, whether
there really was a historic figure who impressed the rubes with card tricks
and other stunts I don't know. Personally I'd be a lot more impressed if he
had taught us about the second law of thermodynamics rather than hear a
report of questionable accuracy about some water into wine trick. It took
the human race another 1800 years to learn about entropy and although it
teaches us nothing about morality neither do Christ's stunts, and unlike
the fermented grape juice bit you can't fake thermodynamics.

Christ was a nut, nutty as a fruit cake, or to put it in more politically
correct language, he had a mental illness that produced delusions of
grandeur. I don't think it was an act, I think he really thought he was God.

Christ was a martinet. His words "You serpents, you generation of vipers,
how can you escape the damnation of hell" sounds more like a typical flame
you can find anywhere on the net then it does the wisdom of a great sage.
Buddha, Lao-tse, and Socrates all had a much more enlightened attitude
toward those who disagreed with them, and they had it 500 years before
Jesus.

Christ was a creep. He believed in hell, he talked with glee about "wailing
and gnashing of teeth" and "these shall go away into everlasting fire". He
thought that torturing somebody, not for a billion years, not for a
trillion years but for an INFINITE number of years would be an amusing
thing to do to somebody he didn't like. I think cruelty on this monstrous
scale proves that Jesus Christ of the bible is morally indistinguishable
from Satan of the bible.

Christ was a idiot. He believed that God, that is to say himself, was
furious with the human race (something to do with fruit trees) and even
though he could do anything the only way for him to forgive the humans
would be for the humans to torture him to death, even though being a god he
can not die. Does any of this seem very smart to you?

 John K ClarK

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Re: Miraculous new invention.


On 9/15/2012 10:29 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 9/15/2012 9:20 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi meekerdb
Miraculous new invention. All plantlife eats CO2 and releases O2.


I have never seen biomass dymanics represented in the climate models...


Most biological carbon processing is in equilibrium.  Only if you cut down and sequester 
biomass (e.g. build houses out of lumber) or plant areas with new growth do you affect the 
equilibrium.  But some models consider the fermentation of the tundra when the permafrost 
melts - which will release enormous amounts of methane in relatively short time.  It's not 
biological, but the melting of methane calthrates on the ocean floor is already releasing 
a lot more methane than most models considered.


Brent

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Re: The poverty of computers


On 9/15/2012 9:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Most religion agree that God is not human conceivable, and that is why we can be deluded 
in recognizing sign, so that it is better to trust God for teaching Itself to the 
others, and not intervene too much on that plane.


What religion leaves it to God to teach the children of its adherents?

Brent

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Re: questions on machines, belief, awareness, and knowledge

On 9/15/2012 9:35 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 9/15/2012 4:11 AM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 02:55:17AM -0400, Stephen P. King wrote:

Dear Bruno,

Could you elaborate on what your definition of "a digital
machine" is?

Anything Turing emulable.

Dear Bruno,

OK. But you do understand that this assumes an unnecessary
restrictive definition of computation. I define computation as "any
transformation of information" and Information is defined as "the
difference between a pair that makes a difference to a third".

Hi Russell,

That is far too inclusive a definition of computation.

Not really, it only requires some way of representing the information such that it
can be transformed. The integers are not the only kind of number that we can represent
numbers (or any other mathematical object) with. IMHO, we are naive to think that Nature
is hobbled to only use integers to perform her Computations. We must never project our
deficiencies on Nature.

I would go even farther than Russell implies. A lot of the muddle about computation and
consciousness comes about because they are abstracted out of the world. That's why I like
to think in terms of robots or Mars rovers. Consciousness and computation are given their
meaning by their effecting actions in the world. To find out what a string of 1s and 0s
means a Mars rovers memory you need to see what effect they have on its actions. You know
that "1+1=10" means 1+1=2 when 10 in a register causes it to pick up two rocks.

So to further abstract computation to mean "transformation of information" will lead to
even more of a muddle.

Brent

A map from i in
N to the ith decimal place of Chaitin's number Omega would satisfy you
definition of transformation of information, yet the posession of such
an "algorithm" would render oneself omniscient.

That is exactly my point! I am forcing the issue of the implication of Universal
Turing Machines, they are implicitly omniscient unless they are restricted in some way.
Turing et al, considered the case of computations via NxN -> N functions but abstracted
away the resource requirements and we get very smart people, like Bruno, taking this as
to means that we can completely ignore the possibility of actually implementing a
computation and not jsut reasoning about some abstract object in our minds. The
Ultrafinitists and Intuitionist (like Normal Wildberger
for instance) have a valid critique
but forget that they too are fallible and project their limitations on Nature. I am
trying very hard to to do that!

You can answer any
question posable in a formal language by means of running this
algorithm for the correct decimal place. See Li and Vitanyi, page 218
for a discussion, or the reference they give:

Bennett& Gardiner, (1979) Scientific American, 241, 20-34.

Sure, but you are missing the point that I am trying to make. Unless there is at
least the possibility in principle for a given computation to be implemented somehow,
even if it is in the form of some pattern of chalk marks on a board or pattern of
neurons firing in a brain, there is no "reality" to a abstraction such as a Universal
Turing Machine. I am arguing against Immaterialism (and Materialism!) of any kind and
for a dual aspect monism (like that which David Chalmers discusses and argues for in his
book ).

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Re: science only works with half a brain


On 9/15/2012 8:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 14 Sep 2012, at 18:36, Jason Resch wrote:




On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 8:32 AM, Stephen P. King > wrote:


 I contend that universality is the independence of computations to any 
particular
machine but there must be at least one physical system that can implement a 
given
computation for that computation to be knowable. This is just a 
accessibility
question, in the Kripke sense of accessible worlds
.


Stephen,

Could you provide a definition of what you mean by 'physical system'?

Do you think it is possible, even in theory, for entities to distinguish whether they 
are in a physical system or a mathematical one?  If so, what difference would they test 
to make that distinction?


I am "philosophically" pretty well convinced by this argument.

But there is still a logical problem, pointed by Peter Jones (1Z) on this list.

Peter believes that comp makes sense only for primitively material machine, 
period.

So he would answer to you that the mathematical machine is just not conscious, and that 
the distinction you ask is the difference between being conscious (and material) and 
being non conscious at all (and immaterial).


I don't see any way to reply to this which does not bring the movie graph, the 323 
principles, and that kind of stuff into account.


But of course I can understand that the idea that arithmetic is full of immaterial 
philosophical zombies is rather weird, notably because they have also endless discussion 
on zombie, and that arithmetic contains P. Jones counterpart defending in exactly his 
way, that *he* is material, but Peter does not care as they are zombie and are not 
conscious, in his theory.


In Peter's ontology, with which I have considerable empathy, they simply don't exist.  
"Exist" is what distinguishes material things from Platonia's abstractions - of course 
that doesn't play so well on something called the *EVERYTHING-LIST*.  :-)


Brent



I would be happy if there was a simple way to avoid such quasi ad hoc zombies, without 
going through MGA, which is quite subtle for some people, and perhaps weak as it is not 
clear if comp really logically imply the 323 principle.


Bruno


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



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Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.


On 9/15/2012 9:35 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Alberto G. Corona
At the heart of a market economy (which has existed since the cave man),
there is a fundamental freedom, you can buy or sell if the price is right,
where price = value = what you are willing to pay or sell for. So the 
market

is basically psychological and free and  is as old as man.
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
9/15/2012
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him
so that everything could function."


Hi Roger,

I agree 100%. One might ask what is the agenda of those that 
steadfastly refuse to understand this basic fact.


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Re: Miraculous new invention.

On 9/15/2012 9:20 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi meekerdb
Miraculous new invention. All plantlife eats CO2 and releases O2.

I have never seen biomass dymanics represented in the climate models...

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
9/15/2012
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:* 2012-09-14, 13:10:59
*Subject:* Re: victims of faith

On 9/14/2012 6:10 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:
> The "evidence" has strong indications of being manipulated for
the purpose of a
> political agenda.

It is certainly cherry-picked by minions of the fossil fuel industry.

> The way that the sensors are distributed and their data is
weighed is the subject of a
> lot of controversy

Which has been addressed by direct comparison of different
sensors. Of course the fossil
fuel industry doesn't have to prove anything, they just create
fake controversy and take
advantage of the provisional nature of all science.

> We do not have models that are accurate enough to even
accurately retrodict the
> variation in temperatures so why are we trusting them in their
predictions?.

Because whatever other factors there are it is straightforward to
predict that increasing
atmospheric CO2 will increase temperatures, something already
calculated by Arrhenius in
1890. Burning fossil fuel releases CO2 into the atmosphere. The
concentration of CO2 is
increasing proportionately. Measured temperatures are increasing.

Brent

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Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers


On 9/15/2012 9:12 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King
And then there is Leibniz's identity of indiscernibles, identity
there meaning that you only need one of them, throw the rest away.
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
9/15/2012
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him
so that everything could function."

Hi Roger,

Yes but! We have to solve the "other minds" problem or be content 
to simmer in our solipsist state of being. This requires something 
"external" to the singleton sets of objects. We need to have "room to 
make copies" of that would be otherwise identical objects.


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Re: science only works with half a brain


Hi Roger,

You might think that you are being consistent with an 
anti-materialist stance, but consider how your wordings appear to use 
the exact mereological relations that are required for a materialist 
ontology. A mereology is a scheme of relations between "wholes" and 
"parts", it is what defines the primitives that we build our set 
theories from. See: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/


I don't have time to show my claim at this time, I apologize. But 
if you have a moment, please take a look at the article and ponder the 
implications of it.


On 9/15/2012 9:00 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King
My stance there is absolutely anti-materialist.
Where do you see a materialistic statement ?
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
9/15/2012
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:* 2012-09-14, 12:40:45
*Subject:* Re: science only works with half a brain

On 9/14/2012 8:14 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
> Hi Bruno Marchal
>
> Objective things are things that can be measured (are extended)
and so are quantitative.
> Numbers can apply. Science applies. Computers can deal with them.
>
> Subjective things are inextended and so cannot be measured
directly, at least,
> nor dealt with by computers at least directly.
>
> I think a more practical division would be the body/mind split.
> Perhaps set theory might work, I don't understand it.
Dear Roger,

 You are assuming an exclusively "materialist" stance or
paradigm in
your comment. Bruno's ideas are against the very idea.


>
> Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
> 9/14/2012
> 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: 2012-09-14, 04:09:27
> Subject: Re: science only works with half a brain
>
>
> On 13 Sep 2012, at 13:17, Roger Clough wrote:
>
>> Hi Bruno Marchal and meekerdb,
>>
>>
>> ROGER: Hi meekerdb
>>
>> First, science can only work with quantity, not quality, so
>> it only works with half a brain.
>>
>>
>> MEEKERDB [actually it is BRUNO]: Bad decision. You are the one
>> cutting the "corpus callosum" here.
>>
>> ROGER: You have to. Quantity is an objective measure, quality is a
>> subjective measure.
>> Apples and oranges.
> You are too much categorical. Qualities can have objective features
> too. Modal logic, and other non standard logic are invented for that
> purposes.
> Geometry and topology can have non quantitative features, also.
>
>
>
>
>> Secondly, meaning is not a scientific category.
> Model theory studies a form of meaning. If you decide that something
> is not scientific, you make it non scientific.
>
>
>
>> So science
>> can neither make nor understand meaningful statements.
>> Logic has the same fatal problem.
> Only if you decide so.
>
>
>
>
>>
>> BRUNO ?: Not at all. Logic handle both syntactical or digital
>> transformations, and its
>> "dual" the corresponding semantical adjoint transformation.
There is
>> proof theory and model theory.
>> Meaning is handle by non syntactical mathematical structures. There
>> are many branches in
>> logic, and semantic, alias Model Theory, is one of them.
>>
>> ROGER: Those are all tools for working with objective data such as
>> numbers or written words.
> Not at all. Model studies infinite structure, some of them have no
> syntactical or finite counterparts.
>
>
>
>> Then what do you do with subjective data ? Obviously you must throw
>> it out.
> On the contrary, even with just the UDA, consciousness is the basic
> notion at the base of the whole reasoning (which annoys of course
> those who want to keep it under the rug). You are either a bit
unfair,
> or ignorant of the UDA.
> Its role consists in showing that the subjective data and the 3p
stuff
> are not easily reconciled with comp, as we must explain the physical
> 3p, from coherence condition on the subjective experience related to
> computations.
>
>
>
>> BRUNO To separate science from religion looks nice, but it consists
>> in encouraging nonsense in religion, and in science eventually.
>>
>> ROGER: Religion deals mainly with subjective issues such as values.
>> morality, salvation, forgiveness.
>> These are inextended or nonphysical huma

Re: The poverty of computers


On 9/15/2012 8:57 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King
Faith is merely trust.  I could have faith in a doorknob.
But I wouldn't try faith in Satan.
Even the doorknob would work to some extent, for trust opens you
up to authority, to submission, and submission
is the meat and potatoes of salvation. It's the
bending over that does the work. In the case of salvation,
bending over to Jesus.


Hi Roger,

I do not wish to sink into Scholastic style arguments, but I am 
trying to make a point here. Faith must be anticipatory or it is not 
capable of being "knowledge of things unseen". If I where the one entity 
in the universe then it would not make any sense to confine "knowledge 
of things not seem" to a future tensed domain as anything that is beyond 
my direct reach would be in the domain defined by the "not seen", but we 
appear to live in a universe where I can communicate with the fellow 
around the corner with a radio and he can tell me all about that is 
happening beyond my local reach.
Thus if we are trying to be logically consistent in our 
definitions, we have to restrict the domain of Faith to the common 
future of any that I might be able to communicate with; "not seen" means 
not seen to anyone that I can communicate with, no? =-O



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
9/15/2012
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:* 2012-09-14, 12:11:35
*Subject:* Re: The poverty of computers

On 9/14/2012 7:09 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Craig Weinberg
Faith can be expressed as a belief, but faith itself is inner
trust, confidence, etc.
Faith
Noun:   

 1. Complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
 2. Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based
on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.



Dear Roger,

But not just "anything" it is contained to cover only that
which is possible in the future. Faith is forward projected
belief. I have faith that the bridge can support my weight because
it is possible to falsify that belief when I am actually crossing
it..


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
9/14/2012
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:* 2012-09-13, 13:21:50
*Subject:* Re: Re: The poverty of computers



On Thursday, September 13, 2012 8:43:39 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote:

Hi Bruno Marchal

The shared part of religion (or
science) is called belief(s).
They are exclusively in the fom of words.
For example words from the Bible, and the Creeds.

The personal or private part of religion is called faith.
It is not belief, for it is wordless, is more like
trust or motivation.
Religion trusts its creeds, science trust the laws of
physics etc.


It sounds like you are talking about the particular forms of
religion though. In some other traditions, faith can be the
public proclamation in words and belief is the privately
expressed as wordless.

Craig
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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


On 9/15/2012 8:52 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King

I seem to have-- whoops-- totally misread him. Logical dyslexia ?


Hi Roger,

Good catch! Yeah, my dyslexia distorts things in a weird "telephone 
game" way...




His first sentence is correct:

"Conscious experience is an expression of nonphysical mind"
OK, but I agree with that remark. It is the idea that "all that 
exists is the possible expressions of nonphysical mind" that I find to 
be deeply flawed.




I don't follow the rest of your comments. Berkeley's solipsism has
never been disproven, as far as I know.


The inability for Berkeley and those to support his thesis to 
answer to Mr. Johnson's retort of bounding his foot off of a rock was 
the evidence of the flaw. A thesis that makes a deed ontological 
statement, such as Immaterials does with its thesis that: "all that 
exists is the possible expressions of nonphysical mind", need to be able 
to explain the causal relationships of that which it claims is "merely 
epiphenomena", as such can have (by definition) no causal efficacy 
whatsoever.
The fact that I experience a world that is not directly maleable to 
my whim is a pretty good indication that it is not just the case "all 
that exists is the possible expressions of nonphysical mind" since I 
have what very much appears to be a " nonphysical mind".





Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/15/2012
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: 2012-09-14, 12:09:25
Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


On 9/14/2012 7:05 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Craig Weinberg

His very first sentence is wrong. Conscious experience is an expression of 
nonphysical mind,
although it may deal with physical topics.

"It is widely accepted that conscious experience has a physical basis.

Dear Roger,

  No, you misunderstand his argument. If "Conscious experience is an
expression of nonphysical mind" in a strict "nothing but" sense then
consciousness would be completely solipsistic and incapable of even
comprehending that it is not all that exists. It is because
consciousness is contained to be Boolean representable (and thus
finite!) that it can "bet" on its incompleteness and thus go beyond
itself, escaping its solipsism.



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/14/2012
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: 2012-09-13, 15:03:13
Subject: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


If anyone is not familiar with David Chalmers "Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing 
Qualia" You should have a look at it first.

This thought experiment is intended to generalize principles common to both 
computationalism and functionalism so that the often confusing objections 
surrounding their assumptions can be revealed.

Say that we have the technology to scan the city of New York by means of 
releasing 100,000 specially fitted cats into the streets, which will return to 
the laboratory in a week's time with a fantastically large amount of data about 
what the cats see and feel, smell and taste, hear, their positions and 
movements relative to each other, etc.

We now set about computing algorithms to simulate the functions of Brooklyn 
such that we can tear down Brooklyn completely and replace it with a simulation 
which causes cats released into the simulated environment to behave in the same 
way as they would have according to the history of their initial release.

Indeed, cats in Manhattan travel to and from Brooklyn as usual. Perhaps to get 
this right, we had to take all of Brooklyn and grind it up in a giant blender 
until it becomes a paste of liquified corpses, garbage, concrete, wood, and 
glass, and then use this substrate to mold into objects that can be moved 
around remotely to suit the expectations of the cats.

Armed with the confidence of the feline thumbs-up, we go ahead and replace 
Manhattan and the other boroughs in the same way, effectively turning a city of 
millions into a cat-friendly cemetery. While the experiment is not a PR success 
(Luddites and Fundamentalists complain loudly about a genocide), our cats 
assure us that all is well and the experiment is a great success.

Craig






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Re: imaginary numbers in comp

On 9/15/2012 8:44 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King
I believe that all or much of the brain calculations are done
aurally, phonetically. That has to be since we have to
be able to understand and create vocal language.
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
9/15/2012
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him
so that everything could function."

Dear Roger,

I agree with you but what happens if the parts of the brain that 
implement the aural type computations are miswired? You get dyslexia, a 
condition that I am very familiar with as I have it. I process ideas 
visually and proprioceptively. Ideas have a "look and feel" to them that 
cannot be exactly translated into words...

- Receiving the following content -
*From:* Stephen P. King 
*Receiver:* everything-list 
*Time:* 2012-09-14, 11:52:52
*Subject:* Re: imaginary numbers in comp

On 9/14/2012 6:38 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
> Hi John Clark
>
> The difference is that a computer has no intelligence, cannot
> deal with qualia, and is not alive.
Dear Roger,

 You are assuming ab initio that a computer has no capacity
whatsoever of "reflecting upon" its computations and to possible
be able
to report on its meditation. You might say that you are intelligent
exactly because you assume that you have this capacity.

>
> My brain has all of these features in spades.
>
> ibniz 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: 2012-09-13, 13:15:54
> Subject: Re: imaginary numbers in comp
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 12:11 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
>
>> I reject comp, because it cannot access feelings or qualities
> And you have deduced this by using the "nothing but" fallacy:
even the largest computer is "nothing but" a collection of on and
off switches. Never mind that your brain is "nothing but" a
collection of molecules rigorously obeying the laws of physics.
>
> ? John K Clark
>

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Re: The poverty of computers



On 15 Sep 2012, at 13:08, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi John Clark

Theology was once called the queen of the sciences,
but that was just a power rating.

Theology is not a science, it's closer to but different than
philosophy in that theology is, or should be, based on scripture.
God's teachings, not man's.


I guess that it is here that we might disagree the more.

Theology, like everything else, should rely only to the experience,  
and then logic, theories, etc.


The experience can be helped by practice, meditation, prayer, plants,  
walking in woods and mountains, surfing the ocean, looking at Hubble  
picture, or doing jazz, and some Church can help a lot, when they  
handle magically the sun light.
Humans are known to write a lot of things, so scripture, as inspiring  
they can be, should never taken literally, nor ever too much seriously.


Most religion agree that God is not human conceivable, and that is why  
we can be deluded in recognizing sign, so that it is better to trust  
God for teaching Itself to the others, and not intervene too much on  
that plane. Cautious.
If not you are, willingly or unwillingly, imposing your conception of  
reality to the other.


Truth is a goddess which does not need any army to win.





Philosophy deals with belief and reason,


You mean science? OK.



moreorless.
Theology deals with faith  and scripture.


Theology deals with our relation with the big thing. Faith is a  
universal gift, but scriptures, when taken too much literally,  or too  
much repeated, can kill the original faith that we have all.


Bruno

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



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Re: questions on machines, belief, awareness, and knowledge


On 9/15/2012 4:11 AM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 02:55:17AM -0400, Stephen P. King wrote:

Dear Bruno,

Could you elaborate on what your definition of "a digital
machine" is?

Anything Turing emulable.

Dear Bruno,

 OK. But you do understand that this assumes an unnecessary
restrictive definition of computation. I define computation as "any
transformation of information" and Information is defined as "the
difference between a pair that makes a difference to a third".


Hi Russell,


That is far too inclusive a definition of computation.


Not really, it only requires some way of representing the 
information such that it can be transformed. The integers are not the 
only kind of number that we can represent numbers (or any other 
mathematical object) with. IMHO, we are naive to think that Nature is 
hobbled to only use integers to perform her Computations. We must never 
project our deficiencies on Nature.



  A map from i in
N to the ith decimal place of Chaitin's number Omega would satisfy you
definition of transformation of information, yet the posession of such
an "algorithm" would render oneself omniscient.


That is exactly my point! I am forcing the issue of the implication 
of Universal Turing Machines, they are implicitly omniscient unless they 
are restricted in some way. Turing et al, considered the case of 
computations via NxN -> N functions but abstracted away the resource 
requirements and we get very smart people, like Bruno, taking this as to 
means that we can completely ignore the possibility of actually 
implementing a computation and not jsut reasoning about some abstract 
object in our minds. The Ultrafinitists and Intuitionist (like Normal 
Wildberger  for 
instance) have a valid critique but forget that they too are fallible 
and project their limitations on Nature. I am trying very hard to to do 
that!



  You can answer any
question posable in a formal language by means of running this
algorithm for the correct decimal place. See Li and Vitanyi, page 218
for a discussion, or the reference they give:

Bennett & Gardiner, (1979) Scientific American, 241, 20-34.


Sure, but you are missing the point that I am trying to make. 
Unless there is at least the possibility in principle for a given 
computation to be implemented somehow, even if it is in the form of some 
pattern of chalk marks on a board or pattern of neurons firing in a 
brain, there is no "reality" to a abstraction such as a Universal Turing 
Machine. I am arguing against Immaterialism (and Materialism!) of any 
kind and for a dual aspect monism (like that which David Chalmers 
discusses and argues for in his book ).



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Re: Re: Re: Re: the "nothing but" fallacy.

2012-09-15 Thread Richard Ruquist

Nonesense

On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 8:41 AM, Roger Clough  wrote:
> Hi Richard Ruquist
>
> He was talking about the 10 commandments.
> He fulfilled them with his death and res.
>
>
> Jesus did away for example with the dietary laws when
> he said that it is not what a man puts into his mouth
> that can make him unclean, it is what comes out of it.
>
>
> Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
> 9/15/2012
> 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: 2012-09-15, 08:08:22
> Subject: Re: Re: Re: the "nothing but" fallacy.
>
> Jesus did not do away with any OT laws.
> He said so explicitly in the Sermon on the Mount.
>
> Matthew 5:
> [17] "Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets;
> I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them.
> [18] For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an
> iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
> [19] Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and
> teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he
> who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of
> heaven."
>
> Roger, are you one of the least?
> Richard
>
> On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 7:22 AM, Roger Clough  wrote:
>> Hi John Clark
>>
>> 1)Intelligence ? I don't think the word was available back then (Bible
>> days).
>> Russell also hadn't a clue (he admitted) as to the meaning of pragmatism.
>> On the other hand, Proverbs says, "Fear of God is beginning of
>> wisdom (or knowledge)."
>>
>> 2) To understand the Bible you have to read it as a little child,
>> not a shark.
>>
>> 3) Those slaughter statements are mostly based on the old jewish
>> laws in leviticus and numbers. Jesus did away with them.
>> But God did order a few massacres. The forgiveness of Jesus
>> also did away with the need for them.
>>
>> The Old Testament is the problem.
>> The New Testament is the solution.
>>
>> Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
>> 9/15/2012
>> 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: 2012-09-14, 15:32:46
>> Subject: Re: Re: the "nothing but" fallacy.
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 6:55 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
>>
>>
>>> You're a slow learner.
>>
>> Maybe, but I'm smarter than the people in the Bible. As Bertrand Russell
>> said "So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
>> praise of intelligence."
>>
>>
>>> Bible stories are generally based on true happenings.
>>
>>
>> Do you believe that the stories in Mother Goose are generally based on
>> true happenings too? I know there are no reasons to believe either one but
>> faith don't need no education, or reasons.
>>
>>
>>
>>> Science deals with facts, religion deals with values.
>>
>>
>> Values? One of the best ways to become a atheist is to actually read the
>> Bible, so let's go directly to the source and read some quotations from the
>> Bible and see some of those wonderful values that it teaches:
>>
>> Take all the heads of the people and hang them up before the Lord against
>> the sun.
>> Numbers 25:4
>>
>> The LORD slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn
>> of man, and the firstborn of beast.
>> Exodus 13:15
>>
>> Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers.
>> Isaiah 14:21
>>
>> And the priest shall dip his finger in some of the blood, and sprinkle it
>> seven times before the LORD.
>> Leviticus 4:17
>>
>> And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters
>> shall ye eat.
>> Leviticus 26:29
>>
>> Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the
>> sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle
>> thereof, with the edge of the sword.
>> Deuteronomy 13:15
>>
>> Thus saith the LORD of hosts ... go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy
>> all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant
>> and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.?
>> 1 Samuel 15:2-3
>>
>> Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray
>> you, bring them out unto you, an do ye to them as is good in your eyes.
>> Genesis 19:8
>>
>> And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her
>>  Thou shalt go in unto her. Deuteronomy 21:11-13
>>
>> The LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself,
>> above all people that are upon the face of the earth.
>> Deuteronomy 7:6
>>
>> I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your
>> children.
>> Leviticus 26:22
>>
>> And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of
>> their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend.
>> Jeremiah 19:9
>>
>> For

Re: science only works with half a brain



On 14 Sep 2012, at 18:36, Jason Resch wrote:




On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 8:32 AM, Stephen P. King > wrote:
 I contend that universality is the independence of computations to  
any particular machine but there must be at least one physical  
system that can implement a given computation for that computation  
to be knowable. This is just a accessibility question, in the Kripke  
sense of accessible worlds.



Stephen,

Could you provide a definition of what you mean by 'physical system'?

Do you think it is possible, even in theory, for entities to  
distinguish whether they are in a physical system or a mathematical  
one?  If so, what difference would they test to make that distinction?


I am "philosophically" pretty well convinced by this argument.

But there is still a logical problem, pointed by Peter Jones (1Z) on  
this list.


Peter believes that comp makes sense only for primitively material  
machine, period.


So he would answer to you that the mathematical machine is just not  
conscious, and that the distinction you ask is the difference between  
being conscious (and material) and being non conscious at all (and  
immaterial).


I don't see any way to reply to this which does not bring the movie  
graph, the 323 principles, and that kind of stuff into account.


But of course I can understand that the idea that arithmetic is full  
of immaterial philosophical zombies is rather weird, notably because  
they have also endless discussion on zombie, and that arithmetic  
contains P. Jones counterpart defending in exactly his way, that *he*  
is material, but Peter does not care as they are zombie and are not  
conscious, in his theory.


I would be happy if there was a simple way to avoid such quasi ad hoc  
zombies, without going through MGA, which is quite subtle for some  
people, and perhaps weak as it is not clear if comp really logically  
imply the 323 principle.


Bruno


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



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Re: victims of faith



On 14 Sep 2012, at 19:10, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/14/2012 6:10 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:
   The "evidence" has strong indications of being manipulated for  
the purpose of a political agenda.


It is certainly cherry-picked by minions of the fossil fuel industry.

The way that the sensors are distributed and their data is weighed  
is the subject of a lot of controversy


Which has been addressed by direct comparison of different sensors.   
Of course the fossil fuel industry doesn't have to prove anything,  
they just create fake controversy and take advantage of the  
provisional nature of all science.


We do not have models that are accurate enough to even accurately  
retrodict the variation in temperatures so why are we trusting them  
in their predictions?.


Because whatever other factors there are it is straightforward to  
predict that increasing atmospheric CO2 will increase temperatures,  
something already calculated by Arrhenius in 1890.  Burning fossil  
fuel releases CO2 into the atmosphere.  The concentration of CO2 is  
increasing proportionately.  Measured temperatures are increasing.




And for all practical purpose we have access to only one planet, (even  
with the MWI), so a caution principle makes sense.
Henry Ford (who I do not appreciate as he was quasi-nazy) already  
defended doing car with hemp to avoid the risk of making too much CO_2.


Prohibition is responsible, in part, of the climate change, if there  
is one.


Bruno


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



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Re: Why the supreme monad is necessary in Leibniz's universe

On 14 Sep 2012, at 19:02, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 9/14/2012 11:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 13 Sep 2012, at 13:44, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Bruno Marchal

BRUNO: Matter is what is not determined, and thus contingent
indeed, at its very roots, like W and M in a self-duplication
experiment, or like, plausibly when looking at a photon through a
calcite crystal.

ROGER: So Newton's Laws, such as F = ma, are not deterministic ?

It means that F = ma, if correct, can only be an approximation of a
deeper non deterministic process.

Hi Bruno,

What does this mean? If we assume a stochastic process, like
Markov or Weiner, then we can only do so in a framework that allows
for an ordering of the events to be defined. Strict indeterminacy is
a self-contradictory concept.

Note that it is actually the case, as F=ma can be derived from the
more fundamental schroedinger equation, which indeed give rise to a
first person plural indeterminacy.

I wish that you would explain how this is the case. Your
explanation in terms of cut and paste operations assumes a unifying
framework of a single word that has the room for he multiple copies.
You seem to ignore this necessity in your step 8.

I was alluding to Feynman phase randomization, not comp. This well
explain in his little book on light.

ROGER: and in which men, so as not to be robots,

BRUNO: You might try to be polite with the robots, and with your
son in law, victim of pro-life doctors who gave him an artificial
brain without its consent. He does not complain on the
artificial brain, though, as he is glad to be alive. Do you think
it is a (philosophical) zombie? Come on! He is a Lutheran.
Obviously, if you decide that a machine cannot be a Lutheran, few
machines will be ...

ROGER: I may be wrong, but I don't see how an artifical brain can
have any awareness or intelligence, for these require life-- real
life.

As you say, you might be wrong.

I agree with Bruno. So long as the person with the artificial
brain can behave and respond to interviews the same way as a "real
person" what is the difference that makes a difference?

Actually I don't use this (even if I agree). But if you agree with
this, then it is even more mysterious that you have a problem with the
idea that physics is derivable from arithmetic, because in arithmetic
the program have the right behavior, by definition of comp. They just
lack primitive physical bodies.

Nobody understand how a machine, or a brain, can feel, but machine
can already explain why they can know some true fact without being
able to justify them---at all.
With the good hypotheses, sometimes we can explain why there are
things that we cannot explain.

Please understand, Bruno, that you are tacitly assuming a common
framework or schemata what allows the comparison of "a machine that
can explain ..." and a "machine that cannot explain...".

I assume elementary arithmetic, and that is enough for such a purpose.

This is the mistake that you and Maudlin commit in the MGA argument.
Contrafactuals depend on just their "possibility to act" for their
capacity, not on their actual state of affairs.

I agree but don't see the mistake. You are not clear enough.

Bruno

And you might be true, but your personal feeling cannot be used in
this setting, as they can only look like prejudices, even if true.

The best is to keep the mind open, to make clear assumptions and to
reason, without ever pretending to know the public truth.

I agree.

Bruno

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

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Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html

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Re: Re: Qualitative calculations with binary numbers

Hi Richard Ruquist 

I worked with Chris for a number of years and we even
met twice. I learned much from him and was sorry to
hear that he died of lung cancer maybe 5 years ago. 


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/15/2012 
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: 2012-09-14, 13:13:01
Subject: Re: Qualitative calculations with binary numbers


The late Chris Lofting turned I Ching into a science and even was able
to derive Quantum Mechanics from it, at least what he considered to be
QM.
http://www.emotionaliching.com/myweb/newindex.html

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 12:42 PM, Stephen P. King  wrote:
> On 9/14/2012 8:40 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
>>
>> Hi Bruno Marchal
>>
>> IMHO in Platonia (the Eternal) all logical statements must always
>> be either true or false forever. However, in this everyday world, where
>> time
>> is a factor, such necessary logical statements become contingent,
>> and may only sometimes be true. And possibly not everywhere.
>>
>> The I Ching provides a numerical way of combining, separating,
>> and systematically manipulating qualitative situations, since
>> these have visually been associated to trigrams of binary numbers.
>>
>> For example 111 or all yang lines is male and yang-ish.
>> 000 is female and having softer heavier female qualitites.
>> Then combining and reading down from left to right, 00 is female
>> 11 is male. 111000 or male over female is stagnation
>> while 000111 with female over male, is bliss. Which is what
>> womens' lib teaches.
>>
>> There's so much more to such manipulations that it would take a book to
>> show them all.
>
> Dear Roger,
>
> On this claim I agree with you 100%.
>
>
>>
>>
>> Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
>> 9/14/2012
>> 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: 2012-09-14, 03:38:43
>> Subject: Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of
>> computers
>>
>>
>> On 30 Aug 2012, at 04:40, Terren Suydam wrote:
>>
>>> hmmm, my interpretation is that in platonia, all computations, all the
>>> potential infinities of computations, have the same ontological
>>> status. Meaning, there's nothing meaningful that can be said with
>>> regard to any particular state of the UD - one can imagine that all
>>> computations have been performed in a timeless way.
>>
>> OK. And not only they all exist, (in the same sense as all prime
>> numbers exist), but they all exist with a particular weighted
>> redundancy, independent of the choice of the U in the UD.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> If so, it follows
>>> that the state that corresponds to my mind at this moment has an
>>> infinite number of instantiations in the UD (regardless of some
>>> arbitrary "current" state of the UD). In fact this is the only way I
>>> can make sense of the reversal, where physics emerges from "the
>>> infinite computations going through my state".
>>
>> That's correct.
>>
>>
>>
>>> Otherwise, I think the
>>> physics that emerges would depend in a contigent way on the
>>> particulars of how the UD unfolds.
>>
>> Yes.
>>
>>
>>> Whether the infinities involved with my current state are of the same
>>> ordinality as the infinitie of all computations, I'm not sure. But I
>>> think if it was a "lesser" infinity, so that the probability of my
>>> state being instantiated did approach zero in the limit, then my
>>> interpretation above would imply that the probability of my existence
>>> is actually zero. Which is a contradiction.
>>
>> This does not necessarily follows. We can be relatively rare. To
>> exists more than an instant, we need only to have enough normal
>> computations going through or state, but the initial state can be
>> "absolutely" rare. The same might be true for the origin of life.
>> Logically, as I am agnostic on this, to be sure.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Terren
>>>
>>> On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 4:41 PM, meekerdb
>>> wrote:

 But there are no infinities at any give state - only potential
 infinities.
 Of course that also implies that "you" are never complete, since at
 any
 given state in the UD there still remain infinitely many
 computations that
 will, in later steps, go through the states instantiating "you".

 Brent


 On 8/29/2012 9:04 AM, Terren Suydam wrote:
>
> It may not even be zero in the limit, since there's an infinity of
> computations that generate my state. I suppose it comes down to the
> ordinality of the infinities involved.
>
> Terren
>
>> Not zero, only zero in the limit of completing the infinite
>> computations.
>> So
>> at any stage short the infinite completion the probability of
>> "you" is
>> very
>> sm

Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.

Hi Alberto G. Corona 

At the heart of a market economy (which has existed since the cave man),
there is a fundamental freedom, you can buy or sell if the price is right,
where price = value = what you are willing to pay or sell for. So the market
is basically psychological and free and  is as old as man.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/15/2012 
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: 2012-09-15, 07:37:44
Subject: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.

Hi Roger,
But neither Darwin nor Spencer discovered darwinism. a selection
between alternatives is at the heart of every creative process (that
creates order). It is a form of creative destruction. The market and
the war are examples of such process. But it is also running now in
this discussion. It is in our mind, that select and discard ideas
depending on their consequences. It is in the political organization
of the society etc.

One of the first things that a darwinian process develops is a way to
protect the created order from its own destructive nature. Capitalism
in a democracy with the rule of law is a very sophisticated
organization that run above a human nature that is deeply social. And
this human nature is naturally selected. Probably the highest
satisfaction that a man may have, abobe money, is to be helpful to
others.

Probably the natural human instincts of compassion would be enough
without the inefficient artificial state-run welfare systems. A simple
traditional religious commandments would suffice to remember our
personal responsibilities with the others and would make these corrupt
structures innecessary. This has been that way until few centuries
ago. It would be more that enough in a society with so much resources
like this. The problem in the actual situation is that the narrow
selfishness that is being promoted in the "modern society" is not only
dysfunctional at the social level, because it also makes necessary
the externalization of the compassion away from the individual,
because it is incompatible with the narrow selfish concept of freedom
as absence of obligations. Not only that, because it is also
dysfunctional at the individual level, because we as humans need to
help others . We need to feel useful to others to be happy.

2012/9/14 Roger Clough :
> Hi Craig Weinberg
>
> Fortunately or unfortunately, capitalism is Darwinism, pure and simple.
> So it can prepare for a better future, although it can be painful
> at present. My own take on this is that there needs to be
> a calculus of pleasure and pain. Jeremy Bentham suggested
> perhaps an impfect one.
>
> In lieu of that, I am all for food stamps and safety
> nets.
>
>
> Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
> 9/14/2012
> 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: 2012-09-13, 12:28:09
> Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Racism ? How's that implied ?
>
>
>
> On Thursday, September 13, 2012 8:33:47 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote:
>>
>> Hi Craig Weinberg
>>
>> The fact is that the only incentive businesses look to is profit.
>> So demonizing profit doesn't do any good.
>> And urging them to hire workers doesn't work.
>>
>
> Sounds exactly like cancer. The only incentive cancer looks to is growth.
> As long as any institution partitions itself off from responsibility to the
> full spectrum of human experience I think it is doomed to be a force for
> oppression. You can tell when this happens because the effect of the
> institution is inverted to its cause. Businesses perpetuate financial
> bondage rather than freedom. Hospitals perpetuate sickness and misery rather
> than health. Schools neutralize intellectual curiosity. Religions foment
> intolerance and the abuse of the innocent. It's inevitable since by
> definition the first order of business for an institution is to ensure its
> own growth and survival at all costs...which becomes the sole purpose
> forever.
>
> Craig
>
>>
>> Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
>> 9/13/2012
>> 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: 2012-09-12, 20:03:27
>> Subject: Re: Re: Re: Racism ? How's that implied ?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, September 11, 2012 8:32:21 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote:
>> Hi Craig Weinberg
>>
>> I am intolerant of stupidity and deception, particularly
>> when the idea of carbon credits pops up. This suggests that
>> "Global warming" is just a method of raising taxes,
>> diminishing coal and oil, and even globally sharing the wealth.
>>
>> Thankfully china won't go along with this stupidity.
>> It all seems to be politics rather than science.
>>
>> I don

Miraculous new invention.

Hi meekerdb 

Miraculous new invention. All plantlife eats CO2 and releases O2. 

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/15/2012 
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: 2012-09-14, 13:10:59
Subject: Re: victims of faith

On 9/14/2012 6:10 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:
> The "evidence" has strong indications of being manipulated for the purpose of 
> a 
> political agenda. 

It is certainly cherry-picked by minions of the fossil fuel industry.

> The way that the sensors are distributed and their data is weighed is the 
> subject of a 
> lot of controversy 

Which has been addressed by direct comparison of different sensors. Of course 
the fossil 
fuel industry doesn't have to prove anything, they just create fake controversy 
and take 
advantage of the provisional nature of all science.

> We do not have models that are accurate enough to even accurately retrodict 
> the 
> variation in temperatures so why are we trusting them in their predictions?.

Because whatever other factors there are it is straightforward to predict that 
increasing 
atmospheric CO2 will increase temperatures, something already calculated by 
Arrhenius in 
1890. Burning fossil fuel releases CO2 into the atmosphere. The concentration 
of CO2 is 
increasing proportionately. Measured temperatures are increasing.

Brent

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Re: Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers

Hi Stephen P. King 

And then there is Leibniz's identity of indiscernibles, identity
there meaning that you only need one of them, throw the rest away.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/15/2012 
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: 2012-09-14, 13:29:27
Subject: Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers

On 9/14/2012 11:53 AM, John Clark wrote:

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 7:55 AM, Stephen P. King  wrote:

> Godel numberings are not unique.

True, there are a infinite number of ways you could do Godel numbering. 

  Hi John,

Yes, but my point here is that this is the same thing as having an infinite 
number of names for one and the same thing. This makes it impossible to be 
absolutely sure of what "John Clark" or "Stephen P. King" is.

> Thus there is no a single abslute structure of relations, there is an infinity

And you can use any one of those Godel numbering schemes to show that there is 
not a single one of those infinite number of structural relationships that are 
powerful enough to do arithmetic and be consistent and complete. The hope is 
that the scheme mathematicians are using is consistent but incomplete, if it's 
inconsistent that would be a disaster.  

Mathematicians get around this problem by defining a unique naming scheme. 
My point is that this cannot be done at a meta-theoretical level when we have 
to include a multiplicity of names for the same of multiple entities that are 
evaluating models of the mathematical scheme.

 John K Clark

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Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html

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Re: Re: Why the supreme monad is necessary in Leibniz's universe

Hi Bruno,

Hume would agree with you, even at the classical level,
but even Leibniz, whio construed all phenomena as
mind, said that the phenomena we see and measure are
"well-founded phenomena",not illusions. You can still
stub your toe on a rock.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/15/2012 
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: 2012-09-14, 13:02:32
Subject: Re: Why the supreme monad is necessary in Leibniz's universe


On 9/14/2012 11:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> On 13 Sep 2012, at 13:44, Roger Clough wrote:
>
>> Hi Bruno Marchal
>>
>>
>> 
>>
>>
>> BRUNO: Matter is what is not determined, and thus contingent indeed, 
>> at its very roots, like W and M in a self-duplication experiment, or 
>> like, plausibly when looking at a photon through a calcite crystal.
>>
>> ROGER: So Newton's Laws, such as F = ma, are not deterministic ?
>
> It means that F = ma, if correct, can only be an approximation of a 
> deeper non deterministic process.

Hi Bruno,

 What does this mean? If we assume a stochastic process, like Markov 
or Weiner, then we can only do so in a framework that allows for an 
ordering of the events to be defined. Strict indeterminacy is a 
self-contradictory concept.

> Note that it is actually the case, as F=ma can be derived from the 
> more fundamental schroedinger equation, which indeed give rise to a 
> first person plural indeterminacy.

 I wish that you would explain how this is the case. Your 
explanation in terms of cut and paste operations assumes a unifying 
framework of a single word that has the room for he multiple copies. You 
seem to ignore this necessity in your step 8.

>
>
>
>>
>>
>> ROGER: and in which men, so as not to be robots,
>>
>>
>> BRUNO: You might try to be polite with the robots, and with your son 
>> in law, victim of pro-life doctors who gave him an artificial brain 
>> without its consent. He does not complain on the
>> artificial brain, though, as he is glad to be alive. Do you think it 
>> is a (philosophical) zombie? Come on! He is a Lutheran. Obviously, if 
>> you decide that a machine cannot be a Lutheran, few machines will be ...
>>
>> ROGER: I may be wrong, but I don't see how an artifical brain can 
>> have any awareness or intelligence, for these require life-- real life.
>
> As you say, you might be wrong.

 I agree with Bruno. So long as the person with the artificial brain 
can behave and respond to interviews the same way as a "real person" 
what is the difference that makes a difference?

>
> Nobody understand how a machine, or a brain, can feel, but machine can 
> already explain why they can know some true fact without being able to 
> justify them---at all.
> With the good hypotheses, sometimes we can explain why there are 
> things that we cannot explain.

 Please understand, Bruno, that you are tacitly assuming a common 
framework or schemata what allows the comparison of "a machine that can 
explain ..." and a "machine that cannot explain...". This is the mistake 
that you and Maudlin commit in the MGA argument. Contrafactuals depend 
on just their "possibility to act" for their capacity, not on their 
actual state of affairs.

>
> And you might be true, but your personal feeling cannot be used in 
> this setting, as they can only look like prejudices, even if true.
>
> The best is to keep the mind open, to make clear assumptions and to 
> reason, without ever pretending to know the public truth.

 I agree.

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


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Stephen

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Re: Re: victims of faith

Hi Stephen P. King 

Paul hoped to know only Christ and Him crucified. 
I'm headed that way.

All of this stuff, all I trained for, is totally useless
in the long run.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/15/2012 
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: 2012-09-14, 12:48:22
Subject: Re: victims of faith


On 9/14/2012 9:04 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Alberto G. Corona 
 
That's why I stick to orthodoxy and the creeds.
Hard to go wrong that way.
 

Hi Roger,

But you do so at the real risk of ossification. You stop asking questions, 
thinking that "I know all that can be known". This becomes "fear of the 
unknown".


 
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/14/2012 
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: 2012-09-14, 07:27:26
Subject: Re: Re: victims of faith


Roger: right
But there are two types of people: the ones that know that believe,
that know that they are unfounded and the others that believe that
known, who don? know that they are unfounded

2012/9/14 Roger Clough :
> Hi Alberto G. Corona
>
> All religious beliefs are at the bottom unfounded.
> So is the fact that you are real unfounded.
> All scientific theories moreover are founded on assumptions,
> which by definition are unfounded.
>
> Need I go on ?
>
>
>
> Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
> 9/14/2012
> 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: 2012-09-13, 14:45:42
> Subject: Re: victims of faith
>
>
> 2012/9/13 Stathis Papaioannou :
>> On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 8:22 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
>>> There is no difference at all between religious mitifications and other
>>> mitifucatuons . See form, example the paper about Darwin that I posted.
>>> religion is a label that appears when the mith is old enough it has enough
>>> believers and the object of mitification is far away in time.
>>>
>>> People are reluctant to admit that they have unfounded beliefs. Specially if
>>> they have been educated in the belief that any belief is bad and into the
>>> belied that they have no beliefs. But to have a commong ground of beliefs is
>>> a prerequisite for individual and social life. I think that my theory of
>>> social capital, mytopoesis and belief and the assimilaion of good and truth
>>> is sound in evolutuionary terms, and provides a factual/operation definition
>>> of Truth in the world of the mind, which is the only world accesible to us.
>>
>> If I tell you that a spirit appeared to me last night and told me that
>> you should give me all your money or else the world will be destroyed,
>> what will you say to me? That it's as true as any other myth,
>> understandable in evolutionary terms, on a par with scientific fact?
>> Or will you just say, without thinking too hard, that it's bullshit?
>>
> I suppose that you mean that there are histories that everyone would
> identify as bullshit. Well, this changes nothing. A myth by definition
> is something believed by a group of people in the past. Most of them
> as intelligent or more that you and me . You and me believe in things
> that will be myths tomorrow. Most of them created by scientists. The
> mith of antropogenic global warming, the myth of cultural determinism
> for example.. There are many things that were "scientific" in the past
> "race studies" for example. Now there are "gender studies"... they
> were, and they are scientific and bullshit at the same time. I hope
> that this is clarifying.
>>
>> --
>> Stathis Papaioannou
>>




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Re: Re: science only works with half a brain

Hi Stephen P. King 

My stance there is absolutely anti-materialist.
Where do you see a materialistic statement ?


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/15/2012 
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: 2012-09-14, 12:40:45
Subject: Re: science only works with half a brain


On 9/14/2012 8:14 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
> Hi Bruno Marchal
>
> Objective things are things that can be measured (are extended) and so are 
> quantitative.
> Numbers can apply. Science applies. Computers can deal with them.
>
> Subjective things are inextended and so cannot be measured directly, at least,
> nor dealt with by computers at least directly.
>
> I think a more practical division would be the body/mind split.
> Perhaps set theory might work, I don't understand it.
Dear Roger,

 You are assuming an exclusively "materialist" stance or paradigm in 
your comment. Bruno's ideas are against the very idea.


>
> Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
> 9/14/2012
> 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: 2012-09-14, 04:09:27
> Subject: Re: science only works with half a brain
>
>
> On 13 Sep 2012, at 13:17, Roger Clough wrote:
>
>> Hi Bruno Marchal and meekerdb,
>>
>>
>> ROGER: Hi meekerdb
>>
>> First, science can only work with quantity, not quality, so
>> it only works with half a brain.
>>
>>
>> MEEKERDB [actually it is BRUNO]: Bad decision. You are the one
>> cutting the "corpus callosum" here.
>>
>> ROGER: You have to. Quantity is an objective measure, quality is a
>> subjective measure.
>> Apples and oranges.
> You are too much categorical. Qualities can have objective features
> too. Modal logic, and other non standard logic are invented for that
> purposes.
> Geometry and topology can have non quantitative features, also.
>
>
>
>
>> Secondly, meaning is not a scientific category.
> Model theory studies a form of meaning. If you decide that something
> is not scientific, you make it non scientific.
>
>
>
>> So science
>> can neither make nor understand meaningful statements.
>> Logic has the same fatal problem.
> Only if you decide so.
>
>
>
>
>>
>> BRUNO ?: Not at all. Logic handle both syntactical or digital
>> transformations, and its
>> "dual" the corresponding semantical adjoint transformation. There is
>> proof theory and model theory.
>> Meaning is handle by non syntactical mathematical structures. There
>> are many branches in
>> logic, and semantic, alias Model Theory, is one of them.
>>
>> ROGER: Those are all tools for working with objective data such as
>> numbers or written words.
> Not at all. Model studies infinite structure, some of them have no
> syntactical or finite counterparts.
>
>
>
>> Then what do you do with subjective data ? Obviously you must throw
>> it out.
> On the contrary, even with just the UDA, consciousness is the basic
> notion at the base of the whole reasoning (which annoys of course
> those who want to keep it under the rug). You are either a bit unfair,
> or ignorant of the UDA.
> Its role consists in showing that the subjective data and the 3p stuff
> are not easily reconciled with comp, as we must explain the physical
> 3p, from coherence condition on the subjective experience related to
> computations.
>
>
>
>> BRUNO To separate science from religion looks nice, but it consists
>> in encouraging nonsense in religion, and in science eventually.
>>
>> ROGER: Religion deals mainly with subjective issues such as values.
>> morality, salvation, forgiveness.
>> These are inextended or nonphysical human/divine issues.
> Yes, but that does not mean we cannot handle them with the scientific
> method. If not you would not even been arguing.
>
>
>
>> The Bible was not written as a scientific textbook, but as a manual
>> oof faith and moral practice.
> OK.
>
>
>> Science deals entirely with objective issues such as facts,
>> quantity, numbers, physical data.
> If you decide so, but then religious people should stop doing factual
> claims, and stop proposing normatible behavior.
> Science can study its own limitations, and reveal what is beyond
> itself. Like in neoplatonism, science proposes a negative theology,
> protecting faith from blind faith, actually.
>
>
>
>> BRUNO: Science cannot answer the religious question, nor even the
>> human question,
>> nor even the machine question, but it *can* reduce the nonsense.
>>
>>
>> Bruno
>> ROGER: You can try, which is what atheists do.
> No atheists have a blind faith in a primary universe. They are
> religious, despite they want not to be. A scientist aware of the mind-
> body problem can only be agnostic, and continue the research for more
> information. Atheists are Christian, as John Clark illustrates so well.
>
>
>
>> As I say,

Re: Re: The poverty of computers

Hi Stephen P. King 

Faith is merely trust.  I could have faith in a doorknob.
But I wouldn't try faith in Satan.  


Even the doorknob would work to some extent, for trust opens you
up to authority, to submission, and submission
is the meat and potatoes of salvation. It's the
bending over that does the work. In the case of salvation,
bending over to Jesus. 




Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/15/2012 
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: 2012-09-14, 12:11:35
Subject: Re: The poverty of computers


On 9/14/2012 7:09 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Craig Weinberg 

Faith can be expressed as a belief, but faith itself is inner trust, 
confidence, etc.

Faith

Noun:Complete trust or confidence in someone or something. 
Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual 
apprehension rather than proof. 





Dear Roger,

But not just "anything" it is contained to cover only that which is 
possible in the future. Faith is forward projected belief. I have faith that 
the bridge can support my weight because it is possible to falsify that belief 
when I am actually crossing it.. 



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/14/2012 
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: 2012-09-13, 13:21:50
Subject: Re: Re: The poverty of computers




On Thursday, September 13, 2012 8:43:39 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: 
Hi Bruno Marchal  

The shared part of religion (or science) is called belief(s). 
They are exclusively in the fom of words. 
For example words from the Bible, and the Creeds. 

The personal or private part of religion is called faith. 
It is not belief, for it is wordless, is more like trust or motivation. 
Religion trusts its creeds, science trust the laws of physics etc.



It sounds like you are talking about the particular forms of religion though. 
In some other traditions, faith can be the public proclamation in words and 
belief is the privately expressed as wordless.

Craig

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Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

Hi Stephen P. King  

I seem to have-- whoops-- totally misread him. Logical dyslexia ?

His first sentence is correct:

"Conscious experience is an expression of nonphysical mind"

I don't follow the rest of your comments. Berkeley's solipsism has
never been disproven, as far as I know.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
9/15/2012  
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: 2012-09-14, 12:09:25 
Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment 


On 9/14/2012 7:05 AM, Roger Clough wrote: 
> Hi Craig Weinberg 
> 
> His very first sentence is wrong. Conscious experience is an expression of 
> nonphysical mind, 
> although it may deal with physical topics. 
> 
> "It is widely accepted that conscious experience has a physical basis. 

Dear Roger, 

 No, you misunderstand his argument. If "Conscious experience is an  
expression of nonphysical mind" in a strict "nothing but" sense then  
consciousness would be completely solipsistic and incapable of even  
comprehending that it is not all that exists. It is because  
consciousness is contained to be Boolean representable (and thus  
finite!) that it can "bet" on its incompleteness and thus go beyond  
itself, escaping its solipsism. 

> 
> 
> Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
> 9/14/2012 
> 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: 2012-09-13, 15:03:13 
> Subject: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment 
> 
> 
> If anyone is not familiar with David Chalmers "Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, 
> Dancing Qualia" You should have a look at it first. 
> 
> This thought experiment is intended to generalize principles common to both 
> computationalism and functionalism so that the often confusing objections 
> surrounding their assumptions can be revealed. 
> 
> Say that we have the technology to scan the city of New York by means of 
> releasing 100,000 specially fitted cats into the streets, which will return 
> to the laboratory in a week's time with a fantastically large amount of data 
> about what the cats see and feel, smell and taste, hear, their positions and 
> movements relative to each other, etc. 
> 
> We now set about computing algorithms to simulate the functions of Brooklyn 
> such that we can tear down Brooklyn completely and replace it with a 
> simulation which causes cats released into the simulated environment to 
> behave in the same way as they would have according to the history of their 
> initial release. 
> 
> Indeed, cats in Manhattan travel to and from Brooklyn as usual. Perhaps to 
> get this right, we had to take all of Brooklyn and grind it up in a giant 
> blender until it becomes a paste of liquified corpses, garbage, concrete, 
> wood, and glass, and then use this substrate to mold into objects that can be 
> moved around remotely to suit the expectations of the cats. 
> 
> Armed with the confidence of the feline thumbs-up, we go ahead and replace 
> Manhattan and the other boroughs in the same way, effectively turning a city 
> of millions into a cat-friendly cemetery. While the experiment is not a PR 
> success (Luddites and Fundamentalists complain loudly about a genocide), our 
> cats assure us that all is well and the experiment is a great success. 
> 
> Craig 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: Re: imaginary numbers in comp

Hi Stephen P. King 

I believe that all or much of the brain calculations are done 
aurally, phonetically. That has to be since we have to
be able to understand and create vocal language.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/15/2012 
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: 2012-09-14, 11:52:52
Subject: Re: imaginary numbers in comp


On 9/14/2012 6:38 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
> Hi John Clark
>
> The difference is that a computer has no intelligence, cannot
> deal with qualia, and is not alive.
Dear Roger,

 You are assuming ab initio that a computer has no capacity 
whatsoever of "reflecting upon" its computations and to possible be able 
to report on its meditation. You might say that you are intelligent 
exactly because you assume that you have this capacity.


>
> My brain has all of these features in spades.
>
> ibniz 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: 2012-09-13, 13:15:54
> Subject: Re: imaginary numbers in comp
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 12:11 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
>
>> I reject comp, because it cannot access feelings or qualities
> And you have deduced this by using the "nothing but" fallacy: even the 
> largest computer is "nothing but" a collection of on and off switches. Never 
> mind that your brain is "nothing but" a collection of molecules rigorously 
> obeying the laws of physics.
>
> ? John K Clark
>
> ?
>
>
>
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Re: Re: Re: Re: the "nothing but" fallacy.

Hi Richard Ruquist 

He was talking about the 10 commandments.
He fulfilled them with his death and res.


Jesus did away for example with the dietary laws when
he said that it is not what a man puts into his mouth
that can make him unclean, it is what comes out of it.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/15/2012 
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: 2012-09-15, 08:08:22
Subject: Re: Re: Re: the "nothing but" fallacy.


Jesus did not do away with any OT laws.
He said so explicitly in the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 5:
[17] "Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets;
I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them.
[18] For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an
iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
[19] Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and
teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he
who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of
heaven."

Roger, are you one of the least?
Richard

On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 7:22 AM, Roger Clough  wrote:
> Hi John Clark
>
> 1)Intelligence ? I don't think the word was available back then (Bible days).
> Russell also hadn't a clue (he admitted) as to the meaning of pragmatism.
> On the other hand, Proverbs says, "Fear of God is beginning of
> wisdom (or knowledge)."
>
> 2) To understand the Bible you have to read it as a little child,
> not a shark.
>
> 3) Those slaughter statements are mostly based on the old jewish
> laws in leviticus and numbers. Jesus did away with them.
> But God did order a few massacres. The forgiveness of Jesus
> also did away with the need for them.
>
> The Old Testament is the problem.
> The New Testament is the solution.
>
> Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
> 9/15/2012
> 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: 2012-09-14, 15:32:46
> Subject: Re: Re: the "nothing but" fallacy.
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 6:55 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
>
>
>> You're a slow learner.
>
> Maybe, but I'm smarter than the people in the Bible. As Bertrand Russell said 
> "So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of 
> intelligence."
>
>
>> Bible stories are generally based on true happenings.
>
>
> Do you believe that the stories in Mother Goose are generally based on true 
> happenings too? I know there are no reasons to believe either one but faith 
> don't need no education, or reasons.
>
>
>
>> Science deals with facts, religion deals with values.
>
>
> Values? One of the best ways to become a atheist is to actually read the 
> Bible, so let's go directly to the source and read some quotations from the 
> Bible and see some of those wonderful values that it teaches:
>
> Take all the heads of the people and hang them up before the Lord against the 
> sun.
> Numbers 25:4
>
> The LORD slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of 
> man, and the firstborn of beast.
> Exodus 13:15
>
> Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers.
> Isaiah 14:21
>
> And the priest shall dip his finger in some of the blood, and sprinkle it 
> seven times before the LORD.
> Leviticus 4:17
>
> And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters 
> shall ye eat.
> Leviticus 26:29
>
> Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the 
> sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle 
> thereof, with the edge of the sword.
> Deuteronomy 13:15
>
> Thus saith the LORD of hosts ... go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all 
> that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and 
> suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.?
> 1 Samuel 15:2-3
>
> Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray 
> you, bring them out unto you, an do ye to them as is good in your eyes.
> Genesis 19:8
>
> And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her 
>  Thou shalt go in unto her. Deuteronomy 21:11-13
>
> The LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above 
> all people that are upon the face of the earth.
> Deuteronomy 7:6
>
> I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children.
> Leviticus 26:22
>
> And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their 
> daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend.
> Jeremiah 19:9
>
> For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to 
> death.
> Leviticus 20:9
>
> The Lord is a man of War.
> Exodus 15:3
>
> Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the

Re: Re: Re: the "nothing but" fallacy.

2012-09-15 Thread Richard Ruquist

Jesus did not do away with any OT laws.
He said so explicitly in the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 5:
[17] "Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets;
I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them.
[18] For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an
iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
[19] Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and
teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he
who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of
heaven."

Roger, are you one of the least?
Richard

On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 7:22 AM, Roger Clough  wrote:
> Hi John Clark
>
> 1)Intelligence ? I don't think the word was available back then (Bible days).
> Russell also hadn't a clue (he admitted) as to the meaning of pragmatism.
> On the other hand, Proverbs says, "Fear of God is beginning of
> wisdom (or knowledge)."
>
> 2) To understand the Bible you have to read it as a little child,
> not a shark.
>
> 3) Those slaughter statements are mostly based on the old jewish
> laws in leviticus and numbers.  Jesus did away with them.
> But God did order a few massacres. The forgiveness of Jesus
> also did away with the need for them.
>
> The Old Testament is the problem.
> The New Testament is the solution.
>
> Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
> 9/15/2012
> 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: 2012-09-14, 15:32:46
> Subject: Re: Re: the "nothing but" fallacy.
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 6:55 AM, Roger Clough  wrote:
>
>
>> You're a slow learner.
>
> Maybe, but I'm smarter than the people in the Bible. As Bertrand Russell said 
> "So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of 
> intelligence."
>
>
>> Bible stories are generally based on true happenings.
>
>
> Do you believe that the stories in Mother Goose are generally based on true 
> happenings too? I know there are no reasons to believe either one but faith 
> don't need no education, or reasons.
>
>
>
>> Science deals with facts, religion deals with values.
>
>
> Values? One of the best ways to become a atheist is to actually read the 
> Bible, so let's go directly to the source and read some quotations from the 
> Bible and see some of those wonderful values that it teaches:
>
> Take all the heads of the people and hang them up before the Lord against the 
> sun.
> Numbers 25:4
>
> The LORD slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of 
> man, and the firstborn of beast.
> Exodus 13:15
>
> Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers.
> Isaiah 14:21
>
> And the priest shall dip his finger in some of the blood, and sprinkle it 
> seven times before the LORD.
> Leviticus 4:17
>
> And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters 
> shall ye eat.
> Leviticus 26:29
>
> Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the 
> sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle 
> thereof, with the edge of the sword.
> Deuteronomy 13:15
>
> Thus saith the LORD of hosts ... go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all 
> that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and 
> suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.?
> 1 Samuel 15:2-3
>
> Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray 
> you, bring them out unto you, an do ye to them as is good in your eyes.
> Genesis 19:8
>
> And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her 
>  Thou shalt go in unto her. Deuteronomy 21:11-13
>
> The LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above 
> all people that are upon the face of the earth.
> Deuteronomy 7:6
>
> I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children.
> Leviticus 26:22
>
> And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their 
> daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend.
> Jeremiah 19:9
>
> For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to 
> death.
> Leviticus 20:9
>
> The Lord is a man of War.
> Exodus 15:3
>
> Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the 
> stones.?
> Psalms 137:9
>
> People lamented because the Lord had smitten many people in a great slaughter.
> 1Samuel 6:19
>
> Smite through the loins of them that rise against him...that they rise not 
> again.
> Deuteronomy 33:11
>
> And thou shalt eat the fruit of? thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of 
> thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.
> Deuteronomy 28:53
>
> ? 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-l

On Searle and Mandarin

Hi Stephen P. King 

I was wrong when I previously said that the problem with the
Chinese Room argument is that it doesn't explain how
to respond. That's a dumb comment, you just translate
your thought-out response back into mandarin characters.

It may be that Searle chose chinese language and characters
because although spoken chinese has some different meanings for
certain sounds, the written characters are completely unambiguous.

In case anybody would like to read an intelligent and entertaining 
book on mandarin, look up "dreaming in mandarin" by Deborah Fallows. There's 
a phrase before that phrase.Inside, it gives a 19 character short story
in which each character sounds very similar (although still different)
such as sih (hard to write the ping ying sounds in english). So the story goes
sih sih sih sih etc.

I can only speak a few phrases in mandarin but find it
fascinating. I teach english to chinese immigrants (ESL) in
my retirement.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/15/2012 
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: 2012-09-14, 11:47:13
Subject: Re: imaginary numbers in comp


On 9/14/2012 6:14 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi John Clark 

Right. The problem with the Chinese Room argument
is that there is no way to generate a reasonable answer.

Hi Roger,

The Chinese room argument is flawed becuase it does not consider the 
distinction of levels of meaningfulness.




9/14/2012 
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: 2012-09-13, 15:58:20
Subject: Re: imaginary numbers in comp


On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 1:38 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:



> This is the symbol grounding problem pointed out by Searle's Chinese Room

I've said it before I'll say it again,? Searle's Chinese Room is the single 
stupidest thought experiment ever devised by the mind of man. Of course even 
the best of us can have a brain fart from time to time, but Searle baked this 
turd pie decades ago and apparently he still thinks its quite clever, and thus 
I can only conclude that John Searle is as dumb as his room.? 

? John K Clark




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Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html

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Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.

2012-09-15 Thread Alberto G. Corona

Hi Roger,
But neither Darwin nor Spencer discovered darwinism. a selection
between alternatives is at the heart of every creative process (that
creates order).  It is a form of creative destruction. The market and
the war are examples of such process. But it is also running now in
this discussion.  It is in our mind, that select and discard ideas
depending on their consequences. It is in the political organization
of the society etc.

One of the first things that a darwinian process develops is a way to
protect the created order from its own destructive nature.  Capitalism
in a democracy with the rule of law is a very sophisticated
organization that run above a human nature that is deeply social.  And
this human nature is naturally selected.  Probably the highest
satisfaction that a man may have, abobe money, is to be helpful to
others.

Probably the natural human instincts of compassion would be enough
without the inefficient artificial state-run welfare systems. A simple
traditional religious commandments would suffice to remember our
personal responsibilities with the others and would make these corrupt
structures innecessary. This has been that way until few centuries
ago. It would be more that enough in a society with so much resources
like this.  The problem in the actual situation is that  the narrow
selfishness that is being promoted in the "modern society" is not only
dysfunctional at the  social level, because it also makes necessary
the externalization of the compassion away from the individual,
because it is incompatible with the narrow selfish concept of freedom
as absence of obligations.  Not only that, because it is also
dysfunctional at the individual level, because we as humans need to
help others . We need to feel useful to others to be happy.

2012/9/14 Roger Clough :
> Hi Craig Weinberg
>
> Fortunately or unfortunately, capitalism is Darwinism, pure and simple.
> So it can prepare for a better future, although it can be painful
> at present. My own take on this is that there needs to be
> a calculus of pleasure and pain. Jeremy Bentham suggested
> perhaps an impfect one.
>
> In lieu of that, I am all for food stamps and safety
> nets.
>
>
> Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
> 9/14/2012
> 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: 2012-09-13, 12:28:09
> Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Racism ? How's that implied ?
>
>
>
> On Thursday, September 13, 2012 8:33:47 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote:
>>
>> Hi Craig Weinberg
>>
>> The fact is that the only incentive businesses look to is profit.
>> So demonizing profit doesn't do any good.
>> And urging them to hire workers doesn't work.
>>
>
> Sounds exactly like cancer. The only incentive cancer looks to is growth.
> As long as any institution partitions itself off from responsibility to the
> full spectrum of human experience I think it is doomed to be a force for
> oppression. You can tell when this happens because the effect of the
> institution is inverted to its cause. Businesses perpetuate financial
> bondage rather than freedom. Hospitals perpetuate sickness and misery rather
> than health. Schools neutralize intellectual curiosity. Religions foment
> intolerance and the abuse of the innocent. It's inevitable since by
> definition the first order of business for an institution is to ensure its
> own growth and survival at all costs...which becomes the sole purpose
> forever.
>
> Craig
>
>>
>>  Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
>> 9/13/2012
>> 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: 2012-09-12, 20:03:27
>> Subject: Re: Re: Re: Racism ? How's that implied ?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, September 11, 2012 8:32:21 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote:
>> Hi Craig Weinberg
>>
>> I am intolerant of stupidity and deception, particularly
>> when the idea of carbon credits pops up. This suggests that
>> "Global warming" is just a method of raising taxes,
>> diminishing coal and oil,  and even globally sharing the wealth.
>>
>> Thankfully china won't go along with this stupidity.
>> It all seems to be politics rather than science.
>>
>> I don't know enough about it to say too much about it. I think that the
>> point is to make it political so
>>
>> that the greatest polluters will have an incentive to pollute less.
>> Otherwise, why would they ever reduce
>> emissions? Personally I think that the only issue that matters is
>> overpopulation. As long as we have
>> seven billion people making billions more people, nothing will stop the
>> devaluation of they quality of human life,
>> and of human lives. Whether it's the threat of running out of oil, food,
>> water, or money, it doesn't really matter
>>  which comes first. It's like putting more and more f

Re: Re: Re: the "nothing but" fallacy.

Hi John Clark  

1)Intelligence ? I don't think the word was available back then (Bible days). 
Russell also hadn't a clue (he admitted) as to the meaning of pragmatism. 
On the other hand, Proverbs says, "Fear of God is beginning of 
wisdom (or knowledge)."  

2) To understand the Bible you have to read it as a little child, 
not a shark. 

3) Those slaughter statements are mostly based on the old jewish 
laws in leviticus and numbers.  Jesus did away with them.  
But God did order a few massacres. The forgiveness of Jesus 
also did away with the need for them. 

The Old Testament is the problem. 
The New Testament is the solution. 

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
9/15/2012  
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: 2012-09-14, 15:32:46 
Subject: Re: Re: the "nothing but" fallacy. 

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 6:55 AM, Roger Clough  wrote: 

> You're a slow learner.  

Maybe, but I'm smarter than the people in the Bible. As Bertrand Russell said 
"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of 
intelligence." 

> Bible stories are generally based on true happenings. 

Do you believe that the stories in Mother Goose are generally based on true 
happenings too? I know there are no reasons to believe either one but faith 
don't need no education, or reasons. 

> Science deals with facts, religion deals with values. 

Values? One of the best ways to become a atheist is to actually read the Bible, 
so let's go directly to the source and read some quotations from the Bible and 
see some of those wonderful values that it teaches: 

Take all the heads of the people and hang them up before the Lord against the 
sun. 
Numbers 25:4  

The LORD slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of 
man, and the firstborn of beast. 
Exodus 13:15 

Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers. 
Isaiah 14:21 

And the priest shall dip his finger in some of the blood, and sprinkle it seven 
times before the LORD. 
Leviticus 4:17 

And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall 
ye eat.  
Leviticus 26:29 

Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the 
sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, 
with the edge of the sword. 
Deuteronomy 13:15 

Thus saith the LORD of hosts ... go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all 
that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and 
suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.?  
1 Samuel 15:2-3 

Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, 
bring them out unto you, an do ye to them as is good in your eyes.  
Genesis 19:8 

And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her  
Thou shalt go in unto her. Deuteronomy 21:11-13 

The LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above 
all people that are upon the face of the earth.  
Deuteronomy 7:6 

I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children.  
Leviticus 26:22 

And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their 
daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend.  
Jeremiah 19:9 

For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to 
death.  
Leviticus 20:9 

The Lord is a man of War. 
Exodus 15:3 

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.? 

Psalms 137:9  

People lamented because the Lord had smitten many people in a great slaughter.  
1Samuel 6:19 

Smite through the loins of them that rise against him...that they rise not 
again. 
Deuteronomy 33:11 

And thou shalt eat the fruit of? thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of 
thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee. 
Deuteronomy 28:53 

? John K Clark 

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Re: Re: Re: Re: The poverty of computers

Hi John Clark 

Religious faith is like trust in your father, but
the one in heaven instead.

With faith you have everything.
Without faith you have nothing.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/15/2012 
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: 2012-09-14, 11:27:35
Subject: Re: Re: Re: The poverty of computers


On Fri, Sep 14, 2012? Roger Clough  wrote:



> Faith is ?o me at least a virtue since it is associated with hope and love.


Faith is believing in something when there is absolutely no reason for doing 
so; an optimist with faith would believe in things that fill him with hope and 
love, and a pessimist with faith would believe in things that fill him with 
despair and hate. Both are idiots. 

? John K Clark




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Re: Re: The poverty of computers

Hi John Clark 

Theology was once called the queen of the sciences,
but that was just a power rating.

Theology is not a science, it's closer to but different than
philosophy in that theology is, or should be, based on scripture.
God's teachings, not man's.
Philosophy deals with belief and reason, moreorless.
Theology deals with faith  and scripture.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/15/2012 
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: 2012-09-14, 11:16:57
Subject: Re: The poverty of computers

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 4:40 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> Theology is a science. 

It's a very strange science, it's a science that does not use the scientific 
method and, not surprisingly, a science that has discovered absolutely 
positively nothing about the nature of the universe despite working on the 
problem for thousands of years. However I will admit that theology's rate of 
success is every bit as good as that other "science", astrology. 

> Aristotle hypothesis of the existence of a primary universe

Face reality and get with the program, Aristotle didn't know his ass from a 
hole in the ground.

> Plato's questions are at the origin of science. 

And neither did Plato. 

> Aristotle is one of the first very big scientists. To be wrong is the natural 
> fate of all serious scientists.

Yes all the great scientists were wrong about something, but unlike them 
Aristotle was not just wrong he was also certain; he was so certain that men 
have more teeth than women he didn't bother to look into his wife's mouth. Even 
2500 years ago that was lousy science.? 

> Again atheism goes hand in hand with the fundamentalist christians and 
> muslims. [...] I don't buy your religion, John.

The taunt that atheism is a religion didn't impress me when I first heard it at 
the age of 12 and it doesn't impress me today.? 

> The physical science is a product of a theology.

Yes, chemistry is the product of alchemy and astronomy is the product of 
astrology, but our knowledge has improved over the centuries and we no longer 
need such crap.

> >if you have never seen a physics paper even attempt to do something then its 
> >probably not very important because they've attempted some pretty wacky 
> >things.? 

> ?

Which word didn't you understand?

? John K Clark 

?

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Re: Re: Re: Re: The poverty of computers

Hi Craig Weinberg 

To use Russell's discriminations:

Faith is knowledge by experience (meaning personal or subjective knowledge)

Belief is knowledge by description. Public, objective, shareable, in words (The 
 Bible).





Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/15/2012 
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: 2012-09-14, 15:32:05
Subject: Re: Re: Re: The poverty of computers




On Friday, September 14, 2012 7:10:17 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote:
Hi Craig Weinberg 

Faith can be expressed as a belief, but faith itself is inner trust, 
confidence, etc.

Faith

Noun:Complete trust or confidence in someone or something. 
Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual 
apprehension rather than proof.




Can't exactly the same thing be said of belief?

be?ief
Noun:

An acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists.
Something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held opinion or conviction. 
Craig




Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/14/2012 
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: 2012-09-13, 13:21:50
Subject: Re: Re: The poverty of computers




On Thursday, September 13, 2012 8:43:39 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: 
Hi Bruno Marchal  

The shared part of religion (or science) is called belief(s). 
They are exclusively in the fom of words. 
For example words from the Bible, and the Creeds. 

The personal or private part of religion is called faith. 
It is not belief, for it is wordless, is more like trust or motivation. 
Religion trusts its creeds, science trust the laws of physics etc.



It sounds like you are talking about the particular forms of religion though. 
In some other traditions, faith can be the public proclamation in words and 
belief is the privately expressed as wordless.

Craig

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Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.

Hi Craig Weinberg  

I should have said "capitalism is similar to Darwinism". 
But as you point out, they are are not literally the same. 
Consider these points:

Valuations in market economics are not fitness,  
but what you're willing to pay for what I have to sell.  

Natural selection is buying stocks or goods or not. 

Fitness is non-bankruptcy. 

Social Darwinism is too personal, and easily racial, 
and anyway not as usefulor powerful as  what is  
called Demographics:

" relating to the dynamic balance of a population especially 
with regard to density and capacity for expansion or decline."

It's useful for marketing and for any kind of planning,
such as probability of war and political dynamics.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
9/15/2012  
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: 2012-09-14, 13:50:22 
Subject: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. 




On Friday, September 14, 2012 12:33:45 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: 
On 9/14/2012 8:07 AM, Roger Clough wrote: 

Hi Craig Weinberg  

Fortunately or unfortunately, capitalism is Darwinism, pure and simple. 
So it can prepare for a better future, although it can be painful 
at present. My own take on this is that there needs to be 
a calculus of pleasure and pain. Jeremy Bentham suggested  
perhaps an impfect one. 

In lieu of that, I am all for food stamps and safety 
nets.  


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 

Dear Roger, 

I completely disagree. Darwinism does not consider valuations beyond the 
concept of relative fitness. Capitalism is a theory of valuation and exchange 
between entities. It does include concept that are analogous to those in 
darwinism, just as the "fitness" of a trader to make multiple trades, and so I 
can see some analogy between them, but to claim equivalence is simply false.  


Yes! People conflate Social Darwinism 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism) with Darwin's evolution. The 
idea of 'survival of the fittest' is also (see the Wiki) a misinterpretation. 
Evolution is just a blind statistical filtering of organisms which happen to 
survive in any given niche. Being fit has nothing whatsoever with being 
aggressive, greedy, or selfish, and indeed most species on Earth seem much more 
relaxed and gentle than human beings most of the time. 



IMHO, Food stamps and safety nets encourage risky behavior that is better 
if suppressed for the general welfare of the population, thus I am against them 
in principle. Why work to sustain my physical existence with my own toil if I 
can depend on the coercive taxation on others to sustain me? 


Eh, I would rather increase that stuff by 10 times than five one more dollar to 
subsidize corporations. The amount of money set aside for that stuff is tiny 
compared to everything else. It can certainly be a disincentive for people to 
look for work, but I think we need to confront the reality that the US doesn't 
really need very many people to work anymore. Most of what the US does is own 
things. That doesn't require a large workforce. Without manufacturing or a 
growing middle class, there really isn't much demand for more undereducated, 
unhealthy, unrealistically ambitious American workers. 

Craig 
  



--  
Onward! 

Stephen 

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html 
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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-09-15 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 2:55 AM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> What you think third party observable behavior means is the set of all
> properties which are externally discoverable. I am saying that is a
> projection of naive realism, and that in reality, there is no such set, and
> that in fact the process of discovery of any properties supervenes on the
> properties of all participants and the methods of their interaction.

Of course there is a set of all properties that are externally
discoverable, even if you think this set is very small! Moreover, this
set has subsets, and we can limit our discussion to these subsets. For
example, if we are interested only in mass, we can simulate a human
perfectly using the right number of rocks. Even someone who believes
in an immortal soul would agree with this.

> My point of using cats in this thought experiment is to specifically point
> out our naivete in assuming that instruments which extend our perception in
> only the most deterministic and easy to control ways are sufficient to
> define a 'third person'. If we look at the brain with a microscope, we see
> those parts of the brain that microscopes can see. If we look at New York
> with a swarm of cats, then we see the parts of New York that cats can see.

Yes, but there are properties of the brain that may not be relevant to
behaviour. Which properties are in fact important is determined by
experiment. For example, we may replace the myelin sheath with a
synthetic material that has similar electrical properties and then
test an isolated nerve to see if action potentials propagate in the
same way. If they do, then the next step is to incorporate the nerve
in a network and see if the pattern of firing in the network looks
normal. The step after that is to replace the myelin in the brain of a
rat to see if the animal's behaviour changes. The modified rats are
compared to unmodified rats by a blinded researcher to see if he can
tell the difference. If no-one can consistently tell the difference
then it is announced that the synthetic myelin appears to be a
functionally identical substitute for natural myelin. As is the nature
of science, another team of researchers may then find some deficit in
the behaviour of the modified rats under conditions the first team did
not examine. Scientists then make modifications to the formula of the
synthetic myelin and do the experiments again.

> This is the point of the thought experiment. The limitations of all forms of
> measurement and perception preclude all possibility of there ever being a
> such thing as an exhaustively complete set of third person behaviors of any
> system.
>
> What is it that you don't think I understand?

What you don't understand is that an exhaustively complete set of
behaviours is not required. I don't access an exhaustively complete
set of behaviours to determine if my friends are the same people from
day to day, and in fact they are *not* the same systems from day to
day, as they change both physically and psychologically. I have in
mind a rather vague set of behavioural behavioural limits and if the
people who I think are my friends deviate significantly from these
limits I will start to worry.

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Three forms of meaning

Hi Bruno Marchal 

There are at least three forms or levels of meaning:

1) Meaning learned from experience 

2) The experience of meaning

3) Meaning learned from description. 


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/15/2012 
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: 2012-09-14, 14:51:52
Subject: Re: science only works with half a brain




On 14 Sep 2012, at 15:32, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/14/2012 4:09 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 13 Sep 2012, at 13:17, Roger Clough wrote: 


Hi Bruno Marchal and meekerdb, 


ROGER:  Hi meekerdb 

First, science can only work with quantity, not quality, so 
it only works with half a brain. 


MEEKERDB [actually it is BRUNO]: Bad decision. You are the one cutting the 
"corpus callosum" here. 

ROGER: You have to. Quantity is an objective measure, quality is a subjective 
measure. 
Apples and oranges. 


You are too much categorical. Qualities can have objective features too. Modal 
logic, and other non standard logic are invented for that purposes. 
Geometry and topology can have non quantitative features, also. 


Dear Bruno,

This concept of "objective property" is just consistency of definition, 
nothing more!





Secondly, meaning is not a scientific category. 


Model theory studies a form of meaning. If you decide that something is not 
scientific, you make it non scientific. 


If it is incapable of being falsified by physical evidence then it is 
"nonscientific".



I agree.








So science 
can neither make nor understand meaningful statements. 
Logic has the same fatal problem. 


Only if you decide so. 


No, that would be "true belief" as Alberto discussed elsewhere. If one 
accepts as true some set of axioms then certain properties follow 
automatically. But if we look at theories in a "meta" way, we see that there 
are multiple possible axioms. For example, we have ZFC and ZF-C (with or 
without axiom of choice). These have very different models.



And the fatal problem is?










BRUNO ?: Not at  all. Logic handle both syntactical or digital transformations, 
and its 
"dual" the corresponding semantical adjoint transformation. There is proof 
theory and model theory. 
Meaning is handle by non syntactical mathematical structures. There are many 
branches in 
logic, and semantic, alias Model Theory, is one of them. 

ROGER: Those are all tools for working with objective data such as numbers or 
written words. 


Not at all. Model studies infinite structure, some of them have no syntactical 
or finite counterparts. 


You are ignoring the existence of finitistic and ultrafinitistic axioms! 
Maybe we need to revisit model theory.



No. Comp is finitistic. And of course not ultra-finitistic. 










Then what do you do with subjective data ? Obviously you must throw it out. 


On the contrary, even with just the UDA, consciousness is the basic notion at 
the base of the whole reasoning (which annoys of course those who want to keep 
it under the rug). You are either a bit unfair, or ignorant of the UDA. 
Its role consists in showing that the subjective data and the 3p stuff are not 
easily reconciled with comp, as we must explain the physical 3p, from coherence 
condition on the subjective experience related to computations. 


We need some reason to believe that just because I have a subjective 
experience of "being in the world" that this implies that this is possible for 
other entities. Chalmer's argues for panprotopsychism, the theory that 
everything has subjective experience and qualia,


Every thing? I thought we are searching the things.






but does not seem to offer a hypothesis as to how. I offer (reasoning with 
Vaughan Pratt) a theory that psychism follows from Stone duality, but this 
limits subjectivity to the duality between Boolean algebras (up to isomorphism) 
and topological spaces (up to isomorphism).



An that might be coherent with comp. You study Pratt, so it is your work to do 
that. I gave you hints.













BRUNO To separate science from religion looks nice, but it consists in 
encouraging nonsense in religion, and in science eventually. 

ROGER: Religion deals mainly with subjective issues such as values. morality, 
salvation, forgiveness. 
These are inextended or nonphysical human/divine issues. 


Yes, but that does not mean we cannot handle them with the scientific method. 
If not you would not even been arguing. 


It is ironic that you are taking this side of the debate, Bruno! You, in 
your theory, have reduced to a epiphenomena the very thing that allows for 
falsification.



Here you miss the entire point. I show comp testable, on the contrary. And 
partially tested.













The Bible was not written as a scientific textbook, but as a manual oof faith 
and moral practice. 


OK. 


Sam Harris makes a good argument f

The two types of knowledge -- and computability