Re: The Plant Teachers
Do you eat dinner every day? Do you drink coffee every day? Do you drink water or milk every day? Do you watch the TV news every day? Kim On 21/02/2013, at 12:59 AM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: All classical psychedelics exhibit anti-addictive properties. Sure, people can't do mescaline or LSD regularly enough, i.e. every few days to every day, How is using every day (or every few days) not an addictive behavior ? Seems quite strange to say that to have **anti** addictive properties, you should use it like an addict, seems contradictory. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The Plant Teachers
There is a guy in India - don't ask me for the chapter and verse because I can't be bothered looking it up - who is in his late 70s. He claims that his last meal was 65 years ago. No one has ever seen him eat. He survives on sunlight, food and water - according to him. When asked why this is, or how he is able to survive in this way he merely says I live as do the plants. OK - he's maybe a fakir or maybe he's a faker but I mention this to challenge your assertion that the intake of certain substances is privileged because of a claim of a necessary relationship we have with them. You say you are addicted to the Green Bitch but I still hold that it is your choice to be so. I have been inhaling the stuff fairly regularly for at least the past 35 years. All the current studies indicate that cannabis is about as addictive as coffee. A woman in New Zealand recently died because she consumed on average half a swimming-pool of Coca Cola every day. You may argue that her addiction to Coke is what killed her, but I would say it was the lack of diversity in her diet that killed her. You cannot suicide by smoking too much cannabis. Even if you got a wheelbarrow full of the finest heads and proceeded to smoke all of it, you would eventually die - not from the THC intake, but through asphyxiation from inhaling such a ridiculous amount of smoke. I advocate intelligent and moderate use. My rule of thumb is - I buy a quarter of an ounce which I usually cannot afford anyway, so I treasure it. I am able to make that last for approximately 10 to twelve days. I then don't smoke for twice that amount of time - a fortnight or more. This is important because, the more you smoke Mary Jane, the less she works for you because the body builds up a tolerance for her. You surely have noticed this effect? To continue your intake of a substance after that substance has stopped working is the height of ignorance or stupidity. Intelligent and moderate use of a substance always invokes the need for a FORMAL and RITUALISED behaviour which becomes a life rhythm, a regime that supports your best side. When you use, your mind accepts the THC and you gain the marvellous insights and creative ideas that are the hallmark of cannabis and its effect on the mind. You also arm your body against cancer. One thing you and I will certainly NOT die of Quentin (and Bruno) is cancer. You must see this period of time as a privilege, a gift or a learning experience. You then leave the ecological classroom for a time and you take the wisdom and insights you developed under the influence back into the baseline normative state of consciousness that we must adhere to to live in a world where we have to do things like drive cars and operate dangerous heavy machinery for which a cannabis delirium would spell danger or death. I did not call this thread The Plant Teachers for nothing. The other thing is marijuana's effect on the memory. Often you smoke, you have powerful insights and ideas, but you forget them as your mind races ahead to its next perception.I have trained myself over the years to have a notepad and pen with me whenever stoned so I do not lose track of the pearls of wisdom as they come through. Cannbis is not a lifestyle; it is a TOOL. You must be clear to yourself WHY you are using it when you are using it and not just giving into a bad habit. But the ability to do that is a function of education - it requires restraint and the ability to see the value of living in these two parallel universes and skipping between the two. There is a necessary period of transition from one to the other. By now I can say that the experience of being straight is a wonderful experience because I know that it won't last forever because at a certain point I will allow myself to enter my Second Life and will become an avatar in another world. Both universes are on an equal footing. Being straight is not better than being stoned and being stoned is not better than being straight. There is symmetry in the experience of moving between different instantiations of the self. In the future, it will be the job of education to instruct people how to use their drugs responsibly and to gain value from their use. I mean this quite seriously. In a way, education should be doing this now. Teachers and students should go on trips together and notes should be compared and then a period of abstinence should be enforced to ensure that the subject gets the hang of the symmetry of which I speak. Smoking marijuana every day is not only a waste of money - it's a waste of marijuana, which is even worse. Kim Jones On 22/02/2013, at 7:24 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: These are necessity, they do not entertain compusilve behavior. I've been addicted to marijuana for more than fifteen years, I know what addict behavior entails. Usage repetition in drugs usage is an addictive behavior, the I stop when I
Re: Born Rule in MWI
On 22 Feb 2013, at 04:10, Joseph Knight wrote: Question: Why is the derivation* of the Born Rule in (Everett, 1957) not considered satisfactory**? Good question. I asked it myself very often. *Everett shows that the amplitude-squared rule for subjective probability is the only measure consistent with an agreeable additivity condition. And that was shown by Paulette Destouches-Février some decade before. My study of Gleason's theorem (in Richard Hugues's book, Harvard press) convinced me, at that time, that the Born rule follows indeed from the formalism + a version of comp first person indeterminacy (implicit in Everett, I think). Given the time made by some people to grasp that first person indeterminacy, or even just the notion of first person in the comp setting, maybe the problem relies there. Wallace is close to this, though. **It is apparently not satisfactory because there have been multiple later attempts to derive the Born Rule from certain other (e.g., decision-theoretic) assumptions in an Everett framework (Deutsch, Wallace). I have not yet studied these later works so cannot yet comment on them (but would appreciate any remarks/opinions that Everything-listers have to offer). I did study them, but I think I miss something as I think that Everett, in his long paper (thesis) is more convincing, especially in quantum computing where high dimensional Hilbert Space is required. Gleason theorem requires three dimension at least. Now comp requires an arithmetical quantum logic on which a Gleason theorem should be working, and up to now, it looks like this is quite plausible, and then we got both the wave and the Born rule from arithmetic alone. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
John, What do you mean by there is no ideally correct case? I can understand if you sincerely doubt about elementary arithmetic, though. In that case the term research lost his meaning, and we get a completely instrumentalist conception of science. We get the type of relativism used by my opponents i Brussels and Paris, that is philosophers who asserted that truth = power, and who illustrated it by rejecting my thesis while admitting not having seen any flaws. One said to me simply: we have the money. Those are cynical people who vindicate corruption, simply. We don't know the truth, but to make sense of research we need some faith in it. Bruno On 21 Feb 2013, at 22:00, John Mikes wrote: (I THINK: Brent): But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. (I THINK: Bruno): Yes, but we can't know that. (again I THINK Brent:) I'd say it's the other way around, scientists have no beliefs, only hypotheses. (again I THINK Bruno:) I define belief by hypothesis or derived from hypotheses. That's why in the ideally correct case, belief = provable. This works because provable does not entail truth. JM: There is NO ideally correct case. I define 'belief' as being possibly based on hearsay as well (religious etc.) (May I refer to my 2000 essay: Science - Religion, several times quoted on these pages). JM On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 5:58 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 20 Feb 2013, at 21:15, meekerdb wrote: On 2/20/2013 8:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to a few concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of a 'model'. There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. Yes, but we can't know that. I'd say it's the other way around, scientists have no beliefs, only hypotheses. I define belief by hypothesis or derived from hypotheses. That's why in the ideally correct case, belief = provable. This works because provable does not entail truth. If you ask a physicist, for example, if he believes GR he will probably give a complicated answer about how it is our best theory of macroscopic gravitation and it has proven correct in many experiments and it is our best model - BUT it is almost certainly not right because its inconsistent with QM. OK. (assuming QM is correct, of course). and the best we can hope, is to refute them, by making them clear enough. I insist on this because there is a widespread misconsception in popular science, but also among many materialist scientists (= many scientists), that we can know something scientifically, but that is provably wrong with comp, and plausiibly wrong with common sense. A scientist who make public his knowledge is a pseudo-scientist, or a pseudo-religious person, or is simply mad. Is that true of logicians too. :-) Yes. Actually logicians made this explicit, where most scientists are unaware that their scientific beliefs are hypotheses. Many believe that they are just truth. Well, not all, of course. Some scientists have still a scientific view, thanks God! :) Bruno Brent There is always an interrogation mark after any theory. Theories are beliefs, never public knowledge. Even 1+1=2. But we can (temporally) agree on some theories. We have to do that to refute them, and learn. Bruno * You mention 'statistical' in connection with adaptation. I deny the validity of statistics (and so: of probability) because it depends on the borderlines to observe in counting the items. 1000 years ago (or maybe yesterday) such boderlines were different, consequently different statistics came up with different chances of occurrence in them (not even mentioning the indifference of WHEN all those chances may materialize). * ...within a looped continuum of perceived causality... Perceived causality is restricted to the 'model' content, while it may be open to be entailed by instigators beyond our present knowledge. Furthermore (in the flimsy concept we have about 'time' I cannot see a 'loop' - only a propagating curve as everything changes by the time we think to 'close' the loop (like the path of a planet as the Sun moves). * ...I couldn't agree with you more. That's a big part of what my TOE is all about
Re: The Plant Teachers
On 21 Feb 2013, at 13:17, Pierz wrote: I have tried both DMT and salvia, although my salvia hits were much milder than my DMT doses. I found DMT quite terrifying in many ways, and I can totally relate what Bruno says regarding the salvia experience not being fun, how it is hard and exhausting, and how one procrastinates its use, to my experience of DMT. I keep intending to use it again, but continually put it off, because it is just such a difficult thing for the mind to deal with. One isn't physically or mentally tired afterwards, but one's soul is exhausted! It's the most spiritually taxing thing imaginable. There is something terribly impersonal about the world one enters, like some vast machinery of mind in which anything is conceivable. It is extremely harsh. Mind you, it might be totally different the next time - despite commonalities between trips, it is wildly unpredictable. One thing I did notice was that low doses of salvia leave the well-known positive hang over, whereas low doses of DMT do not. I was never able to get a big enough hit from salvia to get me anywhere near the extreme psychic bungee-jump of DMT, but I'm sure with a pure enough product, the experience is probably similar in intensity. The attitude toward drug policy is a solid remnant of the attitude of Roman Christianity toward mystics. ---Don' do research by yourself, we have the truth, obey us without doubting, doubt and knowledge is the devil, etc. It is just obvious that altered conscious states provides non trivial observations on the working of mind and brain, and possibly the nature of reality. Science has not yet begun. We are in an obscurantist period, since 1500 years. Free-thinking does not yet exist in academies, with few exceptions. Modernity is an opportunist indexical. Bruno On Thursday, February 7, 2013 8:57:57 PM UTC+11, Kim Jones wrote: Graham Hancock's experiences with Ayahuasca Of course some will immediately denounce this post as irrelevant to the search for a TOE. But, recall that CONSCIOUSNESS is the ultimate final frontier in science and that voyagers in consciousness- altering substances have a perspective to contribute here. This blog I find to be one of the more convincingly serious and thought- provoking essays on the use of DMT that I have yet encountered. In many ways, the experience of Ayahuasca seems to dovetail with the experience of Salvia Divinorum, as I'm sure Bruno will agree. I have tried neither, but would leap at the opportunity were it to present itself to me. Fascinating, Captain, fascinating. Kim Jones. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Born Rule in MWI
On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 4:57 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 22 Feb 2013, at 04:10, Joseph Knight wrote: Question: Why is the derivation* of the Born Rule in (Everett, 1957) not considered satisfactory**? Good question. I asked it myself very often. *Everett shows that the amplitude-squared rule for subjective probability is the only measure consistent with an agreeable additivity condition. And that was shown by Paulette Destouches-Février some decade before. My study of Gleason's theorem (in Richard Hugues's book, Harvard press) convinced me, at that time, that the Born rule follows indeed from the formalism + a version of comp first person indeterminacy (implicit in Everett, I think). Given the time made by some people to grasp that first person indeterminacy, or even just the notion of first person in the comp setting, maybe the problem relies there. Wallace is close to this, though. **It is apparently not satisfactory because there have been multiple later attempts to derive the Born Rule from certain other (e.g., decision-theoretic) assumptions in an Everett framework (Deutsch, Wallace). I have not yet studied these later works so cannot yet comment on them (but would appreciate any remarks/opinions that Everything-listers have to offer). I did study them, but I think I miss something as I think that Everett, in his long paper (thesis) is more convincing, especially in quantum computing where high dimensional Hilbert Space is required. Gleason theorem requires three dimension at least. Now comp requires an arithmetical quantum logic on which a Gleason theorem should be working, and up to now, it looks like this is quite plausible, and then we got both the wave and the Born rule from arithmetic alone. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ Do you get separate universes from comp alone? Richard -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The Plant Teachers
2013/2/22 Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au There is a guy in India - don't ask me for the chapter and verse because I can't be bothered looking it up - who is in his late 70s. He claims that his last meal was 65 years ago. No one has ever seen him eat. He survives on sunlight, food and water - according to him. When asked why this is, or how he is able to survive in this way he merely says I live as do the plants. OK - he's maybe a fakir or maybe he's a faker but I mention this to challenge your assertion that the intake of certain substances is privileged because of a claim of a necessary relationship we have with them. You say you are addicted to the Green Bitch I was, I am no more since several years now. but I still hold that it is your choice to be so. I never pretended otherwise. I have been inhaling the stuff fairly regularly for at least the past 35 years. Then if it is regularly and alone usage, you are an addict, you can pretend otherwise, but regular lonely usage of marijuana is an addictive behavior, you can change the meaning of addict, it won't make you not an addict. All the current studies indicate that cannabis is about as addictive as coffee. Well it's bullshit. A woman in New Zealand recently died because she consumed on average half a swimming-pool of Coca Cola every day. You may argue that her addiction to Coke is what killed her, but I would say it was the lack of diversity in her diet that killed her. You cannot suicide by smoking too much cannabis. Even if you got a wheelbarrow full of the finest heads and proceeded to smoke all of it, you would eventually die - not from the THC intake, but through asphyxiation from inhaling such a ridiculous amount of smoke. I advocate intelligent and moderate use. I do too, but that's what addictive problems show, once addicted, you don't do a *moderate* use. You can say you have an ntelligent and moderate use, don't pretend it is for most marijuana users. It's a lie, you can lie to you if you want, don't lie to others please. My rule of thumb is - I buy a quarter of an ounce which I usually cannot afford anyway, so I treasure it. I am able to make that last for approximately 10 to twelve days. I then don't smoke for twice that amount of time - a fortnight or more. This is important because, the more you smoke Mary Jane, the less she works for you because the body builds up a tolerance for her. You surely have noticed this effect? Sure. To continue your intake of a substance after that substance has stopped working is the height of ignorance or stupidity. Well maybe I'm stupid, happy for you, you're an intelligent, please do your stuff and tells anyone smocking is and blame stupidity on addict. Or maybe, you're the stupid. Quentin Intelligent and moderate use of a substance always invokes the need for a FORMAL and RITUALISED behaviour which becomes a life rhythm, a regime that supports your best side. When you use, your mind accepts the THC and you gain the marvellous insights and creative ideas that are the hallmark of cannabis and its effect on the mind. You also arm your body against cancer. One thing you and I will certainly NOT die of Quentin (and Bruno) is cancer. You must see this period of time as a privilege, a gift or a learning experience. You then leave the ecological classroom for a time and you take the wisdom and insights you developed under the influence back into the baseline normative state of consciousness that we must adhere to to live in a world where we have to do things like drive cars and operate dangerous heavy machinery for which a cannabis delirium would spell danger or death. I did not call this thread The Plant Teachers for nothing. The other thing is marijuana's effect on the memory. Often you smoke, you have powerful insights and ideas, but you forget them as your mind races ahead to its next perception.I have trained myself over the years to have a notepad and pen with me whenever stoned so I do not lose track of the pearls of wisdom as they come through. Cannbis is not a lifestyle; it is a TOOL. You must be clear to yourself WHY you are using it when you are using it and not just giving into a bad habit. But the ability to do that is a function of education - it requires restraint and the ability to see the value of living in these two parallel universes and skipping between the two. There is a necessary period of transition from one to the other. By now I can say that the experience of being straight is a wonderful experience because I know that it won't last forever because at a certain point I will allow myself to enter my Second Life and will become an avatar in another world. Both universes are on an equal footing. Being straight is not better than being stoned and being stoned is not better than being straight. There is symmetry in the experience of moving between different instantiations of the self. In the
Re: The Plant Teachers
2013/2/22 Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com 2013/2/22 Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au There is a guy in India - don't ask me for the chapter and verse because I can't be bothered looking it up - who is in his late 70s. He claims that his last meal was 65 years ago. No one has ever seen him eat. He survives on sunlight, food and water - according to him. When asked why this is, or how he is able to survive in this way he merely says I live as do the plants. OK - he's maybe a fakir or maybe he's a faker but I mention this to challenge your assertion that the intake of certain substances is privileged because of a claim of a necessary relationship we have with them. You say you are addicted to the Green Bitch I was, I am no more since several years now. but I still hold that it is your choice to be so. I never pretended otherwise. I have been inhaling the stuff fairly regularly for at least the past 35 years. Then if it is regularly and alone usage, you are an addict, you can pretend otherwise, but regular lonely usage of marijuana is an addictive behavior, you can change the meaning of addict, it won't make you not an addict. All the current studies indicate that cannabis is about as addictive as coffee. Well it's bullshit. A woman in New Zealand recently died because she consumed on average half a swimming-pool of Coca Cola every day. You may argue that her addiction to Coke is what killed her, but I would say it was the lack of diversity in her diet that killed her. You cannot suicide by smoking too much cannabis. Even if you got a wheelbarrow full of the finest heads and proceeded to smoke all of it, you would eventually die - not from the THC intake, but through asphyxiation from inhaling such a ridiculous amount of smoke. I advocate intelligent and moderate use. I do too, but that's what addictive problems show, once addicted, you don't do a *moderate* use. You can say you have an ntelligent and moderate use, don't pretend it is for most marijuana users. It's a lie, you can lie to you if you want, don't lie to others please. My rule of thumb is - I buy a quarter of an ounce which I usually cannot afford anyway, so I treasure it. I am able to make that last for approximately 10 to twelve days. I then don't smoke for twice that amount of time - a fortnight or more. This is important because, the more you smoke Mary Jane, the less she works for you because the body builds up a tolerance for her. You surely have noticed this effect? Sure. To continue your intake of a substance after that substance has stopped working is the height of ignorance or stupidity. Well maybe I'm stupid, happy for you, you're an intelligent, please do your stuff and tells anyone smocking is and blame stupidity on addict. read: please do your stuff and tells anyone smocking is OK and blame stupidity on addict. Or maybe, you're the stupid. Quentin Intelligent and moderate use of a substance always invokes the need for a FORMAL and RITUALISED behaviour which becomes a life rhythm, a regime that supports your best side. When you use, your mind accepts the THC and you gain the marvellous insights and creative ideas that are the hallmark of cannabis and its effect on the mind. You also arm your body against cancer. One thing you and I will certainly NOT die of Quentin (and Bruno) is cancer. You must see this period of time as a privilege, a gift or a learning experience. You then leave the ecological classroom for a time and you take the wisdom and insights you developed under the influence back into the baseline normative state of consciousness that we must adhere to to live in a world where we have to do things like drive cars and operate dangerous heavy machinery for which a cannabis delirium would spell danger or death. I did not call this thread The Plant Teachers for nothing. The other thing is marijuana's effect on the memory. Often you smoke, you have powerful insights and ideas, but you forget them as your mind races ahead to its next perception.I have trained myself over the years to have a notepad and pen with me whenever stoned so I do not lose track of the pearls of wisdom as they come through. Cannbis is not a lifestyle; it is a TOOL. You must be clear to yourself WHY you are using it when you are using it and not just giving into a bad habit. But the ability to do that is a function of education - it requires restraint and the ability to see the value of living in these two parallel universes and skipping between the two. There is a necessary period of transition from one to the other. By now I can say that the experience of being straight is a wonderful experience because I know that it won't last forever because at a certain point I will allow myself to enter my Second Life and will become an avatar in another world. Both universes are on an equal footing. Being straight is not better than being
Re: The duplicators and the restorers
2013/2/21 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 20 Feb 2013, at 22:38, Alberto G. Corona wrote: if comp and the null hypothesis (everithing exist) is accepted, then a infinity of copies of you are now being kicked by a wild horse while being eaten by bugs in an ocean of acid. That's correct. So it does not matter what just a single copy of you is doing whatever ;) That does not follow, because what a single copy does will influence the relative proportion of its consistent extensions. It may be under QM You can take the lift, the stairs or jump out of the window. In all case you will survive. But with the lift and stairs, you have a high probability to feel nice and healthy when getting at the ground floor. If you jump out of the window, you might have a high probability to find yourself in a very painful situation, in some hospital. This can be argued in both QM, or directly in comp. If your were right, it would make no sense to derive the physical laws from comp, and we would not been Turing emulable. Comp would be just false, by leading to too much white rabbits. But the observed lawful behaviour of the (local) universe according with QM, for example, does not coerce the null hypothesis to such consistency. It may be possible a consistent universe at time T and after that a rogue universe where I suffer painful tortures, white rabbits appear by breaking some causality laws but not challenging the continuation of life and intelligence, at least for some time, so that anyone can observe it. Then a mormal universe at T2 can proceed normally. I guess it would be perfectly computable and mathematical (although with a higher Kolmogorov complexity). What avoid that explosion of possibilities?. That is the unreasonable dogmatic, but effective, assumption that puzzled Einstein, that any reality is simple because it is what it is observed locally. And, if they exist, Do we should care for these other realities? It is all this unobserved realities a scientific endavour or it is simply extrapolations as a result of an aestethical or ideological drive? I suppose that questions like these appear here from time to time. Bruno 2013/2/13 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 13 Feb 2013, at 04:09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 11:58 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Consider the following thought experiment, called The Duplicators: At 1:00 PM tomorrow, you will be abducted by aliens. The aliens will tell you not to worry, that you won't be harmed but they wish to conduct some experiments on the subject of pain, which is unknown to them. These aliens possess technology far in advance of our own. They have the ability to scan and replicate objects down to the atomic level and the aliens use this technology to create an atom-for-atom duplicate of yourself, which they call you2. The aliens thank you for your assistance and return you unharmed back to your home by 5:00 PM. You ask them What about the pain experiments? and they hand you an informational pamphlet and quickly fly off. You read the pamphlet which explains that a duplicate of you (you2) was created and subjected to some rather terrible pain experiments, akin to what humans call torture and at the end of the experiment you2 was euthanized. You consider this awful, but are nonetheless glad that they tortured your duplicate rather than you. Now consider the slightly different thought experiment, called The Restorers: At 1:00 PM tomorrow, you will be abducted by aliens. Unlike the aliens with the duplication technology (the duplicators), these aliens possess a restorative technology. They can perfectly erase memories and all other physical traces to perfectly restore you to a previous state. The aliens will tell you not to worry, that you won't be harmed but they wish to conduct some experiments on the subject of pain, which is unknown to them. They then proceed to brutually torture you for many hours, conducting test after test on pain. Afterwards, they erase your memory of the torture and all traces of injury and stress from your body. When they are finished, you are atom-for-atom identical to how you were before the torture began. The aliens thank you for your assistance and return you unharmed back to your home by 5:00 PM. You ask them What about the pain experiments? and they hand you an informational pamphlet and quickly fly off. You read the pamphlet which explains that a duplicate of you (you2) was created and subjected to some rather terrible pain experiments, akin to what humans call torture and at the end of the experiment you2 was euthenized. You consider this awful, but are nonetheless glad that they tortured your duplicate rather than you. My questions for the list: 1. Do you consider yourself to have experienced the torture in the case of the Restorers, even though you no longer remember it? If
The contents of mind according to Leibniz
Definitions Perceptions = The contents of mind (knowledge) at a given time according to Leibniz. Perceptions are states of knowledge (ideas) acquired indirectly by all of the monads in the universe by means of the Supreme Monad from the point of view of a each monad. Leibniz uses the phrase reflected by each monad. ideas = individual perceptions. particular bits of knowledge. Comnsciousness = current vivid perceptions obtained through the senses as in Hume Memory = the collection of perceptions from its own point of view of each monad knowledge = innate knowledge (platonic, necessary truths) + stored knowledge stored knowledge = knowledge as descriptions (ideas) + empirical knowledge empirical knowledge = knowledge obtained through the senses (faded impressions as in Hume) [Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] 2/22/2013 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. - Woody Allen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On Friday, February 22, 2013 1:05:14 AM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: unlike the other sciences or even art mathematics does not require experimentation. But they require thinking, Obviously. which you are saying is nothing but the brain. What to you think with, your elbow? So my point was that you have a double standard about which brain activities represent nothing but evolutionary driven illusions and which ones represent an independent and absolute truth. I'm pointing out that bias so you can see that your position is riddled with confirmation bias. The act of looking is to see out of your eyes. Are you saying that electrical signals look out of your eyes? I'm saying that eyes produce a sequence of electronic signals that are sent to the brain which interprets that input as a 3D image; already experimental procedures have used electronic cameras to replace non functioning eyes in blind people, and they report seeing a image, a very poor low resolution image to be sure but better than no image at all, and as the technology improves the image will improve too. And for a number of years electronic ears (cochlear implants) have been available, and it is no longer experimental, it's just mainstream medicine. A signal is a sign. A sign means that it has to be interpreted by someone or some thing. Our experience of 3D images is not useful to the brain in any way. The electronic sequences need not be interpreted at all because they are already neurological signals. It is like saying that putting a 3D television inside of your CPU would help it process a video game. Even if we say that the brain interprets signals, why would it interpret as some 'experience'? If all that is needed is math, then why have anything but data in the brain? Why have geometry when you can have glorious certain digital number sequences? The signals that you are talking about aren't even physically coherent. Are you talking about ion channels opening, or neurotransmitters being secreted, or just the general measure of current or field strength as measured by an fMRI? The brain that you describe is a cartoon. Do you understand what is meant by 'the map is not the territory'? Do you understand that you can't have a map of a adjective? Do you understand that despite what your third grade teacher taught you Craig Weinberg is a adjective? I'll take that as a no. What's this about being adjectives though? What other kinds of things that our third grade teachers taught us about nouns and proper nouns are you saying is wrong? So you have a budding theory to overthrow parts of speech? There is no 'the thing'. There is only qualia in the universe, Then it would be impossible to make a computer that did not deal in qualia, Right! But qualia is hierarchical...it's sort of the essence of hierarchy in a way. The qualia which originated in the creation of a water molecule is not the same as the qualia which originated from the creating of a human being. although I must say that if everything in the universe is qualia then the word qualia has zero informational value and you are just causing needless wear and tear on your keyboard when you type the word. The word qualia is only useful now because we are stuck with legacy physics which posits non-qualia in the form of realities which are external to sense. Once we understand that physics is sense, then yes, there's no need for the term. Although it has some use relativistically to suggest personal direct experience rather than indirect experience. Neurons are physical experiences No they are not, neurons are just cells, cells are physical experiences. and about 97% of what neurons do has nothing to do with thinking or consciousness, most of their activities are just to stay alive and is identical with what a liver or skin or intestinal cell does. Yes, exactly. Cells have their own (sub-personal) lives. It's not possible for spatial presentation to have any effect at all. It doesn't do anything functional. Bullshit. Which means I'm right and you have no argument. Explain to me how any spatial presentation can possibly have a function which improves upon unpresented data processing. This is the point of the whole thread, and that point is undeniable as far as I can tell. Geometry is a zombie. It has no connection to math at all except after the fact of our sense's presentation of geometry to us. Geometry cannot be derived from math alone, and neither can color, sound, touch, thought, or feeling. If something works perfectly fine with no consciousness or presentation, It must be grand being a hard problem theorist because it's the easiest job in the world bar none, no matter how smart something is you just say yeah but it's not conscious and there is no way
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On Thursday, February 21, 2013 12:11:36 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 21 Feb 2013, at 15:06, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 21, 2013 5:58:20 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Feb 2013, at 21:15, meekerdb wrote: On 2/20/2013 8:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to *a few* concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of *a 'model'.* There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. Yes, but we can't know that. Can we know that we can't know that? Yes. That something that the machine can prove and know. How can we know what a machine can prove or know if our own knowledge is only belief? It is not obvious, and is based on the fact, known already by Gödel, that machines or formal systems can prove their own incompleteness theorem. The rest follows from the Theatetus' definition of knowledge, and some work. Isn't the proof of incompleteness also incomplete? i.e. we don't know that what senses we have access to unless our personal range of sense informs us about them. We may in fact have intuitions which are true without being believed or even detected explicitly (hence blindsight). I'd say it's the other way around, scientists have no beliefs, only hypotheses. I define belief by hypothesis or derived from hypotheses. That's why in the ideally correct case, belief = provable. This works because provable does not entail truth. If you ask a physicist, for example, if he believes GR he will probably give a complicated answer about how it is our best theory of macroscopic gravitation and it has proven correct in many experiments and it is our best model - BUT it is almost certainly not right because its inconsistent with QM. OK. (assuming QM is correct, of course). I think that if QM were applied to itself, QM is an abstract theory about physical objects, not about abstract theories. If you meant that QM applies to physicists, seen as physical object, then we get the MWI. I mean that if the kind of thought processes which have gone into QM were applied to the theories of QM themselves, then it would likely mandate that QM can only be as true as it is false. Every truth in the theory can only exist by borrowing from a false condition that it creates. it would likely conclude that it was at once the truest and the least true theory to date, and I would agree with that. see above - QM is true/false just as quantum is particle/wave... unless theories are exempt from physics... which would mean that QM is just unacknowledged dualism. Craig ? Bruno Craig and the best we can hope, is to refute them, by making them clear enough. I insist on this because there is a widespread misconsception in popular science, but also among many materialist scientists (= many scientists), that we can know something scientifically, but that is provably wrong with comp, and plausiibly wrong with common sense. A scientist who make public his knowledge is a pseudo-scientist, or a pseudo-religious person, or is simply mad. Is that true of logicians too. :-) Yes. Actually logicians made this explicit, where most scientists are unaware that their scientific beliefs are hypotheses. Many believe that they are just truth. Well, not all, of course. Some scientists have still a scientific view, thanks God! :) Bruno Brent There is always an interrogation mark after any theory. Theories are beliefs, never public knowledge. Even 1+1=2. But we can (temporally) agree on some theories. We have to do that to refute them, and learn. Bruno * You mention 'statistical' in connection with adaptation. I deny the validity of statistics (and so: of probability) because it depends on the borderlines to observe in counting the items. 1000 years ago (or maybe yesterday) such boderlines were different, consequently different statistics came up with different chances of occurrence in them (not even mentioning the indifference of WHEN all those chances may materialize). * *...within a looped continuum of perceived causality... * Perceived causality is restricted to the 'model' content, while it may be open to be entailed
Re: Born Rule in MWI
On 22 Feb 2013, at 11:55, Richard Ruquist wrote: On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 4:57 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 22 Feb 2013, at 04:10, Joseph Knight wrote: Question: Why is the derivation* of the Born Rule in (Everett, 1957) not considered satisfactory**? Good question. I asked it myself very often. *Everett shows that the amplitude-squared rule for subjective probability is the only measure consistent with an agreeable additivity condition. And that was shown by Paulette Destouches-Février some decade before. My study of Gleason's theorem (in Richard Hugues's book, Harvard press) convinced me, at that time, that the Born rule follows indeed from the formalism + a version of comp first person indeterminacy (implicit in Everett, I think). Given the time made by some people to grasp that first person indeterminacy, or even just the notion of first person in the comp setting, maybe the problem relies there. Wallace is close to this, though. **It is apparently not satisfactory because there have been multiple later attempts to derive the Born Rule from certain other (e.g., decision-theoretic) assumptions in an Everett framework (Deutsch, Wallace). I have not yet studied these later works so cannot yet comment on them (but would appreciate any remarks/opinions that Everything-listers have to offer). I did study them, but I think I miss something as I think that Everett, in his long paper (thesis) is more convincing, especially in quantum computing where high dimensional Hilbert Space is required. Gleason theorem requires three dimension at least. Now comp requires an arithmetical quantum logic on which a Gleason theorem should be working, and up to now, it looks like this is quite plausible, and then we got both the wave and the Born rule from arithmetic alone. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ Do you get separate universes from comp alone? We get many separate dreams. It is an open question if some collections of sharable dreams define an unique complete physical reality. The laws of physics are the same for all Turing machines, as they emerge from all computations, but they still can have non isomorphic solutions. My feeling is that an unique complete physical reality is not quite plausible. I don't think this is compatible with the SWE+comp. If the SWE is correct, then the SWE is an epistemological consequence of comp, including the MWI; and if QM is not correct, with comp, this could lead to multiverses but also to multi-multiverses, or multi- multiverses, etc. Even them might be only local, without any definite global physical reality. If the zero of the Riemann function corresponds to the eigenvalue of some hermitian operator, like some hope to show for solving Riemann conjecture, reality could emerge from a quantum chaos, which would implement a quantum universal dovetailing. To solve the mind body problem with this would still need to extract this from the (quantified) arithmetical hypostases. I mean this quantum chaos should be prove the win the measure competition among all universal systems. Let us be clear. If computationalism is correct, we are really only at the very start of getting the comp physics. We have only the logic of the observable, and a tuns of open mathematical problems, which does not interest anyone, by lack of motivation on the mind-body problem. To use the comp-physics to do cosmology or particle physics is like using superstring theory to do a coffee. It is the weakness of comp, it leads to complex mathematics, very quickly, and cannot have direct applications (unlike most of physics). The main non direct but important, in my sight, application is in the understanding that machine's theology is a science, indeed a branch of computer science, and so with comp (usually believed even if unconsciously) theology can be approached with the modest attitude of science. That can help the understanding that science has not decided between the two quite opposite conceptions of reality developed by Plato and Aristotle. Comp provides a lot of jobs for the futures. Even without comp, biotechnologies will develop into theotechnologies, we might get artificial brains because some doctor might not ask you, and just consider it is the best treatment for you. We, here and now, might get consistent extensions in computers build by our descendents, etc. It is not a luxe to dig on what that could mean. To sum up, computationalism leads to the many separate physical universes, in any large sense of physical universes. With a too much strict definition of physical universe, it is possible that comp leads to just 0 universes. Just a web of dreams, defining no global sharable physical realities. A problem: physicists don't try to define what is a (primary or not) physical universe. Bruno Richard -- You received
Re: The duplicators and the restorers
On 22 Feb 2013, at 13:29, Alberto G. Corona wrote: 2013/2/21 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 20 Feb 2013, at 22:38, Alberto G. Corona wrote: if comp and the null hypothesis (everithing exist) is accepted, then a infinity of copies of you are now being kicked by a wild horse while being eaten by bugs in an ocean of acid. That's correct. So it does not matter what just a single copy of you is doing whatever ;) That does not follow, because what a single copy does will influence the relative proportion of its consistent extensions. It may be under QM Plausibly. That makes my statement even more solid. You can take the lift, the stairs or jump out of the window. In all case you will survive. But with the lift and stairs, you have a high probability to feel nice and healthy when getting at the ground floor. If you jump out of the window, you might have a high probability to find yourself in a very painful situation, in some hospital. This can be argued in both QM, or directly in comp. If your were right, it would make no sense to derive the physical laws from comp, and we would not been Turing emulable. Comp would be just false, by leading to too much white rabbits. But the observed lawful behaviour of the (local) universe according with QM, for example, does not coerce the null hypothesis to such consistency. It is comp that coerce for the null or everything hypothesis. And with comp the everything given by the additive and multiplicative number structure is already enough and not completeable for the ontology (and the epistemology is richer, and QM belongs or should belong to it). Keep in mind I do not assume QM, nor non-QM. In some context, I can talk like if QM was indeed the correct consequence of comp, but that remains to be seen. I tend to think that QM is very plausible, because you can derive it from very small set of experience (like rotational two slits experience, four slits experience (Deutch), five Stern Gerlach experience (Swinger). But with comp, we have to derive the whole SWE, including the linearity, the real and complex numbers, the dimensional geometries, which are assumed to interpret those experiences. It may be possible a consistent universe at time T and after that a rogue universe where I suffer painful tortures, white rabbits appear by breaking some causality laws but not challenging the continuation of life and intelligence, at least for some time, so that anyone can observe it. Then a mormal universe at T2 can proceed normally. We have to compute the comp-probability, or the QM-probability of this happening. If the comp-probability of white rabbits is big, then comp can be considered as empirically refuted. The QM-probability of white rabbit is shown rare, by the Born rule or Gleason's theorem, or by Feynman phase randomization. I guess it would be perfectly computable and mathematical (although with a higher Kolmogorov complexity). Computable is not enough. It has to be computable *and* having the right relative measure. Computable makes it exists, but it can still be relatively rare with respect to all computations going through your actual brain states (at the substitution levels). By the invariance of the first person experience for the computation delay, we cannot use Kolmogorov complexity to solve the measure problem, at least not directly (that would beg the measure problem). What avoid that explosion of possibilities?. Nothing. On the contrary: it is the explosion of possibilities which makes us hope that some normal histories can emerge statistically. That is the unreasonable dogmatic, but effective, assumption that puzzled Einstein, that any reality is simple because it is what it is observed locally. And, if they exist, Do we should care for these other realities? We should not care too much for the non-normal realities, except when we die, or take drugs, or sleep. When we die, a priori with comp, we survive in the most normal consistent extension, with respect to our actual state. It makes violent death a bit more frightening, at first sight. We should definitely care about our local normal realities, as they define our most probable futures, for us and our children. It is all this unobserved realities a scientific endavour or it is simply extrapolations as a result of an aestethical or ideological drive? It is a consequence of the assumption that we can survive with digital brain. The existence of the many computations is a theorem of elementary arithmetic, with comp (and thus Church's thesis) assumed or understood at the meta-level. I suppose that questions like these appear here from time to time. No problem with questions. Only problem with answers :) Bruno 2013/2/13 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 13 Feb 2013, at 04:09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On
Re: Born Rule in MWI
On 2/22/2013 12:10 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 22 Feb 2013, at 11:55, Richard Ruquist wrote: Do you get separate universes from comp alone? We get many separate dreams. It is an open question if some collections of sharable dreams define an unique complete physical reality. Hi, If we consider that a 'reality' is that which is incontrovertible for some collection of intercommunicating observers the answer is obvious. Consider an observer as having a set of observables that mutually commute and are mutually consistent (form a Boolean algebra). For some arbitrarily large collection of such, communications (that carry actual signals and not just noise) will only occur between members of the collection that involve some subset of the observables of the collection. Completeness is not necessary and might even be counter-productive as the problem of solving satisfiability for an arbitrarily large collection of propositions is NP-complete. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem The laws of physics are the same for all Turing machines, as they emerge from all computations, but they still can have non isomorphic solutions. I disagree. This claim is sound iff the laws of physics are 'the same' for all Turing machines only if one has a universal equivalence class of Turing machines and one can show that only one set of physical laws can exist. My feeling is that an unique complete physical reality is not quite plausible. I agree. I don't think this is compatible with the SWE+comp. I agree. If the SWE is correct, then the SWE is an epistemological consequence of comp, including the MWI; and if QM is not correct, with comp, this could lead to multiverses but also to multi-multiverses, or multi-multiverses, etc. Even them might be only local, without any definite global physical reality. ISTM that comp requires some form of MWI via the indeterminacy argument. If the zero of the Riemann function corresponds to the eigenvalue of some hermitian operator, like some hope to show for solving Riemann conjecture, reality could emerge from a quantum chaos, which would implement a quantum universal dovetailing. To solve the mind body problem with this would still need to extract this from the (quantified) arithmetical hypostases. I mean this quantum chaos should be prove the win the measure competition among all universal systems. I think that this is a quixotic request as proving the Riemann conjecture requires the inspection of all primes. This is asuper task http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertask... Let us be clear. If computationalism is correct, we are really only at the very start of getting the comp physics. We have only the logic of the observable, and a tuns of open mathematical problems, which does not interest anyone, by lack of motivation on the mind-body problem. To use the comp-physics to do cosmology or particle physics is like using superstring theory to do a coffee. It is the weakness of comp, it leads to complex mathematics, very quickly, and cannot have direct applications (unlike most of physics). The main non direct but important, in my sight, application is in the understanding that machine's theology is a science, indeed a branch of computer science, and so with comp (usually believed even if unconsciously) theology can be approached with the modest attitude of science. That can help the understanding that science has not decided between the two quite opposite conceptions of reality developed by Plato and Aristotle. Comp provides a lot of jobs for the futures. Even without comp, biotechnologies will develop into theotechnologies, we might get artificial brains because some doctor might not ask you, and just consider it is the best treatment for you. We, here and now, might get consistent extensions in computers build by our descendents, etc. It is not a luxe to dig on what that could mean. To sum up, computationalism leads to the many separate physical universes, in any large sense of physical universes. With a too much strict definition of physical universe, it is possible that comp leads to just 0 universes. Just a web of dreams, defining no global sharable physical realities. A problem: physicists don't try to define what is a (primary or not) physical universe. Bruno Richard -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The Plant Teachers
On 22 Feb 2013, at 17:21, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: The people who most hate smokers are ex-smokers. - PGC's father Since this thread has become a bit personal, I offer the view of a former judge of the German supreme court, who himself was not a smoker, nor did ever smoke: It's not really the passive smoking that bothers people, with exception of course to people trapped in a close working environment where everybody smokes and smoking is permitted. It's not the smell on their clothes either, since we have invented washing machines and dry cleaning. We need an attitude change instead of more rules: I think public spaces should regulate themselves and find creative ways to not lock anybody out, such as air vents over smoking sections of a bar, or that smokers at a bar will restrain themselves and be prepared to step outside if a guest with asthma arrives etc. The main issue is that everybody has vices and everybody in Germany has the constitutional right to act irresponsibly on personal choice matters that do not significantly hurt others. Significant harm is an open term here, to be calibrated by judges case-by-case. So the outrage on public smoking is people projecting their judgement of their own vices onto easy targets: passive smoking is a great example. Nobody has a problem walking through smoggy Berlin, Los Angeles, New York where particle emissions from fossil fuels of their SUVs also driven by non-smokers 'make my clothes stink, make me inhale carcinogens, cancerous toxins. Indeed, studies confirm that some cities have been deemed equivalent to smoking a few cigarettes a day, in terms of inhaled toxins. So why the fuss? People like to project what they dislike about themselves onto others behavior and feel the righteousness of judging right from wrong. I know this because I have been a judge all of my life; but I also know that the feeling is illusory and that these questions are much more difficult than our personal ethics. You can find temporary solutions to such issues and minimize harm. But you'll never get rid of the problem via regulation. You just move towards more extremism and uniformity. After all it is our imperfections that make us interesting. I've never smoked in my life, but passive smoke doesn't bother me, I even appreciate the smell of pipe tobacco. It's like I am transported to the orient. On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 6:27 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 20 Feb 2013, at 14:59, Quentin Anciaux wrote: All classical psychedelics exhibit anti-addictive properties. Sure, people can't do mescaline or LSD regularly enough, i.e. every few days to every day, How is using every day (or every few days) not an addictive behavior ? Seems quite strange to say that to have **anti** addictive properties, you should use it like an addict, seems contradictory. This does not necessarily follow. Many people can use some medication daily, without getting addicted. Taking salvia everyday asks for a big effort. I call it the huile de foie de morue of the drugs (Cod liver oil). ... In fact, except in forum, I see very few people developing an interest for that experience (except as a medication). But then I don't know so much people interested in the consequence of comp or in serious theology either. Salvia has this in common with comp: it does not go handy with wishful thinking. It has other relationship with comp, like insisting on some secrecy of a part of the experience, which corroborates the G/G* distinction. And that is the part which I have difficulty with and why I keep it at a close but rare distance. The joke seems immense and euphoric in its own terms, but the relevant brain subroutines, if you permit, are offended by every letter I type here, so there is some sense of stepping over a threshold that is a prohibited hack. Intuitively a question would be: So why was I invited? The small composer and the skeptic in me don't like this, even though they know ultimately resistance is futile. Yes, I understand. I will not add much, as I might say things on which I have to remain silent ... if I want to maintain good relation with the lady. :) Now, the secrecy problematic is a constant problem in theology, but also in a large part of psychology and medicine. We can guess it is normal, as brain are wired for terrestrial survival, which on some point can conflict with other form of survival. Then with comp it can be formally related to the fact that Bx - ~ x, admits solutions, like self-consistency (Dt) by Gödel's second incompleteness theorem. The whole G* minus G describes the landscape of the correct machine's secret. Comp makes some secret conditionally communicable, in the form as far as I am consistent then As for Quentin, I think he's right: poisons are a contradiction. For beside their danger and pleasure, they
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 8:25 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: What to you think with, your elbow? my point was that you have a double standard about which brain activities represent nothing but evolutionary driven illusions Illusions? Evolutionary drive is what made you the man you are today. And interpreting a 1D signal from the eye as 3D space is as valid a interpretation as any other, and apparently Evolution has determined that particular interpretation gets the most genes into the next generation. Thus you are good at 3D visualization because your ancestors were good at it too. You come from a long line of winners, most animals never manage to reproduce but every single one of your ancestors did. and which ones represent an independent and absolute truth. Huh? 2+2=4 is as close to a absolute truth as I can think of, what double standard are you talking about? Evolution is like history, it could have been different, a very small change in the distant past could cause gargantuan changes in the present, is that what you mean? A signal is a sign. I can't argue with that. A sign means that it has to be interpreted by someone or some thing. Yes and in this case the brain is doing the interpretation, and electronic cochlear implants can create a sequence of impulses that the brain interprets as sound, and we're well on the way of doing the same thing with 3D vision. Our experience of 3D images is not useful to the brain in any way. The 3D visualization of space would be very useful indeed if it's the most efficient way to figure out how to jump out of the way when a saber toothed tiger lunges at you on the African savanna. The electronic sequences need not be interpreted at all because they are already neurological signals. That statement is nuts. To a animal without genes for interpretation a neurological signal is just a neurological signal and there would be no reason to move when a predator starts to run at it and the genes of that stupid animal would not make it into the next generation; but a animal with genes for constructing a 3D world would not only know to run but know the direction to run, the magnitude of course is as fast as you can. If all that is needed is math, then why have anything but data in the brain? Because you need machinery to process that data. Why have geometry when you can have glorious certain digital number sequences? Because looked at with the lens of complex numbers that digital number sequence produces the qualia of geometry. Probably. Are you talking about ion channels opening, or neurotransmitters being secreted When you talk about a car moving are you talking about the wheels turning or the axle spinning? What's this about being adjectives though? You are the way matter behaves when it is organized in a Craigweinbergian way. Geometry is a zombie. [...] Geometry cannot be derived from math alone, and neither can color, sound, touch, thought, or feeling. It must be grand being a hard problem theorist because it's the easiest job in the world bar none, no matter how smart something is you just say yeah but it's not conscious and there is no way anybody can prove you wrong. Behavior is the only thing that determines success in life, and it doesn't matter if success means making money or making friends or avoiding predators or catching prey; Those things only mean success if you have meaning to begin with. Evolution has always had a very clear idea what success means, getting genes into the next generation; with humans Evolution has determined that the best way to do that is with a large brain because that produces intelligence. the most valuable thing of all, surely, is sense itself. To you, to me too, but not to Evolution; and yet Evolution has produced consciousness at least once and probably many billions of times; therefore the conclusion is unavoidable, consciousness MUST be a byproduct of something that IS valuable to Evolution. let's say that we have an AI which will pass the Turing Test Then I'd say the AI is certainly intelligent and I would estimate that the probability it is also conscious is the same probability that you are conscious, and that is pretty high. and we have an video simulator as well which has digitized every photograph and film of John Wayne and can produce CGI movies that pass the Scorcese Test. Is the whole system now John Wayne? If it behaves in exactly the same way that John Wayne would have behaved (and not one of John Wayne's characters) in those circumstances then yes, that would be John Wayne because it would be matter behaving in a Johnwayneian way. However as a practical matter I have no idea how you could determine that is what John Wayne would have done, so the Scorcese Test is of little use. if he starts saying how he's been resurrected by a computer and now lives again in movies? Is he telling the truth? When he says he's been
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On Friday, February 22, 2013 4:54:05 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 8:25 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: What to you think with, your elbow? my point was that you have a double standard about which brain activities represent nothing but evolutionary driven illusions Illusions? Evolutionary drive is what made you the man you are today. And interpreting a 1D signal from the eye as 3D space is as valid a interpretation as any other, and apparently Evolution has determined that particular interpretation gets the most genes into the next generation. Thus you are good at 3D visualization because your ancestors were good at it too. You come from a long line of winners, most animals never manage to reproduce but every single one of your ancestors did. A successful evolutionary outcome doesn't have anything to do with the veracity of the content of a signal. If someone has a delusion that their ancestors are sacred turnip people and it causes them to plant turnips and survive a famine, that doesn't mean that their belief is not a delusion. There seems to be this theme with your positions which fanatically exaggerates the importance of winning, and how winning justifies whatever distortions of the truth are required...but then when it comes to science and math, there seems to be a different standard. and which ones represent an independent and absolute truth. Huh? 2+2=4 is as close to a absolute truth as I can think of, what double standard are you talking about? What's 2+2=4 other than an electrical reaction in your brain? Evolution is like history, it could have been different, a very small change in the distant past could cause gargantuan changes in the present, is that what you mean? No, I don't know why you're going over evolution101 with me. A signal is a sign. I can't argue with that. A sign means that it has to be interpreted by someone or some thing. Yes and in this case the brain is doing the interpretation, and electronic cochlear implants can create a sequence of impulses that the brain interprets as sound, and we're well on the way of doing the same thing with 3D vision. We don't really know that the brain is doing an interpretation, so much as a complex notification. The interpretation may not be local to the brain, but to the lifetime of the personal experience associated with the brain. Why would one part of the brain receive and encode information from the outside world only for another part of the brain to decode the same information for some artificial inner world? If the brain can interpret the outside world as code, surely it would remain as code - invisible, intangible, precisely transmitted information states. Our experience of 3D images is not useful to the brain in any way. The 3D visualization of space would be very useful indeed if it's the most efficient way to figure out how to jump out of the way when a saber toothed tiger lunges at you on the African savanna. But it could not be any more efficient than no presentation at all. Absolutely, clearly, and unarguably: not possible. The electronic sequences need not be interpreted at all because they are already neurological signals. That statement is nuts. To a animal without genes for interpretation a neurological signal is just a neurological signal and there would be no reason to move when a predator starts to run at it The reason would be the that they received a neurological to move - just like a computer does. IF TIGER = 1 THEN RUN. You really are not seeing that your legs are cut off here. It reminds me of the limbless knight in Holy Grail. You can't understand what I am talking about if you are unwilling or unable to imagine thought experiments in which the existence of consciousness *is not an option*. Once you can do that, you can see that what makes sense about consciousness in hindsight, makes absolutely no sense evolutionarily. Evolution is not going to invent geometry to make data look pretty if pretty is meaningless. The data is all you need. Just like a computer doesn't need to draw triangles in a DIMM to render images for us to see. and the genes of that stupid animal would not make it into the next generation; but a animal with genes for constructing a 3D world would not only know to run but know the direction to run, the magnitude of course is as fast as you can. That logic is unfalsifiable just-so fallacy. If I asked why do we have teleportation on demand? You could answer because animals with genes for magical powers would have many advantages over those who couldn't. Don't you see that you aren't questioning consciousness? You're just taking it for granted: There is consciousness, therefore it must have evolved. If it evolved it must have an evolutionary purpose. But consciousness violates conventional physics
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On 2/22/2013 3:06 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, February 22, 2013 4:54:05 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 8:25 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: What to you think with, your elbow? my point was that you have a double standard about which brain activities represent nothing but evolutionary driven illusions Illusions? Evolutionary drive is what made you the man you are today. And interpreting a 1D signal from the eye as 3D space is as valid a interpretation as any other, and apparently Evolution has determined that particular interpretation gets the most genes into the next generation. Thus you are good at 3D visualization because your ancestors were good at it too. You come from a long line of winners, most animals never manage to reproduce but every single one of your ancestors did. A successful evolutionary outcome doesn't have anything to do with the veracity of the content of a signal. If someone has a delusion that their ancestors are sacred turnip people and it causes them to plant turnips and survive a famine, that doesn't mean that their belief is not a delusion. There seems to be this theme with your positions which fanatically exaggerates the importance of winning, and how winning justifies whatever distortions of the truth are required On the contrary, John is saying that evolution must align perception at least roughly with reality because misalignment is likely to go badly - like when the turnip people keep planting turnips because their ancestor said so even though the turnip beetle keeps decimating their crops. ...but then when it comes to science and math, there seems to be a different standard. and which ones represent an independent and absolute truth. Huh? 2+2=4 is as close to a absolute truth as I can think of, what double standard are you talking about? What's 2+2=4 other than an electrical reaction in your brain? It's an abstraction from pairs of things and the operation of putting them together. Evolution is like history, it could have been different, a very small change in the distant past could cause gargantuan changes in the present, is that what you mean? No, I don't know why you're going over evolution101 with me. A signal is a sign. I can't argue with that. A sign means that it has to be interpreted by someone or some thing. Yes and in this case the brain is doing the interpretation, and electronic cochlear implants can create a sequence of impulses that the brain interprets as sound, and we're well on the way of doing the same thing with 3D vision. We don't really know that the brain is doing an interpretation, so much as a complex notification. Notification to what...your immortal soul? The interpretation may not be local to the brain, but to the lifetime of the personal experience associated with the brain. How does a lifetime of experience exist in the present, and how does it read notes? Why would one part of the brain receive and encode information from the outside world only for another part of the brain to decode the same information for some artificial inner world? Because by seeing what happens in the inner world one my anticipate what will happen in the real world. If the brain can interpret the outside world as code, surely it would remain as code - invisible, intangible, precisely transmitted information states. Sure, at least up until it needs to coded into bodily reactions: motion, hormone release,... Our experience of 3D images is not useful to the brain in any way. The 3D visualization of space would be very useful indeed if it's the most efficient way to figure out how to jump out of the way when a saber toothed tiger lunges at you on the African savanna. But it could not be any more efficient than no presentation at all. Absolutely, clearly, and unarguably: not possible. But there would have to be an inner presentation in order to plan for avoiding or killing a saber tooth tiger. And while there is generally no conscious presentation in reactions to sudden threats the brain still knows which way to jump in three dimensions. The electronic sequences need not be interpreted at all because they are already neurological signals. That statement is nuts. To a animal without genes for interpretation a neurological signal is just a neurological signal and there would be no reason to move when a predator starts to run at it The reason would be the that they received a neurological to move - just like a computer does. IF TIGER = 1 THEN RUN. You really are not seeing that your legs are cut off here. Do you not see you are simply assuming what you are required to argue - that intelligent action can exist without consciousness. Brent -- You
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On Friday, February 22, 2013 7:45:58 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 2/22/2013 3:06 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, February 22, 2013 4:54:05 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 8:25 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: What to you think with, your elbow? my point was that you have a double standard about which brain activities represent nothing but evolutionary driven illusions Illusions? Evolutionary drive is what made you the man you are today. And interpreting a 1D signal from the eye as 3D space is as valid a interpretation as any other, and apparently Evolution has determined that particular interpretation gets the most genes into the next generation. Thus you are good at 3D visualization because your ancestors were good at it too. You come from a long line of winners, most animals never manage to reproduce but every single one of your ancestors did. A successful evolutionary outcome doesn't have anything to do with the veracity of the content of a signal. If someone has a delusion that their ancestors are sacred turnip people and it causes them to plant turnips and survive a famine, that doesn't mean that their belief is not a delusion. There seems to be this theme with your positions which fanatically exaggerates the importance of winning, and how winning justifies whatever distortions of the truth are required On the contrary, John is saying that evolution must align perception at least roughly with reality because misalignment is likely to go badly - like when the turnip people keep planting turnips because their ancestor said so even though the turnip beetle keeps decimating their crops. It doesn't matter. As long as the turnip people survive to reproduce while everyone else in their niche die of hunger, then they are the heirs of that niche forever. If the next selection event is a turnip beetle, it will be some members of the turnip clan who liked to supplement their turnips with barley who survive - not someone from outside the clan (because they are all dead). Again it makes no difference at all whether the barley people know about crop rotation or soil aeration, nutrition, biology, etc. All that matters is that they had the barley when the turnips went south. If they have it because they believe that Odin commands it, then that will be the adaptation which is passed on to the next selection event. The suggestion that evolution must align perception at least roughly with reality is interesting because it directly contradicts the model of qualia as a solipsistic simulation. This is supposed to be the reason why we don't perceive 'reality' as it is - probabilistic quantum computations. The relation between reality, computation, and perception here are misconceived because only two of the three make sense together any way you slice it. If you have computation and reality, there is no point of perception. If you have perception and computation, there is no need for reality. If you have perception and reality there is no need for a brain which computes. Only my way makes sense - where perception is the parent of both computation and realism, which exist as protocols for discerning and presenting public perceptions. ...but then when it comes to science and math, there seems to be a different standard. and which ones represent an independent and absolute truth. Huh? 2+2=4 is as close to a absolute truth as I can think of, what double standard are you talking about? What's 2+2=4 other than an electrical reaction in your brain? It's an abstraction from pairs of things and the operation of putting them together. How do you know it's not electrical reactions in the brain? Why isn't is just an evolutionary adaptation which cause your people to survive better with an illusion of abstract pairing operations. Think of math like you think of consciousness or the self - a convenient illusion that happens to have survival benefits. Notice the double standard again - when thinking of the utility of perception for survival, you grant the benefit of the doubt, enthusiastically, to the alignment of perception with reality. When perception is not directed toward evolutionary concerns however, and reveals instead the anthropological universals of spiritual and artistic interest, then suddenly the assumption of reality alignment disappears in a puff of smoke. Now perception is simply whatever happens to have washed up in some idiots superstition, and became, you know, an enduring pillar of civilization in every era and every location. Evolution is like history, it could have been different, a very small change in the distant past could cause gargantuan changes in the present, is that what you mean? No, I don't know why you're going over evolution101 with me. A signal is a sign. I can't argue with that.
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On 2/22/2013 6:08 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, February 22, 2013 7:45:58 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 2/22/2013 3:06 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, February 22, 2013 4:54:05 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 8:25 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: What to you think with, your elbow? my point was that you have a double standard about which brain activities represent nothing but evolutionary driven illusions Illusions? Evolutionary drive is what made you the man you are today. And interpreting a 1D signal from the eye as 3D space is as valid a interpretation as any other, and apparently Evolution has determined that particular interpretation gets the most genes into the next generation. Thus you are good at 3D visualization because your ancestors were good at it too. You come from a long line of winners, most animals never manage to reproduce but every single one of your ancestors did. A successful evolutionary outcome doesn't have anything to do with the veracity of the content of a signal. If someone has a delusion that their ancestors are sacred turnip people and it causes them to plant turnips and survive a famine, that doesn't mean that their belief is not a delusion. There seems to be this theme with your positions which fanatically exaggerates the importance of winning, and how winning justifies whatever distortions of the truth are required On the contrary, John is saying that evolution must align perception at least roughly with reality because misalignment is likely to go badly - like when the turnip people keep planting turnips because their ancestor said so even though the turnip beetle keeps decimating their crops. It doesn't matter. As long as the turnip people survive to reproduce while everyone else in their niche die of hunger, then they are the heirs of that niche forever. If the next selection event is a turnip beetle, it will be some members of the turnip clan who liked to supplement their turnips with barley who survive - not someone from outside the clan (because they are all dead). Again it makes no difference at all whether the barley people know about crop rotation or soil aeration, nutrition, biology, etc. All that matters is that they had the barley when the turnips went south. If they have it because they believe that Odin commands it, then that will be the adaptation which is passed on to the next selection event. Yes, it makes no difference why you believe a useful thing, but if you believe things for reasons unrelated to reality then it is unlikely they will be useful. I is astounding that you would argue against such an obvious proposition. I can only conclude you are either a troll or brain damaged. The suggestion that evolution must align perception at least roughly with reality is interesting because it directly contradicts the model of qualia as a solipsistic simulation. You just made that up - it doesn't follow from anything, either logical or empirical - it's just blather. This is supposed to be the reason why we don't perceive 'reality' as it is - probabilistic quantum computations. Who says computations are reality (besides Bruno)? The relation between reality, computation, and perception here are misconceived because only two of the three make sense together any way you slice it. If you have computation and reality, there is no point of perception. Before you can make that into an interesing argument you would have to show that everything must have a point, whatever that means...something like aligning with reality? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: A successful evolutionary outcome doesn't have anything to do with the veracity of the content of a signal. If the interpretation your brain performs on a sequence of impulses that come from your eyes is not compatible with the facts in your external environment then you are going to be eaten by something that has fewer incompatibilities than you do, it's as simple as that. That was true for your parents and for their parents and for hundreds of millions of your ancestors before that to a time when the Earth was young. And you can't fool it, Evolution is not concerned with philosophical bullshit, it cares about getting genes into the next generation and nothing else. I don't know why you're going over evolution101 with me. Because you don't know Evolution 101. The interpretation may not be local to the brain, but to the lifetime of the personal experience associated with the brain. Personal experience is of no use unless it is remembered and memory is encoded in the brain. The 3D visualization of space would be very useful indeed if it's the most efficient way to figure out how to jump out of the way when a saber toothed tiger lunges at you on the African savanna. But it could not be any more efficient than no presentation at all. How did you learn this, did it come to you in a dream? Absolutely, clearly, and unarguably: not possible. Bullshit. The reason would be the that they received a neurological to move - just like a computer does. IF TIGER = 1 THEN RUN. Sure, but to do that you have to interpret a sequence of impulses from your eye as a tiger and that is not a trivial thing to do, computers are only now starting to be able to do image recognition and they still are not nearly as good as people are at it, but then Evolution had a 600 million year head start. Computers are improving at great speed and if we talk again about computer vision 10 years from now the story could be very different. you are unwilling or unable to imagine thought experiments in which the existence of consciousness *is not an option*. Not true, I believe that once you have intelligence the existence of consciousness *is not an option*. Evolution is not going to invent geometry to make data look pretty if pretty is meaningless. Pretty is not meaningless if pretty data can be manipulated with less mental fire power than the same data presented in a ugly way. In fact that's probably at least part of the reason that people have a aesthetic sense, pretty is simple symmetrical and elegant. Don't you see that you aren't questioning consciousness? Are you questioning consciousness, do you consciously believe that consciousness does not exist? There is consciousness, therefore it must have evolved. Yes. If it evolved it must have an evolutionary purpose. No, it might have no Evolutionary purpose whatsoever, consciousness could be a spandrel, it could be the byproduct of something else, something that did have a evolutionary purpose. But consciousness violates conventional physics far more egregiously than magic. Physics neither insists that consciousness exists nor insists that it does not, physics is in fact just like you, it has nothing of interest to say about the subject. This is what you are not explaining - the gap between data and experience of some kind. If consciousness is fundamental as you insist it is then there is nothing you can say about it except that consciousness is the way data feels like when it is being processed. Within the experience of the individual, the qualia of significance is even more of a driving force for a person than survival. Maybe for some individuals, but most certainly NOT for Evolution, and if we're talking about why people have the sort of mind that they do it is only Evolution's opinion that is important. You are right about evolution not valuing sense Thank you. that's because chance and teleonomy are driven by consequence - the flip side of choice/teleology. The driving force for Evolution is mutation and natural selection, teleology has nothing to do with it. Mutation is random while natural selection is deterministic, and choice is either random or deterministic. If it behaves in exactly the same way that John Wayne would have behaved (and not one of John Wayne's characters) in those circumstances then yes, that would be John Wayne because it would be matter behaving in a Johnwayneian way. However as a practical matter I have no idea how you could determine that is what John Wayne would have done, so the Scorcese Test is of little use. But you couldn't determine that it is not what John Wayne would do or say either. True, which is exactly why the Scorcese Test is of little use. you are saying that you could bring John Wayne back from the dead just by doing a perfect impersonation of him. Yes, that is exactly what I
