date:20131016



On 15 Oct 2013, at 23:04, Russell Standish wrote:


On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 01:02:13PM -0400, Richard Ruquist wrote:
Bruno: Arithmetical truth escapes largely the computable  
arithmetical truth

(by Gödel).


Richard: I guess I am too much a physicist to believe that  
uncomputible

arithmetical truth can produce the physical.
Since you read my paper you know that I think computations in this  
universe
if holographic are limited to 10^120 bits (the Lloyd limit) which  
is very
far from infinity. I just do not believe in infinity. In other  
words, I
believe the largest prime number in this universe is less than  
10^120. So I

will drop out of these discussions. My assumptions differ from yours.



Then you might well be interested in the Movie Graph Argument, which
deals directly with the case where the universe doesn't have  
sufficient

resources to run the universal dovetailer.


Good point.

Bruno






--


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: For John Clark



On 16 Oct 2013, at 05:10, LizR wrote:


On 16 October 2013 16:01, Jason Resch  wrote:
"Our theory in a certain sense bridges the positions of Einstein and  
Bohr, since the complete theory is quite objective and  
deterministic...and yet on the subjective level...it is  
probabilistic in the strong sense that there is no way for observers  
to make any predictions better than the limitations imposed by the  
uncertainty principle."


So he explicitly says the fully deterministic theory (fully  
deterministic from the God's eye, third person view) leads to  
probabilistic (random/unpredictable) outcomes from the subjective  
observer's first person view.  Even an observer who had complete  
knowledge of the deterministic wave function and could predict its  
entire evolution could not predict their next experience.


Technically they can. They can correctly predict that they will have  
all the available experiences. It's only after the measurement has  
been made that there is an appearance of probability, with each  
duplicate feeling that he has experienced a probablistic event. But  
that feeling only arises from the assumption (or gut feeling) that  
there is only one observer, both before and after the measurement.


It comes from the fact that each multiplied observers has only one  
first person view on herself. (And that comes rom the fact that the  
personal diary is multiplied along with the body of the observer).

She will not "feel the split", nor even notice any split.

Bruno




(However, I imagine everyone here understands this...???)

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



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RE: For John Clark

2013-10-16 Thread chris peck

>> But that feeling only arises from the assumption (or gut feeling) that there 
>> is only one observer, both before and after the measurement.

Quite, it arises from a mistake which would vanish in a true 'comp 
practitioner'.

The feeling that although I would become each observer and therefore experience 
each outcome, an erronious 'real me' would only follow one or the other path. 
And the fake comp practitioner would therefore not be certain of which outcome 
this 'real me' would experience.

A genuine 'comp practitioner' would be immune to this fallacy and within 
him/her no such subjective uncertainty would arise. Being subjectively certain 
about the future, she would assign a probability of one to both outcomes. She 
would know that each outcome would occur and she would know that she would 
become each observer. And she would know that there was nothing else to know. 
That being the case it would be impossible for subjective uncertainty to arise.

From: marc...@ulb.ac.be
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: For John Clark
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 09:15:51 +0200

On 16 Oct 2013, at 05:10, LizR wrote:On 16 October 2013 16:01, Jason Resch 
 wrote:
 "Our theory in a certain sense bridges the positions of Einstein and Bohr, 
since the complete theory is quite objective and deterministic...and yet on the 
subjective level...it is probabilistic in the strong sense that there is no way 
for observers to make any predictions better than the limitations imposed by 
the uncertainty principle." 
So he explicitly says the fully deterministic theory (fully deterministic from 
the God's eye, third person view) leads to probabilistic (random/unpredictable) 
outcomes from the subjective observer's first person view.  Even an observer 
who had complete knowledge of the deterministic wave function and could predict 
its entire evolution could not predict their next experience.  
Technically they can. They can correctly predict that they will have all the 
available experiences. It's only after the measurement has been made that there 
is an appearance of probability, with each duplicate feeling that he has 
experienced a probablistic event. But that feeling only arises from the 
assumption (or gut feeling) that there is only one observer, both before and 
after the measurement.

It comes from the fact that each multiplied observers has only one first person 
view on herself. (And that comes rom the fact that the personal diary is 
multiplied along with the body of the observer).She will not "feel the split", 
nor even notice any split.
Bruno

(However, I imagine everyone here understands this...???)
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 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ 

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Re: For John Clark

2013-10-16 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2013/10/16 chris peck 

>
>
> *>> But that feeling only arises from the assumption (or gut feeling)
> that there is only one observer, both before and after the measurement.*
>
> Quite, it arises from a mistake which would vanish in a true 'comp
> practitioner'.
>
> The feeling that although I would become each observer and therefore
> experience each outcome, an erronious 'real me' would only follow one or
> the other path. And the fake comp practitioner would therefore not be
> certain of which outcome this 'real me' would experience.
>
> A genuine 'comp practitioner' would be immune to this fallacy and within
> him/her no such subjective uncertainty would arise. Being subjectively
> certain about the future, she would assign a probability of one to both
> outcomes.
>


And he would be wrong, because that assume that every subjective future has
exactly the same measure... as comp should be at least compatible with MWI
(which is compatible with QM and should respect actual measured
probability), it's not the case... So I feel such a person is not a
"genuine" comp practitioner.

Quentin


> She would know that each outcome would occur and she would know that she
> would become each observer. And she would know that there was nothing else
> to know. That being the case it would be impossible for subjective
> uncertainty to arise.
>
> --
> From: marc...@ulb.ac.be
> To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: For John Clark
> Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 09:15:51 +0200
>
>
>
> On 16 Oct 2013, at 05:10, LizR wrote:
>
> On 16 October 2013 16:01, Jason Resch  wrote:
>
> "Our theory in a certain sense bridges the positions of Einstein and Bohr,
> since the complete theory is quite objective and deterministic...and yet on
> the subjective level...it is probabilistic in the *strong sense* that
> there is no way for observers to make any predictions better than the
> limitations imposed by the uncertainty principle."
>
> So he explicitly says the fully deterministic theory (fully deterministic
> from the God's eye, third person view) leads to probabilistic
> (random/unpredictable) outcomes from the subjective observer's first person
> view.  Even an observer who had complete knowledge of the deterministic
> wave function and could predict its entire evolution could not predict
> their next experience.
>
> Technically they can. They can correctly predict that they will have *all*the 
> available experiences. It's only after the measurement has been made
> that there is an *appearance* of probability, with each duplicate feeling
> that he has experienced a probablistic event. But that feeling only arises
> from the assumption (or gut feeling) that there is only one observer, both
> before and after the measurement.
>
>
> It comes from the fact that each multiplied observers has only one first
> person view on herself. (And that comes rom the fact that the personal
> diary is multiplied along with the body of the observer).
> She will not "feel the split", nor even notice any split.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
> (However, I imagine everyone here understands this...???)
>
> --
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>
>
>  http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
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Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers



On 16 Oct 2013, at 03:01, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 3:45:38 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:






I can give you the code in Lisp, and it is up to you to find a good  
free lisp. But don't mind too much, AUDA is an integral description  
of the interview. Today, such interviews is done by paper and  
pencils, and appears in books and papers.
You better buy Boolos 1979, or 1993, but you have to study more  
logic too.


Doesn't it seem odd that there isn't much out there that is newer  
than 20 years old,


That is simply wrong, and I don't see why you say that. But even if  
that was true, that would prove nothing.


It still seems odd. There are a lot of good programmers out there.  
If this is the frontier of machine intelligence, where is the  
interest? Not saying it proves something, but it doesn't instill  
much confidence that this is as fertile an area as you imply.


A revolutionary contemporary result (Gödel's incompleteness) shows  
that the oldest definition of knowledge (greeks, chinese, indians) can  
be applied to the oldest philosophy, mechanism, and that this is  
indeed very fertile, if only by providing an utterly transparent  
arithmetical interpretation of Plotinu's theology, which is the peak  
of the rationalist approach in that field, and you say that this  
instill any confidence in mechanism?









and that paper and pencils are the preferred instruments?


Maybe I was premature in saying it was promissory...it would  
appears that there has not been any promise for it in quite some  
time.






It is almost applicable, but the hard part is that it is blind to  
its own blindness, so that the certainty offered by mathematics  
comes at a cost which mathematics has no choice but to deny  
completely. Because mathematics cannot lie,


G* proves <>[]f

Even Peano Arithmetic can lie.
Mathematical theories (set of beliefs) can lie.

Only truth cannot lie, but nobody know the truth as such.

 Something that is a paradox or inconsistent is not the same thing  
as an intentional attempt to deceive. I'm not sure what 'G* proves  
<>[]f' means but I think it will mean the same thing to anyone who  
understands it, and not something different to the boss than it  
does to the neighbor.


Actually it will have as much meaning as there are correct machines  
(a lot), but the laws remains the same. Then adding the non- 
monotonical umbrella, saving the Lôbian machines from the constant  
mistakes and lies they do, provides different interpretation of  
[]f, like


I dream,
I die,
I get mad,
I am in a cul-de-sac
I get wrong

etc.

It will depend on the intensional nuances in play.

Couldn't the machine output the same product as musical notes or  
colored pixels instead?


Why not. Humans can do that too.

If I asked a person to turn some data into music or art, no two  
people would agree on what that output would be and no person's  
output would be decipherable as input to another person. Computers,  
on the other hand, would automatically be able to reverse any kind  
of i/o in the same way.


I don't see how.



One computer could play a file as a song, and another could make a  
graphic file out of the audio line out data which would be fully  
reversible to the original binary file.


If the computer can do it, me too.

















it cannot intentionally tell the truth either, and no matter how  
sophisticated and self-referential a logic it is based on, it can  
never transcend its own alienation from feeling, physics, and  
authenticity.


That is correct, but again, that is justifiable by all correct  
sufficiently rich machines.


Not sure I understand. Are you saying that we, as rich machines,  
cannot intentionally lie or tell the truth either?


No, I am saying that all correct machines can eventually justify  
that if they are correct they can't  express it, and if they are  
consistent, it will be consistent they are wrong. So it means they  
can eventually exploits the false locally. Team of universal  
numbers get entangled in very subtle prisoner dilemma.

Universal machines can lie, and can crash.

That sounds like they can lie only when they calculate that they  
must, not that they can lie intentionally because they enjoy it or  
out of sadism.


That sounds like an opportunistic inference.

I think that computationalism maintains the illusion of legitimacy  
on basis of seducing us to play only by its rules.


The technical points is that low level rules leads to "no rules" at  
the higher levels. You continue to criticized 19th century  
reductionist conception of machines. We know today that such a  
reductionist view of machines is plain wrong.





It says that we must give the undead a chance to be alive - that we  
cannot know for sure whether a machine is not at least as worthy of  
our love as a newborn baby.


You cannot do that comparison. Is an newborn alien worthy of human  
love? Other parameters than "thinking and consci

Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

http://neurosciencenews.com/human-thought-can-voluntarily-control-neurons-in-brain/

Neuroscience research involving epileptic patients with brain electrodes 
> surgically implanted in their medial temporal lobes shows that patients 
> learned to consciously control individual neurons deep in the brain with 
> thoughts.
>
> Subjects learned to control mouse cursors, play video games and alter 
> focus of digital images with their thoughts. The patients were each using 
> brain computer interfaces, deep brain electrodes and software designed for 
> the research.
>
> The article below offers more detail.
> Controlling Individual Cortical Nerve Cells by Human Thought
>
> Five years ago, neuroscientist Christof Koch of the California Institute 
> of Technology (Caltech), neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried of UCLA, and their 
> colleagues discovered that a single neuron in the human brain can function 
> much like a sophisticated computer and recognize people, landmarks, and 
> objects, suggesting that a consistent and explicit code may help transform 
> complex visual representations into long-term and more abstract memories.
>
> Now Koch and Fried, along with former Caltech graduate student and current 
> postdoctoral fellow Moran Cerf, have found that individuals can exert 
> conscious control over the firing of these single neurons—despite the 
> neurons’ location in an area of the brain previously thought inaccessible 
> to conscious control—and, in doing so, manipulate the behavior of an image 
> on a computer screen.
>
> The work, which appears in a paper in the October 28 issue of the journal 
> Nature, shows that “individuals can rapidly, consciously, and voluntarily 
> control neurons deep inside their head,” says Koch, the Lois and Victor 
> Troendle Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology and professor of 
> computation and neural systems at Caltech.
>
> The study was conducted on 12 epilepsy patients at the David Geffen School 
> of Medicine at UCLA, where Fried directs the Epilepsy Surgery Program. All 
> of the patients suffered from seizures that could not be controlled by 
> medication. To help localize where their seizures were originating in 
> preparation for possible later surgery, the patients were surgically 
> implanted with electrodes deep within the centers of their brains. Cerf 
> used these electrodes to record the activity, as indicated by spikes on a 
> computer screen, of individual neurons in parts of the medial temporal 
> lobe—a brain region that plays a major role in human memory and emotion.
>
> Prior to recording the activity of the neurons, Cerf interviewed each of 
> the patients to learn about their interests. “I wanted to see what they 
> like—say, the band Guns N’ Roses, the TV show House, and the Red Sox,” he 
> says. Using that information, he created for each patient a data set of 
> around 100 images reflecting the things he or she cares about. The patients 
> then viewed those images, one after another, as Cerf monitored their brain 
> activity to look for the targeted firing of single neurons. “Of 100 
> pictures, maybe 10 will have a strong correlation to a neuron,” he says. 
> “Those images might represent cached memories—things the patient has 
> recently seen.”
>
> The four most strongly responding neurons, representing four different 
> images, were selected for further investigation. “The goal was to get 
> patients to control things with their minds,” Cerf says. By thinking about 
> the individual images—a picture of Marilyn Monroe, for example—the patients 
> triggered the activity of their corresponding neurons, which was translated 
> first into the movement of a cursor on a computer screen. In this way, 
> patients trained themselves to move that cursor up and down, or even play a 
> computer game.
>
> But, says Cerf, “we wanted to take it one step further than just 
> brain–machine interfaces and tap into the competition for attention between 
> thoughts that race through our mind.”
>
> To do that, the team arranged for a situation in which two concepts 
> competed for dominance in the mind of the patient. “We had patients sit in 
> front of a blank screen and asked them to think of one of the target 
> images,” Cerf explains. As they thought of the image, and the related 
> neuron fired, “we made the image appear on the screen,” he says. That image 
> is the “target.” Then one of the other three images is introduced, to serve 
> as the “distractor.”
>
> “The patient starts with a 50/50 image, a hybrid, representing the 
> ‘marriage’ of the two images,” Cerf says, and then has to make the target 
> image fade in—just using his or her mind—and the distractor fade out. 
> During the tests, the patients came up with their own personal strategies 
> for making the right images appear; some simply thought of the picture, 
> while others repeated the name of the image out loud or focused their gaze 
> on a particular aspect of the image. Regardless of their tac

Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers



On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 4:21:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 16 Oct 2013, at 03:01, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 3:45:38 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I can give you the code in Lisp, and it is up to you to find a good free 
>>> lisp. But don't mind too much, AUDA is an integral description of the 
>>> interview. Today, such interviews is done by paper and pencils, and appears 
>>> in books and papers.
>>> You better buy Boolos 1979, or 1993, but you have to study more logic 
>>> too.
>>>
>>
>> Doesn't it seem odd that there isn't much out there that is newer than 20 
>> years old, 
>>
>>
>> That is simply wrong, and I don't see why you say that. But even if that 
>> was true, that would prove nothing.
>>
>
> It still seems odd. There are a lot of good programmers out there. If this 
> is the frontier of machine intelligence, where is the interest? Not saying 
> it proves something, but it doesn't instill much confidence that this is as 
> fertile an area as you imply.
>
>
> A revolutionary contemporary result (Gödel's incompleteness) shows that 
> the oldest definition of knowledge (greeks, chinese, indians) can be 
> applied to the oldest philosophy, mechanism, and that this is indeed very 
> fertile, if only by providing an utterly transparent arithmetical 
> interpretation of Plotinu's theology, which is the peak of the rationalist 
> approach in that field, and you say that this instill any confidence in 
> mechanism?
>

It doesn't instill confidence of your interpretation of incompleteness. For 
myself, and I am guessing for others, incompleteness is about the 
lack-of-completeness of mathematical systems rather than a 
hyper-completeness of arithmetic metaphysics. Do you say that Gödel was a 
supporter of the Plotinus view, or are saying that even he didn't realize 
the implications.


>
>
>  
>
>>
>>
>> and that paper and pencils are the preferred instruments?
>>
>>
>> Maybe I was premature in saying it was promissory...it would appears that 
>> there has not been any promise for it in quite some time.
>>  
>>
>>>
>>>

 It is almost applicable, but the hard part is that it is blind to its 
 own blindness, so that the certainty offered by mathematics comes at a 
 cost 
 which mathematics has no choice but to deny completely. Because 
 mathematics 
 cannot lie, 


 G* proves <>[]f

 Even Peano Arithmetic can lie.  
 Mathematical theories (set of beliefs) can lie.

 Only truth cannot lie, but nobody know the truth as such.

>>>
>>>  Something that is a paradox or inconsistent is not the same thing as an 
>>> intentional attempt to deceive. I'm not sure what 'G* proves <>[]f' means 
>>> but I think it will mean the same thing to anyone who understands it, and 
>>> not something different to the boss than it does to the neighbor.
>>>
>>>
>>> Actually it will have as much meaning as there are correct machines (a 
>>> lot), but the laws remains the same. Then adding the non-monotonical 
>>> umbrella, saving the Lôbian machines from the constant mistakes and lies 
>>> they do, provides different interpretation of []f, like
>>>
>>> I dream,
>>> I die,
>>> I get mad,
>>> I am in a cul-de-sac
>>> I get wrong
>>>
>>> etc.
>>>
>>> It will depend on the intensional nuances in play.
>>>
>>
>> Couldn't the machine output the same product as musical notes or colored 
>> pixels instead?
>>
>>
>> Why not. Humans can do that too.
>>
>
> If I asked a person to turn some data into music or art, no two people 
> would agree on what that output would be and no person's output would be 
> decipherable as input to another person. Computers, on the other hand, 
> would automatically be able to reverse any kind of i/o in the same way. 
>
>
> I don't see how.
>

By scanning the image or recording the sound in the same way that it was 
encoded to be played in the first place.
 

>
>
>
> One computer could play a file as a song, and another could make a graphic 
> file out of the audio line out data which would be fully reversible to the 
> original binary file.
>
>
> If the computer can do it, me too.
>

You can't make a graphic file out of a song that 'is' the data of a song. 
Your artistic interpretation will not match anyone else's.
 

>
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>  
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>


 it cannot intentionally tell the truth either, and no matter how 
 sophisticated and self-referential a logic it is based on, it can never 
 transcend its own alienation from feeling, physics, and authenticity. 


 That is correct, but again, that is justifiable by all correct 
 sufficiently rich machines.

>>>
>>> Not sure I understand. Are you saying that we, as rich machines, cannot 
>>> intentionally lie or tell the truth either?
>>>
>>>
>>> No, I am saying that all correct machines can eventually justify that if 
>>> they are correct they can't  express it, and if they are

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-16 Thread John Clark

On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> The point is that with the step 3 protocol, you (the H-guy) can never
> predict among {W, M}, if the result will be "I feel being the W-man", or "I
> feel being the M-man".
>

That's because neither will happen, however I the Helsinki Man can predict
that I the Helsinki Man will see only Helsinki. I the Helsinki Man can also
predict that I the Helsinki Man will turn into the Moscow Man or the
Washington Man,  but is unable to know which because I the Helsinki Man
don't know if the next photon that will enter the eye of I the Helsinki Man
will come from Moscow or Washington. I the Helsinki Man can make a third
prediction, even if the predictions made by I the Helsinki Man turn out to
be wrong (actually they won't be wrong in this instance but it wouldn't
matter if they were) I the Helsinki Man would still feel like I the
Helsinki Man.

>  > If you are OK with this, please proceed.
>

I'm not OK with this and will not proceed.

>   >> the founders of Quantum Mechanics were saying 2 things that neither
>> Pascal or Boltzman were:
>>  1) Some events have no cause.
>>
>
> > Only those believing in the collapse
>

You can say that what the founders of Quantum Mechanics were saying was
wrong if you like, but they were talking about wave collapse.  And the
founders of Quantum Mechanics would also say that arguing over the
difference between a event with no cause and a event with a cause that can
never be detected even in theory is a waste of time.

>  > that Feynman called a collective hallucination.
>

Hmm, I've heard lots of people say that reality is a collective
hallucination and I know a few Feynman sayings but I never heard him say
that about wave collapse.  When did he say it? What is the entire
quotation? Google can't seem to find anything like that.

> > I do not need more about identity than "your definition". Anyone capable
> of remembering having been X, has the right to be recognized as X.
>

The problem has never been X calling himself X, that's fine; the problem
comes when you a third party who never remembers being X starts talking
about "X"  to yet another third party in a world that has 2 things in it
that have a equal right to call themselves "X" because duplication chambers
exist. If somebody hides behind pronouns in such a world anything can be
"proven".

> > So, asking me to not use pronouns, in what is in great part a theory of
> pronouns, is like asking me to square the circle.
>

Yes, just as John Clark thought. It is theoretically impossible to explain
Bruno Marchal's ideas without using ill defined pronouns to hide behind and
without assuming the very things that Bruno Marchal is attempting to prove.
The only explanation given is I is I and you is you and he is he, but
before Euclid even started his first proof he made crystal clear what all
his terms meant, and Euclid never said a line is a line.

> >> Without using pronouns please explain who the hell Mr. 1 is and then
>> maybe I can answer your questions.
>>
>
> > Without using pronouns, I lost my job.
>

John Clark does not think Bruno Marchal knows what a pronoun is.

> > You confuse [blah blah]
>

There is one thing John Clark is most certainly not confused about, unless
used very very carefully pronouns will cause endless confusion in a world
where duplicating chambers exist.

 John K Clark

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Re: For John Clark




On Oct 16, 2013, at 2:38 AM, chris peck   
wrote:





>> But that feeling only arises from the assumption (or gut feeling)  
that there is only one observer, both before and after the  
measurement.


Quite, it arises from a mistake which would vanish in a true 'comp  
practitioner'.


The feeling that although I would become each observer and therefore  
experience each outcome, an erronious 'real me' would only follow  
one or the other path. And the fake comp practitioner would  
therefore not be certain of which outcome this 'real me' would  
experience.


A genuine 'comp practitioner' would be immune to this fallacy and  
within him/her no such subjective uncertainty would arise. Being  
subjectively certain about the future, she would assign a  
probability of one to both outcomes. She would know that each  
outcome would occur and she would know that she would become each  
observer. And she would know that there was nothing else to know.  
That being the case it would be impossible for subjective  
uncertainty to arise.


I think in that last sentence you misuse the term subjective.  I refer  
you to the Everett quote above where he says the usual QM  
probabilities arise in the subjective views, not expectations of 100%.


There are multiple experiencers, each having possibly different  
experiences. For some class of those experiencers you can attach the  
label "chris peck". This allows you to say: "chris peck experiences  
all outcomes" but that does not imply each experiencer experiences all  
experiences, each experiencer has only one experience. The subjective  
first person view, of what any experiencer can claim to experience, is  
a single outcome.  The experiences are fractured and distinct because  
there is no communication between the decohered worlds.


In any event, you have at least seen how the appearance of subjective  
randomness can appear through duplication of continuation paths,  
which  is enough to continue to step 4 in the UDA.


Jason





From: marc...@ulb.ac.be
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: For John Clark
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 09:15:51 +0200


On 16 Oct 2013, at 05:10, LizR wrote:

On 16 October 2013 16:01, Jason Resch  wrote:
"Our theory in a certain sense bridges the positions of Einstein and  
Bohr, since the complete theory is quite objective and  
deterministic...and yet on the subjective level...it is  
probabilistic in the strong sense that there is no way for observers  
to make any predictions better than the limitations imposed by the  
uncertainty principle."


So he explicitly says the fully deterministic theory (fully  
deterministic from the God's eye, third person view) leads to  
probabilistic (random/unpredictable) outcomes from the subjective  
observer's first person view.  Even an observer who had complete  
knowledge of the deterministic wave function and could predict its  
entire evolution could not predict their next experience.


Technically they can. They can correctly predict that they will have  
all the available experiences. It's only after the measurement has  
been made that there is an appearance of probability, with each  
duplicate feeling that he has experienced a probablistic event. But  
that feeling only arises from the assumption (or gut feeling) that  
there is only one observer, both before and after the measurement.


It comes from the fact that each multiplied observers has only one  
first person view on herself. (And that comes rom the fact that the  
personal diary is multiplied along with the body of the observer).

She will not "feel the split", nor even notice any split.

Bruno



(However, I imagine everyone here understands this...???)

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




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Re: The probability problem in Everettian quantum mechanics

2013-10-16 Thread Richard Ruquist

Bruno Marchal 
via
 googlegroups.com
2:47 AM (8 hours ago)
to everything-list
On 15 Oct 2013, at 19:02, Richard Ruquist wrote:

Bruno: Arithmetical truth escapes largely the computable arithmetical truth
(by Gödel).

Richard: I guess I am too much a physicist to believe that uncomputible
arithmetical truth can produce the physical.

Nobody is perfect :)
(You are not alone, physicalism is believed by almost everybody those days)

Since you read my paper you know that I think computations in this universe
if holographic are limited to 10^120 bits (the Lloyd limit) which is very
far from infinity.

Of course, I do not assume such a universe. I assume only that "I" am
Turing emulable.

I just do not believe in infinity. In other words, I believe the largest
prime number in this universe is less than 10^120. So I will drop out of
these discussions. My assumptions differ from yours.

OK. And then the reasoning (UDA), if you do assume some physicalism, is
that we are not Turing emulable. You are working in a non comp theory. Not
sure this solves anything, as now you can't justify matter (you assume it),
and are back to the usual mind-body problem, with an non satisfying
identity between mind and matter.

Bruno

Richard: I guess you did not read my paper afterall. The Metaverse machine
is what computes matter and its energy from the get-go. I grant you that I
assume such a Metaverse. But the universe with its limited computations are
given by known physics.

Regarding MWI vs Wave Collapse , here is some interesting data:

Measurement-induced collapse of quantum wavefunction captured in slow
motion.
http://www.nature.com/news/physicists-snatch-a-peep-into-quantum-paradox-1.13899?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20131015

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 2:59 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 15 Oct 2013, at 23:04, Russell Standish wrote:
>
>  On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 01:02:13PM -0400, Richard Ruquist wrote:
>>
>>> Bruno: Arithmetical truth escapes largely the computable arithmetical
>>> truth
>>> (by Gödel).
>>>
>>>
>>> Richard: I guess I am too much a physicist to believe that uncomputible
>>> arithmetical truth can produce the physical.
>>> Since you read my paper you know that I think computations in this
>>> universe
>>> if holographic are limited to 10^120 bits (the Lloyd limit) which is very
>>> far from infinity. I just do not believe in infinity. In other words, I
>>>
>>> believe the largest prime number in this universe is less than 10^120.
>>> So I
>>> will drop out of these discussions. My assumptions differ from yours.
>>>
>>>
>> Then you might well be interested in the Movie Graph Argument, which
>> deals directly with the case where the universe doesn't have sufficient
>> resources to run the universal dovetailer.
>>
>
> Good point.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
>>
>> --
>>
>> --**--**
>> 
>> Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
>> Principal, High Performance Coders
>> Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
>> University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au
>> --**--**
>> 
>>
>>
>> --
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>
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>
>
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Re: For John Clark

2013-10-16 Thread John Clark

When I saw the title of this thread I was in a quandary over if I should
open it or not. It said it was for John Clark so it must be for me, but it
can't be for me because it said it was for those "who ignore the importance
of first person views" and subjectivity is the most important thing in the
universe, or at least it is in my opinion. In the end I flipped a coin, it
cane out tails so I opened it. I didn't read anything I disagreed with or
hadn't seen before with one exception. I already knew Everett believed in a
infinity of worlds but this is the first time I heard him say they were
non-denumerable, so I'm glad I opened it.

 John K Clark



On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 11:01 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:

> (And others who ignore the importance of first person views when it comes
> to duplication.)
>
> I invite you to read what Hugh Everett had to say on the matter:
>
>
> "I believe that my theory is by far the simplest way out of the dilemma,
> since it results from what is inherently a simplification of the
> conventional picture, which arises from dropping one of the basic
> postulates--the postulate of the discontinuous probabilistic jump in state
> during the process of measurement--from the remaining very simple theory,
> only to recover again this very same picture as a deduction of what will
> appear to be the case for observers."
>
> He notes the appearance of probability from the perspective of observers,
> despite an entirely deterministic theory, saying:
>
> "Our theory in a certain sense bridges the positions of Einstein and Bohr,
> since the complete theory is quite objective and deterministic...and yet on
> the subjective level...it is probabilistic in the *strong sense* that
> there is no way for observers to make any predictions better than the
> limitations imposed by the uncertainty principle."
>
> So he explicitly says the fully deterministic theory (fully deterministic
> from the God's eye, third person view) leads to probabilistic
> (random/unpredictable) outcomes from the subjective observer's first person
> view.  Even an observer who had complete knowledge of the deterministic
> wave function and could predict its entire evolution could not predict
> their next experience.
>
>
> Finally, we have this exchange between Everett and other physicists,
> including Nathan Rosen, Podolsky, Paul Dirac, Yakir Aharanov, Eugene
> Wigner, and Wendell Furry at Xaviar College:
>
> Everett:
> Well, the picture that I have is something like this: Imagine an observer
> making a sequence of results of observations on a number of, let's say,
> originally identical object systems. At the end of this sequence there is a
> large superposition of states, each element of which contains the observer
> as having recorded a particular definite sequence of the results of
> observation. I identify a single element as what we think of as an
> experience, but still hold that it is tenable to assert that all of the
> elements simultaneously coexist.  In any single element of the final
> superposition after all these measurements, you have a state which
> describes the observer as having observed a quite definite and apparently
> random sequence of events. Of course, it's a different sequence of events
> in each element of the superposition. In fact, if one takes a very large
> series of experiments, in a certain sense one can assert that for almost
> all of the elements of the final supeprosition the frequencies of the
> results of measurements will be in accord with what one predicts from the
> ordinary picture of quantum mechanics. That is very briefly it.
>
>
> Podolsky: Somehow or other we have here the parallel times or parallel
> worlds that science fiction likes to talk about so much.
>
> Everett: Yes, it's a consequence of the superposition principle that each
> separate element of the superposition will obey the same laws independent
> of the presence or absence of one another. Hence, why insist on having
> certain selection of one of the elements as being real and all of the
> others somehow mysteriously vanishing?
>
> Furry: This means that each of us, you see, exists on a great many sheets
> or versions and it's only on this one right here that you have any
> particular remembrance of the past. In some other ones we perhaps didn't
> come here to Cincinnati.
>
> Everett: We simply do away with the reduction of the wave packet.
>
> Poldolsky: It's certainly consistent as far as we have heard it.
>
> Everett: All of the consistency of ordinary physics is preserved by the
> correlation structure of this state.
>
> Podolsky: It looks like we would have a non-denumberable infinity of
> worlds.
>
> Everett: Yes.
>
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Re: For John Clark

It was from the book "The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III", a book I
obtained and read in a large part based on you glowing review. :-)

So if you agree that the branching wave function structure, which creates
many copies of observers in different states, can lead to first person
uncertainty, I do not understand why you do not see how the same can arise
through duplication of observers by teleportation to two locations.

Could you explain to me why subjective indeterminacy arises in MWI but not
in step 3 of Bruno's UDA?

Jason


On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 10:50 AM, John Clark  wrote:

> When I saw the title of this thread I was in a quandary over if I should
> open it or not. It said it was for John Clark so it must be for me, but it
> can't be for me because it said it was for those "who ignore the importance
> of first person views" and subjectivity is the most important thing in the
> universe, or at least it is in my opinion. In the end I flipped a coin, it
> cane out tails so I opened it. I didn't read anything I disagreed with or
> hadn't seen before with one exception. I already knew Everett believed in a
> infinity of worlds but this is the first time I heard him say they were
> non-denumerable, so I'm glad I opened it.
>
>  John K Clark
>
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 11:01 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>> (And others who ignore the importance of first person views when it comes
>> to duplication.)
>>
>> I invite you to read what Hugh Everett had to say on the matter:
>>
>>
>> "I believe that my theory is by far the simplest way out of the dilemma,
>> since it results from what is inherently a simplification of the
>> conventional picture, which arises from dropping one of the basic
>> postulates--the postulate of the discontinuous probabilistic jump in state
>> during the process of measurement--from the remaining very simple theory,
>> only to recover again this very same picture as a deduction of what will
>> appear to be the case for observers."
>>
>> He notes the appearance of probability from the perspective of observers,
>> despite an entirely deterministic theory, saying:
>>
>> "Our theory in a certain sense bridges the positions of Einstein and
>> Bohr, since the complete theory is quite objective and deterministic...and
>> yet on the subjective level...it is probabilistic in the *strong sense*that 
>> there is no way for observers to make any predictions better than the
>> limitations imposed by the uncertainty principle."
>>
>> So he explicitly says the fully deterministic theory (fully deterministic
>> from the God's eye, third person view) leads to probabilistic
>> (random/unpredictable) outcomes from the subjective observer's first person
>> view.  Even an observer who had complete knowledge of the deterministic
>> wave function and could predict its entire evolution could not predict
>> their next experience.
>>
>>
>> Finally, we have this exchange between Everett and other physicists,
>> including Nathan Rosen, Podolsky, Paul Dirac, Yakir Aharanov, Eugene
>> Wigner, and Wendell Furry at Xaviar College:
>>
>> Everett:
>> Well, the picture that I have is something like this: Imagine an observer
>> making a sequence of results of observations on a number of, let's say,
>> originally identical object systems. At the end of this sequence there is a
>> large superposition of states, each element of which contains the observer
>> as having recorded a particular definite sequence of the results of
>> observation. I identify a single element as what we think of as an
>> experience, but still hold that it is tenable to assert that all of the
>> elements simultaneously coexist.  In any single element of the final
>> superposition after all these measurements, you have a state which
>> describes the observer as having observed a quite definite and apparently
>> random sequence of events. Of course, it's a different sequence of events
>> in each element of the superposition. In fact, if one takes a very large
>> series of experiments, in a certain sense one can assert that for almost
>> all of the elements of the final supeprosition the frequencies of the
>> results of measurements will be in accord with what one predicts from the
>> ordinary picture of quantum mechanics. That is very briefly it.
>>
>>
>> Podolsky: Somehow or other we have here the parallel times or parallel
>> worlds that science fiction likes to talk about so much.
>>
>> Everett: Yes, it's a consequence of the superposition principle that each
>> separate element of the superposition will obey the same laws independent
>> of the presence or absence of one another. Hence, why insist on having
>> certain selection of one of the elements as being real and all of the
>> others somehow mysteriously vanishing?
>>
>> Furry: This means that each of us, you see, exists on a great many sheets
>> or versions and it's only on this one right here that you have any
>> particular remembrance of the past. In some other ones we perhaps didn't
>> com

Re: For John Clark

2013-10-16 Thread John Clark

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:

> It was from the book "The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III", a book I
> obtained and read in a large part based on you glowing review. :-)
>

Did Everett use the word "non-denumerable" in that book? I must have missed
it. What page?

> So if you agree that the branching wave function structure, which creates
> many copies of observers in different states, can lead to first person
> uncertainty, I do not understand why you do not see how the same can arise
> through duplication of observers by teleportation to two locations.
>

And I don't understand the difference between "first person uncertainty"
and plain old fashioned uncertainty.

> Could you explain to me why subjective indeterminacy arises in MWI but
> not in step 3 of Bruno's UDA?
>

In Bruno's United Dance Association proof, and in Everett's interpretation,
and in every other interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, and in classical
physics too, John Clark doesn't know what John Clark is going to see next.
So what?

  John K Clark












>
> Jason
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 10:50 AM, John Clark  wrote:
>
>> When I saw the title of this thread I was in a quandary over if I should
>> open it or not. It said it was for John Clark so it must be for me, but it
>> can't be for me because it said it was for those "who ignore the importance
>> of first person views" and subjectivity is the most important thing in the
>> universe, or at least it is in my opinion. In the end I flipped a coin, it
>> cane out tails so I opened it. I didn't read anything I disagreed with or
>> hadn't seen before with one exception. I already knew Everett believed in a
>> infinity of worlds but this is the first time I heard him say they were
>> non-denumerable, so I'm glad I opened it.
>>
>>  John K Clark
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 11:01 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>> (And others who ignore the importance of first person views when it
>>> comes to duplication.)
>>>
>>> I invite you to read what Hugh Everett had to say on the matter:
>>>
>>>
>>> "I believe that my theory is by far the simplest way out of the dilemma,
>>> since it results from what is inherently a simplification of the
>>> conventional picture, which arises from dropping one of the basic
>>> postulates--the postulate of the discontinuous probabilistic jump in state
>>> during the process of measurement--from the remaining very simple theory,
>>> only to recover again this very same picture as a deduction of what will
>>> appear to be the case for observers."
>>>
>>> He notes the appearance of probability from the perspective of
>>> observers, despite an entirely deterministic theory, saying:
>>>
>>> "Our theory in a certain sense bridges the positions of Einstein and
>>> Bohr, since the complete theory is quite objective and deterministic...and
>>> yet on the subjective level...it is probabilistic in the *strong sense*that 
>>> there is no way for observers to make any predictions better than the
>>> limitations imposed by the uncertainty principle."
>>>
>>> So he explicitly says the fully deterministic theory (fully
>>> deterministic from the God's eye, third person view) leads to probabilistic
>>> (random/unpredictable) outcomes from the subjective observer's first person
>>> view.  Even an observer who had complete knowledge of the deterministic
>>> wave function and could predict its entire evolution could not predict
>>> their next experience.
>>>
>>>
>>> Finally, we have this exchange between Everett and other physicists,
>>> including Nathan Rosen, Podolsky, Paul Dirac, Yakir Aharanov, Eugene
>>> Wigner, and Wendell Furry at Xaviar College:
>>>
>>> Everett:
>>> Well, the picture that I have is something like this: Imagine an
>>> observer making a sequence of results of observations on a number of, let's
>>> say, originally identical object systems. At the end of this sequence there
>>> is a large superposition of states, each element of which contains the
>>> observer as having recorded a particular definite sequence of the results
>>> of observation. I identify a single element as what we think of as an
>>> experience, but still hold that it is tenable to assert that all of the
>>> elements simultaneously coexist.  In any single element of the final
>>> superposition after all these measurements, you have a state which
>>> describes the observer as having observed a quite definite and apparently
>>> random sequence of events. Of course, it's a different sequence of events
>>> in each element of the superposition. In fact, if one takes a very large
>>> series of experiments, in a certain sense one can assert that for almost
>>> all of the elements of the final supeprosition the frequencies of the
>>> results of measurements will be in accord with what one predicts from the
>>> ordinary picture of quantum mechanics. That is very briefly it.
>>>
>>>
>>> Podolsky: Somehow or other we have here the parallel times or parallel
>>> worlds that

Why we can't trust 3p descriptions of reality

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/medium/000/010/655/stop-motion-skateboarding.gif

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Re: For John Clark

2013-10-16 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2013/10/16 John Clark 

> On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> > It was from the book "The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III", a book I
>> obtained and read in a large part based on you glowing review. :-)
>>
>
> Did Everett use the word "non-denumerable" in that book? I must have
> missed it. What page?
>
> > So if you agree that the branching wave function structure, which
>> creates many copies of observers in different states, can lead to first
>> person uncertainty, I do not understand why you do not see how the same can
>> arise through duplication of observers by teleportation to two locations.
>>
>
> And I don't understand the difference between "first person uncertainty"
> and plain old fashioned uncertainty.
>

The difference is that from 3rd POV it is deterministic... POV plays a
role. So as I said to you before, be consistent and reject MWI. If you
accept assigning a probability of seeing spin up/down before measuring, you
should accept the same for Bruno's thought experiment, or you must reject
both, or look like a fool.

Quentin

>
>  > Could you explain to me why subjective indeterminacy arises in MWI but
>> not in step 3 of Bruno's UDA?
>>
>
> In Bruno's United Dance Association proof, and in Everett's
> interpretation, and in every other interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, and
> in classical physics too, John Clark doesn't know what John Clark is going
> to see next. So what?
>
>   John K Clark
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 10:50 AM, John Clark wrote:
>>
>>> When I saw the title of this thread I was in a quandary over if I should
>>> open it or not. It said it was for John Clark so it must be for me, but it
>>> can't be for me because it said it was for those "who ignore the importance
>>> of first person views" and subjectivity is the most important thing in the
>>> universe, or at least it is in my opinion. In the end I flipped a coin, it
>>> cane out tails so I opened it. I didn't read anything I disagreed with or
>>> hadn't seen before with one exception. I already knew Everett believed in a
>>> infinity of worlds but this is the first time I heard him say they were
>>> non-denumerable, so I'm glad I opened it.
>>>
>>>  John K Clark
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 11:01 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>>
 (And others who ignore the importance of first person views when it
 comes to duplication.)

 I invite you to read what Hugh Everett had to say on the matter:

 "I believe that my theory is by far the simplest way out of the
 dilemma, since it results from what is inherently a simplification of the
 conventional picture, which arises from dropping one of the basic
 postulates--the postulate of the discontinuous probabilistic jump in state
 during the process of measurement--from the remaining very simple theory,
 only to recover again this very same picture as a deduction of what will
 appear to be the case for observers."

 He notes the appearance of probability from the perspective of
 observers, despite an entirely deterministic theory, saying:

 "Our theory in a certain sense bridges the positions of Einstein and
 Bohr, since the complete theory is quite objective and deterministic...and
 yet on the subjective level...it is probabilistic in the *strong 
 sense*that there is no way for observers to make any predictions better 
 than the
 limitations imposed by the uncertainty principle."

 So he explicitly says the fully deterministic theory (fully
 deterministic from the God's eye, third person view) leads to probabilistic
 (random/unpredictable) outcomes from the subjective observer's first person
 view.  Even an observer who had complete knowledge of the deterministic
 wave function and could predict its entire evolution could not predict
 their next experience.

 Finally, we have this exchange between Everett and other physicists,
 including Nathan Rosen, Podolsky, Paul Dirac, Yakir Aharanov, Eugene
 Wigner, and Wendell Furry at Xaviar College:

 Everett:
 Well, the picture that I have is something like this: Imagine an
 observer making a sequence of results of observations on a number of, let's
 say, originally identical object systems. At the end of this sequence there
 is a large superposition of states, each element of which contains the
 observer as having recorded a particular definite sequence of the results
 of observation. I identify a single element as what we think of as an
 experience, but still hold that it is tenable to assert that all of the
 elements simultaneously coexist.  In any single element of the final
 superposition after all these measurements, you have a state which
 describes the observer as having observed a quite definite and apparently
 random sequence of events. Of course, it's a different sequen

Re: For John Clark

2013-10-16 Thread meekerdb

On 10/16/2013 10:48 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Jason Resch > wrote:

> It was from the book "The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III", a book I
obtained and
read in a large part based on you glowing review. :-)

Did Everett use the word "non-denumerable" in that book? I must have missed it.
What page?

> So if you agree that the branching wave function structure, which creates
many
copies of observers in different states, can lead to first person
uncertainty, I do
not understand why you do not see how the same can arise through
duplication of
observers by teleportation to two locations.

And I don't understand the difference between "first person uncertainty" and plain old
fashioned uncertainty.

> Could you explain to me why subjective indeterminacy arises in MWI but
not in step
3 of Bruno's UDA?

In Bruno's United Dance Association proof, and in Everett's interpretation, and in every
other interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, and in classical physics too, John Clark
doesn't know what John Clark is going to see next. So what?

So then the uncertainty of John Clark in Bruno's teleportation is the same as in Everett's
MWI, which I think is all Bruno wants to show because he has a theory in which everybody
is 'duplicated' countless times as in MWI in which interaction with the environment
induces MW splits even in the absence of specific measurements.

Brent

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Re: For John Clark

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 12:48 PM, John Clark  wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> > It was from the book "The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III", a book I
>> obtained and read in a large part based on you glowing review. :-)
>>
>
> Did Everett use the word "non-denumerable" in that book? I must have
> missed it. What page?
>


I will have to check later.  But I found the page in Google books (but it
shows now page number unfortunately):

http://books.google.com/books?id=dqgqPjqIyJoC&pg=PT204&dq=All+of+the+consistency+of+ordinary+physics+is+preserved+by+the+correlation+structure+of+this+state.&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uuJeUqGFL-iMyAGn84HYDQ&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=All%20of%20the%20consistency%20of%20ordinary%20physics%20is%20preserved%20by%20the%20correlation%20structure%20of%20this%20state.&f=false


>
> > So if you agree that the branching wave function structure, which
>> creates many copies of observers in different states, can lead to first
>> person uncertainty, I do not understand why you do not see how the same can
>> arise through duplication of observers by teleportation to two locations.
>>
>
> And I don't understand the difference between "first person uncertainty"
> and plain old fashioned uncertainty.
>

The difference is that first person uncertainty remains even in cases when
the entire system and its evolution is known. For example, a deterministic
program running on a computer whose evolution can be entirely predicted.
 If it forks into two paths and those paths diverge, an AI or any other
conscious entity within that program cannot from their point of view
predict their experience after the fork, despite that the entire process is
deterministic and in principle could be entirely derived beforehand.


>
>  > Could you explain to me why subjective indeterminacy arises in MWI but
>> not in step 3 of Bruno's UDA?
>>
>
> In Bruno's United Dance Association proof, and in Everett's
> interpretation, and in every other interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, and
> in classical physics too, John Clark doesn't know what John Clark is going
> to see next. So what?
>

if you agree with that, move on to the next steps and see how the
computational theory of mind, together
with arithmetical realism, necessarily lead to the appearance of a physical
world. That is the "so what", a falsifiable theory of everything that
arises from among the barest set of starting assumptions, and explains many
aspects of quantum mechanics.

Jason



>
>   John K Clark
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 10:50 AM, John Clark wrote:
>>
>>> When I saw the title of this thread I was in a quandary over if I should
>>> open it or not. It said it was for John Clark so it must be for me, but it
>>> can't be for me because it said it was for those "who ignore the importance
>>> of first person views" and subjectivity is the most important thing in the
>>> universe, or at least it is in my opinion. In the end I flipped a coin, it
>>> cane out tails so I opened it. I didn't read anything I disagreed with or
>>> hadn't seen before with one exception. I already knew Everett believed in a
>>> infinity of worlds but this is the first time I heard him say they were
>>> non-denumerable, so I'm glad I opened it.
>>>
>>>  John K Clark
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 11:01 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>>
 (And others who ignore the importance of first person views when it
 comes to duplication.)

 I invite you to read what Hugh Everett had to say on the matter:


 "I believe that my theory is by far the simplest way out of the
 dilemma, since it results from what is inherently a simplification of the
 conventional picture, which arises from dropping one of the basic
 postulates--the postulate of the discontinuous probabilistic jump in state
 during the process of measurement--from the remaining very simple theory,
 only to recover again this very same picture as a deduction of what will
 appear to be the case for observers."

 He notes the appearance of probability from the perspective of
 observers, despite an entirely deterministic theory, saying:

 "Our theory in a certain sense bridges the positions of Einstein and
 Bohr, since the complete theory is quite objective and deterministic...and
 yet on the subjective level...it is probabilistic in the *strong 
 sense*that there is no way for observers to make any predictions better 
 than the
 limitations imposed by the uncertainty principle."

 So he explicitly says the fully deterministic theory (fully
 deterministic from the God's eye, third person view) leads to probabilistic
 (random/unpredictable) outcomes from the subjective observer's first person
 view.  Even an observer who had complete knowledge of the deterministic
 wave function and could predict its entire evolution could not predict
 their next experien

Re: The probability problem in Everettian quantum mechanics

2013-10-16 Thread Russell Standish

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 11:41:46AM -0400, Richard Ruquist wrote:
> 
> 
> Measurement-induced collapse of quantum wavefunction captured in slow
> motion.
> http://www.nature.com/news/physicists-snatch-a-peep-into-quantum-paradox-1.13899?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20131015
> 

The headline is sensationlist and misleading. What is being done is a
series of weak measurements that capturing the change from a
superposition to a non superposed state. An MWIer would say this is
capturing the process of decoherence. It is most certainly not
demonstrating wave function collapse is occurring, interesting though
the experiment is for technical reasons.

Cheers

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: The probability problem in Everettian quantum mechanics

On 16 Oct 2013, at 17:41, Richard Ruquist wrote:

Bruno Marchal via googlegroups.com
2:47 AM (8 hours ago)

to everything-list

On 15 Oct 2013, at 19:02, Richard Ruquist wrote:

Bruno: Arithmetical truth escapes largely the computable
arithmetical truth (by Gödel).

Richard: I guess I am too much a physicist to believe that
uncomputible arithmetical truth can produce the physical.

Nobody is perfect :)
(You are not alone, physicalism is believed by almost everybody
those days)

Since you read my paper you know that I think computations in this
universe if holographic are limited to 10^120 bits (the Lloyd
limit) which is very far from infinity.

Of course, I do not assume such a universe. I assume only that "I"
am Turing emulable.

I just do not believe in infinity. In other words, I believe the
largest prime number in this universe is less than 10^120. So I
will drop out of these discussions. My assumptions differ from yours.

OK. And then the reasoning (UDA), if you do assume some physicalism,
is that we are not Turing emulable. You are working in a non comp
theory. Not sure this solves anything, as now you can't justify
matter (you assume it), and are back to the usual mind-body problem,
with an non satisfying identity between mind and matter.

Bruno

Richard: I guess you did not read my paper afterall.

I read it, but as you said, we start from very different assumption,
and many things you say about PA seems a bit weird for a logician.

The Metaverse machine is what computes matter and its energy from
the get-go. I grant you that I assume such a Metaverse. But the
universe with its limited computations are given by known physics.

But that "universe", if it exists, must be justified by using + and *
and the numbers only, if comp is assumed.

Regarding MWI vs Wave Collapse , here is some interesting data:

Measurement-induced collapse of quantum wavefunction captured in
slow motion.

http://www.nature.com/news/physicists-snatch-a-peep-into-quantum-paradox-1.13899?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20131015

A slow motion movie of the wave collapse is a slow motion movie of a
differentiating multiverse. Everett theory predicts such motions.

Bruno

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 2:59 AM, Bruno Marchal
wrote:

On 15 Oct 2013, at 23:04, Russell Standish wrote:

On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 01:02:13PM -0400, Richard Ruquist wrote:
Bruno: Arithmetical truth escapes largely the computable
arithmetical truth

(by Gödel).

Richard: I guess I am too much a physicist to believe that
uncomputible

arithmetical truth can produce the physical.
Since you read my paper you know that I think computations in this
universe
if holographic are limited to 10^120 bits (the Lloyd limit) which is
very
far from infinity. I just do not believe in infinity. In other
words, I

believe the largest prime number in this universe is less than
10^120. So I

will drop out of these discussions. My assumptions differ from yours.

Then you might well be interested in the Movie Graph Argument, which
deals directly with the case where the universe doesn't have
sufficient

resources to run the universal dovetailer.

Good point.

Bruno

Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au

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

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

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On 16 Oct 2013, at 16:46, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:

> The point is that with the step 3 protocol, you (the H-guy) can  
never predict among {W, M}, if the result will be "I feel being the  
W-man", or "I feel being the M-man".

That's because neither will happen, however I the Helsinki Man can  
predict that I the Helsinki Man will see only Helsinki. I the  
Helsinki Man can also predict that I the Helsinki Man will turn into  
the Moscow Man or the Washington Man,  but is unable to know which  
because I the Helsinki Man don't know if the next photon that will  
enter the eye of I the Helsinki Man will come from Moscow or  
Washington.

OK. We agree. You do grasp enough of the FPI to proceed to step 4.

I the Helsinki Man can make a third prediction, even if the  
predictions made by I the Helsinki Man turn out to be wrong  
(actually they won't be wrong in this instance but it wouldn't  
matter if they were) I the Helsinki Man would still feel like I the  
Helsinki Man.

We completely agree on this.
With "your theory of identity", both the M-man and the W-man are the H- 
man.

 > If you are OK with this, please proceed.

I'm not OK with this

???

and will not proceed.

???

  >> the founders of Quantum Mechanics were saying 2 things that  
neither Pascal or Boltzman were:

 1) Some events have no cause.

> Only those believing in the collapse

You can say that what the founders of Quantum Mechanics were saying  
was wrong if you like, but they were talking about wave collapse.   
And the founders of Quantum Mechanics would also say that arguing  
over the difference between a event with no cause and a event with a  
cause that can never be detected even in theory is a waste of time.

They were under the spell of Vienna positivism. Einstein said about  
this that he would have preferred to be plumber than to hear things  
like that.

Anywy, with comp and/or Everett, we have no more any reason to believe  
in event without cause.

 > that Feynman called a collective hallucination.

Hmm, I've heard lots of people say that reality is a collective  
hallucination and I know a few Feynman sayings but I never heard him  
say that about wave collapse.

It is in a footnote in his little book on light. I don't have it under  
my hand for now.

When did he say it? What is the entire quotation? Google can't seem  
to find anything like that.

Ah! You force me to do research in my (new) apartment. Let me pray  
that it is not in some box ...

... I found it, and the quote. It is page 108 of my french edition  
""Lumière et Matière, une étrange histoire", which is a translation of  
his book "QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter".

The exact quote in french is: "Il est bon de garder à présent à  
l'esprit ce principe général si l'on ne veut pas tomber dans toutes  
sortes de confusions telles que la 'réduction du paquet d'ondes' et  
autres effets magiques".
I translate: " It is good to keep that general idea in mind if we want  
to avoid all sorts of confusions like 'the reduction of the wave  
packet' or other magical effect."
(the general idea is that the wave represents an amplitude of  
probability, whose squared gives the probability).

> I do not need more about identity than "your definition". Anyone  
capable of remembering having been X, has the right to be recognized  
as X.

The problem has never been X calling himself X, that's fine; the  
problem comes when you a third party who never remembers being X  
starts talking about "X"  to yet another third party in a world that  
has 2 things in it that have a equal right to call themselves "X"  
because duplication chambers exist. If somebody hides behind  
pronouns in such a world anything can be "proven".

Only see a problem here, when there is just an indetermination on a  
subjective outcome.

> So, asking me to not use pronouns, in what is in great part a  
theory of pronouns, is like asking me to square the circle.

Yes, just as John Clark thought. It is theoretically impossible to  
explain Bruno Marchal's ideas without using ill defined pronouns to  
hide behind and without assuming the very things that Bruno Marchal  
is attempting to prove.

No made ill use of pronouns, and you mock when I added the necessary  
nuances: notably the distinction between first person pov and third  
person pov, completely defined in sharable 3p terms.

The only explanation given is I is I and you is you and he is he,  
but before Euclid even started his first proof he made crystal clear  
what all his terms meant, and Euclid never said a line is a line.

Nor did I.

> You confuse [blah blah]

And when I provide precise and of course more lengthy explanations,  
you just skip them. This can't help you.

There is one thing John Clark is most certainly not confused about,  
unless used very very carefully pronouns will cause endless  
confusion in a wo

Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers



On 16 Oct 2013, at 14:49, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 4:21:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 16 Oct 2013, at 03:01, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 3:45:38 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:






I can give you the code in Lisp, and it is up to you to find a  
good free lisp. But don't mind too much, AUDA is an integral  
description of the interview. Today, such interviews is done by  
paper and pencils, and appears in books and papers.
You better buy Boolos 1979, or 1993, but you have to study more  
logic too.


Doesn't it seem odd that there isn't much out there that is newer  
than 20 years old,


That is simply wrong, and I don't see why you say that. But even if  
that was true, that would prove nothing.


It still seems odd. There are a lot of good programmers out there.  
If this is the frontier of machine intelligence, where is the  
interest? Not saying it proves something, but it doesn't instill  
much confidence that this is as fertile an area as you imply.


A revolutionary contemporary result (Gödel's incompleteness) shows  
that the oldest definition of knowledge (greeks, chinese, indians)  
can be applied to the oldest philosophy, mechanism, and that this is  
indeed very fertile, if only by providing an utterly transparent  
arithmetical interpretation of Plotinu's theology, which is the peak  
of the rationalist approach in that field, and you say that this  
instill any confidence in mechanism?


It doesn't instill confidence of your interpretation of  
incompleteness. For myself, and I am guessing for others,  
incompleteness is about the lack-of-completeness of mathematical  
systems rather than a hyper-completeness of arithmetic metaphysics.


The whole point here is that the machines prove their own theorem  
about themselves. The meta-arithmetic belongs to arithmetic. I don't  
say much more than what the machines already say. I just need the  
classical theory of knowledge (the modal logic S4), just to compare  
with the machine's theory (S4Grz), like I need QM to compare with the  
machines's statistics on computation seen from inside.






Do you say that Gödel was a supporter of the Plotinus view, or are  
saying that even he didn't realize the implications.


Gödel was indeed a defender of platonism, at the start. But he has  
been quite slow on Church thesis, and not so quick on mechanism  
either. That is suggested notably by his leaning toward Anselm notion  
of God.





The reductionist view of machines may be wrong, but that doesn't  
mean that its absence of rules at higher level translates into  
proprietary feelings, sounds, flavors, etc. Why would it?


Why not? Evidences are that a brain does that. You need to find  
something non-Turing emulable in the brain to provide evidences that  
it does not.





In theory it could, sure, but the universe that we live in seems to  
suggest exactly the opposite.



But we can understand what is that universe, and why it suggests this,  
for the machine "embedded" in that apparent universe.










It says that we must give the undead a chance to be alive - that we  
cannot know for sure whether a machine is not at least as worthy of  
our love as a newborn baby.


You cannot do that comparison. Is an newborn alien worthy of human  
love? Other parameters than "thinking and consciousness" are at play.


What are those parameters, and how do they fit in with mechanism?


The parameters are that love asks for some close familiarity. It fits  
with mechanism through long computational histories.
Anyway, it is up to you to find something non mechanical. I don't  
defend comp, I just try to show why your methodology to criticize comp  
is not valid.









To fight this seduction,


You beg the question. You are the one creating an enemy here. Just  
from your prejudice and lack of reflexion on machines.


Sometimes an enemy creates themselves.


That is weird for an enemy about which you reject the autonomy.








we must use what is our birthright as living beings. We can be  
opportunistic, we can cheat, and lie, and unplug machines whenever  
we want, because that is what makes us superior to recorded logic.  
We are alive, so we get to do whatever we want to that which is not  
alive.


Here you are more than invalid. You are frightening.
We have compared you to racist, and what you say now reminds me of  
the strategy used by Nazy to "prove" that the white caucasian were  
superior. Lies, lies and lies.


We can lie, machines can lie, but I am not sure it is the best  
science, or the best politics.

With comp, God = Truth, and lies are Devil's play.

If there is a chance that a machine will be born that is like me,  
only billions of times more capable and more racist than I am  
against all forms of life, wouldn't you say that it would be worth  
trying to stop at all costs?


Should we prevent human birth because it might lead to people like  
Hitler?

You are p

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

Here's an etext! Happy hunting :)

http://ia700700.us.archive.org/18/items/QuantumElectrodynamics/Feynman-QuantumElectrodynamics.pdf




On 17 October 2013 10:33, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 16 Oct 2013, at 16:46, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
> > The point is that with the step 3 protocol, you (the H-guy) can never
>> predict among {W, M}, if the result will be "I feel being the W-man", or "I
>> feel being the M-man".
>>
>
> That's because neither will happen, however I the Helsinki Man can predict
> that I the Helsinki Man will see only Helsinki. I the Helsinki Man can also
> predict that I the Helsinki Man will turn into the Moscow Man or the
> Washington Man,  but is unable to know which because I the Helsinki Man
> don't know if the next photon that will enter the eye of I the Helsinki Man
> will come from Moscow or Washington.
>
>
> OK. We agree. You do grasp enough of the FPI to proceed to step 4.
>
>
>
> I the Helsinki Man can make a third prediction, even if the predictions
> made by I the Helsinki Man turn out to be wrong (actually they won't be
> wrong in this instance but it wouldn't matter if they were) I the Helsinki
> Man would still feel like I the Helsinki Man.
>
>
> We completely agree on this.
> With "your theory of identity", both the M-man and the W-man are the
> H-man.
>
>
>
>
>
>>  > If you are OK with this, please proceed.
>>
>
> I'm not OK with this
>
>
> ???
>
>
> and will not proceed.
>
>
> ???
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>   >> the founders of Quantum Mechanics were saying 2 things that neither
>>> Pascal or Boltzman were:
>>>  1) Some events have no cause.
>>>
>>
>> > Only those believing in the collapse
>>
>
> You can say that what the founders of Quantum Mechanics were saying was
> wrong if you like, but they were talking about wave collapse.  And the
> founders of Quantum Mechanics would also say that arguing over the
> difference between a event with no cause and a event with a cause that can
> never be detected even in theory is a waste of time.
>
>
> They were under the spell of Vienna positivism. Einstein said about this
> that he would have preferred to be plumber than to hear things like that.
>
> Anywy, with comp and/or Everett, we have no more any reason to believe in
> event without cause.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>  > that Feynman called a collective hallucination.
>>
>
> Hmm, I've heard lots of people say that reality is a collective
> hallucination and I know a few Feynman sayings but I never heard him say
> that about wave collapse.
>
>
> It is in a footnote in his little book on light. I don't have it under my
> hand for now.
>
>
>
> When did he say it? What is the entire quotation? Google can't seem to
> find anything like that.
>
>
> Ah! You force me to do research in my (new) apartment. Let me pray that it
> is not in some box ...
>
> ... I found it, and the quote. It is page 108 of my french edition
> ""Lumière et Matière, une étrange histoire", which is a translation of his
> book "QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter".
>
> The exact quote in french is: "Il est bon de garder à présent à l'esprit
> ce principe général si l'on ne veut pas tomber dans toutes sortes de
> confusions telles que la 'réduction du paquet d'ondes' et autres effets
> magiques".
> I translate: " It is good to keep that general idea in mind if we want to
> avoid all sorts of confusions like 'the reduction of the wave packet' or
> other magical effect."
> (the general idea is that the wave represents an amplitude of probability,
> whose squared gives the probability).
>
>
>
>
>> > I do not need more about identity than "your definition". Anyone
>> capable of remembering having been X, has the right to be recognized as X.
>>
>
> The problem has never been X calling himself X, that's fine; the problem
> comes when you a third party who never remembers being X starts talking
> about "X"  to yet another third party in a world that has 2 things in it
> that have a equal right to call themselves "X" because duplication chambers
> exist. If somebody hides behind pronouns in such a world anything can be
> "proven".
>
>
>
> Only see a problem here, when there is just an indetermination on a
> subjective outcome.
>
>
>
>
>> > So, asking me to not use pronouns, in what is in great part a theory of
>> pronouns, is like asking me to square the circle.
>>
>
> Yes, just as John Clark thought. It is theoretically impossible to explain
> Bruno Marchal's ideas without using ill defined pronouns to hide behind and
> without assuming the very things that Bruno Marchal is attempting to prove.
>
>
> No made ill use of pronouns, and you mock when I added the necessary
> nuances: notably the distinction between first person pov and third person
> pov, completely defined in sharable 3p terms.
>
>
> The only explanation given is I is I and you is you and he is he, but
> before Euclid even started his first proof he made crystal clear what all
> his terms meant, and Euclid never sa

Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

2013-10-16 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On 16 October 2013 23:33, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
> http://neurosciencenews.com/human-thought-can-voluntarily-control-neurons-in-brain/

And what do you think this article shows, Craig? Something about
"voluntary" meaning "neither determined nor random"?


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

Interesting! One part of the brain controlling another (I guess it does
this anyway but not in the same way).

A switch on the pain centre would be good.not to mention
the pleasure centre.

"Wireheading", anyone?

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Re: Why we can't trust 3p descriptions of reality

:D

My son made some of those sorts of videos a couple of years ago when he was
11 or 12.


On 17 October 2013 06:53, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>
> http://i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/medium/000/010/655/stop-motion-skateboarding.gif
>
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Re: For John Clark

On 17 October 2013 09:49, Jason Resch  wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 12:48 PM, John Clark  wrote:
>


>
> And I don't understand the difference between "first person uncertainty"
> and plain old fashioned uncertainty.
>
> The difference arises when you are the system which is behaving
probablistically. Presumably a sentient dice (or die*) would feel the same
way.

* "Take the dice or die!" as my son once said while playing Monopoly. He
was just being pedantic but it got my attention.

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Re: The probability problem in Everettian quantum mechanics

On 16 October 2013 06:02, Richard Ruquist  wrote:

>
> Richard: I guess I am too much a physicist to believe that uncomputible
> arithmetical truth can produce the physical.
> Since you read my paper you know that I think computations in this
> universe if holographic are limited to 10^120 bits (the Lloyd limit) which
> is very far from infinity. I just do not believe in infinity. In other
> words, I believe the largest prime number in this universe is less than
> 10^120. So I will drop out of these discussions. My assumptions differ from
> yours.
>
> So what happens if someone proves that, say, 2^200 - 1 is a prime number?

Personally I find a statements about prime numbers "in this universe" to be
rather odd. Would 17 remain prime in an empty universe?

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Re: The probability problem in Everettian quantum mechanics

By the way, my son (14) asked me the other day "what's the oddest prime
number?"

Fortunately, I got the right answer!

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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 6:23:33 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On 16 October 2013 23:33, Craig Weinberg > 
> wrote: 
> > 
> http://neurosciencenews.com/human-thought-can-voluntarily-control-neurons-in-brain/
>  
>
> And what do you think this article shows, Craig? Something about 
> "voluntary" meaning "neither determined nor random"? 
>

I think that it means that neurons are subject to our direct intention, 
rather than creating the illusion of intention on top of mechanistic 
processes. It shows that our own brain, down to the individual neuron level 
can be controlled intuitively, as we would if we had found that we had 
grown a new arm. Just as the brain can cause changes in the body, our 
personal motivation can cause changes in the brain.

As for the ontology of 'voluntary', it does, now that you mention it, imply 
that our role of consciousness not merely to predict, or to be 
unpredictable, but also to dictate. It's hard to claim that the brain is 
mechanistic when its own cells are being directly controlled, without some 
other organ in between acting as a brain's brain.

Craig

>
>
> -- 
> Stathis Papaioannou 
>

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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain



On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 6:32:44 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
> Interesting! One part of the brain controlling another (I guess it does 
> this anyway but not in the same way).
>

The question is, what is controlling the first part of the brain?
 

>
> A switch on the pain centre would be good.not to mention 
> the pleasure centre.
>
> "Wireheading", anyone?
>
>
>

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Re: Why we can't trust 3p descriptions of reality

Pretty cool. I made a claymation film as a kid for a class once. Fun times. 

What struck me was how easy it is to pull the mind of an audience along a 
fictional narrative without even doing anything physically impossible. This 
is like the AI robot/zombie/puppet who comes up with the right answers and 
we fill in the gaps to assume that they have some subjective experience of 
reasoning.



On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 6:33:50 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
> :D
>
> My son made some of those sorts of videos a couple of years ago when he 
> was 11 or 12.
>
>
> On 17 October 2013 06:53, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>> http://i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/medium/000/010/655/stop-motion-skateboarding.gif
>>  
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>
>

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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

On 17 October 2013 11:57, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>
> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 6:32:44 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>>
>> Interesting! One part of the brain controlling another (I guess it does
>> this anyway but not in the same way).
>>
>
> The question is, what is controlling the first part of the brain?
>

I'm not sure if it's controlled, exactly. Some would consider it
autonomous, although it has a lot of input that "drives" it - both from the
rest of the brain and the environment (which I guess means the rest of the
body, including the senses).

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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

2013-10-16 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On 17 October 2013 09:56, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>
>
> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 6:23:33 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>>
>> On 16 October 2013 23:33, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>> >
>> > http://neurosciencenews.com/human-thought-can-voluntarily-control-neurons-in-brain/
>>
>> And what do you think this article shows, Craig? Something about
>> "voluntary" meaning "neither determined nor random"?
>
>
> I think that it means that neurons are subject to our direct intention,
> rather than creating the illusion of intention on top of mechanistic
> processes. It shows that our own brain, down to the individual neuron level
> can be controlled intuitively, as we would if we had found that we had grown
> a new arm. Just as the brain can cause changes in the body, our personal
> motivation can cause changes in the brain.

But everything that we think and feel follows from some physical
activity in the neurons, just like every other biological function.
Tachycardia is caused by the heart beating faster, the heart does not
beat faster because of tachycardia.


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Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain



On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 7:09:00 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
> On 17 October 2013 11:57, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 6:32:44 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>>>
>>> Interesting! One part of the brain controlling another (I guess it does 
>>> this anyway but not in the same way).
>>>
>>
>> The question is, what is controlling the first part of the brain?
>>
>
> I'm not sure if it's controlled, exactly. Some would consider it 
> autonomous, although it has a lot of input that "drives" it - both from the 
> rest of the brain and the environment (which I guess means the rest of the 
> body, including the senses).
>

There isn't really any room for an autonomous 'it' though when I'm 
introspectively controlling parts of my own brain. If my will can control 
what a neuron does then it is my will that controls the neuron, not the 
brain being passively driven by its own input.

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Re: The probability problem in Everettian quantum mechanics

2013-10-16 Thread meekerdb


On 10/16/2013 3:49 PM, LizR wrote:

By the way, my son (14) asked me the other day "what's the oddest prime number?"

Fortunately, I got the right answer!


2, because it's the only one that's even.

Brent
"There are 10 kinds of people.  Those who think in binary and those who don't."

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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 7:23:33 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On 17 October 2013 09:56, Craig Weinberg > 
> wrote: 
> > 
> > 
> > On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 6:23:33 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: 
> >> 
> >> On 16 October 2013 23:33, Craig Weinberg  wrote: 
> >> > 
> >> > 
> http://neurosciencenews.com/human-thought-can-voluntarily-control-neurons-in-brain/
>  
> >> 
> >> And what do you think this article shows, Craig? Something about 
> >> "voluntary" meaning "neither determined nor random"? 
> > 
> > 
> > I think that it means that neurons are subject to our direct intention, 
> > rather than creating the illusion of intention on top of mechanistic 
> > processes. It shows that our own brain, down to the individual neuron 
> level 
> > can be controlled intuitively, as we would if we had found that we had 
> grown 
> > a new arm. Just as the brain can cause changes in the body, our personal 
> > motivation can cause changes in the brain. 
>
> But everything that we think and feel follows from some physical 
> activity in the neurons

Not at all. What we think and feel leads activity in the neurons also. 
Right now, I can plan to take a walk tomorrow morning, and lo and behold, 
activity in my body will follow activity in the neurons which follow my 
intention. Neuron activity may have no more to do with what we think and 
feel than traffic patterns have in determining the culture of a city.

> , just like every other biological function. 
> Tachycardia is caused by the heart beating faster, the heart does not 
> beat faster because of tachycardia. 
>

Tachycardia is the heart beating faster. They mean the same thing. It's 
like saying that drag racing is caused by driving cars fast, but cars are 
not driven fast because they are in a race.

It's impossible to understand consciousness if you look at the world only 
from the view that consciousness gives you of conditions outside of your 
body. Until we recognize our interior experience as a phenomenon no less 
physically real than any quark or galaxy, we are going to be doomed to 
chasing our tail looking for our own insides by taking measurements of our 
outsides. I think that the big revelation is to consider that the interior 
of everything is not isomorphic to the exterior, and is, in our case, 
contra-isomorphic.

Craig

>
>
> -- 
> Stathis Papaioannou 
>

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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

On 17 October 2013 12:41, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>
>
> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 7:09:00 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
>> On 17 October 2013 11:57, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 6:32:44 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:

 Interesting! One part of the brain controlling another (I guess it does
 this anyway but not in the same way).

>>>
>>> The question is, what is controlling the first part of the brain?
>>>
>>
>> I'm not sure if it's controlled, exactly. Some would consider it
>> autonomous, although it has a lot of input that "drives" it - both from the
>> rest of the brain and the environment (which I guess means the rest of the
>> body, including the senses).
>>
>
> There isn't really any room for an autonomous 'it' though when I'm
> introspectively controlling parts of my own brain. If my will can control
> what a neuron does then it is my will that controls the neuron, not the
> brain being passively driven by its own input.
>
> I'm not sure what "will" means here. It seems to be an emergent /
high-level description which perhaps needs to be broken down into a
neuronal level description, given what we're discussing...? Nor am I sure
what "passive" means in the context of autonomy (the two are somewhat
opposed, surely). I'm not sure what it means for the brain to be "passively
driven by its own input" (where "input" includes memories, experiences,
etc) when it's constantly rewiring itself, making and breaking
connections...? (Presumably it's ultimately "driven" by the laws of
physics, but so is everything else, so that would make the entire universe
"passively driven" which makes the concept meaningless, or at least
redundant!)

The brain is normally assumed to be essentially a large collection of
interconnected neurons. There isn't anything else in there that I know of
that is relevant to a discussion of how it functions (well, there are blood
vessels and glial cells and whatever, but I don't know if they're relevant
to a discussion of the brain functions we're interested in, though they are
obviously needed in a supporting role). On that view, giving the brain the
ability to control parts of itself more directly than it would normally be
able to (through training and feedback, or with wires etc) is just
introducing more connections, filling in some links that nature happens to
have not provided, but not fundamentally different from what goes on in
there already.

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Re: The probability problem in Everettian quantum mechanics

Or the largest prime number less than 10^120, because it's the biggest
prime number...?!?!? :)

There are two secrets to success.
The first is not to give away everything you know...

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Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers

2013-10-16 Thread Platonist Guitar Cowboy

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 2:49 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

>
>
> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 4:21:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 16 Oct 2013, at 03:01, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> we must use what is our birthright as living beings. We can be
>> opportunistic, we can cheat, and lie, and unplug machines whenever we want,
>> because that is what makes us superior to recorded logic. We are alive, so
>> we get to do whatever we want to that which is not alive.
>>
>> Craig, these are murky waters you're fishing in this time.

I forgot who said the following: "X is giving reasons for why reasoning is
bad. His reasoning was bad."


>
>> Here you are more than invalid. You are frightening.
>> We have compared you to racist, and what you say now reminds me of the
>> strategy used by Nazy to "prove" that the white caucasian were superior.
>> Lies, lies and lies.
>>
>> We can lie, machines can lie, but I am not sure it is the best science,
>> or the best politics.
>> With comp, God = Truth, and lies are Devil's play.
>>
>>
> If there is a chance that a machine will be born that is like me, only
> billions of times more capable and more racist than I am against all forms
> of life, wouldn't you say that it would be worth trying to stop at all
> costs?
>

How could a machine be racist if it is totally incapable of any form of
relation or sentience, according to you?


>
>
>> But thanks for warning us about the way you proceed.
>>
>> This does not help for your case,
>>
>
> I am just the beginning. Your sun in law will make me seem like Snoopy.
>
>
If the above holds and you're not just playing, then these ideas make you
totally mainstream: hunger for opportunistic dominance and perverted sense
of liberty so expansive that we poison the very air we breathe and the soil
that grounds our homes. You'd be saying nothing new at all, just the
opposite in fact.

The opportunism program is so old, cockroaches run it successfully and will
continue to do so. They also eat their young. Makes sense, consistent with
opportunism, but not the apex of aesthetics to put it mildly. To anybody
with the luxury of cultivating an aesthetic sense, even when inevitable,
that is merely ugly and to be avoided.

 PGC



> Craig
>
>
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>>
>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~**marchal/ 
>>
>>
>>
>>  --
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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 8:12:34 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
> On 17 October 2013 12:41, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 7:09:00 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>>
>>> On 17 October 2013 11:57, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>>

 On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 6:32:44 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
> Interesting! One part of the brain controlling another (I guess it 
> does this anyway but not in the same way).
>

 The question is, what is controlling the first part of the brain?

>>>
>>> I'm not sure if it's controlled, exactly. Some would consider it 
>>> autonomous, although it has a lot of input that "drives" it - both from the 
>>> rest of the brain and the environment (which I guess means the rest of the 
>>> body, including the senses).
>>>
>>
>> There isn't really any room for an autonomous 'it' though when I'm 
>> introspectively controlling parts of my own brain. If my will can control 
>> what a neuron does then it is my will that controls the neuron, not the 
>> brain being passively driven by its own input.
>>
>> I'm not sure what "will" means here. It seems to be an emergent / 
> high-level description which perhaps needs to be broken down into a 
> neuronal level description, given what we're discussing...?
>

Juts the opposite. Neuronal level descriptions are to me clearly divergent 
from high level description (will). It might help to think of neuronal 
descriptions as microphysiological rather than conflating them with 
microphenomenal descriptions. It's not so much high level phenomenology 
emerging from low level physiology, bit personal level descriptions and 
sub-personal level descriptions of phenomenology correspond to 
physiological and microphysiological descriptions. We are not made of what 
neurons do any more than a movie is made of what the pixels of a video 
screen do.

> Nor am I sure what "passive" means in the context of autonomy (the two are 
> somewhat opposed, surely). I'm not sure what it means for the brain to be 
> "passively driven by its own input" (where "input" includes memories, 
> experiences, etc)
>

It's begging the question to assume that input includes memories and 
experiences. As far as we can tell, all that the brain should need as input 
would be electrical or neurochemical signals. There is no sign of any 
'experiences' there. That's what I thought that you meant by autonomous - 
driven by purely bio-mechanical interactions, not aesthetically experienced 
content.

when it's constantly rewiring itself, making and breaking connections...? 
> (Presumably it's ultimately "driven" by the laws of physics, but so is 
> everything else, so that would make the entire universe "passively driven" 
> which makes the concept meaningless, or at least redundant!)
>

I think that we are driving physics as much as physics is driving us. If 
that were not the case, then our experience would not make much sense in a 
universe that is driven only by its own unconscious automaticity.

>
> The brain is normally assumed to be essentially a large collection of 
> interconnected neurons.
>

The brain, like the entire body, is a single living cells which has divided 
into a multiplicity of self-reflections. I think that our understanding of 
the brain is on par with our understanding of astronomy before Galileo.

> There isn't anything else in there that I know of that is relevant to a 
> discussion of how it functions (well, there are blood vessels and glial 
> cells and whatever, but I don't know if they're relevant to a discussion of 
> the brain functions we're interested in, though they are obviously needed 
> in a supporting role). On that view, giving the brain the ability to 
> control parts of itself more directly than it would normally be able to 
> (through training and feedback, or with wires etc) is just introducing more 
> connections, filling in some links that nature happens to have not 
> provided, but not fundamentally different from what goes on in there 
> already.
>

Still, the fact that every person finds their own way to manipulate their 
own individual neuron suggests that consciousness is indeed sub-personal as 
well as personal. We have to find our way around our own brain from the 
inside - with no hands or eyes, and no sub-brain to 'process sense data' to 
allow us to improve in our training. 

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Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers



On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 5:34:08 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 16 Oct 2013, at 14:49, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 4:21:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 16 Oct 2013, at 03:01, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 3:45:38 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>


 I can give you the code in Lisp, and it is up to you to find a good 
 free lisp. But don't mind too much, AUDA is an integral description of the 
 interview. Today, such interviews is done by paper and pencils, and 
 appears 
 in books and papers.
 You better buy Boolos 1979, or 1993, but you have to study more logic 
 too.

>>>
>>> Doesn't it seem odd that there isn't much out there that is newer than 
>>> 20 years old, 
>>>
>>>
>>> That is simply wrong, and I don't see why you say that. But even if that 
>>> was true, that would prove nothing.
>>>
>>
>> It still seems odd. There are a lot of good programmers out there. If 
>> this is the frontier of machine intelligence, where is the interest? Not 
>> saying it proves something, but it doesn't instill much confidence that 
>> this is as fertile an area as you imply.
>>
>>
>> A revolutionary contemporary result (Gödel's incompleteness) shows that 
>> the oldest definition of knowledge (greeks, chinese, indians) can be 
>> applied to the oldest philosophy, mechanism, and that this is indeed very 
>> fertile, if only by providing an utterly transparent arithmetical 
>> interpretation of Plotinu's theology, which is the peak of the rationalist 
>> approach in that field, and you say that this instill any confidence in 
>> mechanism?
>>
>
> It doesn't instill confidence of your interpretation of incompleteness. 
> For myself, and I am guessing for others, incompleteness is about the 
> lack-of-completeness of mathematical systems rather than a 
> hyper-completeness of arithmetic metaphysics. 
>
>
> The whole point here is that the machines prove their own theorem about 
> themselves.
>

Which is why their proofs are not reliable as general principles. If you 
ask people who cannot hear about music, they might confirm each others view 
that music consists only of vibrations that you can feel through your body.
 

> The meta-arithmetic belongs to arithmetic. I don't say much more than what 
> the machines already say. I just need the classical theory of knowledge 
> (the modal logic S4), just to compare with the machine's theory (S4Grz), 
> like I need QM to compare with the machines's statistics on computation 
> seen from inside.
>

I think that all theories of logic are incestuous and ungrounded.
 

>
>
>
>
>
> Do you say that Gödel was a supporter of the Plotinus view, or are saying 
> that even he didn't realize the implications.
>
>
> Gödel was indeed a defender of platonism, at the start. But he has been 
> quite slow on Church thesis, and not so quick on mechanism either. That is 
> suggested notably by his leaning toward Anselm notion of God.
>

Platonism is alright, but it just doesn't go far enough. It takes the 
ability to sense forms for granted.
 

>
>
>
> The reductionist view of machines may be wrong, but that doesn't mean that 
> its absence of rules at higher level translates into proprietary feelings, 
> sounds, flavors, etc. Why would it? 
>
>
> Why not? Evidences are that a brain does that. You need to find something 
> non-Turing emulable in the brain to provide evidences that it does not.
>

No, I don't need to find something non-Turing emulable in the brain, any 
more than I need to find something non-pixel descriptive in a TV set to 
provide evidence that a TV show can have characters and dialogue.
 

>
>
>
>
> In theory it could, sure, but the universe that we live in seems to 
> suggest exactly the opposite.
>
>
>
> But we can understand what is that universe, and why it suggests this, for 
> the machine "embedded" in that apparent universe.
>

I have no problem with using mathematics to describe a theoretical 
universe. I don't even say that such a universe could not be real, I only 
say that the universe which hosts our experience does not quite make sense 
as a mathematical universe.
 

>
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>> It says that we must give the undead a chance to be alive - that we 
>> cannot know for sure whether a machine is not at least as worthy of our 
>> love as a newborn baby. 
>>
>>
>> You cannot do that comparison. Is an newborn alien worthy of human love? 
>> Other parameters than "thinking and consciousness" are at play.
>>
>
> What are those parameters, and how do they fit in with mechanism?
>
>
> The parameters are that love asks for some close familiarity. It fits with 
> mechanism through long computational histories.
>

You can have long computational histories without inventing love, surely?
 

> Anyway, it is up to you to find something non mechanical. I don't defend 
> comp, I just try to show why your methodology to criticize comp

Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

On 17 October 2013 13:49, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>
>
> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 8:12:34 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
>> On 17 October 2013 12:41, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 7:09:00 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>>>
 On 17 October 2013 11:57, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>
> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 6:32:44 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>>
>> Interesting! One part of the brain controlling another (I guess it
>> does this anyway but not in the same way).
>>
>
> The question is, what is controlling the first part of the brain?
>

 I'm not sure if it's controlled, exactly. Some would consider it
 autonomous, although it has a lot of input that "drives" it - both from the
 rest of the brain and the environment (which I guess means the rest of the
 body, including the senses).

>>>
>>> There isn't really any room for an autonomous 'it' though when I'm
>>> introspectively controlling parts of my own brain. If my will can control
>>> what a neuron does then it is my will that controls the neuron, not the
>>> brain being passively driven by its own input.
>>>
>>> I'm not sure what "will" means here. It seems to be an emergent /
>> high-level description which perhaps needs to be broken down into a
>> neuronal level description, given what we're discussing...?
>>
>
> Juts the opposite. Neuronal level descriptions are to me clearly divergent
> from high level description (will). It might help to think of neuronal
> descriptions as microphysiological rather than conflating them with
> microphenomenal descriptions. It's not so much high level phenomenology
> emerging from low level physiology, bit personal level descriptions and
> sub-personal level descriptions of phenomenology correspond to
> physiological and microphysiological descriptions. We are not made of what
> neurons do any more than a movie is made of what the pixels of a video
> screen do.
>

The pixels have an obvious cause outside themselves. That isn't obvious
with neurons and consciousness (I'm not wearing my comp hat at the moment,
unless you want to bring that in?)

>
>
>> Nor am I sure what "passive" means in the context of autonomy (the two
>> are somewhat opposed, surely). I'm not sure what it means for the brain to
>> be "passively driven by its own input" (where "input" includes memories,
>> experiences, etc)
>>
>
> It's begging the question to assume that input includes memories and
> experiences. As far as we can tell, all that the brain should need as input
> would be electrical or neurochemical signals. There is no sign of any
> 'experiences' there. That's what I thought that you meant by autonomous -
> driven by purely bio-mechanical interactions, not aesthetically experienced
> content.
>

My point was that "input" isn't necessarily just something received from
outside. And yes, to a materialist, at least, the brain does appear to just
need electrical and neurochemical signals.

>
> when it's constantly rewiring itself, making and breaking connections...?
>> (Presumably it's ultimately "driven" by the laws of physics, but so is
>> everything else, so that would make the entire universe "passively driven"
>> which makes the concept meaningless, or at least redundant!)
>>
>
> I think that we are driving physics as much as physics is driving us. If
> that were not the case, then our experience would not make much sense in a
> universe that is driven only by its own unconscious automaticity.
>

How do we do that?

>
>> The brain is normally assumed to be essentially a large collection of
>> interconnected neurons.
>>
>
> The brain, like the entire body, is a single living cells which has
> divided into a multiplicity of self-reflections. I think that our
> understanding of the brain is on par with our understanding of astronomy
> before Galileo.
>

Well that may be so, but it's hard to have a discussion based on as yet
undiscovered future science!

>
>
>> There isn't anything else in there that I know of that is relevant to a
>> discussion of how it functions (well, there are blood vessels and glial
>> cells and whatever, but I don't know if they're relevant to a discussion of
>> the brain functions we're interested in, though they are obviously needed
>> in a supporting role). On that view, giving the brain the ability to
>> control parts of itself more directly than it would normally be able to
>> (through training and feedback, or with wires etc) is just introducing more
>> connections, filling in some links that nature happens to have not
>> provided, but not fundamentally different from what goes on in there
>> already.
>>
>
> Still, the fact that every person finds their own way to manipulate their
> own individual neuron suggests that consciousness is indeed sub-personal as
> well as personal. We have to find our way around our own brain from the
> inside - with no hands or eyes, and no sub-brain to 'process sense data' to
> allow us to i

Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers



On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 8:18:28 PM UTC-4, Platonist Guitar Cowboy 
wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 2:49 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 4:21:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 16 Oct 2013, at 03:01, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> we must use what is our birthright as living beings. We can be 
>>> opportunistic, we can cheat, and lie, and unplug machines whenever we want, 
>>> because that is what makes us superior to recorded logic. We are alive, so 
>>> we get to do whatever we want to that which is not alive.
>>>
>>> Craig, these are murky waters you're fishing in this time.
>
> I forgot who said the following: "X is giving reasons for why reasoning is 
> bad. His reasoning was bad."
>

Murky, yes. I think that consciousness and life are trans-rational, 
trans-measurable, and trans-ontological.
 

>  
>
>>
>>> Here you are more than invalid. You are frightening. 
>>> We have compared you to racist, and what you say now reminds me of the 
>>> strategy used by Nazy to "prove" that the white caucasian were superior. 
>>> Lies, lies and lies.
>>>
>>> We can lie, machines can lie, but I am not sure it is the best science, 
>>> or the best politics.
>>> With comp, God = Truth, and lies are Devil's play.
>>>
>>>
>> If there is a chance that a machine will be born that is like me, only 
>> billions of times more capable and more racist than I am against all forms 
>> of life, wouldn't you say that it would be worth trying to stop at all 
>> costs?
>>
>
> How could a machine be racist if it is totally incapable of any form of 
> relation or sentience, according to you?
>

Not according to me, I'm going along with Bruno. By his view, I am a 
machine, or a product of a machine, so if I am racist against machines, 
then it is inevitable that there will be machines who are similarly racist 
against humans or biology - the only difference being that they may be 
placed in a position to exert much more control on the world.
 

>  
>
>>
>>
>>> But thanks for warning us about the way you proceed.
>>>
>>> This does not help for your case,
>>>
>>
>> I am just the beginning. Your sun in law will make me seem like Snoopy.
>>
>>
> If the above holds and you're not just playing, then these ideas make you 
> totally mainstream: hunger for opportunistic dominance and perverted sense 
> of liberty so expansive that we poison the very air we breathe and the soil 
> that grounds our homes. You'd be saying nothing new at all, just the 
> opposite in fact. 
>

Even if that's not what I think that I advocate personally, my point is 
that there is no reason to assume that an AI would be any different, given 
that we are machines.
 

>
> The opportunism program is so old, cockroaches run it successfully and 
> will continue to do so. They also eat their young. Makes sense, consistent 
> with opportunism, but not the apex of aesthetics to put it mildly. To 
> anybody with the luxury of cultivating an aesthetic sense, even when 
> inevitable, that is merely ugly and to be avoided.
>

I agree, but that's because I'm not a machine. The part of me that is a 
machine is no better or worse than a cockroach.

Craig
 

>
>  PGC
>  
>  
>
>> Craig
>>  
>>
>>>
>>> Bruno
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~**marchal/ 
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  -- 
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>
>

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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

2013-10-16 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On 17 October 2013 10:52, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>
>
> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 7:23:33 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>>
>> On 17 October 2013 09:56, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 6:23:33 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On 16 October 2013 23:33, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > http://neurosciencenews.com/human-thought-can-voluntarily-control-neurons-in-brain/
>> >>
>> >> And what do you think this article shows, Craig? Something about
>> >> "voluntary" meaning "neither determined nor random"?
>> >
>> >
>> > I think that it means that neurons are subject to our direct intention,
>> > rather than creating the illusion of intention on top of mechanistic
>> > processes. It shows that our own brain, down to the individual neuron
>> > level
>> > can be controlled intuitively, as we would if we had found that we had
>> > grown
>> > a new arm. Just as the brain can cause changes in the body, our personal
>> > motivation can cause changes in the brain.
>>
>> But everything that we think and feel follows from some physical
>> activity in the neurons
>
>
> Not at all. What we think and feel leads activity in the neurons also. Right
> now, I can plan to take a walk tomorrow morning, and lo and behold, activity
> in my body will follow activity in the neurons which follow my intention.
> Neuron activity may have no more to do with what we think and feel than
> traffic patterns have in determining the culture of a city.
>
>
>>
>> , just like every other biological function.
>> Tachycardia is caused by the heart beating faster, the heart does not
>> beat faster because of tachycardia.
>
>
> Tachycardia is the heart beating faster. They mean the same thing. It's like
> saying that drag racing is caused by driving cars fast, but cars are not
> driven fast because they are in a race.

Whichever way you look at it with the heart, the cars or the brain, it
is a sequence of physical events A->B->C etc. Event "B" may correspond
to choosing coffee over tea or it may correspond to tachycardia, but
it was *caused* by event "A". Sometimes, "B" may be random or
uncaused, like radioactive decay. But you have a concept of "B" being
"spontaneous", which means (as far as I can work out) neither caused
by antecedent physical events nor uncaused by antecedent physical
events. And that seems not only wrong, but meaningless.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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RE: Current events

2013-10-16 Thread Chris de Morsella

Anybody else concerned about the typhoon now bearing down on Fukushima? If
it slices up the coast and strikes Fukushima will those damaged and weather
exposed reinforced concrete monolithic structures withstand the horizontal
stresses. Am especially concerned about the SFP above reactor #4 (it is
sitting ten floors up in the air) and that building is in bad shape and is
far too radioactive to work around. That is the one they plan on trying to
remove, especially the hot fuel from - a very dangerous act with Zirconium
clad fuel rods and one that speaks volumes about how really desperate the
situation is in that SFP.

There is enough still very hot spent fuel in that SFP to wreak havoc on this
earth if #4  or the other units there should fail in this once in a decade
storm. 

Hopefully the typhoon misses. In the next hours will see. Happening now on
planet earth, which no matter where our heads are at, is where our feet are
planted.

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Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers

On 17 October 2013 14:08, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> How could a machine be racist if it is totally incapable of any form of
>> relation or sentience, according to you?
>>
>
> Not according to me, I'm going along with Bruno. By his view, I am a
> machine, or a product of a machine, so if I am racist against machines,
> then it is inevitable that there will be machines who are similarly racist
> against humans or biology - the only difference being that they may be
> placed in a position to exert much more control on the world.
>

I don't remember Bruno saying that. (Unless one considers arithmetic to be
a machine?)

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Re: Current events

The trouble is we will be getting "once in a decade" storms (and "once in a
lifetime" events of all types) more and more often, unless the IPCC are
completely wrong (the latest view seems to be that they were too
conservative in their last report).

So yes I'm concerned about this, and about everything else that's going on
upon the dark and troubled Earth.



On 17 October 2013 14:17, Chris de Morsella  wrote:

> Anybody else concerned about the typhoon now bearing down on Fukushima? If
> it slices up the coast and strikes Fukushima will those damaged and weather
> exposed reinforced concrete monolithic structures withstand the horizontal
> stresses. Am especially concerned about the SFP above reactor #4 (it is
> sitting ten floors up in the air) and that building is in bad shape and is
> far too radioactive to work around. That is the one they plan on trying to
> remove, especially the hot fuel from – a very dangerous act with Zirconium
> clad fuel rods and one that speaks volumes about how really desperate the
> situation is in that SFP.
>
> There is enough still very hot spent fuel in that SFP to wreak havoc on
> this earth if #4  or the other units there should fail in this once in a
> decade storm. 
>
> Hopefully the typhoon misses. In the next hours will see. Happening now on
> planet earth, which no matter where our heads are at, is where our feet are
> planted.
>
> --
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>

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Re: Current events

I think it has either arrived or missed by now, it was due to make landfall
on Wednesday, I think. Wikipedia states 17 people killed and 50 missing,
unfortunately.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/15/us-japan-typhoon-idUSBRE99E09H20131015

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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain



On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 9:11:37 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On 17 October 2013 10:52, Craig Weinberg > 
> wrote: 
> > 
> > 
> > On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 7:23:33 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: 
> >> 
> >> On 17 October 2013 09:56, Craig Weinberg  wrote: 
> >> > 
> >> > 
> >> > On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 6:23:33 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: 
> >> >> 
> >> >> On 16 October 2013 23:33, Craig Weinberg  
> wrote: 
> >> >> > 
> >> >> > 
> >> >> > 
> http://neurosciencenews.com/human-thought-can-voluntarily-control-neurons-in-brain/
>  
> >> >> 
> >> >> And what do you think this article shows, Craig? Something about 
> >> >> "voluntary" meaning "neither determined nor random"? 
> >> > 
> >> > 
> >> > I think that it means that neurons are subject to our direct 
> intention, 
> >> > rather than creating the illusion of intention on top of mechanistic 
> >> > processes. It shows that our own brain, down to the individual neuron 
> >> > level 
> >> > can be controlled intuitively, as we would if we had found that we 
> had 
> >> > grown 
> >> > a new arm. Just as the brain can cause changes in the body, our 
> personal 
> >> > motivation can cause changes in the brain. 
> >> 
> >> But everything that we think and feel follows from some physical 
> >> activity in the neurons 
> > 
> > 
> > Not at all. What we think and feel leads activity in the neurons also. 
> Right 
> > now, I can plan to take a walk tomorrow morning, and lo and behold, 
> activity 
> > in my body will follow activity in the neurons which follow my 
> intention. 
> > Neuron activity may have no more to do with what we think and feel than 
> > traffic patterns have in determining the culture of a city. 
> > 
> > 
> >> 
> >> , just like every other biological function. 
> >> Tachycardia is caused by the heart beating faster, the heart does not 
> >> beat faster because of tachycardia. 
> > 
> > 
> > Tachycardia is the heart beating faster. They mean the same thing. It's 
> like 
> > saying that drag racing is caused by driving cars fast, but cars are not 
> > driven fast because they are in a race. 
>
> Whichever way you look at it with the heart, the cars or the brain, it 
> is a sequence of physical events A->B->C etc.


It's not a sequence, it's different scopes of simultaneous. I decide to go 
to the store. That's A. I get in the car and the car drives to the store. 
That's B. The physical event B is cause by personal motive A. There is no 
physical event which specifically would have caused A if it were not for my 
personal contribution in 'clutching' together various histories and 
narratives to arrive at a novel cause which is entering the public universe 
from a private vantage point that I am saying is trans-ontological.

 

> Event "B" may correspond 
> to choosing coffee over tea or it may correspond to tachycardia, but 
> it was *caused* by event "A". 


No cause exists without awareness that has 1) memory, and 2) an application 
of causality to that memory. Cause, like simultaneity, is not absolute, it 
is a fictional perspective generated through a particular type of 
awareness, IMO.
 

> Sometimes, "B" may be random or 
> uncaused, like radioactive decay. But you have a concept of "B" being 
> "spontaneous", which means (as far as I can work out) neither caused 
> by antecedent physical events nor uncaused by antecedent physical 
> events. And that seems not only wrong, but meaningless. 
>

Spontaneous is primordial. It comes before cause and before all 
antecedents. It is before the beginning. All causes can be traced back to 
the spontaneous. You are looking at the consequence of that spontaneity as 
it appears to our body, after the fact, as public measurements. That is not 
fundamental, it is derived from the more fundamental - the capacity to 
appreciate form and participate in function which must precede all 
repeating functions or stable forms.

Craig
 

>
>
> -- 
> Stathis Papaioannou 
>

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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain



On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 9:03:19 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
> On 17 October 2013 13:49, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 8:12:34 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>>
>>> On 17 October 2013 12:41, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>>


 On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 7:09:00 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:

> On 17 October 2013 11:57, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>
>>
>> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 6:32:44 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>>>
>>> Interesting! One part of the brain controlling another (I guess it 
>>> does this anyway but not in the same way).
>>>
>>
>> The question is, what is controlling the first part of the brain?
>>
>
> I'm not sure if it's controlled, exactly. Some would consider it 
> autonomous, although it has a lot of input that "drives" it - both from 
> the 
> rest of the brain and the environment (which I guess means the rest of 
> the 
> body, including the senses).
>

 There isn't really any room for an autonomous 'it' though when I'm 
 introspectively controlling parts of my own brain. If my will can control 
 what a neuron does then it is my will that controls the neuron, not the 
 brain being passively driven by its own input.

 I'm not sure what "will" means here. It seems to be an emergent / 
>>> high-level description which perhaps needs to be broken down into a 
>>> neuronal level description, given what we're discussing...?
>>>
>>
>> Juts the opposite. Neuronal level descriptions are to me clearly 
>> divergent from high level description (will). It might help to think of 
>> neuronal descriptions as microphysiological rather than conflating them 
>> with microphenomenal descriptions. It's not so much high level 
>> phenomenology emerging from low level physiology, bit personal level 
>> descriptions and sub-personal level descriptions of phenomenology 
>> correspond to physiological and microphysiological descriptions. We are not 
>> made of what neurons do any more than a movie is made of what the pixels of 
>> a video screen do.
>>
>
> The pixels have an obvious cause outside themselves. That isn't obvious 
> with neurons and consciousness (I'm not wearing my comp hat at the moment, 
> unless you want to bring that in?) 
>

The pixels don't have an obvious cause outside themselves unless you 
smuggle your knowledge of electronics into it. Neurons are a character 
within our conscious experience as much as our experience coincides with 
some of the behaviors of neurons. We have no reason at all to imagine that 
a brain has anything to do with 'consciousness' except because we are 
taking our own word that we are conscious. On the level that we understand 
the brain and neurons, there could be no such thing as awareness.


 
>>
>>>  Nor am I sure what "passive" means in the context of autonomy (the two 
>>> are somewhat opposed, surely). I'm not sure what it means for the brain to 
>>> be "passively driven by its own input" (where "input" includes memories, 
>>> experiences, etc)
>>>
>>
>> It's begging the question to assume that input includes memories and 
>> experiences. As far as we can tell, all that the brain should need as input 
>> would be electrical or neurochemical signals. There is no sign of any 
>> 'experiences' there. That's what I thought that you meant by autonomous - 
>> driven by purely bio-mechanical interactions, not aesthetically experienced 
>> content.
>>
>
> My point was that "input" isn't necessarily just something received from 
> outside. And yes, to a materialist, at least, the brain does appear to just 
> need electrical and neurochemical signals.
>

I'm trying to show that actual memories and experiences are different from 
changes in the brain. We can explain everything that the brain does without 
ever guessing that there could be experiences outside of the brain tissue 
being 'represented' in some way.
 

>
>>  when it's constantly rewiring itself, making and breaking 
>>> connections...? (Presumably it's ultimately "driven" by the laws of 
>>> physics, but so is everything else, so that would make the entire universe 
>>> "passively driven" which makes the concept meaningless, or at least 
>>> redundant!)
>>>
>>
>> I think that we are driving physics as much as physics is driving us. If 
>> that were not the case, then our experience would not make much sense in a 
>> universe that is driven only by its own unconscious automaticity.
>>
>
> How do we do that? 
>

The same way that the subjects train themselves to control their neurons, 
or that I move my fingers to push the keyboard to input the data that you 
see through your brain/eyes/screen. We are physics. We are not reducible to 
low level public physics, we are personal level private physics.  I think 
that it might work something like this: 
http://multisenserealism.com/thesis/6-panpsychism/eigenmorphism/

 
>>> The brain is normally assumed to be essentially

RE: Current events

2013-10-16 Thread Chris de Morsella

Yeah your right: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24550492

It's crazy that comparatively so little has been done to stabilize and
entomb that site; considering the ultimate consequences should any number of
the structures fail. A case of misplaced priorities that unfortunately could
become a civilization ending event.

At this point entombing the whole thing seems to be the only option - don't
think anybody has the tech to handle a hot mass of corium melt. I would
estimate that entombing Fukushima will cost many trillions of dollars over
hundreds and hundreds - if not hundreds of thousands of years. But that is
chump change compared to the cost of doing nothing.

As you noted large once in a hundred year weather events are going to most
likely become more common as the planet roils in shedding heat out into
space. 

That place is hell on earth. In one of the reactor buildings - I forget
which even the best radiation hardened robots we have only last a few
minutes before the intense gamma ray flux literally fries them and the
telemetry they can gather is of extremely poor quality due the intense gamma
ray emissions in that area. 

I think all we can do at this point is to entomb - at massive cost - and
contain this hell from the rest of the planet. 

This is one of those problems that is so horrible that no one wants to deal
with it or think about it; preferring almost anything to this activity.
Nobody wants to own this. Fukushima is like an orphan child and the Japanese
government would love it to just go away and let it focus instead on
important things like preparing for the Olympics. the insanity of the
apparent priorities is truly rich, but also potentially tragic for all of
humankind.

I am unimpressed with Japan's efforts and ability to manage this disaster
and am concerned that they have been in a reactive mode and are flailing
around and trying to pretend that they can focus on other things - like the
Olympics.

How many close calls will Fukushima survive before it can finally be
stabilized?

 

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of LizR
Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 6:30 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Current events

 

I think it has either arrived or missed by now, it was due to make landfall
on Wednesday, I think. Wikipedia states 17 people killed and 50 missing,
unfortunately.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/15/us-japan-typhoon-idUSBRE99E09H2013
1015

 

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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

On 17 October 2013 15:04, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

The pixels don't have an obvious cause outside themselves unless you
> smuggle your knowledge of electronics into it. Neurons are a character
> within our conscious experience as much as our experience coincides with
> some of the behaviors of neurons. We have no reason at all to imagine that
> a brain has anything to do with 'consciousness' except because we are
> taking our own word that we are conscious. On the level that we understand
> the brain and neurons, there could be no such thing as awareness.
>

"Smuggle your knowledge of electronics" into explaining the operation of an
electronic device??? If we can't take our word for it that we're conscious,
whose word can we take for it? How can there be "no such thing as
awareness" when we have good working models of eyes, the visual cortex, and
so on?

TBH I think you're just throwing out objections randomly; if you aren't, I
don't have a clue what you're trying to say.

I think it's time for me to retire in confusion.

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Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers



On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 9:19:13 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
> On 17 October 2013 14:08, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
>> How could a machine be racist if it is totally incapable of any form of 
>>> relation or sentience, according to you?
>>>
>>
>> Not according to me, I'm going along with Bruno. By his view, I am a 
>> machine, or a product of a machine, so if I am racist against machines, 
>> then it is inevitable that there will be machines who are similarly racist 
>> against humans or biology - the only difference being that they may be 
>> placed in a position to exert much more control on the world.
>>
>  
> I don't remember Bruno saying that. (Unless one considers arithmetic to be 
> a machine?)
>

Yes, if I understand his view correctly, Bruno considers arithmetic to be 
behind mechanism, mechanism to be behind awareness, and awareness to be 
behind physics. 

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Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers



On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 9:11:02 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
> On 16 October 2013 14:05, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 8:51:17 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>>
>>> On 16 October 2013 13:48, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>>

 No, that's begging the question. A human body may be a machine, but 
 that does not mean that a human experience can be created from the outside 
 in. That's what all of these points are about - a machine does not build 
 itself from a single reproducing cell. A machine does not care what it is 
 doing, it doesn't get bored or tired. A machine is great at doing things 
 that people are terrible at doing and vice versa. There is much more 
 evidence to suggest that human experience is the polar opposite of 
 mechanism than that it could be defined by mechanism.

 So what is a human being, if not a (very complicated, 
>>> molecular-component-**containing) machine? (Or is "machine" being 
>>> defined in a specialised sense here?) 
>>>
>>
>> A human being is the collective self experience received during the 
>> phenomenon known as a human lifetime. The body is only one aspect of that 
>> experience - a reflection defined as a familiar body in the context of its 
>> own perception.
>>
>
> That's cool, but if the body is a (complicated, etc) machine, then either 
> those experiences are part of the machine, or they're something else. If 
> they're part of the machine then you're wrong in some of the above-quoted 
> statements (and you contradicted yourself by saying that a machine doesn't 
> grow from a cell, by the way) If it's something else, then - depending on 
> the nature of that something else - it's possible that other things have 
> it, and we don't recognise the fact. It would be important to know what 
> that something else is before one can construct an argument. (For example, 
> I believe Bruno thinks the "something else" is an infinite sheaf of 
> computations.)
>

Have you considered that it might be the body which is part of a sheaf of 
experiences? 

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Re: Current events

Japan is only doing the same as the rest of the world, of course -
pretending there's nothing wrong, carrying on as usual and hoping the world
will sort itself out (which it will, no doubt, but maybe not with the human
race still around). Fukushima just happens to be a particularly ghastly
example of the sort of problems we've created for ourselves.

Meanwhile Barak Obama continues to not fulfil his promises about a green
economy, Putin is such a wimp he can't take a few peaceful protests about
Arctic oil drilling without throwing his toys out the cradle, the Aussies
have just withdrawn from the carbon tax scheme (why they don't use solar
power for everything in that climate is beyond me) and our very own Prime
Minister in New Zealand continues to head towards the most environmentally
destructive policies he can in the name of short term supposed boosts to
the economy, or more likely just making the rich richer...

(And we wonder why SETI hasn't picked up any signs of intelligent life...)

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Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers

On 17 October 2013 16:12, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>
>
> On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 9:11:02 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
>> On 16 October 2013 14:05, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 8:51:17 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>>>
 On 16 October 2013 13:48, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>
> No, that's begging the question. A human body may be a machine, but
> that does not mean that a human experience can be created from the outside
> in. That's what all of these points are about - a machine does not build
> itself from a single reproducing cell. A machine does not care what it is
> doing, it doesn't get bored or tired. A machine is great at doing things
> that people are terrible at doing and vice versa. There is much more
> evidence to suggest that human experience is the polar opposite of
> mechanism than that it could be defined by mechanism.
>
> So what is a human being, if not a (very complicated,
 molecular-component-**containing**) machine? (Or is "machine" being
 defined in a specialised sense here?)

>>>
>>> A human being is the collective self experience received during the
>>> phenomenon known as a human lifetime. The body is only one aspect of that
>>> experience - a reflection defined as a familiar body in the context of its
>>> own perception.
>>>
>>
>> That's cool, but if the body is a (complicated, etc) machine, then either
>> those experiences are part of the machine, or they're something else. If
>> they're part of the machine then you're wrong in some of the above-quoted
>> statements (and you contradicted yourself by saying that a machine doesn't
>> grow from a cell, by the way) If it's something else, then - depending on
>> the nature of that something else - it's possible that other things have
>> it, and we don't recognise the fact. It would be important to know what
>> that something else is before one can construct an argument. (For example,
>> I believe Bruno thinks the "something else" is an infinite sheaf of
>> computations.)
>>
>
> Have you considered that it might be the body which is part of a sheaf of
> experiences?
>

Since Bruno started trying to explain comp to me, I have indeed considered
that. It could be, for example, via the mechanism you mentioned in your
previous post:

Bruno considers arithmetic to be behind mechanism, mechanism to be behind
> awareness, and awareness to be behind physics.
>

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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 11:03:21 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
> On 17 October 2013 15:04, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
> The pixels don't have an obvious cause outside themselves unless you 
>> smuggle your knowledge of electronics into it. Neurons are a character 
>> within our conscious experience as much as our experience coincides with 
>> some of the behaviors of neurons. We have no reason at all to imagine that 
>> a brain has anything to do with 'consciousness' except because we are 
>> taking our own word that we are conscious. On the level that we understand 
>> the brain and neurons, there could be no such thing as awareness.
>>
>
> "Smuggle your knowledge of electronics" into explaining the operation of 
> an electronic device???
>

You don't know its an electronic device, you only know that there are 
pixels because you can look at the screen closely. It's like the stop 
motion video. You would have to suppress your knowledge of stop motion 
video and what is possible in real life if you wanted to imagine how the 
video would look to someone who had no experience with video editing. To 
such a person, the video could seem like evidence of impossible things 
happening. This is the case when we look at the data presented by 
neuroscientific instruments. We are seeing a limited narrative which we 
have interpreted under certain assumptions. If we used only those 
assumptions, and suppressed our knowledge of consciousness, there would be 
nothing which neuroscience reports that could lead us to discover any such 
thing as consciousness. In his book Aping Mankind, Raymond Tallis talks 
about the failure of neuroscience and evolutionary biology to examine this 
view, what he calls the prospective view of consciousness. Any theory of 
consciousness can make sense retrospectively, since you already know how 
its supposed to turn out - with consciousness as an end result, but only a 
theory of consciousness which makes sense prospectively can help us with 
the Hard Problem and Explanatory Gap.

> If we can't take our word for it that we're conscious, whose word can we 
> take for it?
>

We would have to take the word of neuroscience. If neuroscientific data 
were enough to lead us to consciousness, then that is all that we would 
need. If consciousness were like some other form or function, we could 
simply measure whether something was conscious or not without having any 
idea what consciousness is. We have to begin to approach consciousness by 
forgetting that there has ever been any such thing.

> How can there be "no such thing as awareness" when we have good working 
> models of eyes, the visual cortex, and so on?
>

We have good working models of cameras and video editing hardware too, but 
that doesn't mean that they imply awareness at all.

>
> TBH I think you're just throwing out objections randomly; if you aren't, I 
> don't have a clue what you're trying to say.
>

I'm trying to say that our contemporary approach to understanding awareness 
is fatally flawed. It suffers from a leaky philosophical vacuum, and maybe 
the premature confidence of a teenage civilization that imagines it to be 
finishing a race that is only halfway done.

>
> I think it's time for me to retire in confusion.
>

Have a good night! 

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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

On 17 October 2013 16:29, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>
> I'm trying to say that our contemporary approach to understanding
> awareness is fatally flawed. It suffers from a leaky philosophical vacuum,
> and maybe the premature confidence of a teenage civilization that imagines
> it to be finishing a race that is only halfway done.
>
> OK, that's something I can understand (and even agree with). So do you
have some idea about how we *should* be understanding awareness, and can
you explain it simply, and preferably without doing violence to, for
example, our understanding of how TV sets work? (Or if you do have to do
violence to that notion, could you only do so after explaining how and why
you need to do violence to it, rather than throwing the idea into the
conversation willy-nilly and expecting the audience to understand?!)

Explaining in the style of Bruno and comp, for example, would be good...

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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain



On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 11:39:49 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
> On 17 October 2013 16:29, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm trying to say that our contemporary approach to understanding 
>> awareness is fatally flawed. It suffers from a leaky philosophical vacuum, 
>> and maybe the premature confidence of a teenage civilization that imagines 
>> it to be finishing a race that is only halfway done.
>>
>> OK, that's something I can understand (and even agree with). So do you 
> have some idea about how we *should* be understanding awareness, and can 
> you explain it simply, and preferably without doing violence to, for 
> example, our understanding of how TV sets work? (Or if you do have to do 
> violence to that notion, could you only do so after explaining how and why 
> you need to do violence to it, rather than throwing the idea into the 
> conversation willy-nilly and expecting the audience to understand?!)
>
> Explaining in the style of Bruno and comp, for example, would be good...
>

I have a lot written already. It depends which aspects you are interested 
in. Philosophy of mind positions? Mathematical abstractions? Diagrams? 
Podcasts or videos?

http://multisenserealism.com/about/introduction/
http://multisenserealism.com/consciousness-problems-and-possible-solutions/the-four-problems-of-studying-consciousness/
http://multisenserealism.com/about/why-pip-and-msr-solves-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness/

http://multisenserealism.com/thesis/a-new-theory-of-information/multisense-mathematics/non-well-founded-identity-principle/

http://multisenserealism.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/trini1.jpg

http://multisenserealism.com/about/radio-and-tv-interviews/


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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

Let's start at the very beginning.
(It's a very good place to start.)


On 17 October 2013 16:56, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>
>
> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 11:39:49 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
>> On 17 October 2013 16:29, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I'm trying to say that our contemporary approach to understanding
>>> awareness is fatally flawed. It suffers from a leaky philosophical vacuum,
>>> and maybe the premature confidence of a teenage civilization that imagines
>>> it to be finishing a race that is only halfway done.
>>>
>>> OK, that's something I can understand (and even agree with). So do you
>> have some idea about how we *should* be understanding awareness, and can
>> you explain it simply, and preferably without doing violence to, for
>> example, our understanding of how TV sets work? (Or if you do have to do
>> violence to that notion, could you only do so after explaining how and why
>> you need to do violence to it, rather than throwing the idea into the
>> conversation willy-nilly and expecting the audience to understand?!)
>>
>> Explaining in the style of Bruno and comp, for example, would be good...
>>
>
> I have a lot written already. It depends which aspects you are interested
> in. Philosophy of mind positions? Mathematical abstractions? Diagrams?
> Podcasts or videos?
>
> http://multisenserealism.com/about/introduction/
>
> http://multisenserealism.com/consciousness-problems-and-possible-solutions/the-four-problems-of-studying-consciousness/
>
> http://multisenserealism.com/about/why-pip-and-msr-solves-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness/
>
>
> http://multisenserealism.com/thesis/a-new-theory-of-information/multisense-mathematics/non-well-founded-identity-principle/
>
> http://multisenserealism.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/trini1.jpg
>
> http://multisenserealism.com/about/radio-and-tv-interviews/
>
>
>  --
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Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers



On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 11:18:39 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
> On 17 October 2013 16:12, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 9:11:02 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>>
>>> On 16 October 2013 14:05, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>>


 On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 8:51:17 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:

> On 16 October 2013 13:48, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>
>>
>> No, that's begging the question. A human body may be a machine, but 
>> that does not mean that a human experience can be created from the 
>> outside 
>> in. That's what all of these points are about - a machine does not build 
>> itself from a single reproducing cell. A machine does not care what it 
>> is 
>> doing, it doesn't get bored or tired. A machine is great at doing things 
>> that people are terrible at doing and vice versa. There is much more 
>> evidence to suggest that human experience is the polar opposite of 
>> mechanism than that it could be defined by mechanism.
>>
>> So what is a human being, if not a (very complicated, 
> molecular-component-**containing**) machine? (Or is "machine" being 
> defined in a specialised sense here?) 
>  

 A human being is the collective self experience received during the 
 phenomenon known as a human lifetime. The body is only one aspect of that 
 experience - a reflection defined as a familiar body in the context of its 
 own perception.

>>>
>>> That's cool, but if the body is a (complicated, etc) machine, then 
>>> either those experiences are part of the machine, or they're something 
>>> else. If they're part of the machine then you're wrong in some of the 
>>> above-quoted statements (and you contradicted yourself by saying that a 
>>> machine doesn't grow from a cell, by the way) If it's something else, then 
>>> - depending on the nature of that something else - it's possible that other 
>>> things have it, and we don't recognise the fact. It would be important to 
>>> know what that something else is before one can construct an argument. (For 
>>> example, I believe Bruno thinks the "something else" is an infinite sheaf 
>>> of computations.)
>>>
>>
>> Have you considered that it might be the body which is part of a sheaf of 
>> experiences? 
>>
>
> Since Bruno started trying to explain comp to me, I have indeed considered 
> that. It could be, for example, via the mechanism you mentioned in your 
> previous post:
>
> Bruno considers arithmetic to be behind mechanism, mechanism to be behind 
>> awareness, and awareness to be behind physics.
>>
>
I would have agreed with Bruno completely a few years ago, but since then I 
think that it makes more sense that arithmetic is a kind of sense than that 
sense could be a kind of arithmetic. I think that mechanism is a kind of 
arithmetic and arithmetic is a kind of sense, as is private awareness a 
kind of sense. 

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RE: Current events

2013-10-16 Thread Chris de Morsella

There is something to be said for the hypothesis that there are no advanced
technological civilizations in the universe because they invariably destroy
themselves in the blink of an eye after they are fist born. Not what I would
have wished, but in our own case we certainly seem to be bearing it out.

 

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of LizR
Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 8:16 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Current events

 

Japan is only doing the same as the rest of the world, of course -
pretending there's nothing wrong, carrying on as usual and hoping the world
will sort itself out (which it will, no doubt, but maybe not with the human
race still around). Fukushima just happens to be a particularly ghastly
example of the sort of problems we've created for ourselves.


Meanwhile Barak Obama continues to not fulfil his promises about a green
economy, Putin is such a wimp he can't take a few peaceful protests about
Arctic oil drilling without throwing his toys out the cradle, the Aussies
have just withdrawn from the carbon tax scheme (why they don't use solar
power for everything in that climate is beyond me) and our very own Prime
Minister in New Zealand continues to head towards the most environmentally
destructive policies he can in the name of short term supposed boosts to the
economy, or more likely just making the rich richer...

(And we wonder why SETI hasn't picked up any signs of intelligent life...)

 

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Re: Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 11:58:27 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
> Let's start at the very beginning.
> (It's a very good place to start.)
>

I think before anything can 'begin' there already has to be awareness or 
sense. Presence. A capacity to discern difference from indifference and to 
participate in projecting that discernment as an effect. Without that, 
there is no difference between nothingness and something that can ever 
become a 'beginning'.

To get to a beginning, there would have to be a lot more sensible 
tendencies - a sense of memory, a sense of cause, etc.

It gets difficult because at this primitive level of the cosmos, time is 
not coherent, so it is as much the distant past as the far future, as it is 
the present moment. It is not an event in time, it is the solitude implicit 
within every time, every beginning. On that level, all of eternity is a 
single tick of an infinitely slow clock which has not even begun yet, but 
its perpetual expectation is the infinite well of entropy-negentropy that 
keeps everything spinning.

>
>
> On 17 October 2013 16:56, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 11:39:49 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>>
>>> On 17 October 2013 16:29, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>>

 I'm trying to say that our contemporary approach to understanding 
 awareness is fatally flawed. It suffers from a leaky philosophical vacuum, 
 and maybe the premature confidence of a teenage civilization that imagines 
 it to be finishing a race that is only halfway done.

 OK, that's something I can understand (and even agree with). So do you 
>>> have some idea about how we *should* be understanding awareness, and 
>>> can you explain it simply, and preferably without doing violence to, for 
>>> example, our understanding of how TV sets work? (Or if you do have to do 
>>> violence to that notion, could you only do so after explaining how and why 
>>> you need to do violence to it, rather than throwing the idea into the 
>>> conversation willy-nilly and expecting the audience to understand?!)
>>>
>>> Explaining in the style of Bruno and comp, for example, would be good...
>>>
>>
>> I have a lot written already. It depends which aspects you are interested 
>> in. Philosophy of mind positions? Mathematical abstractions? Diagrams? 
>> Podcasts or videos?
>>
>> http://multisenserealism.com/about/introduction/
>>
>> http://multisenserealism.com/consciousness-problems-and-possible-solutions/the-four-problems-of-studying-consciousness/
>>
>> http://multisenserealism.com/about/why-pip-and-msr-solves-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness/
>>
>>
>> http://multisenserealism.com/thesis/a-new-theory-of-information/multisense-mathematics/non-well-founded-identity-principle/
>>
>> http://multisenserealism.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/trini1.jpg
>>
>> http://multisenserealism.com/about/radio-and-tv-interviews/
>>
>>
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>
>

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RE: For John Clark

2013-10-16 Thread chris peck

Hi jason

>>I think in that last sentence you misuse the term subjective.  

In what way? 

Also, in what way could uncertainty be anything other than subjective? Have you 
ever seen an rock quivering in doubt? Certainty/uncertainty are properties of 
1-p experiences and can't be anything but. 

>>I refer you to the Everett quote above where he says the usual QM 
>>probabilities arise in the subjective views, not expectations of 100%.

Are you going to show an error of reasoning or are you going to point to a dead 
physicist?

I see your reference and raise you a reference back to section 4.1 of

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0312136

>> There are multiple experiencers, each having possibly different experiences. 
>> For some class of those experiencers you can attach the label "chris peck". 
>> This allows you to say: "chris peck experiences all outcomes" but that does 
>> not imply each experiencer experiences all experiences, each experiencer has 
>> only one experience. The subjective first person view, of what any 
>> experiencer can claim to experience, is a single outcome.  The experiences 
>> are fractured and distinct because there is no communication between the 
>> decohered worlds. 

ISTM that you're missing the point of my argument. You don't seem to get that 
it is very well understood that there is only one stream of experience per 'I'. 
The trouble is that in step 3 these 'I's get duplicated from one 'I' to two 
'I's AND I am obliged axiomatically to assume my 'I'ness survives in both 
duplicates.

So, when asked what will I experience ... and remember, there is only one 'I' 
at this point ... how can I answer 'either or' without violating this axiom I 
am obliged to accept? Alternatively, perhaps neither of the future 'I's are 
this earlier 'I'. In which case, I am forced to predict I will experience 
nothing and again that violates the axiom. The only choice I can make here is 
to predict this single 'I' will experience each outcome once duplicated. This 
is the only prediction I can make which doesn't violate the survival axiom I am 
bound to.

>> In any event, you have at least seen how the appearance of subjective 
>> randomness can appear through duplication of continuation paths, which  is 
>> enough to continue to step 4 in the UDA.

On the contrary, Jason, I find the concept of subjective uncertainty extremely 
unlikely in both MWI and COMP and find the 50/50 prediction particularly a 
little bit silly.

Nevertheless, I am not Clark, and have already raced ahead. I find myself 
tracking dropped pens through UD*, wallowing in a morass of an unseemly dream 
argument and furrowing my brow over strange interpretations of modal logic. Im 
not sure what to make of any of it but Im certain Bruno is happy to have you on 
board.

regards.

Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 11:36:06 +1300
Subject: Re: For John Clark
From: lizj...@gmail.com
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com

On 17 October 2013 09:49, Jason Resch  wrote:

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 12:48 PM, John Clark  wrote:

And I don't understand the difference between "first person uncertainty" and 
plain old fashioned uncertainty.  

The difference arises when you are the system which is behaving 
probablistically. Presumably a sentient dice (or die*) would feel the same way.

* "Take the dice or die!" as my son once said while playing Monopoly. He was 
just being pedantic but it got my attention. 

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Re: For John Clark

2013-10-16 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2013/10/17 chris peck 

> Hi jason
>
>
> *>>I think in that last sentence you misuse the term subjective.  *
>
> In what way?
>
> Also, in what way could uncertainty be anything other than subjective?
> Have you ever seen an rock quivering in doubt? Certainty/uncertainty are
> properties of 1-p experiences and can't be anything but.
>
>
> *>>I refer you to the Everett quote above where he says the usual QM
> probabilities arise in the subjective views, not expectations of 100%.*
>
> Are you going to show an error of reasoning or are you going to point to a
> dead physicist?
>
> I see your reference and raise you a reference back to section 4.1 of
>
> http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0312136
>
>
> *>> There are multiple experiencers, each having possibly different
> experiences. For some class of those experiencers you can attach the label
> "chris peck". This allows you to say: "chris peck experiences all outcomes"
> but that does not imply each experiencer experiences all experiences, each
> experiencer has only one experience. The subjective first person view, of
> what any experiencer can claim to experience, is a single outcome.  The
> experiences are fractured and distinct because there is no communication
> between the decohered worlds. *
>
> ISTM that you're missing the point of my argument. You don't seem to get
> that it is very well understood that there is only one stream of experience
> per 'I'. The trouble is that in step 3 these 'I's get duplicated from one
> 'I' to two 'I's AND I am obliged axiomatically to assume my 'I'ness
> survives in both duplicates.
>
> So, when asked what will I experience ... and remember, there is only one
> 'I' at this point ... how can I answer 'either or' without violating this
> axiom I am obliged to accept? Alternatively, perhaps neither of the future
> 'I's are this earlier 'I'. In which case, I am forced to predict I will
> experience nothing and again that violates the axiom. The only choice I can
> make here is to predict this single 'I' will experience each outcome once
> duplicated. This is the only prediction I can make which doesn't violate
> the survival axiom I am bound to.
>
>
> *>> In any event, you have at least seen how the appearance of subjective
> randomness can appear through duplication of continuation paths, which  is
> enough to continue to step 4 in the UDA.*
>
> On the contrary, Jason, I find the concept of subjective uncertainty
> extremely unlikely in both MWI and COMP and find the 50/50 prediction
> particularly a little bit silly.
>
>
So, if you have to predict if you'll get spin up or down, you'll predict
100% seeing sping up and 100% seeing spin down ? And so, that proves your
theory is wrong (MWI true or not)... no need to go further.

Quentin


> Nevertheless, I am not Clark, and have already raced ahead. I find myself
> tracking dropped pens through UD*, wallowing in a morass of an unseemly
> dream argument and furrowing my brow over strange interpretations of modal
> logic. Im not sure what to make of any of it but Im certain Bruno is happy
> to have you on board.
>
> regards.
>
>
>
> --
> Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 11:36:06 +1300
>
> Subject: Re: For John Clark
> From: lizj...@gmail.com
> To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
>
>
> On 17 October 2013 09:49, Jason Resch  wrote:
>
> On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 12:48 PM, John Clark  wrote:
>
>
>
>
> And I don't understand the difference between "first person uncertainty"
> and plain old fashioned uncertainty.
>
> The difference arises when you are the system which is behaving
> probablistically. Presumably a sentient dice (or die*) would feel the same
> way.
>
> * "Take the dice or die!" as my son once said while playing Monopoly. He
> was just being pedantic but it got my attention.
>
> --
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Re: For John Clark