Re: The MGA revisited
On Saturday, April 4, 2015, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','meeke...@verizon.net'); wrote: On 4/3/2015 2:38 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 4 Apr 2015, at 7:32 am, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/2/2015 4:18 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I think the argument I present does not depend on any fact about the world (although going from the general case of what I call functionalism to what Putnam called machine-state functionalism and you call comp does depend on the physical CT being true). It depends on a very basic operational definition of consciouness: that you know it if you are conscious and you realise if there is a large enough change in your consciousness. If you don't accept this operational definition then I can find no meaning in the word consciousness. I don't understand how that applies to someone who, for example, is red-green colorblind. Aren't they partial-zombies by your definition? They may come to realize that they don't distinguish the full spectrum, just as we realize we don't see infrared. Supppose the colorblind person used to see colors but lost the ability (as my mother did after cataract surgery)? She realized it by noticing that things that used to be colorful weren't anymore. But like the person born colorblind, she didn't directly experience a qualia of being colorblind. She noticed a difference and there was also an objective change in her ability to discriminate between a colours. A partial zombie would not notice a difference and there would be no test that could find a difference. But what does it mean to say she noticed a difference? Was the noticing a perception of a difference, or was it just remembering that grass and roses aren't named by the same color. The latter could be noticed by someone who had never had color vision (and was in fact well known to my father who was red-green colorblind all his life). If the noticing was just a fact learned in the way anyone might learn a 3p fact, then I think that would still leave my mother a partial zombie by your definition. If you can think of a case where there could be a change that would not be noticed then that's not the example to use. We lose neurons every day and perhaps there is a subtle change in our perceptions as a result, but nobody notices. The example to use in the thought experiment is where the change in qualia would be large enough that the subject would definitely notice. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 03 Apr 2015, at 19:17, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Imagine the iterated duplication, the average history in the diaries obtained contained histories like W (I was unable to predit that), W again! Bruno Marchal keeps making the exact same error over and over and over again. Whatever is in the diary that the Washington Man is carrying is totally irrelevant because it was not written by the Washington Man he's just carrying it, the diary was written by the Helsinki Man. And Bruno Marchal just can't kick that personal pronoun addiction. For the 123rd time WHO THE HELL IS I? You are the one saying that personal identity is needed, and that we need to use ammbiguous pronoun. But the question is about a result of an experiment. You need only to agree that you survive (in both place if you want), but that in any place where you survive, you will see only one outcome. here you is used for the Helsinki guy, trying to predict what will happen when he push on the button. Then, it is a simple exercise to see that the prediction W M is made wrong in all consistent future (in that precise protocol). W and M leads to contradiction, W v M is made correct in all consistent future. Given the definition of first person and third person, this leads to the FPI. I don't see what is not clear with that. The I in the above sentence causes no unambiguity because matter copying machines do not yet exist and because there was no prediction about what Mr. I will experience in the future; otherwise it would be so ambiguous there would be no way to determine even in theory if the prediction turned out to be correct or not; in other words the sentence would be meaningless. What is wrong with what is above? May be it is just the vocabulary. let me ask you step 4 with your vocabulary/ Does the ambiguity remains the same if we introduce a delay of reconstitution in Moscow? Nobody grasp where you see a difficulty. Perhaps because like Bruno Marchal they can't stop themselves from effortlessly spewing out personal pronouns without thinking. That's fine for everyday conversation, poetry and even most technical writing, but personal pronouns don't work worth a damn in thought experiments that try to uncover the fundamental nature of personal identity. See the math treatment if you have really a problem. Using Kleene's second recursion, we can write a program e such that phi_e() = execute- and-dovetail on (e in M) and (e in W), and see which option is valid in both. That works without problem, and eliminate the use of pronouns. See the longer text for all details. Bruno And the step 4 question is Is step 4 infested with personal pronouns just like everything else Bruno Marchal writes about personal identity? John K Clark John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Life in the Islamic State for women
Hi John On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 10:10 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: TELMO: I did not expect from you to point to the 2 centuries old obsolete and theoretical exercise of Marx-Engels (irrespective of Lenin's intermitted LATER speculations) as blueprint for a (still?) viable(?) political system. I don't think it was ever viable, and I don't think it's relevant to the current times, as it is based on too many assumption from an era that is long gone (early Industrialism). What I mean is, when people use the word communism, there is a document that describes precisely what this word is supposed to mean. A blueprint for communism. I do think that Marx-Engels correctly identified social problems that remain being problems to this day, namely the self-reinforcing nature of wealth inequality. The issue is that their proposed solution seems to equalize society by throwing the majority of people into extreme poverty and servitude. It never got further than a tyranny of 'leftish-sounding' slogans by pretenders. As the original authors dreamed it up, it never (and nowhere) did get off from the ground. I know, I lived in a so called Peoples' Democracy (Called 'commi' system - ha ha) which was neither peoples' nor democracy. Nor Marxist, nor Leninist. It was a Stalinist tyranny. And Maoist, Pol-Pot, plus a KimIrSen-istic one. I would be very interested in any story you had to share about those times. I agree that these societies never achieved anything resembling what Marx proposed. The remaining communists of today tend to argue that all of past communist movements were not sincere in their motivations. That might very well be true, but even then it is an important piece of information on human nature. If we are trying to get from A - B and we always stumble on the same horrors along the way, maybe the plan is just not viable for this world. So far we have learned that either communism is a terrible idea or communist revolutions always end up being hijacked by sociopaths. To be honest, I think both are true. Capitalism - in my view an advanced form of slavery, following feudalism - started to destroy the entire human experiment on this Globe - way before the warming entered the picture. It never 'faced' a competition of any 'socialistic' challenger. It succumbbed to the authoritarian religious tyrannies (brutal and violent, or just retracting and philosophical). As with communism, there is a big gap between the theory and the implementation. Advanced form of slavery might be a way to put it, but an even more cynical view would be that there's always been slavery to some degree. I believe that the big challenge that we face is how to move to a jobless society. Worse, I think this transition already started but there is still no political will to admit it. Robotics and AI are Marx's worse nightmare. In the limit, the number of employees required by a business will tend to zero, while the ability of a business to provide goods for the rest of us keeps being more and more leveraged by technological advance. One of the realities about the current economic crises that few are willing to admit: there simply are no longer jobs for everyone. I think the best idea that we have so far is the universal flat salary. Best, Telmo. On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 4:04 AM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 4:19 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 2 April 2015 at 15:18, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: In practice Communism was evil but in theory it was just stupid Almost as stupid as capitalism, The defining characteristic of stupid is that stupid doesn't work, so regardless of what you may personally think of capitalism's ethics (and there is no disputing matters of taste) the fact remains that if capitalism was stupider than communism then it wouldn't have won the 40 year long face to face confrontation with it. It didn't. Communism hasn't been tried except at the tribal/village level (you're getting confused because some people called themselves communist). The same claim can be made about anything. Reality never seems to conform to the idealized version of any political theory. Communism has a blueprint, The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. Several societies of varying sizes and cultural backgrounds attempted to implement these ideas. In all cases so far, the results have been horrendous. I have no doubt that this is not the outcome that Marx desired, but there is now strong empirical evidence that this is the outcome you get when applying the idea to societies of human beings. My point is that capitalism is in the process of destroying the world, so it hasn't won anything and may well lose the entire human experiment thanks to the greed of a few short sighted individuals. If the world is indeed being destroyed by pollution, then this is being
Re: The Object
Nice! Quite Platonist! We never invent anything---we always only discover. would assess a platonist. Bruno On 07 Jan 2015, at 23:54, Jason Resch wrote: From Douglas Jone's short story ( http://frombob.to/you/ aconvers.html ): But suppose it were possible to create physical universes like yours within an appropriately specified computational universe. What could you say about the origin of the universe then? Very little, actually. Why? Because all general-purpose computers are equivalent. If it is possible to perform this computation within any one computational universe, then there are an infinite number of computational universes in which this computation is performed. If you were to try to follow the chain of causality back past the origin of your physical universe, you would find an infinite number of causes. These are all deep, deep questions. We have been thinking about them, and doing experiments, for a very long time. Our mathematicians have proven certain things... I’m sorry, I have to be very careful about what I say here. There is the very real possibility of inducing cardiac arrest in certain people if I say too much. So let me say some vague things: There exists an object, a mathematical object, which has certain properties. For reasons that should be obvious, there is no general agreement on what the best name for this object is, so for the sake of convenience, let’s just call it The Object. Your world, that is, the entire universe that you can observe, is an infinitesimal part of that Object. And so is mine. And so is every universe that can possibly exist. And everything else that can exist, whether or not you would call it a universe. All of Mathematics is inside that Object. And the various parts of that Object are somehow connected together. We expend a considerable amount of effort attempting to deduce the properties of that Object. In a sense, we are Exploring it. As I said before, we are Explorers, and we are exploring Everything. And exploring the nature of the connections between the various parts of The Object is the most fundamental kind of exploration there is. And some of the most interesting kinds of connections are related to Consciousness. The Object is Eternal. It exists outside of time. It has no beginning and no end; it simply Is. It contains many universes that have a property called Time, and you live in one of them, and so do I. But these universes are Eternal too. The Time within them is visible only from a particular point of view. Whenever we speak of creating a computational universe, or of creating a physical universe, or of creating anything, we are not really speaking of creation; we are really speaking of making a connection. Making a connection between different parts of The Object. The parts are already there. They have always been there. And we don’t really make the connection; the connection was always there too. We just discover what is already there. In other words, we just become aware of it. So whenever we think we’re creating something, this is just a vanity of the ego, which exists within Time. Everything is already there, within The Object. B: What do you mean, the Afterlife? Apparently, each of us gets an infinite number of different ones, simultaneously. And this doesn’t just happen when you die. It happens to you all the time. In the last five minutes, you have split into an uncountable number of different versions of yourself, each one in a different universe. And some of those versions of yourself have found themselves in universes that are very different from the one you all shared just over five minutes ago. Just because you don’t recall ever experiencing a discontinuity that big, doesn’t mean that it never happens to you. The Object contains all possible computational universes, with all possible initial conditions. So there are an infinite number of computational universes which contain, as part of their initial conditions, You as you exist at this precise instant. And this instant too. And all of the other instants of your life. And in precisely zero percent of those universes, which is to say an infinite number of them, you will find yourself in a world like the one I live in, the Realm of Possibilities. Where you will have freedom, and infinite choices, and immortality. Where you can visit worlds of invention, and live innumerable lives. Where you can follow, for a time, the paths of other Souls. Of course, in the vast majority of those universes, you will find yourself completely alone. But nevertheless, it can be shown that there are an infinite number of universes that will also contain all of your friends and loved ones. Even the ones who are already dead in your world. And we can take this even further. It can be shown that there exist an infinite number of universes
Re: The MGA revisited
On 04 Apr 2015, at 01:26, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 4/2/2015 8:55 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: The only reason that the dovetailer might have to worry about time limitations is if it is actually a physical computer. Physical computers have to contend with such things as physical laws, the finite speed of light, the properties of materials, the generation of heat (entropy) and the need to remove that heat to a safe distance before everything melts down. If your computer is not a physical device, then it has none of these limitations, and there is no such concept available as the 'speed' of the computation, the 'time for each step', or anything of this sort. From our external concrete perspective, the whole thing is instantaneous, or it enters statis at some point and gets nowhere. For a non- physical computer these things are equivalent. So without a physical computer you have no dynamics. A mere ordering of states is still a static thing, and the dovetailer does nothing useful that could not more easily be done by referring to a normal number. Why would it not have the same dynamics as in any Platonia version of physics, e.g. a block universe simulated in a digital computer? The states don't even have to be computed in their inherent time order. Bruno doesn't argue for this -- as far as I can see he moves from a physical computer straight into Platonia, ? No, I often use the block universe to illustrate the similarity here. and I don't move straight into Platonia, I use the MGA, and eventually the math. without any attempt at a justification for the move. You have not answer the question: do you agree that at step 7, and thus in presence of primitive physical universe running a universal dovetailer, physics is reduce to a mathematical problem. Unfortunately for his case, if you start with a physical computer, you have to start with a set of physical laws and that will run this machine composed of physical matter in an orderly manner. It cannot bootstrap itself -- run the machine and this itself generates the laws that enable the machine to run? Argue the self-referential bootstrap, don't just ignore the problem. To avoid such problem, I divided the reasoning in smaller step. I can't comment this without knowing if youe have seen the reversal in step seven. It looks you do. So what you say amount to say that you believe there is something wrong in the MGA. OK, so what is wrong? But a more significant point, it seems to me, is that time in the block universe works by taking some subsystem and using it as a clock. But that can be done in the simulation of the Milky Way, or of any computable solution of some physical laws. And also, in platonia (sigma_1 arithmetical truth), you have a universal clock: the steps of the UD itself. But the clock function is instantiated by showing correlations between the regular dynamics of the clock and the dynamics of the rest of the universe. In other words, the universe has to run according to regular dynamical laws that apply equally to the clock subsystem and to the rest. Without these regular correlations you have no clock, and no time. Digitalness entails the existence of a universal time, given by the ordering of the steps of the UD, which can be defined in arithmetic. Of course, that universal time has only quite indirect relations with possible physical time, which emerge from inside, in the first person view of the entities emulated by the UD. Your argument is not valid. Barbour's solution is rather different, and more ingenious, because he doesn't actually recreate physical time or dynamics. He simply connects otherwise unrelated slices by his 'time capsules'. One can argue for ever whether this actually works, but it is an ingenious possibility. The computer's memories of the entities emulated by the UD (equivalently sigma_1 arithmetic) plays the role of time capsule, and can be defined formally in arithmetic. The problem I see is that Bruno has not made any attempt to argue for any sensible notion of time when he moves into Platonia. I submit a problem for the computationalist. Now you are unfair, because the math part shows the solution (and show it empirically testable). Both a physical time and a subjective time emergence is explained with all details. The fact that you say that I made no attempt is proof that you have not yet begin to study the reasoning, the problem and the illustration of testable solution. He can refer to relations among numbers in arithmetic as 'computations', but that is just a play with words -- there is still no dynamics involved. There is, and as Brent argue correctly, it is similar to any block universe theory, except that I show the block-reality is bigger, immaterial, and might contain white rabbits, and then I show why those white rabbits
Re: The MGA revisited
On 04 Apr 2015, at 01:29, Russell Standish wrote: On Fri, Apr 03, 2015 at 06:33:52PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 03 Apr 2015, at 00:44, Russell Standish wrote: The whole point of the MGA is to try and close off a gap in the argument if you assume that ontological reality I guess you mean here: physical ontological reality (assuming it exists). If we have a robust ontology (ie the full Platonia), You really mean: robust physical ontology. No, because the label physical should refer to what is phenomenal, otherwise it doesn't have any meaning. ? But then it seems you assume what we want to prove. I have introduced the term robust only for the physical universe (be it ontological or phenomenological). It is just what makes an entire (never ending) physical universal dovetailing possible. The Church Thesis (true by assumption) shows that what is phenomenal cannot be ontological (or noumenal, to borrow Kant's term), when the ontology is robust. That is pretty much the whole point of UDA1-7. What does it mean than an ontology is robust? UD* is robust in arithmetic by definition. The point of UDA1-7 is only that if we assume the physical universe run a UD, then physics is a branch of arithmetic/computer science. Moreover, I would argue that the MGA doesn't even work, as recordings can be fully counterfactually correct. By adding the inert Klara? But then the physical role of the inert Klara to produce consciousness to the movie is not Turing emulable, and you stop assuming computationalism. But in a robust ontology, the Klaras are no longer inert. They cannot be. I don't know what is a robust ontology. It looks that you mean by this an everything ontology, or a many-world or many states or many computations ontology. But in that case the Klara are still inert in the relevant branch where we do the reasoning. So I am not sure to see the relevance of the remark here. I can understand the role of Klara and counterfactual correctness for the computation and behavior being correct hen change occur, but how could they change the consciousness by being non present when not needed? If they are not needed, then some non-counterfactually correct recordings can be conscious. That is right, but that is the path to the reductio ad absurdum. I don't have a strong opinion on this, as the relevant recordings will be really very complex, but do suspect, along with Brent, that full embodiment in an environment is needed, along with counterfactual correctness. ? Then they are no more recordings, but computation. As I point out in my paper, that, physical supervenience, and the MGA entails a robust ontology (ie something like the Multiverse to exist). You mean a primitively physical multiverse? That would already be a quite non trivial result, but I don't see how you get it. That would be weird because it would prove that if can prove the existence of primitive matter in arithmetic. I am a bit confused. Cheers, Bruno 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 Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Fast moves for nuclear development in Siberia
On 4/4/2015 7:45 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote: Whatever the breeder fuel cycle: LFTR or the (seems like the Russians are going in that direction) plutonium economy; inherent passive safety features are critical. If we learned anything from Fukushima, I would argue that one of the lessons must be that reactors need to be walk away safe, being designed with in-built passive safety designed failure modes. This also argues for smaller scale units than behemoths like the MarkII design. The very big units just generate too much heat all, in a remarkably small place… too much for passive safety to be practical. I think a better reactor scale would be around 200MW, big enough to matter, but small enough to be manageable in failure mode. Most proposed advanced reactors will operate at higher temperatures than the older designs. This both makes them more thermodynamically efficient and it allows them to be air cooled. The safety problem isn't from the high temperature in the design use, it's from the residual radioactive components that continue to decay after the reactor shuts down. There's been assertions about Fukushima's core melt down and escaping the reactor vessel based on muon imaging. But the corium didn't escape the concrete containment under the reactor. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: Fast moves for nuclear development in Siberia
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of meekerdb Sent: Saturday, April 04, 2015 6:58 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Fast moves for nuclear development in Siberia On 4/4/2015 5:58 PM, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com wrote: Has anybody been following this. Looks like the lead cooled fast breeder design is being carried ahead in Russia. It doesn't need high pressure which is good and, if there is a leak the molten lead would soon solidly and self seal which is also good, but the Russians have used this sort of design before in their submarines and that's not exactly a sterling recommendation in my book. And it makes Plutonium from U238 and that's not my favorite element, call me old fashioned but I think the world already has more than enough Plutonium in it. I like the Thorium fuel cycle much more than the Uranium fuel cycle. Also thorium is much more abundant. And it has been demonstrated at Oak Ridge as part of the Air Force's program to build a nuclear powered bomber. I don't think any new reactor technology is likely to get built unless some government gets involved to fund research and to tailor regulations to the new technology. Also, and this is a major point in its favor LFTR reactor types would be walk away safe. Because the U233 fuel plus fertile thorium is solution in the fluoride salt coolant a simple and effective failure plug could be designed in at the low point of the inner core circulating design. If the reactor ever started overheating the plug would be made of a material with a substantially lower melting point than the vessel. In other words it would fail first; guaranteed. In this manner the hot fuel/fertile/salt mix (plus various by products in the mix) would get channeled into a sub catchment chamber made of neutron absorbing materials and with a surface shape that would disperse the hot liquid core circulating fluid over a relatively wide flat area beneath the reactor, and without any intervention the reaction speed would very significantly slow down (free neutron starvation); the hot liquid (also radioactively very hot of course) fluid would cool down and solidify into what can be pictured as a kind of cupcake shaped containment. It would still be a big cleanup, but it would be a manageable one that would in many senses have elf-contained itself. Another advantage of the LFTR design is that they have a broader neutron bandwidth (being able to utilize both fast neutrons as well as slower neutrons). I guess one could say LFTR has a higher neutron efficiency; being able to use them across a broader spectrum of energies. Whatever the breeder fuel cycle: LFTR or the (seems like the Russians are going in that direction) plutonium economy; inherent passive safety features are critical. If we learned anything from Fukushima, I would argue that one of the lessons must be that reactors need to be walk away safe, being designed with in-built passive safety designed failure modes. This also argues for smaller scale units than behemoths like the MarkII design. The very big units just generate too much heat all, in a remarkably small place… too much for passive safety to be practical. I think a better reactor scale would be around 200MW, big enough to matter, but small enough to be manageable in failure mode. Chris Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Fast moves for nuclear development in Siberia
On 4/4/2015 5:58 PM, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com wrote: Has anybody been following this. Looks like the lead cooled fast breeder design is being carried ahead in Russia. It doesn't need high pressure which is good and, if there is a leak the molten lead would soon solidly and self seal which is also good, but the Russians have used this sort of design before in their submarines and that's not exactly a sterling recommendation in my book. And it makes Plutonium from U238 and that's not my favorite element, call me old fashioned but I think the world already has more than enough Plutonium in it. I like the Thorium fuel cycle much more than the Uranium fuel cycle. Also thorium is much more abundant. And it has been demonstrated at Oak Ridge as part of the Air Force's program to build a nuclear powered bomber. I don't think any new reactor technology is likely to get built unless some government gets involved to fund research and to tailor regulations to the new technology. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Fast moves for nuclear development in Siberia
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com wrote: Has anybody been following this. Looks like the lead cooled fast breeder design is being carried ahead in Russia. It doesn't need high pressure which is good and, if there is a leak the molten lead would soon solidly and self seal which is also good, but the Russians have used this sort of design before in their submarines and that's not exactly a sterling recommendation in my book. And it makes Plutonium from U238 and that's not my favorite element, call me old fashioned but I think the world already has more than enough Plutonium in it. I like the Thorium fuel cycle much more than the Uranium fuel cycle. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: Iranian joke about the big deal, or understanding that was just reached.
Nicely wry joke, I saw online, making the rounds in Tehran about the just signed deal: I went to the store now and they still don't have whiskey! What kind of a deal is this? My non-sequitur to that: I'll have that joke on the rocks, please. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: DNA Wormholes can cause cancer (what!?)
Chris, Hi. It's good that they have new studies confirming this stuff, but the looping of DNA into 3D structures inside the nucleus has been known for awhile. I think they're even starting to map these interactions just like the human genome project. One of the methods they use is to crosslink the DNA in the nucleus so that the shape it's currently in is saved, and then sequence the crosslinked areas to identify the crosslinked segments of DNA. But, I admit calling this a wormhole is kind of just good marketing. I guess the everything list is kind of like a wormhole that brings together distant people so they can talk about everything! :-) Also, on the epigenetic inheritance thing via histones, it's also good that new studies are proving this stuff, but epigenetic changes (changes in gene expression caused by things other than changes to the DNA sequence) that can be inherited have also been known for 10 years or so. So far, what they know are that these changes are caused by adding or removing methyl groups to the DNA bases or methyl and acetyl groups to the histones. That affects how the genes are expressed. These changes can be affected by the environment and your own activities (like exercise). So, your descendants may thank you for exercising and eating right! The only reason I know some stuff about this is that I have kind of a weird job where I read biochem. articles all day and put the new stuff into a database. See you! Roger On Saturday, April 4, 2015 at 3:08:19 PM UTC-4, cdemorsella wrote: -Original Message- From: everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: [mailto: everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript:] On Behalf Of Russell Standish Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2015 1:44 PM To: 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List Subject: Re: DNA Wormholes can cause cancer (what!?) Of course, this is what Australia's John Mattick has been saying for decades (I heard him talk on this nearly 15 years ago, for instance, and he'd been railing at the establishment sometime before that). But wormholes? Really? Someone in marketing has been given far too liberal a rein. They're always on the hunt for that catchy title aren't they; I find them amusing :) Still, in seriousness, it's an interesting idea: that previously overlooked, non-local effects, naturally operating within an organisms DNA may be playing a more fundamental role in life than previously believed (or even considered to be occurring at all) Chris Cheers On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 05:26:16PM +, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote: [Have been very busy on a new software project and have not had time to follow and participate on this list... such an active list :). ] Came across this article and found it interesting also from an information science point of view -- taking the perspective of DNA being a fairly dynamic information repository. It seems like the butterfly effect is operating in DNA... a small difference one place can result in effects being triggered in very distant DNA locations... or as the researchers said... kind of like a wormhole.-Chris Cancer risk linked to DNA ‘wormholes’ February 25, 2015 Single-letter genetic variations within parts of the genome once dismissed as “junk DNA” can increase cancer risk through remote effects on far-off genes, new research by scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London shows.The researchers found that DNA sequences within “gene deserts” — so called because they are completely devoid of genes — can regulate gene activity elsewhere by forming DNA loops across relatively large distances.The study helps solve a mystery about how genetic variations in parts of the genome that don’t appear to be doing very much can increase cancer risk.Their study, published in Nature Communications, also has implications for the study of other complex genetic diseases.The researchers developed a technique called Capture Hi-C to investigate long-range physical interactions between stretches of DNA – allowing them to look at how specific areas of chromosomes interact physically in more detail.The researchers assessed 14 regions of DNA that contain single-letter variations previously linked to bowel cancer risk. They detected significant long-range interactions for all 14 regions, confirming their role in gene regulation.“Our new technique shows that genetic variations are able to increase cancer risk through long-range looping interactions with cancer-causing genes elsewhere in the genome,” study leader Professor Richard Houlston, Professor of Molecular and Population Genetics at The Institute of Cancer Research, London said.“It is sometimes described as analogous to a wormhole, where distortions in space and time could in theory bring together distant parts of the
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 6:42 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: I is a single entity travelling through time in the forward direction. If matter copying machines exist there would be nothing single about it, Mr. I can split numerous times and can even split into 2 and then recombine back to one. And none of this would require a scientific breakthrough, all it needs is just very good engineering. If you take the MWI seriously, then you are open to the possibility that you are constantly being duplicated already. You are open to this possibility even though you were never aware of the existence of your copies. If you have duplication you realise this is an illusion. In a discussion about subjectivity the word illusion has no place But you alluded to this illusion yourself, when you said above that 'If matter copying machines exist there would be nothing single about it'. Assuming you're like me, you perceive yourself as a single entity travelling through time in the forward direction. And yet, if you take the MWI seriously, then you must accept that there is a possibility that this is an illusion created by our limited perception of reality, just like the illusion that the earth is flat or that the sun orbits around the earth. unless it can be explained exactly how this illusion works. And I remind you that illusions are a perfectly respectable subjective phenomenon, and in this context subjectivity is far more important than objectivity. I don't care if objectively I'm dead as long as subjectively I'm not. the result is that if you are teleported to two places it will seem to you that you are teleported to just one with probability 1/2. After the duplication but before the door of the duplication chamber is opened objectively there are 2 bodies of Stathis Papaioannou And yet, he will never be aware of being two people at once (this is just the initial assumption of a substitution level). but subjectively there is only one Stathis Papaioannou because they are identical. Subjectively from whose perspective? After the doors are opened they no longer are identical because they see different things; one sees Moscow and becomes Mr. Stathis Papaioannou The Moscow Man, and the other sees Washington and becomes Mr. Stathis Papaioannou The Washington Man. But before the doors are opened and after the duplication, you can ask them through the intercom to guess where they are. If they are forced to make a bet, you will find that they tend to be right 1/2 of the time. This is all you're being asked to agree with. I can predict with 100% certainty that it doesn't matter though, because you made your mind before giving the idea a chance. Telmo. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 04 Apr 2015, at 00:03, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Saturday, April 4, 2015, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Imagine the iterated duplication, the average history in the diaries obtained contained histories like W (I was unable to predit that), W again! Bruno Marchal keeps making the exact same error over and over and over again. Whatever is in the diary that the Washington Man is carrying is totally irrelevant because it was not written by the Washington Man he's just carrying it, the diary was written by the Helsinki Man. And Bruno Marchal just can't kick that personal pronoun addiction. For the 123rd time WHO THE HELL IS I? I is a single entity travelling through time in the forward direction. If you have duplication you realise this is an illusion. However, brains are strongly wired up to persist in this illusion, and the result is that if you are teleported to two places it will seem to you that you are teleported to just one with probability 1/2. The original and the copy know it's not objectively true, but they can't help the feeling. Yes, and then, as they assume comp, they have a simple theory explaining why it has to be like that: they have been duplicated. ( w v m) has been realized in all extensions, and (w m) is falsified in all extensions. Everything here can be made pure third person, so ... even a p-zombie grasps this :) BTW, I think your argument in your other post might eliminate yes doctor from comp. The unprovable part would rely entirely in Church's thesis. That would be nice and you make me think so. Brent criticized my habit to consider consciousness as being binary: it exists or it does not exist, despite my acknowledgement of ten thousands of possibly conscious states, with different intensity. I see that the point if well captured by the fact that partial zombie does not make sense. And this redeems my initial, pre-stroboscop, argument that if you let a movie think, in the real time of an actual physical projection, then you will have to attribute all possible experience to the projection of an empty movie at anytime. The argument follows like the usual functional substitution, piece by piece. You will just eliminate the first component, by digging a hole in the pellicle, so that during the projection there is a hole in the movie, just on a component (some gate), yet, from that hole, you get the right outputs for the corresponding inputs, and so it is functionally equivalent, and indeed, that hole does not impact on the behavior of any other gates. If consciousness supervene on the movie, it supervenes on the movie with one hole. And the absence of partial zombiness makes both experiences (with and without the hole) 100% identical. So, we can extend the hole and get a bigger one. But that hole keeps the right relative input/output. Non-partial-zombiness makes it allowable to extend the hole to the whole brain movie, without touching to the motor output, and the person would keep its behavior like if nothing happened, but if we still associate the token consciousness, impossible to change continuously in virtue of non-partial-zombiness, it leads to attach arbitrary experience to arbitrary things. So a movie cannot think (i.e. support the thinking which was associated to the filmed boolean graph activity). But then consciousness is not in the physical activity of the neurons (a bit already Watson intelligence is not in its gate organization and activity), but at a higher level, in its goal, memeoris, personality, but abstract higher order pattern: the spirit of the hero, something like that. This aliments the intuition pump that the physical is not responsible for consciousness. The physical should be what is responsible for its stability and normality, only (by UDA). Physics is a measure calculus on the computational histories/computational states. The theory of everything seems to be Church's thesis. Church-Turing- Post-Markov thesis. The discovery of the universal machine. The belief that the Turing universal machine(*) is universal for all the intuitively computable function. (*) equivalently: Elementary Arithmetic, or the SK combinators, or Algol, of Lisp, of c++, ...) It is easy to derive incompleteness from Church's thesis. Even from a weaker thesis: the thesis that there is a universal machine. I proved this to Liz some time ago, I might do it again, it is really the start somehow. Church thesis key role is in the step 7. With comp you convince me that there is truly no zombies, which implies that the relative arithmetic dreaming numbers, relative to other universal numbers, cannot be zombies either. The consciousness is not in the incarnation/relative-implementation, but the incarnation/ implementation makes it possible to manifest itself,
Re: Life in the Islamic State for women
Telmo: I have only a few remarks to your (appreciable) response: you wrote: . *What I mean is, when people use the word communism, there is a document that describes precisely what this word is supposed to mean. A blueprint for communism.* That 'document' is obsolete and was idealized' even when formulated. Lenin (in his theoretical work) tried to save (some of) it and postulated a BRAND NEW type of humans ('the communist man') unselfish and active up to his capabilities in the favor (benefit) of mankind (society). He was not to hopeful about it's realization. I don't give more credit to the M-E *Socialis*t Bible than to the other earlier one. I believe in (some?) advancement over the past 2 centuries, so I would be careful to draw conclusions upon the ancient pattern (wording?). Today's 'inequality' means haves and havnots, as developed in the capitalistic world. Havenots not meaning only absolute paupers, rather employees as well and I am willing to add the very well paid ones. ((A chairman can fire a CEO etc.)) I contrast them by the OWNERS (of big wealth) - the successors of the feudal lords. The slave-owners. Inequality cannot be fixed by re-distribution, it is a system. As long as people seek jobs to survive with their family as in today's economy, no re-distribution works. We have to return to the (original?) M-E ideas of ownership excluded for all territory, or products of Nature (in-ground, or grown out of ground) except for the part that is a result of the invested (human's) activity ((work)). A flat salary is still a salary - not a MINIMUM distribution of the avalable goods necessary for survival at the level the world can achieve at any point in time. Then comes Lenin's super hero (communist man) and works to the top of his capacity and talents FOR the society, not for a salary. Appreciation (expressable also in levels of living) may be a 'reward', not an additional pay. Such new system requires a new identification of values and activities, goals and results. I don't think we are ready for such. At the end you write about jobs (missing for everyone) which is a view anchored in captialism. In the re-evaluation I mentioned we don't speak about (paid?) jobs.The entire view has to be different Of course - in today's terms - technology will soon eliminate the necessity of working employees for pay and if we cannot change the entire image of societal survival a mass-famine will strike, only the owners of the technology will survive, unless the starving crowd finishes them off. I need someone smarter-than-me to propose the re-evaluation of this world. And about your flat salary: WHO ON EARTH will assign and supply it? Of course the owners (HA-HA) Thanks for your thoughts On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 9:19 AM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: Hi John On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 10:10 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: TELMO: I did not expect from you to point to the 2 centuries old obsolete and theoretical exercise of Marx-Engels (irrespective of Lenin's intermitted LATER speculations) as blueprint for a (still?) viable(?) political system. I don't think it was ever viable, and I don't think it's relevant to the current times, as it is based on too many assumption from an era that is long gone (early Industrialism). What I mean is, when people use the word communism, there is a document that describes precisely what this word is supposed to mean. A blueprint for communism. I do think that Marx-Engels correctly identified social problems that remain being problems to this day, namely the self-reinforcing nature of wealth inequality. The issue is that their proposed solution seems to equalize society by throwing the majority of people into extreme poverty and servitude. It never got further than a tyranny of 'leftish-sounding' slogans by pretenders. As the original authors dreamed it up, it never (and nowhere) did get off from the ground. I know, I lived in a so called Peoples' Democracy (Called 'commi' system - ha ha) which was neither peoples' nor democracy. Nor Marxist, nor Leninist. It was a Stalinist tyranny. And Maoist, Pol-Pot, plus a KimIrSen-istic one. I would be very interested in any story you had to share about those times. I agree that these societies never achieved anything resembling what Marx proposed. The remaining communists of today tend to argue that all of past communist movements were not sincere in their motivations. That might very well be true, but even then it is an important piece of information on human nature. If we are trying to get from A - B and we always stumble on the same horrors along the way, maybe the plan is just not viable for this world. So far we have learned that either communism is a terrible idea or communist revolutions always end up being hijacked by sociopaths. To be honest, I think both are true. Capitalism - in my view an advanced form of slavery, following feudalism - started to
RE: DNA Wormholes can cause cancer (what!?)
-Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Russell Standish Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2015 1:44 PM To: 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List Subject: Re: DNA Wormholes can cause cancer (what!?) Of course, this is what Australia's John Mattick has been saying for decades (I heard him talk on this nearly 15 years ago, for instance, and he'd been railing at the establishment sometime before that). But wormholes? Really? Someone in marketing has been given far too liberal a rein. They're always on the hunt for that catchy title aren't they; I find them amusing :) Still, in seriousness, it's an interesting idea: that previously overlooked, non-local effects, naturally operating within an organisms DNA may be playing a more fundamental role in life than previously believed (or even considered to be occurring at all) Chris Cheers On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 05:26:16PM +, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote: [Have been very busy on a new software project and have not had time to follow and participate on this list... such an active list :). ] Came across this article and found it interesting also from an information science point of view -- taking the perspective of DNA being a fairly dynamic information repository. It seems like the butterfly effect is operating in DNA... a small difference one place can result in effects being triggered in very distant DNA locations... or as the researchers said... kind of like a wormhole.-Chris Cancer risk linked to DNA ‘wormholes’ February 25, 2015 Single-letter genetic variations within parts of the genome once dismissed as “junk DNA” can increase cancer risk through remote effects on far-off genes, new research by scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London shows.The researchers found that DNA sequences within “gene deserts” — so called because they are completely devoid of genes — can regulate gene activity elsewhere by forming DNA loops across relatively large distances.The study helps solve a mystery about how genetic variations in parts of the genome that don’t appear to be doing very much can increase cancer risk.Their study, published in Nature Communications, also has implications for the study of other complex genetic diseases.The researchers developed a technique called Capture Hi-C to investigate long-range physical interactions between stretches of DNA – allowing them to look at how specific areas of chromosomes interact physically in more detail.The researchers assessed 14 regions of DNA that contain single-letter variations previously linked to bowel cancer risk. They detected significant long-range interactions for all 14 regions, confirming their role in gene regulation.“Our new technique shows that genetic variations are able to increase cancer risk through long-range looping interactions with cancer-causing genes elsewhere in the genome,” study leader Professor Richard Houlston, Professor of Molecular and Population Genetics at The Institute of Cancer Research, London said.“It is sometimes described as analogous to a wormhole, where distortions in space and time could in theory bring together distant parts of the universe.”The research was funded by the EU, Cancer Research UK, Leukaemia Lymphoma Research, and The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- 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 Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
Re: Fast moves for nuclear development in Siberia
I have literally monitored developments for years that would return some form of nuclear fission as a safe possibility to be the main power source for the human species. It always sounds interestingly, and innovative, but never takes off to become a reality. Thorium, Molten Salt, Micro, Betavoltaic, subcritical reactors which switch off when a laser or proton beam stop, all the wonderful ideas, and more. But these things never leave the laboratory. I will not argue why this is true, or that its a total shame that it never takes off. I think at this late date, fusion, a different process, will wait till the 22nd century, and for the next 85 years its going to be natural gas (argue about this later) or solar and wind. Electric cars power by solar and wind, factories, homes, and the rest of the slack taken up by natural gas. Tesla and Prius will eventually lead the way in transportation. Yes, this view is disappointing, but true. -Original Message- From: 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Apr 4, 2015 12:26 am Subject: RE: Fast moves for nuclear development in Siberia Has anybody been following this. Looks like the lead cooled fast breeder design is being carried ahead in Russia. An experimental lead-cooled nuclear reactor will be built at the Siberian Chemical Combine (SCC). If successful, the small BREST-300 unit could be the first of a new wave of Russian fast reactors. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Fast_moves_for_nuclear_development_in_Siberia_0410121.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: I is a single entity travelling through time in the forward direction. If matter copying machines exist there would be nothing single about it, Mr. I can split numerous times and can even split into 2 and then recombine back to one. And none of this would require a scientific breakthrough, all it needs is just very good engineering. If you have duplication you realise this is an illusion. In a discussion about subjectivity the word illusion has no place unless it can be explained exactly how this illusion works. And I remind you that illusions are a perfectly respectable subjective phenomenon, and in this context subjectivity is far more important than objectivity. I don't care if objectively I'm dead as long as subjectively I'm not. the result is that if you are teleported to two places it will seem to you that you are teleported to just one with probability 1/2. After the duplication but before the door of the duplication chamber is opened objectively there are 2 bodies of Stathis Papaioannou but subjectively there is only one Stathis Papaioannou because they are identical. After the doors are opened they no longer are identical because they see different things; one sees Moscow and becomes Mr. Stathis Papaioannou The Moscow Man, and the other sees Washington and becomes Mr. Stathis Papaioannou The Washington Man. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The Object
My view is that rather than being a simulation, our universe and an infinitude of others,are programs that yields physical universes, as a programmatic process. The underlying software and hardware are more real than the reality we sense, but our lives are very real. Underneath everything is organized data, programs, processes, and pipelines to other universes (or parts of a greater very big universe). So theoretically, humans and galaxies and bacteria, get promoted (as in software) to other places. I am stealing from Eric Steinhart's Promotion hypothesis, to suit my own pitiful intellect, and emotions. -Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Apr 4, 2015 11:10 am Subject: Re: The Object Nice! Quite Platonist! We never invent anything---we always only discover. would assess a platonist. Bruno On 07 Jan 2015, at 23:54, Jason Resch wrote: From Douglas Jone's short story ( http://frombob.to/you/aconvers.html ): But suppose it were possible to create physical universes like yours within an appropriately specified computational universe. What could you say about the origin of the universe then? Very little, actually. Why? Because all general-purpose computers are equivalent. If it is possible to perform this computation within any one computational universe, then there are an infinite number of computational universes in which this computation is performed. If you were to try to follow the chain of causality back past the origin of your physical universe, you would find an infinite number of causes. These are all deep, deep questions. We have been thinking about them, and doing experiments, for a very long time. Our mathematicians have proven certain things... I’m sorry, I have to be very careful about what I say here. There is the very real possibility of inducing cardiac arrest in certain people if I say too much. So let me say some vague things: There exists an object, a mathematical object, which has certain properties. For reasons that should be obvious, there is no general agreement on what the best name for this object is, so for the sake of convenience, let’s just call it The Object. Your world, that is, the entire universe that you can observe, is an infinitesimal part of that Object. And so is mine. And so is every universe that can possibly exist. And everything else that can exist, whether or not you would call it a universe. All of Mathematics is inside that Object. And the various parts of that Object are somehow connected together. We expend a considerable amount of effort attempting to deduce the properties of that Object. In a sense, we are Exploring it. As I said before, we are Explorers, and we are exploring Everything. And exploring the nature of the connections between the various parts of The Object is the most fundamental kind of exploration there is. And some of the most interesting kinds of connections are related to Consciousness. The Object is Eternal. It exists outside of time. It has no beginning and no end; it simply Is. It contains many universes that have a property called Time, and you live in one of them, and so do I. But these universes are Eternal too. The Time within them is visible only from a particular point of view. Whenever we speak of creating a computational universe, or of creating a physical universe, or of creating anything, we are not really speaking of creation; we are really speaking of making a connection. Making a connection between different parts of The Object. The parts are already there. They have always been there. And we don’t really make the connection; the connection was always there too. We just discover what is already there. In other words, we just become aware of it. So whenever we think we’re creating something, this is just a vanity of the ego, which exists within Time. Everything is already there, within The Object. B: What do you mean, the Afterlife? Apparently, each of us gets an infinite number of different ones, simultaneously. And this doesn’t just happen when you die. It happens to you all the time. In the last five minutes, you have split into an uncountable number of different versions of yourself, each one in a different universe. And some of those versions of yourself have found themselves in universes that are very different from the one you all shared just over five minutes ago. Just because you don’t recall ever experiencing a discontinuity that big, doesn’t mean that it never happens to you. The Object contains all possible computational universes, with all possible initial conditions.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 8:37 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: You need only to agree that you survive (in both place if you want) That depends entirely on who Mr. You is. Assuming the variation of the thought experiment where the Helsinki Man is destroyed after the duplications then Mr. John Clark will survive, but if The Helsinki Man means the guy who is presently experiencing Helsinki (and it's hard to understand what else it could mean) then Mr. John Clark The Helsinki Man will not survive. That may sound ominous but all it really means is that John Clark is no longer in Helsinki, instead John Clark is in Moscow AND Washington. it is a simple exercise to see that the prediction W M is made wrong in all consistent future (in that precise protocol). W and M leads to contradiction [...] here you is used for the Helsinki guy, trying to predict what will happen when he push on the button. Then the correct prediction would be that in the future Mr. John Clark The Helsinki Man will see neither Moscow nor Washington nor Helsinki because Mr. John Clark The Helsinki Man has no future at all; but Mr. John Clark will see Moscow AND Mr. John Clark will see Washington and both will remember seeing Helsinki. It's just a fact that in matters like this one needs to be very very careful with personal pronouns or the result is ambiguous crap. I don't see what is not clear with that The I in the above sentence causes no unambiguity because matter copying machines do not yet exist and because there was no prediction about what Mr. I will experience in the future; otherwise it would be so ambiguous there would be no way to determine even in theory if the prediction turned out to be correct or not; in other words the sentence would be meaningless. What is wrong with what is above? Nothing, that's why I said I caused no unambiguity in this case. I'm not saying never use personal pronouns, but if you're talking about both matter duplicating machines and subjectivity then you've got to treat them as carefully as if they were made of nitroglycerin because otherwise they will detonate an explosion of illogic. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: [SPAM]Re: Economic inequality
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of meekerdb Sent: Wednesday, April 01, 2015 12:31 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [SPAM]Re: Economic inequality On 3/31/2015 10:56 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote: From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of meekerdb Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2015 9:26 PM To: EveryThing Subject: [SPAM]Re: Economic inequality The SciAm article doesn't even begin to describe how great the inequality is. Like most statistical presentations it divides the population into quintiles. But that hides the fact that is not the to 20 to 1 percentile that hold the wealth, it is the tope 1% and even just the top 0.1% And that graph describes the source of so many of our social ills; this high degree of income distortion -- in terms of the US being an outlier, on the global distribution of developed economies -- is the fundamental driver of pretty much everything else going wrong with this country; from crumbling infrastructure, to crumbling education, to crumbling living standards. But the GDP/person is up. Those things are crumbling because the rich don't use them and so are not interested in paying for them and the rich control politicians thru campaign contributions. Precisely; we live in a country with the best government money can buy. Could this be what life is like in a crumbling empire, far out into imperial overreach, stretched thin across the globe, in the vast archipelago of bases – including places of true logistical nightmare, like Afghanistan (the logistical nightmare of nightmares…there is no feasible way to get the heavy armor out of Afghanistan, except through Russia, with Pakistan definitely not wanting mass transiting US armor. The cost of bearing empire is breaking our backs, and with each successive cycle of disaster capitalism – creative destruction, right-sizing, out-sourcing etc. the empire is in a race to scraping bottom, as all empires do. Inside the bubble of power the mantra remains “we make history” (as once boasted by one famous neocon), but on the ground it is not all going as planned… though who is going to ever bring the emperor the bad news… any volunteers? Naturally we don’t have an emperor (yet), but we do have a powerful deeply rooted patrician aristocracy that has been ascendant here for the last four decades. You seem to have overlooked the fact that what has, in the past, leveled the wealth is war. Of course that's because the government raised taxes, regulated prices, and invested in research, development, and technology as part of the war effort. The kind of total war efforts, WWII being the preeminent example, that worked in the past like gigantic Keynesian money pumps (and all the spin offs form the war effort) are not easily reproducible in today’s environment. The world we find ourselves living in today has been environmentally and resource impoverished – compared with the how the world was in 1939. The common denominator of all war is that it is the most horribly expensive activity a society can engage in. War made sense when one empire conquered surrounding weaker states and transferred their wealth to the imperial center; or even perhaps one could argue – as you have – when the resulting martialing of resources, required by the war effort, propelled a world stuck in the morass of global economic depression (the great depression era of the 1930s) out of that state of affairs. In today’s environment, with the much tighter margins (resulting from needing to acquire resources from increasingly marginal sources) I don’t think that the outcome would be a post war era of relative global prosperity, rather I think it would accelerate a global course down into hard bitten poverty and collapsing social fabrics. One can argue this point, of course, and present an alternate hypothesis, but I feel it is a salient and foundational fact of life that needs to be considered when assessing the probable outcomes of global war. After WWII the Americans victors opened up the great oil fields of Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states. The EROI of the early wells sunk in the Ghawar super giant field were around 100:1… that was a payoff! Now returns on new fields are in the order of only 8:1 or so. What would the victors of the war win? Tiny disparate challenging pockets of resources that would require very significant capital and energetic investment in order to extract the increasingly marginal yields. IMO, the world needs cooperation, if we are going to find a way out of this compounded mess we find ourselves in. Chris Brent Will it swing back the other way, as it has in the past – such as with the New Deal, or earlier with Teddy Roosevelt’s trust busting of Standard Oil; or is this just the prelude to… welcome to
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Sunday, April 5, 2015, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','marc...@ulb.ac.be'); wrote: On 04 Apr 2015, at 00:03, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Saturday, April 4, 2015, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Imagine the iterated duplication, the average history in the diaries obtained contained histories like W (I was unable to predit that), W again! Bruno Marchal keeps making the exact same error over and over and over again. Whatever is in the diary that the Washington Man is carrying is totally irrelevant because it was not written by the Washington Man he's just carrying it, the diary was written by the Helsinki Man. And Bruno Marchal just can't kick that personal pronoun addiction. For the 123rd time WHO THE HELL IS I? I is a single entity travelling through time in the forward direction. If you have duplication you realise this is an illusion. However, brains are strongly wired up to persist in this illusion, and the result is that if you are teleported to two places it will seem to you that you are teleported to just one with probability 1/2. The original and the copy know it's not objectively true, but they can't help the feeling. Yes, and then, as they assume comp, they have a simple theory explaining why it has to be like that: they have been duplicated. ( w v m) has been realized in all extensions, and (w m) is falsified in all extensions. Everything here can be made pure third person, so ... even a p-zombie grasps this :) BTW, I think your argument in your other post might eliminate yes doctor from comp. The unprovable part would rely entirely in Church's thesis. That would be nice and you make me think so. Yes, that's what I think. Those who believe (like Searle) that CT is true and every 3P function of the brain can be replicated but don't believe in comp are inconsistent. There is for completeness another possibility, which is that a type of dualism is true. Your body is a zombie and your mind exists in a spiritual realm, but the two happily run in parallel. In this case if there was a partial brain replacement your body would continue saying everything is normal but your mind might notice a difference and the parallelism would stop from that point. Cochlear implant patients might be experiencing this now: their minds are frantically trying to communicate to the world that they are just as deaf as before, but they have frustratingly lost the ability to control their bodies, which are telling people that they can hear. Brent criticized my habit to consider consciousness as being binary: it exists or it does not exist, despite my acknowledgement of ten thousands of possibly conscious states, with different intensity. I see that the point if well captured by the fact that partial zombie does not make sense. And this redeems my initial, pre-stroboscop, argument that if you let a movie think, in the real time of an actual physical projection, then you will have to attribute all possible experience to the projection of an empty movie at anytime. The argument follows like the usual functional substitution, piece by piece. You will just eliminate the first component, by digging a hole in the pellicle, so that during the projection there is a hole in the movie, just on a component (some gate), yet, from that hole, you get the right outputs for the corresponding inputs, and so it is functionally equivalent, and indeed, that hole does not impact on the behavior of any other gates. If consciousness supervene on the movie, it supervenes on the movie with one hole. And the absence of partial zombiness makes both experiences (with and without the hole) 100% identical. So, we can extend the hole and get a bigger one. But that hole keeps the right relative input/output. Non-partial-zombiness makes it allowable to extend the hole to the whole brain movie, without touching to the motor output, and the person would keep its behavior like if nothing happened, but if we still associate the token consciousness, impossible to change continuously in virtue of non-partial-zombiness, it leads to attach arbitrary experience to arbitrary things. So a movie cannot think (i.e. support the thinking which was associated to the filmed boolean graph activity). But then consciousness is not in the physical activity of the neurons (a bit already Watson intelligence is not in its gate organization and activity), but at a higher level, in its goal, memeoris, personality, but abstract higher order pattern: the spirit of the hero, something like that. This aliments the intuition pump that the physical is not responsible for consciousness. The physical should be what is responsible for its stability and normality, only (by UDA). Physics is a measure calculus on the computational histories/computational states. The theory of everything seems to be Church's
RE: Histones (proteins that form the scaffolding around which DNA wraps itself may also themselves be involved in heredity processes
The process of heredity may have more levels of actors in it than just the DNA itself. An interesting notion that seems logical; a case of living processes employing various different strategies in parallel, which would seem a plausible result of a process of random selection based on environmental fitness. Chris DNA can't explain all inherited biological traits, research shows http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150402161751.htm Characteristics passed between generations are not decided solely by DNA, but can be brought about by other material in cells, new research shows. Scientists studied proteins found in cells, known as histones, which are not part of the genetic code, but act as spools around which DNA is wound. Histones are known to control whether or not genes are switched on. Quoting two paragraphs from the article here: Researchers found that naturally occurring changes to these proteins, which affect how they control genes, can be sustained from one generation to the next and so influence which traits are passed on. The finding demonstrates for the first time that DNA is not solely responsible for how characteristics are inherited. It paves the way for research into how and when this method of inheritance occurs in nature, and if it is linked to particular traits or health conditions. It may also inform research into whether changes to the histone proteins that are caused by environmental conditions -- such as stress or diet -- can influence the function of genes passed on to offspring. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: Fast moves for nuclear development in Siberia
I have been following the publicly available information on development of the various GenIV breeder variants. Am curious as to how much actual progress the Russians may have made in pursuing this one particular form – using molten lead as the heat transfer fluid (which is why they have such a high thermal efficiency at 43%). It may surprise some, but I am not opposed to the idea of nuclear power per se; though I do oppose systems that depend on active safety features in order to prevent a core meltdown… and I do have reasonable concerns about how waste products will be contained in sequestered facilities (or for some materials potentially getting re-processed getting burnt up in breeders) The natural gas uptick in availability is a short duration bubble, resulting from highly capital, water and energy intensive production techniques that is squeezing out small marginal pockets of available fossil energy from a containing oil/gas bearing shale rock formation. I would not count on this long term – already there is a massive capital flight from this sector (that preceded the recent collapse in the global spot prices). Solar PV will continue to grow: For example, GlobalData, a well-known sector forecasting company that publishes forecasts on a wide variety of industry sectors and trends, published figures that show a trend line indicating that PV module capacity will grow from the current base of 135.66 GW installed by 2013 to 413.98 GW in 2020, based on a number of factors, including volume trends, average price, and production share. In another forecast, by this same information company, they estimate that investment in the global wind energy sector will rise to above $100 billion, driving up installed wind capacity from the current global figure of 364.9 Gigawatts (GW) in 2014 to 650.8 GW by 2020. This yields, a cumulative installed capacity for solar PV + wind of over a Terawatt by 2020. This does not include figures for CSP (concentrated solar thermal power) either, which is significant in some areas (California, Nevada, Spain)… and may (or may not) grow. From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] Sent: Saturday, April 04, 2015 9:55 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Fast moves for nuclear development in Siberia I have literally monitored developments for years that would return some form of nuclear fission as a safe possibility to be the main power source for the human species. It always sounds interestingly, and innovative, but never takes off to become a reality. Thorium, Molten Salt, Micro, Betavoltaic, subcritical reactors which switch off when a laser or proton beam stop, all the wonderful ideas, and more. But these things never leave the laboratory. I will not argue why this is true, or that its a total shame that it never takes off. I think at this late date, fusion, a different process, will wait till the 22nd century, and for the next 85 years its going to be natural gas (argue about this later) or solar and wind. Electric cars power by solar and wind, factories, homes, and the rest of the slack taken up by natural gas. Tesla and Prius will eventually lead the way in transportation. Yes, this view is disappointing, but true. -Original Message- From: 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Apr 4, 2015 12:26 am Subject: RE: Fast moves for nuclear development in Siberia Has anybody been following this. Looks like the lead cooled fast breeder design is being carried ahead in Russia. An experimental lead-cooled nuclear reactor will be built at the Siberian Chemical Combine (SCC). If successful, the small BREST-300 unit could be the first of a new wave of Russian fast reactors. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Fast_moves_for_nuclear_development_in_Siberia_0410121.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving
Re: Life in the Islamic State for women
State capitalism is the economic's of (or was) of communism. State Factor #117 and all that. I am more concerned about political evils and murders committed by the communists. The small scale communism sounds just like the old co-ops of the 20th century, US. Nowadays, modern communism is 100% entwined with Crony Capitalism. Look at China, billionaires, look at Russia, billionaire oligarchs, look at the US, billionaire oligarchs catered to by BHO, and yes, the Koch's for the Republicans, George Soros the Democrats. Are all these systems less bloodthirsty, now that our systems are mixed economies? I don't now. Whatever system we are embedded in, I want it to see to protecting our rights, and our survival. Will it? -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Apr 4, 2015 4:16 pm Subject: Re: Life in the Islamic State for women On 4/4/2015 6:19 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: Hi John On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 10:10 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: TELMO: I did not expect from you to point to the 2 centuries old obsolete and theoretical exercise of Marx-Engels (irrespective of Lenin's intermitted LATER speculations) as blueprint for a (still?) viable(?) political system. I don't think it was ever viable, and I don't think it's relevant to the current times, as it is based on too many assumption from an era that is long gone (early Industrialism). What I mean is, when people use the word communism, there is a document that describes precisely what this word is supposed to mean. A blueprint for communism. I do think that Marx-Engels correctly identified social problems that remain being problems to this day, namely the self-reinforcing nature of wealth inequality. The issue is that their proposed solution seems to equalize society by throwing the majority of people into extreme poverty and servitude. It never got further than a tyranny of 'leftish-sounding' slogans by pretenders. As the original authors dreamed it up, it never (and nowhere) did get off from the ground. I know, I lived in a so called Peoples' Democracy (Called 'commi' system - ha ha) which was neither peoples' nor democracy. Nor Marxist, nor Leninist. It was a Stalinist tyranny. And Maoist, Pol-Pot, plus a KimIrSen-istic one. I would be very interested in any story you had to share about those times. I agree that these societies never achieved anything resembling what Marx proposed. The remaining communists of today tend to argue that all of past communist movements were not sincere in their motivations. That might very well be true, but even then it is an important piece of information on human nature. If we are trying to get from A - B and we always stumble on the same horrors along the way, maybe the plan is just not viable for this world. So far we have learned that either communism is a terrible idea or communist revolutions always end up being hijacked by sociopaths. To be honest, I think both are true. Communism is not a terrible idea - it works fine for families. A lot of political problems come from trying to extend ethics that evolved for families and small tribes to nation states of millions of unrelated people. Capitalism has problems from the same source. Owning a flint spearhead you made is unproblematic. If you own it you can prohibit its use, sell it, bequeath it, etc. But when this idea was extended to owning land it created problems. John Locke thought owning land was an oxymoron...you could only own the temporary use of land. Didn't matter for hunter-gatherers, but it was problem that had to be solved for agricultural society. That now a lot the world's GDP comes from capital has created the same kinds of questions about ownership of capital. Given that rg in Piketty's analysis, is it a good idea to allow the Koch brothers to inherit a billion dollar business (that their father built by drilling for Stalin). Capitalism - in my view an advanced form of slavery, following feudalism - started to destroy the entire human experiment on this Globe - way before the warming entered the picture. It never 'faced' a competition of any 'socialistic' challenger. It succumbbed to the authoritarian religious tyrannies (brutal and violent, or just retracting and philosophical). As with communism, there is a big gap between the theory and the implementation.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: If you take the MWI seriously, then you are open to the possibility that you are constantly being duplicated If the MWI is true then it's not a possibility it's a certainty Assuming you're like me, you perceive yourself as a single entity travelling through time in the forward direction. You? Mr. John Clark The Moscow Man will perceive a single entity, and Mr. John Clark the Washington Man will perceive a single entity, and Mr. John Clark The Helsinki Man will no longer perceive anything at all. And John Clark is really starting to hate personal pronouns, as a exercise try writing a paragraph or at least a sentence without using any, it will do Telmo Menezes good. subjectively there is only one Stathis Papaioannou because they are identical. Subjectively from whose perspective? From the only one that matters, from Stathis Papaioannou's perspective. Two identical Stathis Papaioannous running in parallel is subjectively identical to one. After the doors are opened they no longer are identical because they see different things; one sees Moscow and becomes Mr. Stathis Papaioannou The Moscow Man, and the other sees Washington and becomes Mr. Stathis Papaioannou The Washington Man. But before the doors are opened and after the duplication, you can ask them through the intercom to guess where they are. The position of their brains is unimportant because until the door is opened both are still identical to the Helsinki Man. A much better question is to ask them to guess what will happen when the door opens. Both know with 100% certainty that photons will impinge on them and will change them, but they are uncertain if the photons will come from Moscow or from Washington. But this is just the classical old fashioned sort uncertainty that is due to simple lack of information, it's not inherent uncertainty of the Quantum Mechanical sort. Monty Hall always had the information about which door the car was behind, and the person on the other end of that intercom knows which parallel copy of Telmo Menezes will see photons coming from Moscow and turn into the Moscow Man and which will see photons coming from Washington and turn into the Moscow Man. But the information on if that atom of Carbon 14 will decay in the next hour is not just unknown the information does not exist, it's inherently uncertain. John K Clark If they are forced to make a bet, you will find that they tend to be right 1/2 of the time. But the probability is about if the protons that come through that open door will come from Moscow, in which Mr. Telmo Menezes you will change This is all you're being asked to agree with. I can predict with 100% certainty that it doesn't matter though, because you made your mind before giving the idea a chance. Telmo. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Fast moves for nuclear development in Siberia
The question of reactor safety is an essential one if fission is to move forward. Just by what I have read, in places like Lawrence Berkeley Labs, MIT, Japanese labs, South Korea, etc, the fixes might work, but the cost-price of these fixes tends to kill interest by public and private utilities. I also had followed the Russian work with Lead moderated and lead-bismuth reactors. It may end up being a game changer. I have also pondered why not use atmospheric nitrogen as a moderator-coolant for fission reactors? There were the old Magnox reactors that the UK made in the late 50's and 1960's that occasionally made their presence known in a couple of ancient Dr. Who episodes (Pertwee or Baker) which used CO2 as a coolant moderator. Why not use environmentally, safer, and abundant atmospheric nitrogen instead? I think the toxicity of radio nitrogen lasts under one second, as a feature of physics. Costs, again, are likely the reason. Too costly to develop, I suppose, and low RO!. You could well be right about gas being a bubble (pun?). However, the tricks the petroleum engineers can do seem to be endless. One area of continued troubles for Green-minded is the possibility that in a decade or three, enhanced oil recovery becomes economic (unlikely today) and that methane gas hydrates (which are a phenomenally large resource) comes to the forefront, technically. This is why I am big on spending whatever it takes for storage for solar and wind, which as far as I can see is the only bottleneck in the way of solar and wind becoming the dominant fuel resource. If storage can be improved the forecasts you cited will be conservative in their estimate of progress. I would take natural gas from shale, enhanced recovery, or gas hydrates, only because it may be the only thing available for civilization. It's a very, pessimistic view, but then so is purchasing AAA insurance in case one's car breaks down on the highway. -Original Message- From: 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Apr 4, 2015 3:35 pm Subject: RE: Fast moves for nuclear development in Siberia I have been following the publicly available information on development of the various GenIV breeder variants. Am curious as to how much actual progress the Russians may have made in pursuing this one particular form – using molten lead as the heat transfer fluid (which is why they have such a high thermal efficiency at 43%). It may surprise some, but I am not opposed to the idea of nuclear power per se; though I do oppose systems that depend on active safety features in order to prevent a core meltdown… and I do have reasonable concerns about how waste products will be contained in sequestered facilities (or for some materials potentially getting re-processed getting burnt up in breeders) The natural gas uptick in availability is a short duration bubble, resulting from highly capital, water and energy intensive production techniques that is squeezing out small marginal pockets of available fossil energy from a containing oil/gas bearing shale rock formation. I would not count on this long term – already there is a massive capital flight from this sector (that preceded the recent collapse in the global spot prices). Solar PV will continue to grow: For example, GlobalData, a well-known sector forecasting company that publishes forecasts on a wide variety of industry sectors and trends, published figures that show a trend line indicating that PV module capacity will grow from the current base of 135.66 GW installed by 2013 to 413.98 GW in 2020, based on a number of factors, including volume trends, average price, and production share. In another forecast, by this same information company, they estimate that investment in the global wind energy sector will rise to above $100 billion, driving up installed wind capacity from the current global figure of 364.9 Gigawatts (GW) in 2014 to 650.8 GW by 2020. This yields, a cumulative installed capacity for solar PV + wind of over a Terawatt by 2020. This does not include figures for CSP (concentrated solar thermal power) either, which is significant in some areas (California, Nevada, Spain)… and may (or may not) grow. From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] Sent: Saturday, April 04, 2015 9:55 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Fast moves for nuclear development in Siberia I have literally monitored developments for years that would return some form of nuclear fission as a safe possibility to be the main power source for the human species. It always sounds interestingly, and innovative, but never takes off to become a reality. Thorium, Molten Salt, Micro, Betavoltaic, subcritical reactors which switch off when a laser or proton beam stop, all the wonderful ideas, and
Re: Life in the Islamic State for women
On 4/4/2015 6:19 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: Hi John On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 10:10 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com mailto:jami...@gmail.com wrote: TELMO: I did not expect from you to point to the 2 centuries old obsolete and theoretical exercise of Marx-Engels (irrespective of Lenin's intermitted LATER speculations) as blueprint for a (still?) viable(?) political system. I don't think it was ever viable, and I don't think it's relevant to the current times, as it is based on too many assumption from an era that is long gone (early Industrialism). What I mean is, when people use the word communism, there is a document that describes precisely what this word is supposed to mean. A blueprint for communism. I do think that Marx-Engels correctly identified social problems that remain being problems to this day, namely the self-reinforcing nature of wealth inequality. The issue is that their proposed solution seems to equalize society by throwing the majority of people into extreme poverty and servitude. It never got further than a tyranny of 'leftish-sounding' slogans by pretenders. As the original authors dreamed it up, it never (and nowhere) did get off from the ground. I know, I lived in a so called Peoples' Democracy (Called 'commi' system - ha ha) which was neither peoples' nor democracy. Nor Marxist, nor Leninist. It was a Stalinist tyranny. And Maoist, Pol-Pot, plus a KimIrSen-istic one. I would be very interested in any story you had to share about those times. I agree that these societies never achieved anything resembling what Marx proposed. The remaining communists of today tend to argue that all of past communist movements were not sincere in their motivations. That might very well be true, but even then it is an important piece of information on human nature. If we are trying to get from A - B and we always stumble on the same horrors along the way, maybe the plan is just not viable for this world. So far we have learned that either communism is a terrible idea or communist revolutions always end up being hijacked by sociopaths. To be honest, I think both are true. Communism is not a terrible idea - it works fine for families. A lot of political problems come from trying to extend ethics that evolved for families and small tribes to nation states of millions of unrelated people. Capitalism has problems from the same source. Owning a flint spearhead you made is unproblematic. If you own it you can prohibit its use, sell it, bequeath it, etc. But when this idea was extended to owning land it created problems. John Locke thought owning land was an oxymoron...you could only own the temporary use of land. Didn't matter for hunter-gatherers, but it was problem that had to be solved for agricultural society. That now a lot the world's GDP comes from capital has created the same kinds of questions about ownership of capital. Given that rg in Piketty's analysis, is it a good idea to allow the Koch brothers to inherit a billion dollar business (that their father built by drilling for Stalin). Capitalism - in my view an advanced form of slavery, following feudalism - started to destroy the entire human experiment on this Globe - way before the warming entered the picture. It never 'faced' a competition of any 'socialistic' challenger. It succumbbed to the authoritarian religious tyrannies (brutal and violent, or just retracting and philosophical). As with communism, there is a big gap between the theory and the implementation. Advanced form of slavery might be a way to put it, but an even more cynical view would be that there's always been slavery to some degree. I believe that the big challenge that we face is how to move to a jobless society. Worse, I think this transition already started but there is still no political will to admit it. Robotics and AI are Marx's worse nightmare. In the limit, the number of employees required by a business will tend to zero, while the ability of a business to provide goods for the rest of us keeps being more and more leveraged by technological advance. One of the realities about the current economic crises that few are willing to admit: there simply are no longer jobs for everyone. I think the best idea that we have so far is the universal flat salary. The trouble with that is that when everyone has the same income nobody feels rich...and people like to feel rich. It's Nietzsche's will to power. So people who have $100 billion don't want to give up $99 billion to the general welfare, even though it would make the world better and make no discernible difference in their life style. So they instead use a few billion to persuade people to vote for politicians who won't tax them. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop
Re: The MGA revisited
On Sat, Apr 04, 2015 at 03:35:59PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 04 Apr 2015, at 01:29, Russell Standish wrote: On Fri, Apr 03, 2015 at 06:33:52PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 03 Apr 2015, at 00:44, Russell Standish wrote: The whole point of the MGA is to try and close off a gap in the argument if you assume that ontological reality I guess you mean here: physical ontological reality (assuming it exists). If we have a robust ontology (ie the full Platonia), You really mean: robust physical ontology. No, because the label physical should refer to what is phenomenal, otherwise it doesn't have any meaning. ? But then it seems you assume what we want to prove. Not at all. After quite some to-and-fro with you about what physical actually means, we settled on phenomena (things like matter, forces and the like). I have introduced the term robust only for the physical universe (be it ontological or phenomenological). It is just what makes an entire (never ending) physical universal dovetailing possible. That does not make sense. Already by the time you have introduced the term, you have shown that a robust ontology (one capable of running the UD) cannot be physical (ie the phenomena). The Church Thesis (true by assumption) shows that what is phenomenal cannot be ontological (or noumenal, to borrow Kant's term), when the ontology is robust. That is pretty much the whole point of UDA1-7. What does it mean than an ontology is robust? UD* is robust in arithmetic by definition. Sure. And if arithmetic is your ontology, your ontology is robust. The point of UDA1-7 is only that if we assume the physical universe run a UD, then physics is a branch of arithmetic/computer science. OK if your replace physical with ontology Moreover, I would argue that the MGA doesn't even work, as recordings can be fully counterfactually correct. By adding the inert Klara? But then the physical role of the inert Klara to produce consciousness to the movie is not Turing emulable, and you stop assuming computationalism. But in a robust ontology, the Klaras are no longer inert. They cannot be. I don't know what is a robust ontology. It looks that you mean by this an everything ontology, or a many-world or many states or many computations ontology. Sure. But in that case the Klara are still inert in the relevant branch where we do the reasoning. So I am not sure to see the relevance of the remark here. We cannot seperate the branches in this way. I can understand the role of Klara and counterfactual correctness for the computation and behavior being correct hen change occur, but how could they change the consciousness by being non present when not needed? If they are not needed, then some non-counterfactually correct recordings can be conscious. That is right, but that is the path to the reductio ad absurdum. I don't have a strong opinion on this, as the relevant recordings will be really very complex, but do suspect, along with Brent, that full embodiment in an environment is needed, along with counterfactual correctness. ? Then they are no more recordings, but computation. Then what is your definition of a recording? In my eyes, UD* is a recording, particularly a finite portion of it, such as the first 10,000 steps of the first 10,000 programs. As I point out in my paper, that, physical supervenience, and the MGA entails a robust ontology (ie something like the Multiverse to exist). You mean a primitively physical multiverse? That would already be a quite non trivial result, but I don't see how you get it. Not where physical=phenomenal. UDA7 already proves that a robust ontology cannot be physical. If you mean something else by physical, I have no idea what you mean. IIRC, the discussion went something like this: Q: What does 'primitively physical' mean? A: The ontology on which you run the UD Q: Oh, so you mean numbers? A: No, number are not physical Q: Then what? A: Things like protons and electrons, magnetic force and so on Q: Oh so like phenomenal things, things we can directly measure? A: Yes. Q: Then if we assume the ontology is rich enough to be able to run the UD, the Church-Turing thesis means that any such ontology will deliver identical phenomenal outcomes, so there is no way of identifying the ontology with what is physical. A: OK. Now let us assume that the 'primitive physical ontology' is not-robust, ie incapable of running a UD Q: Did you mean ontology or the physical? A: Could be both, because the ontological limitations introduced by being non-robust can affect the phenomenal, hence are phenomena in themselves, hence physical. Q: OK. That would be weird because it would prove that if can prove the existence of primitive matter in arithmetic. I am a bit confused. How so? I don't follow you there. Cheers, Bruno Cheers --