date:20150512

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 01:49:50AM -0500, Jason Resch wrote:
> 
> But in this case behavior does not change. And above you say there is some
> point where it "almost immediately" shuts off. Would it be a faded quail or
> partial zombie while in the midst of switching off?
> 

Why couldn't it be a Heavyside step function between the two states?
As I said, I don't think partial zombies make much sense. I don't
think full zombies make much sense either, but recognise that
non-functionalism entails their possibility.


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Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

2015-05-12 Thread Jason Resch

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 1:07 AM, Russell Standish 
wrote:

> On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 12:38:12AM -0500, Jason Resch wrote:
> > On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 11:42 PM, Russell Standish <
> li...@hpcoders.com.au>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 08:59:57PM -0500, Jason Resch wrote:
> > > > Chalmer's fading quailia argument <
> http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html>
> > > > shows that if replacing a biological neuron with a functionally
> > > equivalent
> > > > silicon neuron changed conscious perception, then it would lead to an
> > > > absurdity, either:
> > > > 1. quaila fade/change as silicon neurons gradually replace the
> biological
> > > > ones, leading to a case where the quaila are being completely out of
> > > touch
> > > > with the functional state of the brain.
> > > > or
> > > > 2. the replacement eventually leads to a sudden and complete loss of
> all
> > > > quaila, but this suggests a single neuron, or even a few molecules of
> > > that
> > > > neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence
> of
> > > > quaila
> > >
> > > This syllogism is wrong. After all, when removing links from a
> > > network, each time following a different sequence links to be removed,
> > > it will be a different link that causes the network to fall apart.
> > >
> > > So it does not suggest "a single neuron, or even a few molecules of
> that
> > > neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of
> > > qualia".
> > >
> > > This was always why I found the fading qualia argument unconvincing -
> > > in spite of being a died-in-the-wool functionalist.
> > >
> > >
> > What is he/I missing? The non functionalist will say that a robot brain
> is
> > a zombie, and a biological brain is fully conscious with qualia. Along
> the
> > way of replacing real neurons with artificial ones you will go from an
> all
> > biological conscious brain to a non-conscious zombie. So if the end
> result
> > is a zombie, and the starting result is consciousness, then logically (it
> > seems to be) either that on the path of replacing a greater and greater
> > fraction of biological neurons with artificial ones that somewhere along
> > the way the consciousness/qualia either changes or it disappears
> suddenly.
> > I don't see any way around that.
> >
>
> Absolutely. The bit that you're missing is when you subsequently
> assume that that implies that a "a single neuron, or even a few
> molecules of that neuron, when substituted, somehow completely
> determine the presence of qualia". That does not follow.
>

You might have misread me, I never suggested that it necessarily follows,
only that there are two possibilities (assuming consciousness decreases
nothing somewhere along the way):
1. There is a gradual decrease/change in the qualia eventually reaching
nothingness
2. It is not gradual change along the way, but some point is reached where
it suddenly disappears

In the case of #2, such a discrete all-or-nothing change would come down to
a single (arbitrarily minor) change.


>
> >
> >
> > >
> > > >
> > > > His argument is convincing, but what happens when we replace neurons
> not
> > > > with functionally identical ones, but with neurons that fire
> according
> > > to a
> > > > RNG. In all but 1 case, the random firings of the neurons will
> result in
> > > > completely different behaviors, but what about that 1 (immensely
> rare)
> > > case
> > > > where the random neuron firings (by chance) equal the firing
> patterns of
> > > > the substituted neurons.
> > > >
> > > > In this case, behavior as observed from the outside is identical.
> Brain
> > > > patterns and activity are similar, but according to computationalism
> the
> > > > consciousness is different, or perhaps a zombie (if all neurons are
> > > > replaced with random firing neurons). Presume that the activity of
> > > neurons
> > > > in the visual cortex is required for visual quaila, and that all
> neurons
> > > in
> > > > the visual cortex are replaced with random firing neurons, which by
> > > chance,
> > > > mimic the behavior of neurons when viewing an apple.
> > > >
> > > > Is this not an example of fading quaila, or quaila desynchronized
> from
> > > the
> > > > brain state? Would this person feel that they are blind, or lack
> visual
> > > > quaila, all the while not being able to express their deficiency? I
> used
> > > to
> > > > think when Searle argued this exact same thing would occur when
> > > substituted
> > > > functionally identical biological neurons with artificial neurons
> that it
> > > > was completely ridiculous, for there would be no room in the
> functionally
> > > > equivalent brain to support thoughts such as "help! I can't see, I am
> > > > blind!" for the information content in the brain is identical when
> the
> > > > neurons are functionally identical.
> > > >
> > > > But then how does this reconcile with fading quaila as the result of
> > > > substituting randomly firing neurons? The computations are not th

Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"



> On 12-May-2015, at 9:39 pm, LizR  wrote:
> 
>> On 13 May 2015 at 14:29, Samiya Illias  wrote:
>> 1) The Quran reminds us that humans have been made Incharge of Earth and 
>> hence are responsible for the welfare of the Earth and all in it  
>> 2) The Quran also tells us that we will be held accountable for all that 
>> we've been gifted with, hence the more worldly riches or power one has, the 
>> greater the responsibility and the greater the accountability 
>> So yes, it speaks of all of us and says that every action, intention, 
>> everything is being recorded and will be replayed and the criminals will not 
>> be able to say anything, rather their bodies will bear witness against 
>> themselves. Humans will be recompensed in full in complete justice, and 
>> nobody will be wronged in the least. 
> It's a nice fantasy, at least. As opposed to the (apparent) reality that rich 
> people can screw everyone else, each other, and the planet, and still make 
> out like bandits.
> 
That is why I suppose facts about creation have been mentioned across the Quran 
so that those who doubt its authenticity can study and assess for themselves 
whether this message is from the One who created, knows and is in perfect 
control of everything to the minutest detail, and is therefore able to carry 
out His Will and keep His Promise, or if this is just a fantasy. 

Samiya 

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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 03:45:09PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> 
> That might be the idea. It is difficult to get to this, though,
> since the notion of "primary materialism" doesn't really feature in
> the argument. Before we get to the MGA, the dovetailer has been
> introduced, and this is supposed to emulate the generalized brain
> (even if the generalized brain is the whole galaxy or even the
> entire universe) infinitely often, and the laws of physics emerge
> from the statistics of all UD-computations passing through my actual
> state.
> 

I can get it, but by an indirect route.

Basically, the MGA shows a contradiction between computationalism and
physical supervenience. But only for non-robust ontologies. For a
robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated,
therefore the MGA is invalid.

Now physical supervenience has been demonstrated to a high level of
empirical satisfaction. So we can conclude either that
computationalism is falsified, or that our ontology is robust. But if
the ontology is robust, UDA 1-7 demonstrates the reversal - physics
depends only on the properties of the universal machine, not on any
other ontological property of "primitive reality". Therefore we can
excise the "physicalness" of ontology - anything capable of universal
computation will do, such as arithmetic.

But this chain of argument is not the usual one, so clearly it needs
to be examined critically. Bruno has not given his imprimatur to it,
dor example. Also, the MGA itself needs to shoring up, particularly
with respect to the requirement of counterfactual correctness, and
also that other issue I just raised about the recording player
machinery changing the physical arrangement, perhaps by just enough to
render physical supervenience toothless too. In which case the whole
thing falls apart.

-- 

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

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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 12:38:12AM -0500, Jason Resch wrote:
> On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 11:42 PM, Russell Standish 
> wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 08:59:57PM -0500, Jason Resch wrote:
> > > Chalmer's fading quailia argument 
> > > shows that if replacing a biological neuron with a functionally
> > equivalent
> > > silicon neuron changed conscious perception, then it would lead to an
> > > absurdity, either:
> > > 1. quaila fade/change as silicon neurons gradually replace the biological
> > > ones, leading to a case where the quaila are being completely out of
> > touch
> > > with the functional state of the brain.
> > > or
> > > 2. the replacement eventually leads to a sudden and complete loss of all
> > > quaila, but this suggests a single neuron, or even a few molecules of
> > that
> > > neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of
> > > quaila
> >
> > This syllogism is wrong. After all, when removing links from a
> > network, each time following a different sequence links to be removed,
> > it will be a different link that causes the network to fall apart.
> >
> > So it does not suggest "a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that
> > neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of
> > qualia".
> >
> > This was always why I found the fading qualia argument unconvincing -
> > in spite of being a died-in-the-wool functionalist.
> >
> >
> What is he/I missing? The non functionalist will say that a robot brain is
> a zombie, and a biological brain is fully conscious with qualia. Along the
> way of replacing real neurons with artificial ones you will go from an all
> biological conscious brain to a non-conscious zombie. So if the end result
> is a zombie, and the starting result is consciousness, then logically (it
> seems to be) either that on the path of replacing a greater and greater
> fraction of biological neurons with artificial ones that somewhere along
> the way the consciousness/qualia either changes or it disappears suddenly.
> I don't see any way around that.
> 

Absolutely. The bit that you're missing is when you subsequently
assume that that implies that a "a single neuron, or even a few
molecules of that neuron, when substituted, somehow completely
determine the presence of qualia". That does not follow.

> 
> 
> >
> > >
> > > His argument is convincing, but what happens when we replace neurons not
> > > with functionally identical ones, but with neurons that fire according
> > to a
> > > RNG. In all but 1 case, the random firings of the neurons will result in
> > > completely different behaviors, but what about that 1 (immensely rare)
> > case
> > > where the random neuron firings (by chance) equal the firing patterns of
> > > the substituted neurons.
> > >
> > > In this case, behavior as observed from the outside is identical. Brain
> > > patterns and activity are similar, but according to computationalism the
> > > consciousness is different, or perhaps a zombie (if all neurons are
> > > replaced with random firing neurons). Presume that the activity of
> > neurons
> > > in the visual cortex is required for visual quaila, and that all neurons
> > in
> > > the visual cortex are replaced with random firing neurons, which by
> > chance,
> > > mimic the behavior of neurons when viewing an apple.
> > >
> > > Is this not an example of fading quaila, or quaila desynchronized from
> > the
> > > brain state? Would this person feel that they are blind, or lack visual
> > > quaila, all the while not being able to express their deficiency? I used
> > to
> > > think when Searle argued this exact same thing would occur when
> > substituted
> > > functionally identical biological neurons with artificial neurons that it
> > > was completely ridiculous, for there would be no room in the functionally
> > > equivalent brain to support thoughts such as "help! I can't see, I am
> > > blind!" for the information content in the brain is identical when the
> > > neurons are functionally identical.
> > >
> > > But then how does this reconcile with fading quaila as the result of
> > > substituting randomly firing neurons? The computations are not the same,
> > so
> > > presumably the consciousness is not the same.
> >
> > That also does not follow from computational
> > supervenience. Difference in computation does not entail a difference
> > in qualia. It's the converse that is entailed.
> >
> 
> But if you attribute the same consciousness to what is in effect a random
> computation, then I would think computationalism ceases to be an effective
> theory of consciousness. 

This is an appeal to intuition. I can only say what computational
supervenience claims, not what we might think it should claim.

> 
> Searle said (which I very much disagree with):
> 
> "...as the silicon is progressively implanted into your dwindling brain,
> you find that the area of your conscious experience is shrinking, but that
> this shows n

Re: What does the MGA accomplish?


meekerdb wrote:

On 5/12/2015 8:03 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

meekerdb wrote:

On 5/12/2015 4:26 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

meekerdb wrote:

On 5/11/2015 11:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:


[BM] Why?  Have you proven that consciousness supervenes on a 
record?


Have you proven that it does not? 


No, but I have a lot of evidence it supervenes on brain 
/*processes*/.  Reducing that to /*states*/ is a further assumption.


That is the pedant's reply. :-)
A process reduces to a sequence of states -- you simply lower the 
substitution level (step rate) to whatever value is necessary to 
reproduce the process FAPP.


No, a sequence of states is not the same as a process.  In a process 
the states in the sequence are causally related.


Need I quote Hume at you, Brent? That which we know as causality is 
nothing more than the constant conjunction of events. You make 
'causality' into a sort of dualist magic.


Whatever it is, it's what Bruno introduces to distinguish computation 
from a playback of computation.  I find the idea of states of an 
extended body like the brain problematic.  The speed of light is finite 
and the speed of neurons is slow; so to model "the state" as you propose 
means modeling it down microseconds or finer in order to capture the 
signaling relation between different neurons as their axons transmit 
pulses across several cm.  This is way below anything that might be 
considered a 'thought' or a 'conscious momement', so the later have 
spacial extent and temporal overlap. To conceive them as separate 
discrete states is already to concede that consciousness is in platonia.


I think you are worrying where no worry is justified. The proposal is 
that we have a full 3-D picture of the brain as it exists at one 
instant. We take a series of pictures at whatever rate is required to 
capture all the essential interactions. Given such a set of pictures, we 
do not ever need to worry about the speed of light, or the speed of 
signal transmission in axons. Each frame of the film is the whole brain 
state at an instant.


Bruce

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Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"


On 5/10/2015 6:02 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
Brent, very true in the sense that I was illustrating (joking) to Liz (a terrible 
Kiwi!), that the hockey stick, the predictions for a tropical Britian, did not come 
about. Hence, the constant name changing and re-selling of global warming to 
anthropogenic global warming, to Climate Catastrophe!! The hockey stick was sawed to 
bits by the (ahem!) Pause that the climate exaggerators sought to promote. Their 
predictions failed, simply pur, which is why most of the public views climatologists as 
self serving liars, 


I think most of the public would recognize you as a dishonest fossil fuel shill, 
pretending to want a solution while spreading the obfuscating lies that there is no problem.


Brent

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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?


LizR wrote:
On 13 May 2015 at 15:03, Bruce Kellett > wrote:


Bruno does make a prediction that can be empirically tested. He
predicts that consciousness does not supervene on physical brains
but on computations. The MGA purports to show that the assumption of
physical supervenience leads to a contradiction. But supervenience
of consciousness on brains is an indisputable empirical result, so
the MGA works against comp.

I'm not sure that's what Bruno is trying to show, because he knows any 
TOE must explain all observations to date, at least in principle, so he 
would hardly be making a claim that is obviously refutable (or not for 
longer than it took him to notice that it was refutable, I hope).


I think Bruno's argument isn't attempting to refute supervention of the 
mind on the brain, but "primary materialism" - but I'm sure he will 
correct me if I'm wrong.


That might be the idea. It is difficult to get to this, though, since 
the notion of "primary materialism" doesn't really feature in the 
argument. Before we get to the MGA, the dovetailer has been introduced, 
and this is supposed to emulate the generalized brain (even if the 
generalized brain is the whole galaxy or even the entire universe) 
infinitely often, and the laws of physics emerge from the statistics of 
all UD-computations passing through my actual state.


The argument might then be that since the reconstruction of the brain 
states from the filmed recording is not a computation to be found in the 
dovetailer, it does not pass through my actual state, so is not part of 
what sustains my consciousness. Or something like that.


But I don't think that this move succeeds. Whether the physical universe 
and its laws come out of the dovetailer or not, I can set up the 
situation in which the sequence of brain states is reproduced from a 
recording *in the universe I inhabit*, whatever its ultimate origin. So 
talk about primitive materialism and computational dovetailer states are 
both equally irrelevant to the actual MGA. The thought experiment can be 
carried out, whatever substrate underlies the physical world.


The claim that the sequence of brain states reconstructed from the 
recording is not conscious contradicts the physical supervenience 
hypothesis, whether the 'physical brain' in this case is made of 
primitive matter (whatever that is) or extracted from the infinite 
computations of the dovetailer. And physical supervenience in the world 
we inhabit has overwhelming empirical support.


Bruce

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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

2015-05-12 Thread Jason Resch

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 11:42 PM, Russell Standish 
wrote:

> On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 08:59:57PM -0500, Jason Resch wrote:
> > Chalmer's fading quailia argument 
> > shows that if replacing a biological neuron with a functionally
> equivalent
> > silicon neuron changed conscious perception, then it would lead to an
> > absurdity, either:
> > 1. quaila fade/change as silicon neurons gradually replace the biological
> > ones, leading to a case where the quaila are being completely out of
> touch
> > with the functional state of the brain.
> > or
> > 2. the replacement eventually leads to a sudden and complete loss of all
> > quaila, but this suggests a single neuron, or even a few molecules of
> that
> > neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of
> > quaila
>
> This syllogism is wrong. After all, when removing links from a
> network, each time following a different sequence links to be removed,
> it will be a different link that causes the network to fall apart.
>
> So it does not suggest "a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that
> neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of
> qualia".
>
> This was always why I found the fading qualia argument unconvincing -
> in spite of being a died-in-the-wool functionalist.
>
>
What is he/I missing? The non functionalist will say that a robot brain is
a zombie, and a biological brain is fully conscious with qualia. Along the
way of replacing real neurons with artificial ones you will go from an all
biological conscious brain to a non-conscious zombie. So if the end result
is a zombie, and the starting result is consciousness, then logically (it
seems to be) either that on the path of replacing a greater and greater
fraction of biological neurons with artificial ones that somewhere along
the way the consciousness/qualia either changes or it disappears suddenly.
I don't see any way around that.



>
> >
> > His argument is convincing, but what happens when we replace neurons not
> > with functionally identical ones, but with neurons that fire according
> to a
> > RNG. In all but 1 case, the random firings of the neurons will result in
> > completely different behaviors, but what about that 1 (immensely rare)
> case
> > where the random neuron firings (by chance) equal the firing patterns of
> > the substituted neurons.
> >
> > In this case, behavior as observed from the outside is identical. Brain
> > patterns and activity are similar, but according to computationalism the
> > consciousness is different, or perhaps a zombie (if all neurons are
> > replaced with random firing neurons). Presume that the activity of
> neurons
> > in the visual cortex is required for visual quaila, and that all neurons
> in
> > the visual cortex are replaced with random firing neurons, which by
> chance,
> > mimic the behavior of neurons when viewing an apple.
> >
> > Is this not an example of fading quaila, or quaila desynchronized from
> the
> > brain state? Would this person feel that they are blind, or lack visual
> > quaila, all the while not being able to express their deficiency? I used
> to
> > think when Searle argued this exact same thing would occur when
> substituted
> > functionally identical biological neurons with artificial neurons that it
> > was completely ridiculous, for there would be no room in the functionally
> > equivalent brain to support thoughts such as "help! I can't see, I am
> > blind!" for the information content in the brain is identical when the
> > neurons are functionally identical.
> >
> > But then how does this reconcile with fading quaila as the result of
> > substituting randomly firing neurons? The computations are not the same,
> so
> > presumably the consciousness is not the same.
>
> That also does not follow from computational
> supervenience. Difference in computation does not entail a difference
> in qualia. It's the converse that is entailed.
>

But if you attribute the same consciousness to what is in effect a random
computation, then I would think computationalism ceases to be an effective
theory of consciousness. For then any/all conscious states could in theory
be mapped to what is a random computation. Imagine a black-box computer
function that took two inputs (x, y), and returned an output. And you test
it 100 times with varying inputs and each time it returned (x*y). You
conclude the function is multiplying the inputs, but when you inspect the
code find that the function was ignoring the inputs and returning
random.randint(-(y^x), y^x) # Returning a random number from negative y to
the power x to y to the power x. You were just (unlucky enough to get the
value x*y for each of your 100 tests. Now since the computation is
different from what you expected, had you built a larger computer program
using this function in place of mul(x, y), the computations performed by
that larger program would be completely different from what you supposed,
but t

Re: What does the MGA accomplish?


On 5/12/2015 9:28 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 02:15:59PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

Not necessarily. Simulated beings could be conscious with their simulated
brains.


In which case their consciousness supervenes on their simulated
physics. This is still physical supervenience, of the sort Bruce was
talking about.


Exactly my point about consciousness supervening on the abstract computation.  In order 
for it to do so the abstract computation must also provide an abstract physics within 
which the consciousness is realized.  So it's just an AI in a virtual environment 
supervening on the virtual physics...which makes it indistinguishable from a real 
environment with a real being's consciousness supervening on real physics.  I think Bruno 
agrees with this.  He recognized the necessity of physics, he just wants it to be as 
"virtual" as the AI.


Brent

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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?

On 5/12/2015 8:03 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

meekerdb wrote:

On 5/12/2015 4:26 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

meekerdb wrote:

On 5/11/2015 11:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

[BM] Why? Have you proven that consciousness supervenes on a record?

Have you proven that it does not?

No, but I have a lot of evidence it supervenes on brain /*processes*/. Reducing that
to /*states*/ is a further assumption.

That is the pedant's reply. :-)
A process reduces to a sequence of states -- you simply lower the substitution level
(step rate) to whatever value is necessary to reproduce the process FAPP.

No, a sequence of states is not the same as a process. In a process the states in the
sequence are causally related.

Need I quote Hume at you, Brent? That which we know as causality is nothing more than
the constant conjunction of events. You make 'causality' into a sort of dualist magic.

Whatever it is, it's what Bruno introduces to distinguish computation from a playback of
computation. I find the idea of states of an extended body like the brain problematic.
The speed of light is finite and the speed of neurons is slow; so to model "the state" as
you propose means modeling it down microseconds or finer in order to capture the signaling
relation between different neurons as their axons transmit pulses across several cm. This
is way below anything that might be considered a 'thought' or a 'conscious momement', so
the later have spacial extent and temporal overlap. To conceive them as separate discrete
states is already to concede that consciousness is in platonia.

Brent

In playing back a *digitized* recording of states the causal relation is broken. But,
as I pointed out to Bruno, "causal" is a nomological, not logical, relation. He, of
course, disagreed.

The assumption of the argument was that consciousness supervenes on the brain state.

That's not the same as saying yes to the doctor. It's your added interpretation that
consciousness supervenes on a brain state as opposed to a brain process that
constitutes a computation. Bruno, who made the argument, I think is relying on the
latter.

Yes, that seems to be the case. The original claim of absurdity for the idea that
consciousness could supervene on a recording has been replaced by the claim that the
recording is not a computation of the required kind. This also begs the question of
course -- where is it proved that that particular type of computation is both
necessary and sufficient for consciousness?

It's just hypothesized as implicit in saying yes to the doctor; one would only say yes
if it were a counterfactually correct AI.

However, I think one can approach this in a different way. The overwhelming evidence
from neuroscience, and all related experimentation, is that consciousness supervenes
on the physical brain -- the goo in our skulls. Damage the goo, stimulate the goo, do
anything to the goo, and our qualia or consciousness are altered. Alter our
consciousness/thinking/processing and there are associated changes in the brain
activity/states. (Pet scans and the like.)

The MGA argues that the natural sequence of brain states and a recording of that
sequence are not equivalent in that one is conscious and the other is not. It is
concluded from this that consciousness does not supervene on the brain
states/processes, which conclusion is contradicted by the overwhelming bulk of
experimental evidence.

I agree with you and Russell that it is not obvious that consciousness can't supervene
on a playback of a recording. But, I don't think there's any empirical evidence
regarding recordings of brains. In fact one of Russell's points is that the fact that
such a recording would be so large and detailed is a reason not to trust intuitions
about whether it could be conscious.

C'mon, Brent. It's a thought experiment. The fact that we don't have experimental
evidence of conscious recordings is irrelevant to this particular thought experiment.

But I think it's jumping to a conclusion to say the supervenience on brain activity is
overwhelming evidence for supervenience on a recording.

This is science. When your theory is contradicted by overwhelming experimental
evidence, it is conventionally taken as evidence that your theory has been falsified.
The MGA puts Bruno's theory in this category: it has been falsified by the
experimental results.

Would that it were so. But so far as I can see Bruno's theory doesn't make any
definite predictions that can be empirically tested. It explains a few things: quantum
randomness=FPI and you can't know what program you are. But these things also have
other possible explanations and they were already known.

Bruno does make a prediction that can be empirically tested. He predicts that
consciousness does not supervene on physical brains but on computations. The MGA
purports to show that the assumption of physical supervenience leads to a contradiction.

Re: My comments on "The Movie Graph Argument Revisited" by Russell Standish

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 09:46:14AM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> 
> I agree with your comment. My post was in response to Russell, who
> claimed that a way out of the "Fading Qualia" paper conclusion that
> computerised replacement of neurons would preserve consciousness was
> that the qualia could remain until some threshold of replacement was
> reached then suddenly disappear, causing a transition from full
> consciousness to full zombie. Bruno also suggested something like
> this. 

> It is possible, but it would mean there is a decoupling between
> qualia and the underlying function, and it would also make for a kind
> of weird partial computationalism.

That's what you haven't demonstrated. I don't see why you say this.

-- 


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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 12:25:06PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> meekerdb wrote:
> >
> >Same objection I had to the proposed playback of a recording.
> >There is no longer the causal link between the neurons firing, so
> >the mere succession of states doesn't constitute a computation nor
> >instantiate consciousness.
> 
> Careful Brent! You are introducing a particular magic into the mix
> -- causality in your case. For Bruno, the magic is a particular type
> of computation. Both of these 'escapes' are essentially dualist
> explanations of consciousness.
> 

Actually, these comments reminded me of a problem I had with the
Einstein brain made out of Chinese people example that we discussed a
few years back.

It has been assumed all along that replaying the recording is
physically identical to the original physical process that gave rise
to the recording. Actually, it is not. In the original case, the
physical states follow as the system follows physical dynamic law -
there is a causal relationship between states and their successors.

In the latter case, some additional machinery has been added in order
to interpret the recording, and rearrange the matter so that it
follows the original sequence of states. Take away this additional
machinery, and the sequence of states grinds to a halt, so one cannot
just eliminate it. Physically, this additional machinery changes
things quite a bit, so the application of physical supervenience is
actually invalid. I saw it with the Chinese Einstein brain, because
there was quite clearly this additional physical process involving
letters being dispatched from Beijing, but the formulation in the MGA
and Maudlin does obscure this aspect.

Cheers
-- 

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Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au

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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 08:59:57PM -0500, Jason Resch wrote:
> Chalmer's fading quailia argument 
> shows that if replacing a biological neuron with a functionally equivalent
> silicon neuron changed conscious perception, then it would lead to an
> absurdity, either:
> 1. quaila fade/change as silicon neurons gradually replace the biological
> ones, leading to a case where the quaila are being completely out of touch
> with the functional state of the brain.
> or
> 2. the replacement eventually leads to a sudden and complete loss of all
> quaila, but this suggests a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that
> neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of
> quaila

This syllogism is wrong. After all, when removing links from a
network, each time following a different sequence links to be removed,
it will be a different link that causes the network to fall apart.

So it does not suggest "a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that
neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of
qualia".

This was always why I found the fading qualia argument unconvincing -
in spite of being a died-in-the-wool functionalist.


> 
> His argument is convincing, but what happens when we replace neurons not
> with functionally identical ones, but with neurons that fire according to a
> RNG. In all but 1 case, the random firings of the neurons will result in
> completely different behaviors, but what about that 1 (immensely rare) case
> where the random neuron firings (by chance) equal the firing patterns of
> the substituted neurons.
> 
> In this case, behavior as observed from the outside is identical. Brain
> patterns and activity are similar, but according to computationalism the
> consciousness is different, or perhaps a zombie (if all neurons are
> replaced with random firing neurons). Presume that the activity of neurons
> in the visual cortex is required for visual quaila, and that all neurons in
> the visual cortex are replaced with random firing neurons, which by chance,
> mimic the behavior of neurons when viewing an apple.
> 
> Is this not an example of fading quaila, or quaila desynchronized from the
> brain state? Would this person feel that they are blind, or lack visual
> quaila, all the while not being able to express their deficiency? I used to
> think when Searle argued this exact same thing would occur when substituted
> functionally identical biological neurons with artificial neurons that it
> was completely ridiculous, for there would be no room in the functionally
> equivalent brain to support thoughts such as "help! I can't see, I am
> blind!" for the information content in the brain is identical when the
> neurons are functionally identical.
> 
> But then how does this reconcile with fading quaila as the result of
> substituting randomly firing neurons? The computations are not the same, so
> presumably the consciousness is not the same.

That also does not follow from computational
supervenience. Difference in computation does not entail a difference
in qualia. It's the converse that is entailed.

> But also, the information
> content does not support knowing/believing/expressing/thinking something is
> wrong. If anything, the information content of this random brain is much
> less, but it seems the result is something where the quaila is out of sync
> with the global state of the brain. Can anyone else where shed some clarity
> on what they think happens, and how to explain it in the rare case of
> luckily working randomly firing neurons, when only partial substitutions of
> the neurons in a brain is performed?
> 

I think one's intuitions are an imperfect guide, particularly when the
number of neurons involved are in any way a significant fraction of
the brain.

Computational supervenience => don't know
Physical supervenience => yes (but only in a classical physical universe).


-- 


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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?

On 13 May 2015 at 15:03, Bruce Kellett  wrote:

>
> Bruno does make a prediction that can be empirically tested. He predicts
> that consciousness does not supervene on physical brains but on
> computations. The MGA purports to show that the assumption of physical
> supervenience leads to a contradiction. But supervenience of consciousness
> on brains is an indisputable empirical result, so the MGA works against
> comp.
>
> I'm not sure that's what Bruno is trying to show, because he knows any TOE
must explain all observations to date, at least in principle, so he would
hardly be making a claim that is obviously refutable (or not for longer
than it took him to notice that it was refutable, I hope).

I think Bruno's argument isn't attempting to refute supervention of the
mind on the brain, but "primary materialism" - but I'm sure he will correct
me if I'm wrong.

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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 02:15:59PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> 
> Not necessarily. Simulated beings could be conscious with their simulated
> brains.
> 

In which case their consciousness supervenes on their simulated
physics. This is still physical supervenience, of the sort Bruce was
talking about.


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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 09:26:02AM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> 
> This is science. When your theory is contradicted by overwhelming
> experimental evidence, it is conventionally taken as evidence that
> your theory has been falsified. The MGA puts Bruno's theory in this
> category: it has been falsified by the experimental results.
> 

I don't see that, because AFAICT, the MGA only works for a non-robust
ontology. So the only valid conclusion to draw is that COMP +
non-robustness has been falsified by the experimental results. Which
is what I state in my paper.

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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?

On Wednesday, May 13, 2015, Bruce Kellett  wrote:

> meekerdb wrote:
>
>> On 5/12/2015 4:26 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>>
>>> meekerdb wrote:
>>>
 On 5/11/2015 11:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

>
>> [BM] Why?  Have you proven that consciousness supervenes on a record?
>>
>
> Have you proven that it does not?
>

 No, but I have a lot of evidence it supervenes on brain /*processes*/.
 Reducing that to /*states*/ is a further assumption.

>>>
>>> That is the pedant's reply. :-)
>>> A process reduces to a sequence of states -- you simply lower the
>>> substitution level (step rate) to whatever value is necessary to reproduce
>>> the process FAPP.
>>>
>>
>> No, a sequence of states is not the same as a process.  In a process the
>> states in the sequence are causally related.
>>
>
> Need I quote Hume at you, Brent? That which we know as causality is
> nothing more than the constant conjunction of events. You make 'causality'
> into a sort of dualist magic.
>
>
>  In playing back a *digitized* recording of states the causal relation is
>> broken.  But, as I pointed out to Bruno, "causal" is a nomological, not
>> logical, relation.  He, of course, disagreed.
>>
>>
>>>  The assumption of the argument was that consciousness supervenes on the
> brain state.
>

 That's not the same as saying yes to the doctor.  It's your added
 interpretation that consciousness supervenes on a brain state as opposed to
 a brain process that constitutes a computation.  Bruno, who made the
 argument, I think is relying on the latter.

>>>
>>> Yes, that seems to be the case. The original claim of absurdity for the
>>> idea that consciousness could supervene on a recording has been replaced by
>>> the claim that the recording is not a computation of the required kind.
>>> This also begs the question of course -- where is it proved that that
>>> particular type of computation is both necessary and sufficient for
>>> consciousness?
>>>
>>
>> It's just hypothesized as implicit in saying yes to the doctor; one would
>> only say yes if it were a counterfactually correct AI.
>>
>>
>>> However, I think one can approach this in a different way. The
>>> overwhelming evidence from neuroscience, and all related experimentation,
>>> is that consciousness supervenes on the physical brain -- the goo in our
>>> skulls. Damage the goo, stimulate the goo, do anything to the goo, and our
>>> qualia or consciousness are altered. Alter our
>>> consciousness/thinking/processing and there are associated changes in the
>>> brain activity/states. (Pet scans and the like.)
>>>
>>> The MGA argues that the natural sequence of brain states and a recording
>>> of that sequence are not equivalent in that one is conscious and the other
>>> is not. It is concluded from this that consciousness does not supervene on
>>> the brain states/processes, which conclusion is contradicted by the
>>> overwhelming bulk of experimental evidence.
>>>
>>
>> I agree with you and Russell that it is not obvious that consciousness
>> can't supervene on a playback of a recording.  But, I don't think there's
>> any empirical evidence regarding recordings of brains.  In fact one of
>> Russell's points is that the fact that such a recording would be so large
>> and detailed is a reason not to trust intuitions about whether it could be
>> conscious.
>>
>
> C'mon, Brent. It's a thought experiment. The fact that we don't have
> experimental evidence of conscious recordings is irrelevant to this
> particular thought experiment.
>
>
>  This is science. When your theory is contradicted by overwhelming
>>> experimental evidence, it is conventionally taken as evidence that your
>>> theory has been falsified. The MGA puts Bruno's theory in this category: it
>>> has been falsified by the experimental results.
>>>
>>
>> Would that it were so.  But so far as I can see Bruno's theory doesn't
>> make any definite predictions that can be empirically tested.  It explains
>> a few things: quantum randomness=FPI and you can't know what program you
>> are.  But these things also have other possible explanations and they were
>> already known.
>>
>
> Bruno does make a prediction that can be empirically tested. He predicts
> that consciousness does not supervene on physical brains but on
> computations. The MGA purports to show that the assumption of physical
> supervenience leads to a contradiction. But supervenience of consciousness
> on brains is an indisputable empirical result, so the MGA works against
> comp.
>

Not necessarily. Simulated beings could be conscious with their simulated
brains.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

On 5/12/2015 7:32 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 13 May 2015 at 12:25, Bruce Kellett wrote:

meekerdb wrote:

On 5/12/2015 6:59 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

Chalmer's fading quailia argument
shows that if replacing a biological neuron with a functionally equivalent
silicon neuron changed conscious perception, then it would lead to an
absurdity, either:
1. quaila fade/change as silicon neurons gradually replace the biological
ones, leading to a case where the quaila are being completely out of touch
with the functional state of the brain.
or
2. the replacement eventually leads to a sudden and complete loss of all
quaila, but this suggests a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that
neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of
quaila

His argument is convincing, but what happens when we replace neurons not
with functionally identical ones, but with neurons that fire according to a
RNG. In all but 1 case, the random firings of the neurons will result in
completely different behaviors, but what about that 1 (immensely rare) case
where the random neuron firings (by chance) equal the firing patterns of the
substituted neurons.

Same objection I had to the proposed playback of a recording. There is no
longer the causal link between the neurons firing, so the mere succession of
states doesn't constitute a computation nor instantiate consciousness.

Careful Brent! You are introducing a particular magic into the mix --
causality in your case. For Bruno, the magic is a particular type of
computation. Both of these 'escapes' are essentially dualist explanations of
consciousness.

Yes, it's important not to put theory before evidence. The evidence is
that brains lead to consciousness. The fading qualia thought
experiment suggests that reproducing brain behaviour will also
reproduce consciousness. It doesn't matter how the brain behaviour is
reproduced: whether by a computer, a RNG, a recording, or God the
argument still goes through.

But the question is what constitutes "behavior"? I think the idea of "states" has been
borrowed from TM and abstract computation. All real processes have continuity and overlap
in time. "States" are an ideal discretization; and in this case I think it is abstracting
away something important.

Brent

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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia


On 5/12/2015 7:25 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

meekerdb wrote:


On 5/12/2015 6:59 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
Chalmer's fading quailia argument  shows that if 
replacing a biological neuron with a functionally equivalent silicon neuron changed 
conscious perception, then it would lead to an absurdity, either:
1. quaila fade/change as silicon neurons gradually replace the biological ones, 
leading to a case where the quaila are being completely out of touch with the 
functional state of the brain.

or
2. the replacement eventually leads to a sudden and complete loss of all quaila, but 
this suggests a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that neuron, when 
substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of quaila


His argument is convincing, but what happens when we replace neurons not with 
functionally identical ones, but with neurons that fire according to a RNG. In all but 
1 case, the random firings of the neurons will result in completely different 
behaviors, but what about that 1 (immensely rare) case where the random neuron firings 
(by chance) equal the firing patterns of the substituted neurons.


Same objection I had to the proposed playback of a recording. There is no longer the 
causal link between the neurons firing, so the mere succession of states doesn't 
constitute a computation nor instantiate consciousness.


Careful Brent! You are introducing a particular magic into the mix -- causality in your 
case. For Bruno, the magic is a particular type of computation. Both of these 'escapes' 
are essentially dualist explanations of consciousness.


What's magic about causality?  In physical terms it just means the wave function evolved 
per the Hamiltonian.


Brent

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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?


meekerdb wrote:

On 5/12/2015 4:26 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

meekerdb wrote:

On 5/11/2015 11:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:


[BM] Why?  Have you proven that consciousness supervenes on a record?


Have you proven that it does not? 


No, but I have a lot of evidence it supervenes on brain 
/*processes*/.  Reducing that to /*states*/ is a further assumption.


That is the pedant's reply. :-)
A process reduces to a sequence of states -- you simply lower the 
substitution level (step rate) to whatever value is necessary to 
reproduce the process FAPP.


No, a sequence of states is not the same as a process.  In a process the 
states in the sequence are causally related.


Need I quote Hume at you, Brent? That which we know as causality is 
nothing more than the constant conjunction of events. You make 
'causality' into a sort of dualist magic.



In playing back a 
*digitized* recording of states the causal relation is broken.  But, as 
I pointed out to Bruno, "causal" is a nomological, not logical, 
relation.  He, of course, disagreed.




The assumption of the argument was that consciousness supervenes on 
the brain state. 


That's not the same as saying yes to the doctor.  It's your added 
interpretation that consciousness supervenes on a brain state as 
opposed to a brain process that constitutes a computation.  Bruno, 
who made the argument, I think is relying on the latter.


Yes, that seems to be the case. The original claim of absurdity for 
the idea that consciousness could supervene on a recording has been 
replaced by the claim that the recording is not a computation of the 
required kind. This also begs the question of course -- where is it 
proved that that particular type of computation is both necessary and 
sufficient for consciousness?


It's just hypothesized as implicit in saying yes to the doctor; one 
would only say yes if it were a counterfactually correct AI.




However, I think one can approach this in a different way. The 
overwhelming evidence from neuroscience, and all related 
experimentation, is that consciousness supervenes on the physical 
brain -- the goo in our skulls. Damage the goo, stimulate the goo, do 
anything to the goo, and our qualia or consciousness are altered. 
Alter our consciousness/thinking/processing and there are associated 
changes in the brain activity/states. (Pet scans and the like.)


The MGA argues that the natural sequence of brain states and a 
recording of that sequence are not equivalent in that one is conscious 
and the other is not. It is concluded from this that consciousness 
does not supervene on the brain states/processes, which conclusion is 
contradicted by the overwhelming bulk of experimental evidence.


I agree with you and Russell that it is not obvious that consciousness 
can't supervene on a playback of a recording.  But, I don't think 
there's any empirical evidence regarding recordings of brains.  In fact 
one of Russell's points is that the fact that such a recording would be 
so large and detailed is a reason not to trust intuitions about whether 
it could be conscious.


C'mon, Brent. It's a thought experiment. The fact that we don't have 
experimental evidence of conscious recordings is irrelevant to this 
particular thought experiment.



This is science. When your theory is contradicted by overwhelming 
experimental evidence, it is conventionally taken as evidence that 
your theory has been falsified. The MGA puts Bruno's theory in this 
category: it has been falsified by the experimental results.


Would that it were so.  But so far as I can see Bruno's theory doesn't 
make any definite predictions that can be empirically tested.  It 
explains a few things: quantum randomness=FPI and you can't know what 
program you are.  But these things also have other possible explanations 
and they were already known.


Bruno does make a prediction that can be empirically tested. He predicts 
that consciousness does not supervene on physical brains but on 
computations. The MGA purports to show that the assumption of physical 
supervenience leads to a contradiction. But supervenience of 
consciousness on brains is an indisputable empirical result, so the MGA 
works against comp.


Bruce

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Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"

On 13 May 2015 at 14:29, Samiya Illias  wrote:

> 1) The Quran reminds us that humans have been made Incharge of Earth and
> hence are responsible for the welfare of the Earth and all in it
> 2) The Quran also tells us that we will be held accountable for all that
> we've been gifted with, hence the more worldly riches or power one has, the
> greater the responsibility and the greater the accountability
> So yes, it speaks of all of us and says that every action, intention,
> everything is being recorded and will be replayed and the criminals will
> not be able to say anything, rather their bodies will bear witness against
> themselves. Humans will be recompensed in full in complete justice, and
> nobody will be wronged in the least.
>
> It's a nice fantasy, at least. As opposed to the (apparent) reality that
rich people can screw everyone else, each other, and the planet, and still
make out like bandits.

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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

On 13 May 2015 at 14:25, Bruce Kellett  wrote:

>
> Careful Brent! You are introducing a particular magic into the mix --
> causality in your case. For Bruno, the magic is a particular type of
> computation. Both of these 'escapes' are essentially dualist explanations
> of consciousness.


I think you may find Brent likes a bit of dualism.

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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

On 13 May 2015 at 12:25, Bruce Kellett  wrote:
> meekerdb wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 5/12/2015 6:59 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>>
>>> Chalmer's fading quailia argument 
>>> shows that if replacing a biological neuron with a functionally equivalent
>>> silicon neuron changed conscious perception, then it would lead to an
>>> absurdity, either:
>>> 1. quaila fade/change as silicon neurons gradually replace the biological
>>> ones, leading to a case where the quaila are being completely out of touch
>>> with the functional state of the brain.
>>> or
>>> 2. the replacement eventually leads to a sudden and complete loss of all
>>> quaila, but this suggests a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that
>>> neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of
>>> quaila
>>>
>>> His argument is convincing, but what happens when we replace neurons not
>>> with functionally identical ones, but with neurons that fire according to a
>>> RNG. In all but 1 case, the random firings of the neurons will result in
>>> completely different behaviors, but what about that 1 (immensely rare) case
>>> where the random neuron firings (by chance) equal the firing patterns of the
>>> substituted neurons.
>>
>>
>> Same objection I had to the proposed playback of a recording.  There is no
>> longer the causal link between the neurons firing, so the mere succession of
>> states doesn't constitute a computation nor instantiate consciousness.
>
>
> Careful Brent! You are introducing a particular magic into the mix --
> causality in your case. For Bruno, the magic is a particular type of
> computation. Both of these 'escapes' are essentially dualist explanations of
> consciousness.

Yes, it's important not to put theory before evidence. The evidence is
that brains lead to consciousness. The fading qualia thought
experiment suggests that reproducing brain behaviour will also
reproduce consciousness. It doesn't matter how the brain behaviour is
reproduced: whether by a computer, a RNG, a recording, or God the
argument still goes through.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"



> On 12-May-2015, at 7:31 pm, LizR  wrote:
> 
> The problem with climate change is that it's a "tragedy of the commons" - it 
> doesn't confer much accountability on most people, who if they forewent all 
> the emissions made in their name would have no noticeable impact - only those 
> who are in a position to do anything about it could perhaps be considered 
> accountable, such as politicians and business leaders, and in particular 
> people who deliberately try to stop us doing anything about it - does the 
> Quran have anything to say about people like the CEOs of big oil companies? 

1) The Quran reminds us that humans have been made Incharge of Earth and hence 
are responsible for the welfare of the Earth and all in it  
2) The Quran also tells us that we will be held accountable for all that we've 
been gifted with, hence the more worldly riches or power one has, the greater 
the responsibility and the greater the accountability 
So yes, it speaks of all of us and says that every action, intention, 
everything is being recorded and will be replayed and the criminals will not be 
able to say anything, rather their bodies will bear witness against themselves. 
Humans will be recompensed in full in complete justice, and nobody will be 
wronged in the least. 

Samiya 


> 
>> On 13 May 2015 at 11:52, Samiya Illias  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On 12-May-2015, at 6:28 pm, LizR  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Does God give any suggestions as to what we should do? 
>> 
>> Regarding the heating of the seas? No, it's already decreed. This chapter is 
>> making the point that this Quran is indeed a message, and reckoning is 
>> indeed decreed, hence take warning and prepare for accountability and an 
>> eternal life in the hereafter. 
>> You can read it here: http://quran.com/81 
>> 
>> Samiya 
>> 
>>> 
 On 12 May 2015 at 23:28, Samiya Illias  wrote:
 
 
> On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 11:18 PM, LizR  wrote:
>> On 11 May 2015 at 17:39, Samiya Illias  wrote:
>> European Space Agency (ESA) has this to report about Glacial Melt: 
>> http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/GOCE/GOCE_reveals_gravity_dip_from_ice_loss
>>  
>> What does this mean for Global Warming? 
> 
> Well, it means it's happening, it's not 100% predictable by humans (no 
> surprise really), and we should really do something about it before it's 
> too late.
> 
> The $64,000 question being - what?  
 
 I came across this report while trying to comprehend a verse of the Quran 
 which foretells the heating of the seas. This might be of interest: 
 http://signsandscience.blogspot.com/2014/10/when-seas-boil.html 
 
 Samiya  
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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia


meekerdb wrote:


On 5/12/2015 6:59 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
Chalmer's fading quailia argument 
 shows that if replacing a 
biological neuron with a functionally equivalent silicon neuron 
changed conscious perception, then it would lead to an absurdity, either:
1. quaila fade/change as silicon neurons gradually replace the 
biological ones, leading to a case where the quaila are being 
completely out of touch with the functional state of the brain.

or
2. the replacement eventually leads to a sudden and complete loss of 
all quaila, but this suggests a single neuron, or even a few molecules 
of that neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the 
presence of quaila


His argument is convincing, but what happens when we replace neurons 
not with functionally identical ones, but with neurons that fire 
according to a RNG. In all but 1 case, the random firings of the 
neurons will result in completely different behaviors, but what about 
that 1 (immensely rare) case where the random neuron firings (by 
chance) equal the firing patterns of the substituted neurons.


Same objection I had to the proposed playback of a recording.  There is 
no longer the causal link between the neurons firing, so the mere 
succession of states doesn't constitute a computation nor instantiate 
consciousness.


Careful Brent! You are introducing a particular magic into the mix -- 
causality in your case. For Bruno, the magic is a particular type of 
computation. Both of these 'escapes' are essentially dualist 
explanations of consciousness.


Bruce

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Re: Occulus (was Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!


On 5/12/2015 7:02 PM, LizR wrote:

Brent, that link doesn't work for me - did you miss something off the end?


Oops!  Shoulda been:

http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/4/13/8371781/homesick-is-a-fantasy-walkabout-in-a-scary-lonely-world

Brent

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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia


On 5/12/2015 6:59 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
Chalmer's fading quailia argument  shows that if 
replacing a biological neuron with a functionally equivalent silicon neuron changed 
conscious perception, then it would lead to an absurdity, either:
1. quaila fade/change as silicon neurons gradually replace the biological ones, leading 
to a case where the quaila are being completely out of touch with the functional state 
of the brain.

or
2. the replacement eventually leads to a sudden and complete loss of all quaila, but 
this suggests a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that neuron, when substituted, 
somehow completely determine the presence of quaila


His argument is convincing, but what happens when we replace neurons not with 
functionally identical ones, but with neurons that fire according to a RNG. In all but 1 
case, the random firings of the neurons will result in completely different behaviors, 
but what about that 1 (immensely rare) case where the random neuron firings (by chance) 
equal the firing patterns of the substituted neurons.


Same objection I had to the proposed playback of a recording.  There is no longer the 
causal link between the neurons firing, so the mere succession of states doesn't 
constitute a computation nor instantiate consciousness.


Brent



In this case, behavior as observed from the outside is identical. Brain patterns and 
activity are similar, but according to computationalism the consciousness is different, 
or perhaps a zombie (if all neurons are replaced with random firing neurons). Presume 
that the activity of neurons in the visual cortex is required for visual quaila, and 
that all neurons in the visual cortex are replaced with random firing neurons, which by 
chance, mimic the behavior of neurons when viewing an apple.


Is this not an example of fading quaila, or quaila desynchronized from the brain state? 
Would this person feel that they are blind, or lack visual quaila, all the while not 
being able to express their deficiency? I used to think when Searle argued this exact 
same thing would occur when substituted functionally identical biological neurons with 
artificial neurons that it was completely ridiculous, for there would be no room in the 
functionally equivalent brain to support thoughts such as "help! I can't see, I am 
blind!" for the information content in the brain is identical when the neurons are 
functionally identical.


But then how does this reconcile with fading quaila as the result of substituting 
randomly firing neurons? The computations are not the same, so presumably the 
consciousness is not the same. But also, the information content does not support 
knowing/believing/expressing/thinking something is wrong. If anything, the information 
content of this random brain is much less, but it seems the result is something where 
the quaila is out of sync with the global state of the brain. Can anyone else where shed 
some clarity on what they think happens, and how to explain it in the rare case of 
luckily working randomly firing neurons, when only partial substitutions of the neurons 
in a brain is performed?


Jason
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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

On 13 May 2015 at 11:59, Jason Resch  wrote:
> Chalmer's fading quailia argument shows that if replacing a biological
> neuron with a functionally equivalent silicon neuron changed conscious
> perception, then it would lead to an absurdity, either:
> 1. quaila fade/change as silicon neurons gradually replace the biological
> ones, leading to a case where the quaila are being completely out of touch
> with the functional state of the brain.
> or
> 2. the replacement eventually leads to a sudden and complete loss of all
> quaila, but this suggests a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that
> neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of
> quaila
>
> His argument is convincing, but what happens when we replace neurons not
> with functionally identical ones, but with neurons that fire according to a
> RNG. In all but 1 case, the random firings of the neurons will result in
> completely different behaviors, but what about that 1 (immensely rare) case
> where the random neuron firings (by chance) equal the firing patterns of the
> substituted neurons.
>
> In this case, behavior as observed from the outside is identical. Brain
> patterns and activity are similar, but according to computationalism the
> consciousness is different, or perhaps a zombie (if all neurons are replaced
> with random firing neurons). Presume that the activity of neurons in the
> visual cortex is required for visual quaila, and that all neurons in the
> visual cortex are replaced with random firing neurons, which by chance,
> mimic the behavior of neurons when viewing an apple.
>
> Is this not an example of fading quaila, or quaila desynchronized from the
> brain state? Would this person feel that they are blind, or lack visual
> quaila, all the while not being able to express their deficiency? I used to
> think when Searle argued this exact same thing would occur when substituted
> functionally identical biological neurons with artificial neurons that it
> was completely ridiculous, for there would be no room in the functionally
> equivalent brain to support thoughts such as "help! I can't see, I am
> blind!" for the information content in the brain is identical when the
> neurons are functionally identical.
>
> But then how does this reconcile with fading quaila as the result of
> substituting randomly firing neurons? The computations are not the same, so
> presumably the consciousness is not the same. But also, the information
> content does not support knowing/believing/expressing/thinking something is
> wrong. If anything, the information content of this random brain is much
> less, but it seems the result is something where the quaila is out of sync
> with the global state of the brain. Can anyone else where shed some clarity
> on what they think happens, and how to explain it in the rare case of
> luckily working randomly firing neurons, when only partial substitutions of
> the neurons in a brain is performed?

I think that in the case of the random neurons your behaviour will be
the same and your consciousness will be the same as well, as long as
those neurons happen to be firing correctly. The Chalmers paper and
most of the discussions on this list focus on computationalism, but
computers are only a means to an end here, and the end is to replace
the behaviour of the replaced neuron. If this is done, then behaviour
and consciousness shall be preserved, even if only momentarily until
the RNG starts producing noise. If anything, this example is an
indication that handling the counterfactuals is not necessary for
consciousness.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Occulus (was Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!

Brent, that link doesn't work for me - did you miss something off the end?

On 13 May 2015 at 09:53, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 5/12/2015 4:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
>  On 05 May 2015, at 00:43, meekerdb wrote:
>
>  On 5/4/2015 11:32 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
>  On 04 May 2015, at 10:23, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sun, May 3, 2015 at 10:08 PM, LizR  wrote:
>
>>  On 4 May 2015 at 06:45, Telmo Menezes  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Of course believing in the supernatural is absurd -- what does that even
>>> mean? If, for example, ghosts were real, then this would just mean that
>>> current scientific theories are incomplete or wrong.
>>>
>>>   That would just mean the terminology isn't very good. It would be
>> more accurate to say you do (or don't) believe in ghosts.
>>
>
>  That's a good point.
> Of course the non-materialist deals with ontological problems. Do entities
> perceived under the influence of psychoactive drugs exist in some sense?
>
>
>
>  At Iridia, there has been a talk and demo of Virtual Reality. I have
> been very often disappointed, but this time I have been quite impressed.
> They have solved the main problems, and the immersion feeling was quite
> realist, in all direction where you looked, without any screen border, and
> perfect real time synchronization for any type of the move of your head or
> eyes.
>
>
> Does this involve wearing 3D display goggles such as Occulus Rift?
>
>
>  Yes. I saw 'Occulus' written on the device, (but not Rift).
>
>
> https://www.oculus.com/
>
> My son has created a video game, "Homesick", of the exploration/puzzle
> genre, which will be available for Occulus.  I tried out their goggles and
> the experience is quite realistic in terms of looking around.  In a test at
> a video game exhibition many people trying them could not bring themselves
> to step off a virtual cliff.
>
>
>  Wonderful! I really would like to buy such Occulus goggles, but more to
> make amazing experience than playing game.  But video-games is the main
> accelerator in the VR field.
>
>
> Here's a review of the game.
>
>
> http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/4/13/8371781/homesick-is-a-fantasy-walkabout-in-a-scary-lonely-w
>
> It should be released on http://store.steampowered.com/ by the end of the
> month.  Buy one - he needs the money. :-)  He saved up so he could quit his
> job and take two years to create this game.  He did everything but the
> music, which he contracted for.  It'll be available for Oculus later.
>
> Brent
>
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Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

2015-05-12 Thread Jason Resch

Chalmer's fading quailia argument 
shows that if replacing a biological neuron with a functionally equivalent
silicon neuron changed conscious perception, then it would lead to an
absurdity, either:
1. quaila fade/change as silicon neurons gradually replace the biological
ones, leading to a case where the quaila are being completely out of touch
with the functional state of the brain.
or
2. the replacement eventually leads to a sudden and complete loss of all
quaila, but this suggests a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that
neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of
quaila

His argument is convincing, but what happens when we replace neurons not
with functionally identical ones, but with neurons that fire according to a
RNG. In all but 1 case, the random firings of the neurons will result in
completely different behaviors, but what about that 1 (immensely rare) case
where the random neuron firings (by chance) equal the firing patterns of
the substituted neurons.

In this case, behavior as observed from the outside is identical. Brain
patterns and activity are similar, but according to computationalism the
consciousness is different, or perhaps a zombie (if all neurons are
replaced with random firing neurons). Presume that the activity of neurons
in the visual cortex is required for visual quaila, and that all neurons in
the visual cortex are replaced with random firing neurons, which by chance,
mimic the behavior of neurons when viewing an apple.

Is this not an example of fading quaila, or quaila desynchronized from the
brain state? Would this person feel that they are blind, or lack visual
quaila, all the while not being able to express their deficiency? I used to
think when Searle argued this exact same thing would occur when substituted
functionally identical biological neurons with artificial neurons that it
was completely ridiculous, for there would be no room in the functionally
equivalent brain to support thoughts such as "help! I can't see, I am
blind!" for the information content in the brain is identical when the
neurons are functionally identical.

But then how does this reconcile with fading quaila as the result of
substituting randomly firing neurons? The computations are not the same, so
presumably the consciousness is not the same. But also, the information
content does not support knowing/believing/expressing/thinking something is
wrong. If anything, the information content of this random brain is much
less, but it seems the result is something where the quaila is out of sync
with the global state of the brain. Can anyone else where shed some clarity
on what they think happens, and how to explain it in the rare case of
luckily working randomly firing neurons, when only partial substitutions of
the neurons in a brain is performed?

Jason

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Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!

On 12 May 2015 at 21:53, spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

>  Yes, and there's geophysical phenomena to include-in, like the recently
> discovered active volcano's under antarctic ice. Melt's the underside of
> the ice shelf, while the top side has expanded. Now, the climate
> researchers have trouble getting to the antarctic waters that were ice
> free, last year. Is that the reason of warming? Don't know, but geophysics
> take precedent over human stuff :-(  Pinatubo Volcano in 91, for example.
> Vesuvius a few years ago.
>
> With luck enough volcanoes will erupt to blanket the Earth in ash and
stave off insolation for a while, however this is clearly a separate issue
to whatever changes we've made via increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere.
You can't say one takes precedence jsut by vitue of being the one you
prefer - very few volcanoes have raised the global atmospheric CO2 by
whatever amount it is in such a short time (20% in my lifetime I think)
which means so far cars and industry are "winning" the race to warm up the
Earth.

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Re: The dovetailer disassembled

Maudlin attempts to show that counterfactuals don't count, as it were, by
bolting on vast universes of counterfactual-handling machinery to his
already unfeasibly large thought experiment. The MWI does the same sort of
thing for free, so if we assume it's the correct interpretation of QM we
get a similar result without the same sort of mind-bogglingly large pieces
of machinery, though at the cost of mind-boggling numbers of parallel
universes.

If a system is deterministic, like a brain in the multiverse, then all the
might-have-beens are unphysical, and hence not possible (e.g. "in branch
1234 zillion, I could have decided to have coffee, but instead I decided to
have tea" - hence "coffee in branch 1234 zillion" is not physically
possible). How can it make any difference to branch 1234zil that in branch
3456zil I *did* have coffee? None, according to QM, once they have ceased
to interfere - which was way before I was even conscious of which hot
beverage related decision I'd made (as I expect everyone here knows, we
only become conscious of what we've "decided" to do some time after the
decision has been arrived at unconsciously - at least according to
experiments involving brain scans etc - and the relevant brain processes
have ceased to interact long before then, on the quantum timescale).

So this counterfactual - "coffee in branch 1234 zilion" - has no relevance
to my consciousness in branch 1234 zilion, being physically impossible by
virtue of not having happened - and by extension no "physically realised
elsewhere, but not here" counterfactuals can have any influence on my
consciousness.

This is why I, at least, can't see the point of the damn things. (Although
there is a version of me in branch 9876 zillion that may be able to.)

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Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"


On 5/12/2015 5:31 PM, LizR wrote:
The problem with climate change is that it's a "tragedy of the commons" - it doesn't 
confer much accountability on most people,


Right.  The free-market solution to a tragedy of the commons is to give someone ownership 
of the commons, i.e. in this case the right to dump CO2 into it.  The obvious entity is 
some world EPA who would sell rights to dump and pay someone to extract and sequester the 
CO2 as necessary, or more likely inject sulfur particles into the upper atmosphere to 
increase reflectivity (what could possibly go wrong?).


Brent

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Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"

The problem with climate change is that it's a "tragedy of the commons" -
it doesn't confer much accountability on most people, who if they forewent
all the emissions made in their name would have no noticeable impact - only
those who are in a position to do anything about it could perhaps be
considered accountable, such as politicians and business leaders, and in
particular people who deliberately try to stop us doing anything about it -
does the Quran have anything to say about people like the CEOs of big oil
companies?

On 13 May 2015 at 11:52, Samiya Illias  wrote:

>
>
> On 12-May-2015, at 6:28 pm, LizR  wrote:
>
> Does God give any suggestions as to what we should do?
>
>
> Regarding the heating of the seas? No, it's already decreed. This chapter
> is making the point that this Quran is indeed a message, and reckoning is
> indeed decreed, hence take warning and prepare for accountability and an
> eternal life in the hereafter.
> You can read it here: http://quran.com/81
>
> Samiya
>
>
> On 12 May 2015 at 23:28, Samiya Illias  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 11:18 PM, LizR  wrote:
>>
>>> On 11 May 2015 at 17:39, Samiya Illias  wrote:
>>>
 European Space Agency (ESA) has this to report about Glacial Melt:
 http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/GOCE/GOCE_reveals_gravity_dip_from_ice_loss

 What does this mean for Global Warming?

>>>
>>> Well, it means it's happening, it's not 100% predictable by humans (no
>>> surprise really), and we should really do something about it before it's
>>> too late.
>>>
>>> The $64,000 question being - what?
>>>
>>
>> I came across this report while trying to comprehend a verse of the Quran
>> which foretells the heating of the seas. This might be of interest:
>> http://signsandscience.blogspot.com/2014/10/when-seas-boil.html
>>
>> Samiya
>>
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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?

On 5/12/2015 4:26 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

meekerdb wrote:

On 5/11/2015 11:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

[BM] Why? Have you proven that consciousness supervenes on a record?

Have you proven that it does not?

No, but I have a lot of evidence it supervenes on brain /*processes*/. Reducing that
to /*states*/ is a further assumption.

That is the pedant's reply. :-)
A process reduces to a sequence of states -- you simply lower the substitution level
(step rate) to whatever value is necessary to reproduce the process FAPP.

No, a sequence of states is not the same as a process. In a process the states in the
sequence are causally related. In playing back a *digitized* recording of states the
causal relation is broken. But, as I pointed out to Bruno, "causal" is a nomological, not
logical, relation. He, of course, disagreed.

The assumption of the argument was that consciousness supervenes on the brain state.

It's just hypothesized as implicit in saying yes to the doctor; one would only say yes if
it were a counterfactually correct AI.

However, I think one can approach this in a different way. The overwhelming evidence
from neuroscience, and all related experimentation, is that consciousness supervenes on
the physical brain -- the goo in our skulls. Damage the goo, stimulate the goo, do
anything to the goo, and our qualia or consciousness are altered. Alter our
consciousness/thinking/processing and there are associated changes in the brain
activity/states. (Pet scans and the like.)

The MGA argues that the natural sequence of brain states and a recording of that
sequence are not equivalent in that one is conscious and the other is not. It is
concluded from this that consciousness does not supervene on the brain states/processes,
which conclusion is contradicted by the overwhelming bulk of experimental evidence.

I agree with you and Russell that it is not obvious that consciousness can't supervene on
a playback of a recording. But, I don't think there's any empirical evidence regarding
recordings of brains. In fact one of Russell's points is that the fact that such a
recording would be so large and detailed is a reason not to trust intuitions about whether
it could be conscious.

This is science. When your theory is contradicted by overwhelming experimental evidence,
it is conventionally taken as evidence that your theory has been falsified. The MGA puts
Bruno's theory in this category: it has been falsified by the experimental results.

Would that it were so. But so far as I can see Bruno's theory doesn't make any definite
predictions that can be empirically tested. It explains a few things: quantum
randomness=FPI and you can't know what program you are. But these things also have other
possible explanations and they were already known.

Brent

Bruce

Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"



> On 12-May-2015, at 6:28 pm, LizR  wrote:
> 
> Does God give any suggestions as to what we should do? 

Regarding the heating of the seas? No, it's already decreed. This chapter is 
making the point that this Quran is indeed a message, and reckoning is indeed 
decreed, hence take warning and prepare for accountability and an eternal life 
in the hereafter. 
You can read it here: http://quran.com/81 

Samiya 
> 
>> On 12 May 2015 at 23:28, Samiya Illias  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 11:18 PM, LizR  wrote:
 On 11 May 2015 at 17:39, Samiya Illias  wrote:
 European Space Agency (ESA) has this to report about Glacial Melt: 
 http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/GOCE/GOCE_reveals_gravity_dip_from_ice_loss
  
 What does this mean for Global Warming? 
>>> 
>>> Well, it means it's happening, it's not 100% predictable by humans (no 
>>> surprise really), and we should really do something about it before it's 
>>> too late.
>>> 
>>> The $64,000 question being - what?  
>> 
>> I came across this report while trying to comprehend a verse of the Quran 
>> which foretells the heating of the seas. This might be of interest: 
>> http://signsandscience.blogspot.com/2014/10/when-seas-boil.html 
>> 
>> Samiya  
>>> -- 
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Re: My comments on "The Movie Graph Argument Revisited" by Russell Standish

On 13 May 2015 at 09:16, meekerdb  wrote:
> On 5/12/2015 12:34 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>
> On 12 May 2015, at 10:37 am, Russell Standish  wrote:
>
> On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 10:23:31AM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
> The final straw would have to be indivisible, otherwise you could make a
> partial zombie by replacing half the straw.
>
> I disagree. The final straw either works, or does not work. If you
> replace half the straw, then the resulting half-straw either works or
> it doesn't, and that directly affects whether you have a conscious
> entity or not. No need to invoke a partial zombie.
>
> It would lead to a strange form of computationalism: you could replace say
> 40% of the brain without any problem, but go to 40.0001% and
> consciousness gies off.
>
> It's what happens in the real world all the time. One moment you have
> a whole working network - the next you have pieces. Consider
> dismantling an engine. 3 screws out, and the engine still idles. Take
> the 4th out, and the head falls off.
>
> It could work that way with consciousness, and going from full consciousness
> to full zombie would be a way to avoid the absurdity of partial zombies. But
> it would have the following consequences:
>
> Physiologically, qualia do in fact fade in parallel with function as neurons
> are destroyed, but if the neurons are replaced, this relationship between
> function and qualia is overturned. The artificial neurons can sustain the
> consciousness that would otherwise have been lost, so computationalism is
> true to this extent, but they lose this capability at a certain threshold.
> Two beings with partial brain replacements could differ only in the smallest
> possible increment such as the position of an electron, but one is a zombie
> and the other fully conscious.
>
>
> I don't understand you reference to fading qualia.  Chalmers argued that
> there could not be fading qualia in a transistion from a biological brain to
> a functionally identical silicon chip brain.  That doesn't rule out qualia
> fading as neurons or transistors are simply lost from the system.  In that
> case I think it quite likely that qualia will "fade".  And "fading" may me
> loss of some aspect of qualia.  For example we could lose color vision if we
> lost the cone receptors in our retinas.

I agree with your comment. My post was in response to Russell, who
claimed that a way out of the "Fading Qualia" paper conclusion that
computerised replacement of neurons would preserve consciousness was
that the qualia could remain until some threshold of replacement was
reached then suddenly disappear, causing a transition from full
consciousness to full zombie. Bruno also suggested something like
this. It is possible, but it would mean there is a decoupling between
qualia and the underlying function, and it would also make for a kind
of weird partial computationalism.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!


On 5/12/2015 1:01 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:



--
*From:* Telmo Menezes 
*To:* "everything-list@googlegroups.com" 
*Sent:* Tuesday, May 12, 2015 12:22 PM
*Subject:* Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!




With climate change and cures for cancer you need statistics, because there 
are no
such laws in these fields. There is no equation where you can plug-in a CO2
concentration and get a correct prediction on global temperature change.


There's a law where you can plug in atmospheric composition and solar 
radiance and
get a correct prediction of the equilibrium temperature.  That's what 
Arrhenius did
in 1890.  It's precisely because we do have equations for the energy 
balance of the
Earth and how CO2 affects it, that anthropic global warming is as solid a 
fact as
evolution and nuclear fission.  If it were *just* observations there might 
be room
for doubt as to why temperature has gone up.  But the mechanism is well 
known and
has been for a century.


>>How can we know that the greenhouse effect is the only thing to consider when dealing 
with something as complex as the earth and its biosphere? Ok, CO2 in the atmosphere 
reflects back some percentage of the infrared radiation which leads to more solar energy 
being trapped in the system.


One key thing to understand about the physical properties of CO2 dipolar gas molecule is 
that it absorbs/re-emits  IR frequencies(i.e. is opaque) in an IR frequency range that 
water vapor (e.g. H2O) -- which is the most significant global warming gas there is 
overall is transparent in. This is critically important in understanding why CO2 gas has 
such an impact on climate. It is because it closes (partially closes of course) a 
critical window of transparency, that exists in the H2O infrared frequency absorption 
profile through which infrared energy -- of that frequency range -- could otherwise 
escape out from the atmosphere to be re-radiated out into outer space.
CO2 does not act alone, its effects are very much a result of its partially closing off 
this infrared frequency transparency hole or window through which large amounts of 
infrared energy would have been able to be directly radiated out into the cold sink of 
outer space.

-Chris


Right.  And it's also more significant because it doesn't condense out in clouds.  There 
is a kind of "last emission" zone in the atmosphere where IR photons can go directly to 
space and it's what is emitted in that zone that affects the energy balance.  IR emission 
below that zone is just part of Earth's internal temperature exchange.  Most clouds are 
well below the last emission zone because water condenses out as it rises and cools.  But 
CO2 doesn't condense out and so plays a bigger role in emission than its concentration 
would suggest.


Brent

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Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"

Does God give any suggestions as to what we should do?

On 12 May 2015 at 23:28, Samiya Illias  wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 11:18 PM, LizR  wrote:
>
>> On 11 May 2015 at 17:39, Samiya Illias  wrote:
>>
>>> European Space Agency (ESA) has this to report about Glacial Melt:
>>> http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/GOCE/GOCE_reveals_gravity_dip_from_ice_loss
>>>
>>> What does this mean for Global Warming?
>>>
>>
>> Well, it means it's happening, it's not 100% predictable by humans (no
>> surprise really), and we should really do something about it before it's
>> too late.
>>
>> The $64,000 question being - what?
>>
>
> I came across this report while trying to comprehend a verse of the Quran
> which foretells the heating of the seas. This might be of interest:
> http://signsandscience.blogspot.com/2014/10/when-seas-boil.html
>
> Samiya
>
>>  --
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Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"

Were you trying to make a point? Maybe that science has moved on and become
more exact since then?

On 13 May 2015 at 01:56, spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> Follow up,
>
> I just received this news item in my email-
>
>  The Washington Post..  NEWS FLASH The Arctic Ocean is
> warming up.
>
> The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some
> places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to
> the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway.
>
> Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical
> change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the
> Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been
> met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100
> meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.
>
> Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones,
> the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have
> entirely disappeared.
>
> Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while
> vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far
> north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.
>
> Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will
> rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.
>
> * * * * * * * * *
>
> *I must apologize, I neglected to mention that this report was from
> November 2, 1922, as reported by the AP and published in The Washington
> Post - 93 years ago.*
>
>
>
>
>  -Original Message-
> From: spudboy100 via Everything List 
> To: everything-list 
> Sent: Tue, May 12, 2015 6:04 am
> Subject: Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"
>
>  Well your eyes must be very old indeed, because methane releases go back
> at least 55 million years, when the great warming occurred and did change
> the climate. Moreover, what are you advocating for a fix for this dilemma?
> This is where X crosses Y.
>
>
>
>  -Original Message-
> From: LizR 
> To: everything-list 
> Sent: Tue, May 12, 2015 12:16 am
> Subject: Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"
>
>   On 11 May 2015 at 15:04, spudboy100 via Everything List <
> everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>> Hmmm. He does present a graph, but looking at the weather over 20 plus
>> years, climate catastrophe as they now call it, is not happening. The cause
>> and effect preached by the progressive intelligensia, or nomeklatura, is
>> not occuring. What climate schmucks are peddling, is something once said by
>> philosopher, Groucho Marx, who said: "who are you going to believe, me, or
>> your own two eyes?"
>>
>>   But it is happening, as Brent's graphs (plus thousands of scientific
> measurements, hundreds of articles, etc) illustrate. The fact that it isn't
> yet a "catastrophe" is down to the scale of the phenomena involved. You
> appear to be expecting a cartoon version of events, and when it doesn't
> arrive (within a ridiculously short timespan, to boot) saying that
> therefore it isn't happening. (Or something like that - it's always hard to
> tell exactly what you're saying, due to the weird political slant you put
> on everything.)
>
>  But since you've given me the choice, I guess I'm going to have to
> believe my own eyes. I've seen plenty of evidence for higher temperatures,
> melting ice, methane bubbling out of the sea, violent storms, low-lying
> islands being swamped ... yep, the eyes have it.
>
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Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"

On 12 May 2015 at 22:04, spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> Well your eyes must be very old indeed, because methane releases go back
> at least 55 million years, when the great warming occurred and did change
> the climate.


Yes, I know. I've seen some of the evidence - the fungus spike and all
that. Very nasty, by the looks of it.


> Moreover, what are you advocating for a fix for this dilemma? This is
> where X crosses Y.
>

This is the hard part. My first recommendation is to stop denying that it's
happening, if anyone still is.

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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?


meekerdb wrote:

On 5/11/2015 11:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:


[BM] Why?  Have you proven that consciousness supervenes on a record?


Have you proven that it does not? 


No, but I have a lot of evidence it supervenes on brain /*processes*/.  
Reducing that to /*states*/ is a further assumption.


That is the pedant's reply. :-)
A process reduces to a sequence of states -- you simply lower the 
substitution level (step rate) to whatever value is necessary to 
reproduce the process FAPP.


The assumption of the argument was that consciousness supervenes on 
the brain state. 


That's not the same as saying yes to the doctor.  It's your added 
interpretation that consciousness supervenes on a brain state as opposed 
to a brain process that constitutes a computation.  Bruno, who made the 
argument, I think is relying on the latter.


Yes, that seems to be the case. The original claim of absurdity for the 
idea that consciousness could supervene on a recording has been replaced 
by the claim that the recording is not a computation of the required 
kind. This also begs the question of course -- where is it proved that 
that particular type of computation is both necessary and sufficient for 
consciousness?


However, I think one can approach this in a different way. The 
overwhelming evidence from neuroscience, and all related 
experimentation, is that consciousness supervenes on the physical brain 
-- the goo in our skulls. Damage the goo, stimulate the goo, do anything 
to the goo, and our qualia or consciousness are altered. Alter our 
consciousness/thinking/processing and there are associated changes in 
the brain activity/states. (Pet scans and the like.)


The MGA argues that the natural sequence of brain states and a recording 
of that sequence are not equivalent in that one is conscious and the 
other is not. It is concluded from this that consciousness does not 
supervene on the brain states/processes, which conclusion is 
contradicted by the overwhelming bulk of experimental evidence.


This is science. When your theory is contradicted by overwhelming 
experimental evidence, it is conventionally taken as evidence that your 
theory has been falsified. The MGA puts Bruno's theory in this category: 
it has been falsified by the experimental results.


Bruce

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Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"

On 12 May 2015 at 22:00, spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> Well, the researchers "pretended" that they knew, back then and are still
> advocating regulations rather then new tech, The validity of a science is
> it's ability to predict. I myself, advocate, solar energy and clean energy
> alternative research, Now! People who advocate regulations of the serfs
> require a vigorous woodplane, to the face.
>

I don't know about researchers advocating anything. If they are
recommending we reduce emissions or suffer the consequences, that isn't
advocating. These are scientists, so they shouldn't be suggesting policies,
just recommending that (within whatever margins of error) a certain course
of action will lead to a certain result. It isn't in their area of
expertise to say how to bring about that course of action. Can you tell me
which researchers are saying what?

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Re: My comments on "The Movie Graph Argument Revisited" by Russell Standish

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 11:11:47AM -0400, John Clark wrote:
> On Mon, May 11, 2015  Russell Standish  wrote:
> 
> >
> > >  I should have written "No free will <= deterministic behaviour."
> > (<= means "entailed by", not ≤).
> > Nondeterministic systems needn't have free will.
> >
> 
> You say that no free will is caused by deterministic behavior, and
> nondeterminism (randomness) need not have free will, so now that you've
> told me what free will isn't it might be nice if you told me what in the
> world "free will" is.  Then after we agree on what the term means we can
> debate if human beings or computers or anything has this property or not.
> 

Free will is the ability to do something stupid. Nonrational.

That's it. I don't normally engage in discussions about free will, as
too many people have nonsensical notions of what it is, including the
notion that it just a meaningless sound made be flapping chunks of
meat together.

> 
> > > Og was seeing, and Laplace's daemon, which operates in a deterministic
> > setting.
> >
> 
> As I said before, if the daemon tells Og what his prediction of Og's
> behavior will be the situation is not deterministic, or at least it can not
> be determined by the daemon, for that you'd need a mega-daemon. And then
> things iterate.
> 

No you don't. Because the system is deterministic (after all the whole
premiss of this thread of conversation is dynamical chaos, which is a
deterministic system), it doesn't matter what the daemon tells Og, Og
will do what he was going to do anyway, as he is deterministic, and
the daemon is deterministic.

In order to get the effect that you're describing, you need a
non-deterministic world, which happily we appear to live in, due in no
small part to the FPI effect.

Cheers
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Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au

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Re: My comments on "The Movie Graph Argument Revisited" by Russell Standish


On 5/12/2015 12:34 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:




On 12 May 2015, at 10:37 am, Russell Standish  wrote:


On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 10:23:31AM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

The final straw would have to be indivisible, otherwise you could make a 
partial zombie by replacing half the straw.

I disagree. The final straw either works, or does not work. If you
replace half the straw, then the resulting half-straw either works or
it doesn't, and that directly affects whether you have a conscious
entity or not. No need to invoke a partial zombie.


It would lead to a strange form of computationalism: you could replace say 40% 
of the brain without any problem, but go to 40.0001% and consciousness gies 
off.

It's what happens in the real world all the time. One moment you have
a whole working network - the next you have pieces. Consider
dismantling an engine. 3 screws out, and the engine still idles. Take
the 4th out, and the head falls off.

It could work that way with consciousness, and going from full consciousness to 
full zombie would be a way to avoid the absurdity of partial zombies. But it 
would have the following consequences:

Physiologically, qualia do in fact fade in parallel with function as neurons 
are destroyed, but if the neurons are replaced, this relationship between 
function and qualia is overturned. The artificial neurons can sustain the 
consciousness that would otherwise have been lost, so computationalism is true 
to this extent, but they lose this capability at a certain threshold. Two 
beings with partial brain replacements could differ only in the smallest 
possible increment such as the position of an electron, but one is a zombie and 
the other fully conscious.



I don't understand you reference to fading qualia.  Chalmers argued that there could not 
be fading qualia in a transistion from a biological brain to a functionally identical 
silicon chip brain.  That doesn't rule out qualia fading as neurons or transistors are 
simply lost from the system.  In that case I think it quite likely that qualia will 
"fade".  And "fading" may me loss of some aspect of qualia.  For example we could lose 
color vision if we lost the cone receptors in our retinas.


Brent

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Re: My comments on "The Movie Graph Argument Revisited" by Russell Standish

I haven't a clue what you're rabitting on about here,so I'll let it
pass without comment...

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 04:00:19PM -0400, John Mikes wrote:
> Russel wrote:
> 
> *Nondeterministic systems needn't have free will*.
> 
> then:
> 
> 
> *My point still stands, though. We were discussing the dynamical chaos**Og
> was seeing, and Laplace's daemon, which operates in a deterministic setting*
> .
> 
> The term 'nondeterministic' (leading to 'random?') is a nono in my views
> (and I do not argue for their correctness, only for their LIMITED agnostic
> nature).
> *Relations* (what are they?) influence each other, I think so does the
> Laplace daemon (I never met this guy) so in the churnings of the existence
> (Nature?) nothing comes un-influenced (randomly, or in a CHAOTIC
> un-ruliness).
> I consider chaos the outcome of *orderly* influences including (our)
> unknown - even (for us) unknowable factors in the 'Everything' (Nature,
> whatever).
> Furthermore: if chaos is ubiquitous, or: if random prevails unrestrained,
> we would have no math-phys laws to observe (consider 2+2=375, or 56831) and
> e.g. Ohm's law would be unfollowable etc. etc. etc.
> 
> So far I did not meet an acceptable regulation about WHERE does the
> potential of random, or chaos prevail and WHERE not? It cannot be a
> convenience rule, like: "it exists there, and ONLY there, where we like it
> and it does not disturb our natural sciences/mathematics etc. "
> 
> A 'deterministic setting' IMO is the outcome of sometimes controversial
> trends from diverse influencing tendencies - ALL OF THEM (known and
> unknown).
> Whatever 'emerges' is entailed by some origins and influences and it is
> only our ignorance that calls it 'random', 'chaos', or 'nondeterministic
> change' etc. etc.
> 
> In many cases we cannot predict what will happen, because our insight is
> limited. 'Free will' is a good cop-out, the gods can even punish the
> 'willer'.
> 
> Regards
> 
> John Mikes
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 6:33 PM, Russell Standish 
> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 03:06:57PM -0400, John Mikes wrote:
> > > Russell:
> > > you wrote (among many many others):
> > >
> > > *"...No free will = deterministic behaviour..." *
> > >
> > > I would not equal the two in my agnostic views. There are lots of (known
> > as
> >
> > Quite right. I should have written "No free will <= deterministic
> > behaviour."
> >
> > (<= means "entailed by", not ≤).
> >
> > Nondeterministic systems needn't have free will.
> >
> > My point still stands, though. We were discussing the dynamical chaos
> > Og was seeing, and Laplace's daemon, which operates in a deterministic
> > setting.
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> >
> > 
> > Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> > Principal, High Performance Coders
> > Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
> > University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au
> >
> > 
> >
> > --
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Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!

On 5/12/2015 12:22 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

With climate change and cures for cancer you need statistics, because there
are no
such laws in these fields. There is no equation where you can plug-in a CO2
concentration and get a correct prediction on global temperature change.

There's a law where you can plug in atmospheric composition and solar
radiance and
get a correct prediction of the equilibrium temperature. That's what
Arrhenius did
in 1890. It's precisely because we do have equations for the energy
balance of the
Earth and how CO2 affects it, that anthropic global warming is as solid a
fact as
evolution and nuclear fission. If it were *just* observations there might
be room
for doubt as to why temperature has gone up. But the mechanism is well
known and
has been for a century.

How can we know that the greenhouse effect is the only thing to consider when dealing
with something as complex as the earth and its biosphere? Ok, CO2 in the atmosphere
reflects back some percentage of the infrared radiation which leads to more solar energy
being trapped in the system. But what about the clouds?

Clouds, especially high clouds have some effect. They reflect visible bands back to space
and they also absorb and reemit IR. Low clouds tend to increase heat load because they
reflect in the day, but they insulate day and night. It's not magic, it's just calculation.

And the vegetation? Don't these things have a role in infraread blocking and sun light
refraction/absorption?

Vegetation may be less reflective than say snow or bare ground.

And many other things we might not be thinking about... My point is: who's to say that
there isn't some negative feedback loop that keeps the temperature stable?

Sure there is. As the Earth gets hotter it's energy loss rate goes up as T^4, so that's
what establishes a new equilibrium. The Earth's temperature won't run away like Venus's did.

It's not such a silly hypothesis if you think in terms of self-sampling. The Earth must
be stable enough to maintain the conditions for uninterrupted biological evolution for
almost 4 billion years.

It's gone through hotter periods with higher CO2 levels - but not while homo sapiens
roamed the Earth. And the rapidity of the rise is faster than anything that can be
resolved the paleoclimate record.

It's not that the long term temperature rise is so hard to predict, at least within a
certain range. What's hard to predict is the effects. There's a lot of focus on sea
level rise because that's relatively easy. But there will also be big changes in weather
patterns and where which crops will grow. And changes that might be dealt with fairly
easily by a rational world government will, in the real world, result in migration,
famine, and war.

But if you'd like to actually formulate the alternative
hypothesis I
might do the analysis.

Ok. My alternative hypothesis is that there is no trend of global
temperature
increase in the period from 1998 to 2010 (as per Liz's chart's
timeframe),
when compared to temperature fluctuations in the 20th century (as
defined by
the metric in the chart).

OK. Here's one way to do it. The ten warmest years in the century from
1910 to
2010 all occurred in the interval 1998 to 2010, the last 13yrs of the
century.
Under the null hypothesis, where the hottest year falls is uniform
random, so
the hottest year had probability 13/100 of falling in that interval.
The next
hottest year then had probability 12/99 of falling in the remaining
12yr of
that interval, given the hottest had already fallen it. The third
hottest year
had probability 11/98 of falling in that interval, given the first two
had
fallen in it, and so on. So the probability of the 10 hottest years
falling in
that 13yr period is

P = (13*12*...5*4)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 1.65e-11

To this we must add the probability of the more extreme events, e.g. the
probability that the ten hottest years were in the last 12

P = (12*11*...*5*4*3)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 3.81e-12

and that they were in the last 11

P = (11*10*...*5*4*3*2)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 6.35e-13

and that they were in the last 10

P = (11*10*...*5*4*3*2)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 5.77e-14

Summing we get P = 2.10e-11

A p-value good enough for CERN. But this isn't a very good analysis
for two
reasons. First, it's not directly measuring trend, it's the same
probability
you'd get for any 10 of the observed temperatures falling on any
defined 13
years. So you have infer that it means a trend from the fact that
these are
the hottest years and they occur in the 13 at the end. Second, it
implicitly
assumes that yearly temperatures

Re: What does the MGA accomplish?

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 12:19:02PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >
> >Exactly. Regardless of truth, it is an interesting model that could
> >well inform us about the truth. Provided it is tractable, of course,
> >which so far it has tended not to be  (John Clark's criticism).
> 
> No, the UD does not need to be tractable, because the first person
> are not aware of the delays.
> 
> John simply cannot understand this, because this needs step 3, 4, 5,
> 6, 7.
> 

Sorry - you misunderstood me. In this case, I was referring to the
consequences of the AUDA, ie the programme of extracting physics from COMP.

-- 


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Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: The dovetailer disassembled

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 02:53:18PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >
> >The recording is a distinctly different computation, because they do
> >not behave identically on all counterfactuals.
> 
> And that is all what is needed in the MGA to proceed.
> 
> Bruno
> 

Only if it is assumed to be absurd that the counterfactually incorrect
recording  instantiates a conscious moment. Not only is that not obvious, but
also a number of people, including you IIRC, say that the issue of
counterfactual correctness is a side issue, not really relevant.

ISTM it is critical - without resolving that issue, the MGA doesn't
proceed, nor is it clear what it even means if it were to.

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Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
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Re: Occulus (was Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!

On 5/12/2015 4:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 05 May 2015, at 00:43, meekerdb wrote:

On 5/4/2015 11:32 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 04 May 2015, at 10:23, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Sun, May 3, 2015 at 10:08 PM, LizR mailto:lizj...@gmail.com>>
wrote:

On 4 May 2015 at 06:45, Telmo Menezes mailto:te...@telmomenezes.com>> wrote:

Of course believing in the supernatural is absurd -- what does that even
mean? If, for example, ghosts were real, then this would just mean that
current scientific theories are incomplete or wrong.

That would just mean the terminology isn't very good. It would be more
accurate
to say you do (or don't) believe in ghosts.

That's a good point.
Of course the non-materialist deals with ontological problems. Do entities perceived
under the influence of psychoactive drugs exist in some sense?

At Iridia, there has been a talk and demo of Virtual Reality. I have been very often
disappointed, but this time I have been quite impressed. They have solved the main
problems, and the immersion feeling was quite realist, in all direction where you
looked, without any screen border, and perfect real time synchronization for any type
of the move of your head or eyes.

Does this involve wearing 3D display goggles such as Occulus Rift?

Yes. I saw 'Occulus' written on the device, (but not Rift).

https://www.oculus.com/

My son has created a video game, "Homesick", of the exploration/puzzle genre, which
will be available for Occulus. I tried out their goggles and the experience is quite
realistic in terms of looking around. In a test at a video game exhibition many people
trying them could not bring themselves to step off a virtual cliff.

Wonderful! I really would like to buy such Occulus goggles, but more to make amazing
experience than playing game. But video-games is the main accelerator in the VR field.

Here's a review of the game.

http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/4/13/8371781/homesick-is-a-fantasy-walkabout-in-a-scary-lonely-w

It should be released on http://store.steampowered.com/ by the end of the month. Buy one
- he needs the money. :-) He saved up so he could quit his job and take two years to
create this game. He did everything but the music, which he contracted for. It'll be
available for Oculus later.

Brent

Re: What does the MGA accomplish?

2015-05-12 Thread 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List

On 5/12/2015 3:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 12 May 2015, at 02:33, Bruce Kellett wrote:
The fact that projecting the film isn't a general purpose computer seems to me to be a
red herring. It was never claimed that projecting the film of the brain substrate
instantiated general consciousness -- the only claim ever made here is that this
projection recreates the conscious moment that was originally filmed. That is all that
is required. General purpose computing and counterfactual correctness are all beside
the point. If the original conscious moment is recreated, then the film is a
computation in any sense that is necessary to produce a conscious moment. This is
sufficient to undermine the claim that consciousness does not supervene on the physical
body.

The matter of whether the physical is primitive or not is also a red herring. No such
assumption is required in order to show that the MGA fails to prove its point.

It is a reductio ad absurdum. If consciousnesss requires the physical activity and only
the physical activity, then the recording is conscious. But anyone knowing what is a
computation should understand that the recording does not compute more than a trivial
sequence of projection, which is not similar to the computation of the boolean graph.

I think there are five concepts of computation in play here:

1. An abstract deterministic computer (TM) or program running with some given external
input. This program is assumed to have well defined behavior over a whole class of
inputs, not just the one considered.

2. A classical (deterministic) physical computer realizing (1) supra. This is what the
doctor proposes to replace part or all of your brain.

3. A recording of (2) supra being played back.

4. An execution of (1) with a classical (deterministic) computer that has all the
branching points disabled so that it realizes (1) but is not counterfactually equivalent
to (1) or (2).

5. A physical (quantum) computer realizing (1) supra, in it's classical limit.

Bruno takes (1) to define computation and takes the hypothesis that consciousness is
realized by a certain kind of computation, an instance of (1). So he says that if you
believe this you will say yes to the doctor who proposes (2) as a prosthesis. This
substitution of a physical deterministic computer will preserve your consciousness. Then
he proceeds to argue via the MGA that this implies your consciousness will not be affected
by using (4) instead of (2) and further that (4) is equivalent to (3) and (3) is absurd.

Having found a reductio, he wants to reject the assumption that your consciousness is
realized by the physics of a deterministic computer as in (2).

Whether (3) preserving consciousness is absurd or not (and I agree with Russell that's to
much of a stretch of intuition to judge); this is not the reversal of physics claimed.
The Democritan physicist (nothing but atoms and the void) will point out that (2) is not
what the doctor can implement. What is possible is realizing a prosthetic computation by
(5). And (5) cannot be truncated like (4); quantum mechanical systems can only be
approximately classical and only when they are interacting with an environment. The
classical deterministic computer (TM) is a platonic ideal which, as far as we know, cannot
be realized.

Now that doesn't invalidate Bruno just developing his theory of the UD and showing that it
realizes QM and the wholistic quasi-classical physical behavior of macroscopic systems in
some limit. But I don't think he can just help himself to the conclusion that there MUST
BE some measure or some way of looking at the UD in which this is so because the MGA has
refuted Democritus.

Brent

Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!

2015-05-12 Thread John Mikes

Telmo,

some long long time ago I was facetious about the climate change (lately I
got more converted)
and asked: how was the study of a substantial climate change established -
say - over the past
30b years? - I meant: ALL of them? How was it for 'other' galaxies - star
systems?
I just did not want to draw conclusions upon the present millisecond of our
little star 'Sun" and it's
stepchild Earth.
My recent (limited?) conversion occurred by acknowledging the human
industrial misdeeds over
the past ~200 or so years realizing how that might have hurt the
bio-balance of our planet.
I still don't know how to think about larger cosmic volumes and timeframes.

Regards
John Mikes

On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 3:40 AM, Telmo Menezes 
wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, May 10, 2015 at 11:55 PM, LizR  wrote:
>
>> I believe satellites and weather stations give a lot of samples of
>> atmospheric temperature (and other properties, I assume).
>>
>
> Yes, I am not questioning these readings. I believe that 2010 was warmer
> than any year in the previous century, etc.
>
> What I am asking is for a robust statistical analysis that shows that it
> is sufficiently plausible that a temperature increase trend is indeed
> happening. I am just behaving in the exact same way that any proper
> scientist would behave when confronted with an hypothesis driven by a set
> of observations. All serious journals require it. So why not provide it?
>
> This, for me, is further evidence that the field of climate research has
> gone pathological. In non-pathological scientific research, such a request
> is seen as perfectly normal and not as an attack. In fact, such requests
> help the cause. If the trend is real, they will only help make the case
> stronger. If you care so much, why don't you join me in insisting on rigour?
>
> Don't you see a problem with trying to demonstrate a trend with a chart
> that is pre-sorted by increasing temperature?
>
>
>> Why is it hard to believe that we can make an estimate of mean global
>> temperatures based on such measurements plus observations of phenomena like
>> shoreline erosion, glacier retreat, methane outgassing, sea level rise,
>> changes in storm intensity and frequency, thinning of arctic ice, etc?
>>
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Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!

  From: Telmo Menezes 
 To: "everything-list@googlegroups.com"  
 Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2015 12:22 PM
 Subject: Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!

  With climate change and cures for cancer you need statistics, because there 
are no such laws in these fields. There is no equation where you can plug-in a 
CO2 concentration and get a correct prediction on global temperature change.

 There's a law where you can plug in atmospheric composition and solar radiance 
and get a correct prediction of the equilibrium temperature.  That's what 
Arrhenius did in 1890.  It's precisely because we do have equations for the 
energy balance of the Earth and how CO2 affects it, that anthropic global 
warming is as solid a fact as evolution and nuclear fission.  If it were *just* 
observations there might be room for doubt as to why temperature has gone up.  
But the mechanism is well known and has been for a century.

>>How can we know that the greenhouse effect is the only thing to consider when 
>>dealing with something as complex as the earth and its biosphere? Ok, CO2 in 
>>the atmosphere reflects back some percentage of the infrared radiation which 
>>leads to more solar energy being trapped in the system. 
One key thing to understand about the physical properties of CO2 dipolar gas 
molecule is that it absorbs/re-emits  IR frequencies(i.e. is opaque) in an IR 
frequency range that water vapor (e.g. H2O) -- which is the most significant 
global warming gas there is overall is transparent in. This is critically 
important in understanding why CO2 gas has such an impact on climate. It is 
because it closes (partially closes of course) a critical window of 
transparency, that exists in the H2O infrared frequency absorption profile 
through which infrared energy -- of that frequency range -- could otherwise 
escape out from the atmosphere to be re-radiated out into outer space.CO2 does 
not act alone, its effects are very much a result of its partially closing off 
this infrared frequency transparency hole or window through which large amounts 
of infrared energy would have been able to be directly radiated out into the 
cold sink of outer space.-Chris 
But what about the clouds? And the vegetation? Don't these things have a role 
in infraread blocking and sun light refraction/absorption? And many other 
things we might not be thinking about... My point is: who's to say that there 
isn't some negative feedback loop that keeps the temperature stable? It's not 
such a silly hypothesis if you think in terms of self-sampling. The Earth must 
be stable enough to maintain the conditions for uninterrupted biological 
evolution for almost 4 billion years. 

   But if you'd like to actually formulate the alternative hypothesis I might 
do the analysis.

  Ok. My alternative hypothesis is that there is no trend of global temperature 
increase in the period from 1998 to 2010 (as  per Liz's chart's timeframe), 
when compared to temperature fluctuations in the 20th century (as defined by 
the metric in the chart).

 OK.  Here's one way to do it. The ten warmest years in the century from 1910 
to 2010 all occurred in the interval 1998 to 2010, the last 13yrs of the  
century.  Under the null hypothesis, where the hottest year falls is uniform 
random, so the hottest year had probability 13/100 of falling in that interval. 
 The next hottest year then had probability 12/99 of falling in the remaining 
12yr of that interval, given the hottest had already fallen it. The third 
hottest year had probability 11/98 of falling in that interval, given the first 
two had fallen in it, and so on.  So the probability of the 10 hottest years 
falling in that 13yr period is

     P = (13*12*...5*4)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 1.65e-11

 To this we must add the probability of the more extreme events, e.g. the 
probability that the ten hottest years were in the last 12

     P = (12*11*...*5*4*3)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 3.81e-12

 and that they were in the last 11

     P = (11*10*...*5*4*3*2)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 6.35e-13

 and that they were in the last 10

     P = (11*10*...*5*4*3*2)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 5.77e-14

 Summing we get P = 2.10e-11

 A p-value good enough for CERN.  But this isn't a very good analysis for two 
reasons.  First, it's not directly measuring trend, it's the same probability 
you'd get for any 10 of the observed temperatures falling on any  defined 13 
years.  So you have infer that it means a trend from the fact that these are 
the hottest years and they occur in the 13 at the end. Second, it implicitly 
assumes that yearly temperatures are independent, which they aren't.  If 
temperatures always occurred in blocks of ten for example the observed p-value 
would be more like 0.1.  But this shows why you need to consider well defined, 
realistic alternatives.  Your alternative was "no trend", but no trend can mean 
a lot of things, including random indepe

Re: My comments on "The Movie Graph Argument Revisited" by Russell Standish

2015-05-12 Thread John Mikes

Russel wrote:

*Nondeterministic systems needn't have free will*.

then:

*My point still stands, though. We were discussing the dynamical chaos**Og
was seeing, and Laplace's daemon, which operates in a deterministic setting*
.

The term 'nondeterministic' (leading to 'random?') is a nono in my views
(and I do not argue for their correctness, only for their LIMITED agnostic
nature).
*Relations* (what are they?) influence each other, I think so does the
Laplace daemon (I never met this guy) so in the churnings of the existence
(Nature?) nothing comes un-influenced (randomly, or in a CHAOTIC
un-ruliness).
I consider chaos the outcome of *orderly* influences including (our)
unknown - even (for us) unknowable factors in the 'Everything' (Nature,
whatever).
Furthermore: if chaos is ubiquitous, or: if random prevails unrestrained,
we would have no math-phys laws to observe (consider 2+2=375, or 56831) and
e.g. Ohm's law would be unfollowable etc. etc. etc.

So far I did not meet an acceptable regulation about WHERE does the
potential of random, or chaos prevail and WHERE not? It cannot be a
convenience rule, like: "it exists there, and ONLY there, where we like it
and it does not disturb our natural sciences/mathematics etc. "

A 'deterministic setting' IMO is the outcome of sometimes controversial
trends from diverse influencing tendencies - ALL OF THEM (known and
unknown).
Whatever 'emerges' is entailed by some origins and influences and it is
only our ignorance that calls it 'random', 'chaos', or 'nondeterministic
change' etc. etc.

In many cases we cannot predict what will happen, because our insight is
limited. 'Free will' is a good cop-out, the gods can even punish the
'willer'.

Regards

John Mikes

On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 6:33 PM, Russell Standish 
wrote:

> On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 03:06:57PM -0400, John Mikes wrote:
> > Russell:
> > you wrote (among many many others):
> >
> > *"...No free will = deterministic behaviour..." *
> >
> > I would not equal the two in my agnostic views. There are lots of (known
> as
>
> Quite right. I should have written "No free will <= deterministic
> behaviour."
>
> (<= means "entailed by", not ≤).
>
> Nondeterministic systems needn't have free will.
>
> My point still stands, though. We were discussing the dynamical chaos
> Og was seeing, and Laplace's daemon, which operates in a deterministic
> setting.
>
>
> --
>
>
> 
> Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Principal, High Performance Coders
> Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
> University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au
>
> 
>
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Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"


On 5/12/2015 3:00 AM, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
Well, the researchers "pretended" that they knew, back then and are still advocating 
regulations rather then new tech, 


That's a phony charge. NOBODY is advocating regulation instead of new technology.  In fact 
there are subsidies for encouraging the use of PV and wind.  There are research grants for 
developing better PV and better batteries and other energy storage systems.


The validity of a science is it's ability to predict. I myself, advocate, solar energy 
and clean energy alternative research, Now! 


Research is uncertain.  You can't just order up technological breakthroughs.  So failing 
to implement corrections and mitigations using the techonlogy we have is like sitting 
around hoping.



People who advocate regulations of the serfs require a vigorous woodplane, to 
the face.


There are no serfs; although there are shills for fossil fuel industry.

Brent

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Re: My comments on "The Movie Graph Argument Revisited" by Russell Standish



> On 12 May 2015, at 10:40 am, Bruce Kellett  wrote:
> 
> Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>>> On 12 May 2015, at 8:25 am, Russell Standish  wrote:
>>> 
>>> It won't be a specific electron  that will switch consciousness off
>>> regardless of the order in which you remove parts, as you seem to be
>>> implying here, but rather, in a specific sequence of removal of parts,
>>> there will be one part that when removed causes the switching off.
>> The final straw would have to be indivisible, otherwise you could make a 
>> partial zombie by replacing half the straw.
>> It would lead to a strange form of computationalism: you could replace say 
>> 40% of the brain without any problem, but go to 40.0001% and 
>> consciousness gies off.
> 
> That seems to be the case in the real world. As brain tissue is destroyed, by 
> injury or disease, specific functionality is lost according to the brain area 
> destroyed, but there is not a fading of consciousness until quite late in 
> this process. Alzheimer's patients can be perfectly conscious although 
> totally gaga.
> 
> Of course, consciousness is also lost if there is whole-of-brain trauma, such 
> as is induced by a very sharp blow on the head. These two observations are 
> not in conflict.

Consciousness has a broader meaning than just being awake. If your memory 
starts to go, you forget things, and your experience of life changes as a 
result.

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Re: My comments on "The Movie Graph Argument Revisited" by Russell Standish

> On 12 May 2015, at 10:37 am, Russell Standish  wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 10:23:31AM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>> 
>> The final straw would have to be indivisible, otherwise you could make a 
>> partial zombie by replacing half the straw.
> 
> I disagree. The final straw either works, or does not work. If you
> replace half the straw, then the resulting half-straw either works or
> it doesn't, and that directly affects whether you have a conscious
> entity or not. No need to invoke a partial zombie.
> 
>> 
>> It would lead to a strange form of computationalism: you could replace say 
>> 40% of the brain without any problem, but go to 40.0001% and 
>> consciousness gies off.
> 
> It's what happens in the real world all the time. One moment you have
> a whole working network - the next you have pieces. Consider
> dismantling an engine. 3 screws out, and the engine still idles. Take
> the 4th out, and the head falls off.

It could work that way with consciousness, and going from full consciousness to 
full zombie would be a way to avoid the absurdity of partial zombies. But it 
would have the following consequences:

Physiologically, qualia do in fact fade in parallel with function as neurons 
are destroyed, but if the neurons are replaced, this relationship between 
function and qualia is overturned. The artificial neurons can sustain the 
consciousness that would otherwise have been lost, so computationalism is true 
to this extent, but they lose this capability at a certain threshold. Two 
beings with partial brain replacements could differ only in the smallest 
possible increment such as the position of an electron, but one is a zombie and 
the other fully conscious.

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Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!

2015-05-12 Thread Telmo Menezes

>
>
>
>  With climate change and cures for cancer you need statistics, because
> there are no such laws in these fields. There is no equation where you can
> plug-in a CO2 concentration and get a correct prediction on global
> temperature change.
>
>
> There's a law where you can plug in atmospheric composition and solar
> radiance and get a correct prediction of the equilibrium temperature.
> That's what Arrhenius did in 1890.  It's precisely because we do have
> equations for the energy balance of the Earth and how CO2 affects it, that
> anthropic global warming is as solid a fact as evolution and nuclear
> fission.  If it were *just* observations there might be room for doubt as
> to why temperature has gone up.  But the mechanism is well known and has
> been for a century.
>

How can we know that the greenhouse effect is the only thing to consider
when dealing with something as complex as the earth and its biosphere? Ok,
CO2 in the atmosphere reflects back some percentage of the infrared
radiation which leads to more solar energy being trapped in the system. But
what about the clouds? And the vegetation? Don't these things have a role
in infraread blocking and sun light refraction/absorption? And many other
things we might not be thinking about... My point is: who's to say that
there isn't some negative feedback loop that keeps the temperature stable?
It's not such a silly hypothesis if you think in terms of self-sampling.
The Earth must be stable enough to maintain the conditions for
uninterrupted biological evolution for almost 4 billion years.


>
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>>   But if you'd like to actually formulate the alternative hypothesis I
>>> might do the analysis.
>>>
>>
>>  Ok. My alternative hypothesis is that there is no trend of global
>> temperature increase in the period from 1998 to 2010 (as per Liz's chart's
>> timeframe), when compared to temperature fluctuations in the 20th century
>> (as defined by the metric in the chart).
>>
>>
>>  OK.  Here's one way to do it. The ten warmest years in the century from
>> 1910 to 2010 all occurred in the interval 1998 to 2010, the last 13yrs of
>> the century.  Under the null hypothesis, where the hottest year falls is
>> uniform random, so the hottest year had probability 13/100 of falling in
>> that interval.  The next hottest year then had probability 12/99 of falling
>> in the remaining 12yr of that interval, given the hottest had already
>> fallen it. The third hottest year had probability 11/98 of falling in that
>> interval, given the first two had fallen in it, and so on.  So the
>> probability of the 10 hottest years falling in that 13yr period is
>>
>> P = (13*12*...5*4)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 1.65e-11
>>
>> To this we must add the probability of the more extreme events, e.g. the
>> probability that the ten hottest years were in the last 12
>>
>> P = (12*11*...*5*4*3)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 3.81e-12
>>
>> and that they were in the last 11
>>
>> P = (11*10*...*5*4*3*2)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 6.35e-13
>>
>> and that they were in the last 10
>>
>> P = (11*10*...*5*4*3*2)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 5.77e-14
>>
>> Summing we get P = 2.10e-11
>>
>> A p-value good enough for CERN.  But this isn't a very good analysis for
>> two reasons.  First, it's not directly measuring trend, it's the same
>> probability you'd get for any 10 of the observed temperatures falling on
>> any defined 13 years.  So you have infer that it means a trend from the
>> fact that these are the hottest years and they occur in the 13 at the end.
>> Second, it implicitly assumes that yearly temperatures are independent,
>> which they aren't.  If temperatures always occurred in blocks of ten for
>> example the observed p-value would be more like 0.1.  But this shows why
>> you need to consider well defined, realistic alternatives.  Your
>> alternative was "no trend", but no trend can mean a lot of things,
>> including random independent yearly temperatures.
>>
>> A better analysis is to select two different years at random and count
>> how many instances there are in which the later year is hotter.  Under the
>> null hypothesis only half should count. This directly counts trends. And
>> this is independent of whether successive years are correlated.  There are
>> 1 possible pairs in a century which is large enough we can just sample
>> it. I got the NOAA data from 1880 thru 2013, so I used a little more than a
>> century.
>>
>> For example taking a sample of 100 pairs gives 86 in which the later year
>> was warmer (I counted ties as 0.5).  The null hypothesis says this is like
>> getting 86 heads in 100 tosses, which obeys a binomial distribution.  The
>> probability of getting 86 or more heads in a 100 tosses is 4.14e-14.
>>
>
>  Brent, I tip my hat to you.
> I was preparing to write some objections after reading your first
> analysis, but your pair sampling analysis already addresses them. You
> convinced me that there is, in fact, a global temperature increase trend in
> t

Re: My comments on "The Movie Graph Argument Revisited" by Russell Standish

2015-05-12 Thread John Clark

On Tue, May 12, 2015  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>> No, what they proved is that physical reality can emulate arithmetic;
>
>
> > False. Just read the original paper of Church, Post, Turing, Kleene,
> please. They don't mention physics at all.
>

Please explain how to build a Turing Machine, or a machine of any sort,
without using matter that obeys the laws of physics.

> > BTW, they prove that the arithmetical reality is NOT emulable by
> anything. the computable is only a quite tiny part of arithmetic.
>

I know, nearly all numbers are non computable so physics doesn't know what
they are, but mathematics  doesn't know what they are either, they aren't
the solution to any polynomial equation and no function can produce them,
 an infinite series can't even approximate one.

>> and one sort of physical reality, like a electronic computer, can
>> emulate another sort of physical reality, like a galaxy, but we have no
>> evidence that arithmetic can emulate anything.
>
>
> > The proof is in all textbooks
>

Ink on paper is in those textbooks, there is no evidence that any book has
ever been able to calculate anything, not even 1+1.  You want to fly across
the Pacific Ocean on the blueprints of a 747 and it just doesn't work.

> > The sigma_1 arithmetical reality is Turing universal. Robinson
> arithmetic is Turing universal.
>

Then I suggest you start the Sigma_1 Arithmetical Reality Computer Company
with a Robinson Arithmetic subdivision and become the world's first
trillionaire.

> > No, the reason is that they want buy physical computer, to enacted the
> computation relatively to our physical reality.
>

In other words those computer textbooks provide simplified and approximated
descriptions of how real computers operate.

> > But the physical reality is used only for that relative manifestation,
>

If so then physics can do something mathematics can not, make a calculation
that has a relationship with our world. Physics must have some secret sauce
that mathematics does not.

> >>>  (once you agree that 2+2=4 is a simpole truth on which we can agree
>> on).
>>
>
> >> We may agree on that but Godel and Turing tell us that there are an
> infinite number of mathematical statements we will NEVER agree on,
>
> > They don't say that. They say that for all consistent machine there are
> statement that they cannot prove.
>

Godel said there are an infinite number of statements that are true (so you
can never find a counterexample to prove it wrong) but that have no proof
(so you can't demonstrate its truth in a finite number of steps). If there
were a way to put statements into two categories, the statements that can
be proven true or false into one category and the statements that are
either false or true but have no proof into another category we could
concentrate our efforts on the first category and just ignore the second,
but Turing proved that in general you can't even do that.  If Goldbach's
conjecture is in that second category (and if it isn't there are an
infinite number of similar statements that are) then mathematicians could
spend eternity looking (unsuccessfully) for a way to prove that Goldbach's
conjecture is true, and spend an infinite number of years building ever
faster computers looking (unsuccessfully) for an even integer that is not
the sum of two prime numbers to prove that Goldbach's conjecture is false.
So after an infinite amount of work you'd be no wiser about the truth or
falsehood of Goldbach's Conjecture than you are right now.

>> mathematical statements that even mathematics doesn't know if they are
>> true or not.
>
>
> > By definition, math "knows" the truth of the statement.
>

90 years ago every good mathematician would have agreed with you, even
Godel would have agreed with you, he was as surprised as anyone with what
he discovered in his 1930 proof, but today no good mathematician would
agree with you.

> > You confuse again the mathematical reality and the mathematical theories.
>

Godel and Turing proved that there is no way even in theory to totally
separate mathematical reality from mathematical non-reality, nothing can do
it, not physics and not even mathematics itself can, therefore it is not
valid to speak about a perfect land that contains nothing but truth. So
you're the one who is confused not me.

> 
>

  John K Clark

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Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!


On 5/12/2015 12:33 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:




I disagree. I think this criticisms comes from a misinterpretation of what 
the
p-value means. The p-value estimates the probability of seeing results at 
least as
helpful to the hypothesis as the ones found, assuming the null hypothesis. 
A high
p-value is informative because it tells us that the null is a likely 
explanation
when compared to the hypothesis. A low p-value tells us that the hypothesis 
merits
further investigation.


First, you've got high and low mixed up.  A low p-value, e.g. 0.05, is 
considered
significant in medical tests, 1e-6 is considered significant in particle 
physics.


No, you misread me. Notice that I was arguing that a result in favor of the null (high 
p-value) is perhaps more informative than a result in favor of the hypothesis (low 
p-value), because the method is quite vulnerable to false positives -- you can expect to 
find the same ratio of false positives as the significance threshold you are using. Thus 
so many "cures for cancer", as you say.





The p-value tells us nothing about the probability of any of the hypothesis 
being
true. It's a filter for noise, given the available data.


But the trouble is it generates noise.  The high value, 0.05, used in 
medicine with
understandably small sample size is the reason the "New Scientist" can tout 
a new
discovery for curing cancer every 6 months.


Yes.

And on the other end when you have really big samples, as in the PEAR 
experiments,
you're virtually certain to reject the null hypothesis at 0.001 simply 
because your
testing a point hypothesis against an undefined alternative, i.e. "anything 
else".


Also true.


Any useful analysis would have to be Bayesian and start with some prior
alternative hypotheses one of which would be Prob(temperature goes 
up|lots of
CO2 is added to the atmosphere).  That already has a high prior 
probability
based on the analysis of Savante Arrhenius in 1890.


If you did Bayesian analysis in this fashion, you would be assuming at the 
start
what you want to test for.


Yeah, just as if you did a Bayesian analysis of whether gravity made things 
fall
down: Yep, that one fell.  OK, that one fell. Yep, the third one fell... 
Statistics
isn't the best decision process for everything.


It's the worse, and should only be used when we don't have anything better. The trouble 
is that this "anything better" must take the form of a model capable of making reliable 
predictions. With gravity you don't need statistics, because the laws of motion can 
predict the outcome perfectly every single time. It would be silly to use statistics 
there, as you say.


With climate change and cures for cancer you need statistics, because there are no such 
laws in these fields. There is no equation where you can plug-in a CO2 concentration and 
get a correct prediction on global temperature change.


There's a law where you can plug in atmospheric composition and solar radiance and get a 
correct prediction of the equilibrium temperature.  That's what Arrhenius did in 1890.  
It's precisely because we do have equations for the energy balance of the Earth and how 
CO2 affects it, that anthropic global warming is as solid a fact as evolution and nuclear 
fission.  If it were *just* observations there might be room for doubt as to why 
temperature has gone up. But the mechanism is well known and has been for a century.




  But if you'd like to actually formulate the alternative hypothesis I 
might do
the analysis.


Ok. My alternative hypothesis is that there is no trend of global 
temperature
increase in the period from 1998 to 2010 (as per Liz's chart's timeframe), 
when
compared to temperature fluctuations in the 20th century (as defined by the 
metric
in the chart).


OK.  Here's one way to do it. The ten warmest years in the century from 
1910 to 2010
all occurred in the interval 1998 to 2010, the last 13yrs of the century.  
Under the
null hypothesis, where the hottest year falls is uniform random, so the 
hottest year
had probability 13/100 of falling in that interval.  The next hottest year 
then had
probability 12/99 of falling in the remaining 12yr of that interval, given 
the
hottest had already fallen it. The third hottest year had probability 11/98 
of
falling in that interval, given the first two had fallen in it, and so on.  
So the
probability of the 10 hottest years falling in that 13yr period is

P = (13*12*...5*4)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 1.65e-11

To this we must add the probability of the more extreme events, e.g. the 
probability
that the ten hottest years were in the last 12

P = (12*11*...*5*4*3)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 3.81e-12

and that they were in the last 11

P = (11*10*...*5*4*3*2)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 6.35e-13

and that th

Re: What does the MGA accomplish?

On 5/11/2015 11:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

meekerdb wrote:

On 5/11/2015 6:54 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

meekerdb wrote:

On 5/11/2015 12:14 AM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 07 May 2015, at 14:45, Bruce Kellett wrote:

..
Now, having read this many times, and looked at the other summaries of the MGA, I
still feel that something crucial is missing. We go from the situation where we
remove more and more of the original 'brain', replacing the removed functionality
by the projections from the movie, which, it is agreed, does not alter the
conscious experience of the first person involved, to the conclusion that the
physical brain is entirely unnecessary; indeed, irrelevant.

Hmm... On the contrary: the brain is necessary. It is the primitive physicalness of
the brain which is not relevant.

That is not what you say in the paper. "Hence, consciousness is not a physical
phenomenon, nor can it be a phenomenon relating to observed matter at all." You go
on to say that the appearance of matter cannot be based on a notion of primitive
matter. But these are different things. Elsewhere you appear to agree that
consciousness does depend on the observed physical brain. In fact, it would be
foolish to deny this given the weight of physical evidence that shows this to be the
case.

Now that I have had a couple of days away from the internet to think about this, and
have read other comments on this thread, I think I understand better the point that
was not clear to me from the COMP(2013) paper. What your intuition claims to be
absurd in the MGA is that replaying the film can instantiate consciousness. The
reason for this is based on your belief that replaying the film is not a
computation, and since the basic assumption is of comp is that consciousness is
Turing emulable -- is in fact a computation -- we cannot have consciousness without
the associated computation.

I think this obfuscates the point. One says yes to the doctor not because one's
conscious thought is a computation, but rather because the doctor proposes to replace
part of your brain with something that will perform ALL the computations that part of
the brain could do. It is not that consciousness is a computation, rather it is a
class of computations that will map all possible (not just actual) environmental
inputs into outputs. And that's why a recording is ruled out - whether it would be
conscious or not; it is not counterfactually adequate.

The recording is not supposed to instantiate a fully conscious person, capable of
actiang normally in a changeable environment. All is was ever presumed to do was
replace just the one conscious moment (or string of moments) that were originally
recorded. This whole argumetn about counterfactual correctness is a total red herring.

Why? Have you proven that consciousness supervenes on a record?

Have you proven that it does not?

No, but I have a lot of evidence it supervenes on brain /*processes*/. Reducing that to
/*states*/ is a further assumption.

The assumption of the argument was that consciousness supervenes on the brain state.

That's not the same as saying yes to the doctor. It's your added interpretation that
consciousness supervenes on a brain state as opposed to a brain process that constitutes a
computation. Bruno, who made the argument, I think is relying on the latter.

If that is the case, then reproducing the brain state reproduces the consciousness. (Not
a brain replacement, but the consciousness of that recorded moment or moments.)

The claim that the film (and projection) is not a computation is thus false.

No, I think it's true because it's not counterfactually correct. Whether you call it
a computation or just and look-up table is, as Russell points out, a matter of
intuition about size. How many counterfactuals must it deal with? Whether the
ultrafinitism is true or not, our theory of the world and consciousness should not
depend on there being infinities. So within ultrafinitism all TM's can be replaced
by lookup tables. Or looked at the other way around, a sufficiently enormous lookup
table is a computer.

As stated above, counterfactual correctness is not required to reproduce just the one
original conscious moment.

But how do you know this. Consciousness is somewhat mysterious. Bruno starts with idea
that you can replace part of the brain with something that is I/O functionally
identical. Saying yes to this doesn't commit you saying that a recording is
functionally identical.

You are conflating two issues. "Yes Doctor" is not about recordings, but fully
functional general computers that can reproduce all the functions of your brain. We are
talking here about a recording of one set of conscious moments.

You would very likely only say yes if the device were counterfactually correct for at
least a large range of inputs. So it certainly doesn't follow from "saying yes to the
doctor" that yo

Re: My comments on "The Movie Graph Argument Revisited" by Russell Standish

2015-05-12 Thread John Clark

On Mon, May 11, 2015  Russell Standish  wrote:

>
> >  I should have written "No free will <= deterministic behaviour."
> (<= means "entailed by", not ≤).
> Nondeterministic systems needn't have free will.
>

You say that no free will is caused by deterministic behavior, and
nondeterminism (randomness) need not have free will, so now that you've
told me what free will isn't it might be nice if you told me what in the
world "free will" is.  Then after we agree on what the term means we can
debate if human beings or computers or anything has this property or not.

> > Og was seeing, and Laplace's daemon, which operates in a deterministic
> setting.
>

As I said before, if the daemon tells Og what his prediction of Og's
behavior will be the situation is not deterministic, or at least it can not
be determined by the daemon, for that you'd need a mega-daemon. And then
things iterate.

  John K Clark

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Re: My comments on "The Movie Graph Argument Revisited" by Russell Standish

2015-05-12 Thread John Clark

On Mon, May 11, 2015  John Mikes  wrote:

>>  Russell: wrote :
>> *"...No free will = deterministic behaviour..." *
>
>
> > I would not equal the two in my agnostic views. There are lots of (known
> as well, as unknow/unknowable) inputs a/effecting our decisionmaking.
>

It's irrelevant if we know what they are or not, if something is effecting
our behavior then obviously cause and effect is in play and things are
deterministic.

  John K Clark

>
>>

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Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"

Follow up,

I just received this news item in my email-


The WashingtonPost..  NEWS FLASH The Arctic Ocean is warming up. 

The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some 
placesthe seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the 
CommerceDepartment yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway. 

Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radicalchange 
in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arcticzone. 
Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as farnorth 
as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed thegulf 
stream still very warm. 

Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, 
thereport continued, while at many points well known glaciers have 
entirelydisappeared. 

Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while 
vastshoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, 
arebeing encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. 

Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise 
andmake most coastal cities uninhabitable. 

* * * * * * * * * 

I must apologize, I neglected to mention that this report was fromNovember 2, 
1922, as reported by the AP and published in The Washington Post -93 years ago.


 

 

 

-Original Message-
From: spudboy100 via Everything List 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Tue, May 12, 2015 6:04 am
Subject: Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"


 Well your eyes must be very old indeed, because methane releases go back at 
least 55 million years, when the great warming occurred and did change the 
climate. Moreover, what are you advocating for a fix for this dilemma? This is 
where X crosses Y.

   
   

   
   

   
   
-Original Message-   
 From: LizR
 To: everything-list
 Sent: Tue, May 12, 2015 12:16 am   
 Subject: Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"   


 
  
   
 On 11 May 2015 at 15:04, spudboy100 via Everything List
 wrote:

 Hmmm. He does present a graph, but looking at the weather over 20 plus years, 
climate catastrophe as they now call it, is not happening. The cause and effect 
preached by the progressive intelligensia, or nomeklatura, is not occuring. 
What climate schmucks are peddling, is something once said by philosopher, 
Groucho Marx, who said: "who are you going to believe, me, or your own two 
eyes?"   
 
 

 But it is happening, as Brent's graphs (plus thousands of scientific 
measurements, hundreds of articles, etc) illustrate. The fact that it isn't yet 
a "catastrophe" is down to the scale of the phenomena involved. You appear to 
be expecting a cartoon version of events, and when it doesn't arrive (within a 
ridiculously short timespan, to boot) saying that therefore it isn't happening. 
(Or something like that - it's always hard to tell exactly what you're saying, 
due to the weird political slant you put on everything.)

 


 But since you've given me the choice, I guess I'm going to have to believe my 
own eyes. I've seen plenty of evidence for higher temperatures, melting ice, 
methane bubbling out of the sea, violent storms, low-lying islands being 
swamped ... yep, the eyes have it.

 

   
  
 
 
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Re: My comments on "The Movie Graph Argument Revisited" by Russell Standish



On 10 May 2015, at 23:29, LizR wrote:


On 11 May 2015 at 04:24, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

You make me say something ridiculous, when I just use a theorem in  
elementary computer science.


It's called a straw man argument. It's often a lot easier to attack  
a position you don't hold than the one you do, so people often put  
words into your mouth, then attack the perceived position.


It is sad that I got this as only critics. (Except rarely some real  
critics which have been able to improve or correct some points).


Up to now, the problems are only with people not reading the work.  
Never has any problem with those who study the work, and that's how I  
got the PHD, except from those who simply disbelieved the "well known  
facts" in some of the field crossed.


here too, I realize that some people does just not know what a  
computation is, in the sense of Church-Turing. I could make new  
attempts to clarify this, but I do suppose people can buy some book  
too, and makes some home works, before saying negative things on what  
they cannot understand without being more familiar with such notions.


bruno






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



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Re: The dovetailer disassembled

On 12 May 2015, at 10:55, LizR wrote:

On 12 May 2015 at 17:36, Russell Standish   
wrote:

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 04:28:16PM +1200, LizR wrote:
> On 12 May 2015 at 15:18, Russell Standish   
wrote:

>
> > On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 03:06:49PM +1200, LizR wrote:
> > > On 12 May 2015 at 14:14, Russell Standish  
 wrote:

> > >
> > > >
> > > > Why would we assume that it wouldn't make a difference? That  
has never

> > > > been made clear.
> > > >
> > > > For the same reason the calculator repeats the same  
calculation given

> > the
> > > same starting state and inputs. This is surely inherent in the  
nature of
> > > computation? It doesn't matter how large (or small) the  
computation is,
> > > it's deterministic (unless the machine breaks down) and should  
behave in

> > > exactly the same way on each run.
> >
> > They are different computations, so by comp supervenience, the  
quales

> > could be different, or they might not.
> >
> > You mean they are different computations because they occur at  
different
> times? Everything else is identical, to start with (in the first  
stage of

> the MGA, I mean - we only convert the computation being rerun into a
> recording one step at a time, I think, so before we can get  
anywhere we
> have to agree that the first step works, which is just to re-run  
the same
> computation using recorded inputs. But so far there doesn't even  
seem to be

> agreement on that, unless I've misunderstood.)

The recording is a distinctly different computation, because they do
not behave identically on all counterfactuals.

We may be at cross purposes then. I was talking about rerunning the  
computation with recorded inputs, not running a recording of the  
computation.

If we're talking about whether a recording of a computation is not  
the same computation, then I agree. But now I'm not sure where you  
stand on the MGA (well, OK, I am fairly sure, because you've told me  
before - but for the purposes of the present discussion, I've got a  
bit lost).

Somewhere along the line, someone (Bruce, I think) purported to show  
that the MGA doesn't show anything useful, or at least that it  
didn't show what Bruno claimed. But now I seem to have lost track of  
why that was. I thought we were talking about the first step in the  
MGA, which I think is rerunning the computation with the same (or  
same lack of) inputs and seeing that it produces the same output  
(i.e. the same stream of consciousness). If we agree that it does,  
according to physical supervenience, we can then move on to the next  
step, which is to begin converting it from a computation into a  
recording.

I think. Or maybe I just need to forget this sort of thing and have  
a large glass of wine.

In vino veritas! That can work but some plants are much more  
efficacious, cheap and non toxic!

;-)

I am a bit lost too. people makes critics on points without seeing if  
the critics is relevant. As I want to avoid the 1004 fallacy, I make  
precise and rigorous only what is needed to proceed validly. But then  
people must go through all the reasoning, before cutting the air for  
nothing, I think.

Bruno

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Re: The dovetailer disassembled



On 12 May 2015, at 07:36, Russell Standish wrote:


On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 04:28:16PM +1200, LizR wrote:
On 12 May 2015 at 15:18, Russell Standish   
wrote:



On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 03:06:49PM +1200, LizR wrote:
On 12 May 2015 at 14:14, Russell Standish   
wrote:




Why would we assume that it wouldn't make a difference? That has  
never

been made clear.

For the same reason the calculator repeats the same calculation  
given

the
same starting state and inputs. This is surely inherent in the  
nature of
computation? It doesn't matter how large (or small) the  
computation is,
it's deterministic (unless the machine breaks down) and should  
behave in

exactly the same way on each run.


They are different computations, so by comp supervenience, the  
quales

could be different, or they might not.

You mean they are different computations because they occur at  
different
times? Everything else is identical, to start with (in the first  
stage of

the MGA, I mean - we only convert the computation being rerun into a
recording one step at a time, I think, so before we can get  
anywhere we
have to agree that the first step works, which is just to re-run  
the same
computation using recorded inputs. But so far there doesn't even  
seem to be

agreement on that, unless I've misunderstood.)



The recording is a distinctly different computation, because they do
not behave identically on all counterfactuals.


And that is all what is needed in the MGA to proceed.

Bruno






I didn't understand what you meant about the quale. Which systems  
are you

referring to?


The observer and its environment. It is plausible that all observers
observe something, or all quales are about something. I'm suggesting
that could give leverage into asserting that a constant computation
(the type that a recording is) cannot instantiate a conscious  
moment.




OK, I think I see. Although I don't see that a recording is even a  
constant
computation (or only to the extent that everything is, assuming  
physics is).




It is a constant because it produces the same result on all
inputs. Think constant function - like the function f(x)=1.

Cheers


--


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


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Re: The dovetailer disassembled

On 12 May 2015, at 06:57, meekerdb wrote:

On 5/11/2015 9:28 PM, LizR wrote:
On 12 May 2015 at 15:18, Russell Standish   
wrote:

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 03:06:49PM +1200, LizR wrote:
> On 12 May 2015 at 14:14, Russell Standish   
wrote:

>
> >
> > Why would we assume that it wouldn't make a difference? That  
has never

> > been made clear.
> >
> > For the same reason the calculator repeats the same calculation  
given the
> same starting state and inputs. This is surely inherent in the  
nature of
> computation? It doesn't matter how large (or small) the  
computation is,
> it's deterministic (unless the machine breaks down) and should  
behave in

> exactly the same way on each run.

They are different computations, so by comp supervenience, the quales
could be different, or they might not.

You mean they are different computations because they occur at  
different times?

I'm confused by this.  Bruno introduce computations as brain  
replacements saying it meant having the same functional I/O behavior.

For the basic computations, made at the substitution level. Not just  
the I/O of the entity (in which case the program nothing would  
impelment all dreams).

But then later he has insisted it is not just the I/O, but the  
sequence of steps in the computation.

Which needs the i/o of the basic elementary which defines the relevant  
computations at the relevant description level.

That would mean that 2+2=4 is different from 2+2+5-5=9-5=4.  Are  
those different in Platonia?

As computation yes. As statement about numbers, it depends what you  
mean.

Maybe it would be clearer if we referred to computational processes;  
so both the above would be the same computation, 2+2=4, but  
different computational processes.

2 + 2 = 4 is just a statement about something. Computation =  
computational process (in the sense of the intensional Church thesis).

  And then suppose that consciousness supervenes on computational  
processes.

Computation means computational process. If not we talk about the  
relation or function computed, and not of the computation itself.

As I said, a computation is a sequence of comp states, bring out by  
some universal numbers. Any sequence of states which does not invoke  
the universal system doing the acomputation is a description of a  
computation, and not a computation, which is really a dynamical  
relation (defined in arithmeoc, wih the main clock being given by the  
successor relation on the natural numbers: it is block-dynamical.

Bruno

Brent

Everything else is identical, to start with (in the first stage of  
the MGA, I mean - we only convert the computation being rerun into  
a recording one step at a time, I think, so before we can get  
anywhere we have to agree that the first step works, which is just  
to re-run the same computation using recorded inputs. But so far  
there doesn't even seem to be agreement on that, unless I've  
misunderstood.)

> I didn't understand what you meant about the quale. Which systems  
are you

> referring to?

The observer and its environment. It is plausible that all observers
observe something, or all quales are about something. I'm suggesting
that could give leverage into asserting that a constant computation
(the type that a recording is) cannot instantiate a conscious moment.

OK, I think I see. Although I don't see that a recording is even a  
constant computation (or only to the extent that everything is,  
assuming physics is).

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Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!



On 05 May 2015, at 13:30, Telmo Menezes wrote:


Hi Mitch,

On Mon, May 4, 2015 at 4:00 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List > wrote:
Totally agree, Telmo, regarding communication. On the Bostrom  
concept of Sims and, by extension, our reality being a sim, I like  
the concept, but in a way, it seems too simple, Rather than life  
being an illusion, let us conceive that its the result of a great  
program running and producing us as a result.


If comp is correct, you need to take the infinities of the programs,  
to get the lmatter rright. This is all what I explained in this list.


Bruno




Moreover, our program can be either revised, copied, or both, etc.  
This is one reason professor, Eric Steinhart's work seems compelling  
to me. The following summary is available from his book, Your  
Digital Afterlives, but here is a taste, from Steinhart's website-


http://ericsteinhart.com/FLESH/flesh-chabs.html

I will have to read this more carefully, but I think I get the gist  
of it. Most of the ideas are not new to me, and correspond to things  
that I enjoy thinking about myself.


I have gone through several revisions of my belief system about  
these topics, so it's likely that I can be convinced by good, new  
ideas.


Just in case you don't know, I really enjoyed this book at some point:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Never-Ending-Days-Being-Dead/dp/0571220568

It's mostly a sampler of theories on these topics, and some have  
already been falsified (like the omega point, I believe).




The best of these theories is Promotion, but Steinhart views his own  
idea as flawed, because he wants it to be progressive rather then  
regressive. I don't see the logical regression he seemed concerned  
about, He did come up with Revision theory, as workable, however,  
these are merely, better-off clones of ourselves, and miss the  
continuity, that infers identity. Promotion is better, because it  
does exactly this, via pipelines, processes, data transfers, as well  
as uploading and teleportation.


Ok, I have no problem with any of this stuff. I will try to  
summarize how my current view of things intersects with these topics.


I think immortality is a given. I suspect we are all versions of the  
same thing (as conscious entities) and that all moments are eternal.  
I think the perception of a time line arises inside each eternal  
observer moment.


What does not appear possible, at the moment, is to have very long  
"story lines". I cannot be Telmo for a time span of many centuries  
(disregarding Quantum Immortality issues). It would be nice if we  
could do that. I think there is potentially great value in having  
human being that extend their personal development way beyond our  
biological limitations.


So the issue becomes: how to preserve a set of memories and transfer  
them to another medium, so that we can extend story lines? This  
could take the form of Promotion, trans-humanism, mind uploading,  
who know what else...


I would just say that the story lines problem is somewhat tangencial  
to the simulated reality problem.


Sorry if I'm rambling, I don't have a lot of time at the moment...

This is one reason I want to see if Ben Goetzel has an afterlife- 
resurrection theory, because they both appeared to have come to the  
same conclusions, independently,  on several other concepts.


Steinhart, like Goetzel, is a computationalist (digitalist) - (5  
minute video)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfDB35y-5Z0

I am mostly ok with this video. My only objection is that time must  
not exist in the maximally simple universe, so thinking about  
causality between universes seems problematic. This is part of what  
attracts me to Platonia and this list: the idea that everything  
already exists, and what is called causality is just structure.




Please let me know if you uncover anything concerning Ben Goetzel's  
views. Thanks.


The AGI conference is going to be in my city in the end of July. I  
am not sure I will be able to attend, but if I can I will try to ask  
Ben in person.


Telmo.


Mitch


-Original Message-
From: Telmo Menezes 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Mon, May 4, 2015 9:08 am
Subject: Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!



On Mon, May 4, 2015 at 1:08 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List > wrote:
I sure did, Telmo. Scroll to the bottom and you shall view my last,  
number 26th, the last one.


Ah there you are! And you are not the only one from this list  
commenting there, it's a small world.


My bet on computational after-lives is that we are in one already  
(an infinity of times), but this is completely transparent to us.


This kind of thing is interesting to me. I tend toward the  
materialist stuff since it seems to have potential. The mentalist  
stuff seems unreliable because people who have NDE's or trances have  
not come back with information.


I would say that the important distinction is between communicable  
and non-communicable st

Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!



On 05 May 2015, at 02:01, meekerdb wrote:


On 5/4/2015 11:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 04 May 2015, at 15:08, Telmo Menezes wrote:




On Mon, May 4, 2015 at 1:08 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List > wrote:
I sure did, Telmo. Scroll to the bottom and you shall view my  
last, number 26th, the last one.


Ah there you are! And you are not the only one from this list  
commenting there, it's a small world.


My bet on computational after-lives is that we are in one already  
(an infinity of times), but this is completely transparent to us.


This kind of thing is interesting to me. I tend toward the  
materialist stuff since it seems to have potential. The mentalist  
stuff seems unreliable because people who have NDE's or trances  
have not come back with information.


I would say that the important distinction is between communicable  
and non-communicable stuff. Science is about communicable stuff,  
but there is personal value in exploring the internal world --  
although it won't get you a nobel prize or even any sort of  
recognition.


This is because there is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics (not  
mentioning Theology).


But you can have the Nobel prize of literature, and some text does  
indeed quasi-succeed, perhaps, in communication a bit of the  
uncommunicable. Then you can communicate a part conditionally, like  
if I am consistent then I can't justify that I am consistent, and  
the inetnsional variants.


Bruno


You can get a Templeton, which is for merging science and religion  
and is worth  more than a Nobel.


If I found the time I might submit a paper at a colloqium on mind and  
machine, organized by CIE and Templeton. I do not forget your text. I  
got idea, and I think it will be a good test to see if Templeton is  
open to the greek mode of doing theology, or not.


Bruno




Brent

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Occulus (was Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!



On 05 May 2015, at 00:43, meekerdb wrote:


On 5/4/2015 11:32 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 04 May 2015, at 10:23, Telmo Menezes wrote:




On Sun, May 3, 2015 at 10:08 PM, LizR  wrote:
On 4 May 2015 at 06:45, Telmo Menezes   
wrote:


Of course believing in the supernatural is absurd -- what does  
that even mean? If, for example, ghosts were real, then this would  
just mean that current scientific theories are incomplete or wrong.


That would just mean the terminology isn't very good. It would be  
more accurate to say you do (or don't) believe in ghosts.


That's a good point.
Of course the non-materialist deals with ontological problems. Do  
entities perceived under the influence of psychoactive drugs exist  
in some sense?



At Iridia, there has been a talk and demo of Virtual Reality. I  
have been very often disappointed, but this time I have been quite  
impressed. They have solved the main problems, and the immersion  
feeling was quite realist, in all direction where you looked,  
without any screen border, and perfect real time synchronization  
for any type of the move of your head or eyes.


Does this involve wearing 3D display goggles such as Occulus Rift?


Yes. I saw 'Occulus' written on the device, (but not Rift).



https://www.oculus.com/

My son has created a video game, "Homesick", of the exploration/ 
puzzle genre, which will be available for Occulus.  I tried out  
their goggles and the experience is quite realistic in terms of  
looking around.  In a test at a video game exhibition many people  
trying them could not bring themselves to step off a virtual cliff.


Wonderful! I really would like to buy such Occulus goggles, but more  
to make amazing experience than playing game.  But video-games is the  
main accelerator in the VR field.


Bruno






Brent

In one demo there was a creature, was it real? Those things are  
relatively real. Like in personal nocturnal dream, or when reading  
a novel, and with comp, like with physicalism, there is a physical  
reality, which is a priori different from a machine (as it is a sum  
of the work of all machine) "acting" below our substitution level.  
In arithmetic, one virtual reality is less virtual than all the  
others, as it has the "correct" comp bottom. That define a notion  
of "physically real", and most entities perceived in inebriated  
state are very often not physically real. But they might still be  
images of important routine operating in the brain of a large class  
of possible subject, and be entities living on alternate reality  
planes, but still there by Turing-Universal + FPI.


Virtual reality might help people for the thought experiences, and  
many (new) things.


But in the long run, we have to be careful, as the poor might one  
day not afford visiting a non virtual reality. If we don't think a  
bit, we might end up all in brains in vats.


Bruno






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Re: My comments on "The Movie Graph Argument Revisited" by Russell Standish



On 11 May 2015, at 18:41, John Clark wrote:


On Sun, May 10, 2015  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> Russell is right. The modern conception of free-will is  
deterministic behavior.


 Then a cuckoo clock has free will.


Free will needs determinacy, but dterminacy does not need free-will.
You confused p -> q with q -> p.

bruno





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Re: My comments on "The Movie Graph Argument Revisited" by Russell Standish

On 11 May 2015, at 18:27, John Clark wrote:

On Sun, May 10, 2015  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> You confuse the notion of computation discovered by the  
mathematicians,

In other words simplified approximations that describe  how matter  
and the laws of physics can make real computations.

You would get a bad notes to any exam in computer science. You like to  
cite Turing, but have never read it.

> with the notion of physical implementation of computation.

In other words real computations that produce real outputs.

I guess you are still advocate of the devil. Not a good one.

I am not confused, I fully understand that those are two different  
things.

Yes; eventually one is described by p, []p ... and the others are  
described by []p & p, []p & <>t, []p & <>t & p.

Comp explains why there are different, and this by assuming (in the  
metaphysical theory, or theology) no more than Robinson arithmetic. It  
looks like you do assume physicalism, which might not help you to  
understand what we talk about. You need to understand that the modern  
post-Turing notion of computation does not assume anything in physics.  
It needs to assume nor more than Robinson Arithmetic.

If anyone is willing to play the role of candid, I can explain all  
details.

Bruno

 John K Clark

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Re: My comments on "The Movie Graph Argument Revisited" by Russell Standish

On 11 May 2015, at 18:10, John Clark wrote:

On Sun, May 10, 2015 Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>>  What computer scientists like Turing and others have proven is  
that if matter is organized in a X manner then computations Y can be  
performed, but nobody, absolutely positively NOBODY has come withing  
a billion light years of figuring out how to add 1+1 without using  
matter and the laws of physics.

> What Turing & Al have proven is that the arithmetical reality  
emulates all computation.

No, what they proved is that physical reality can emulate arithmetic;

False. Just read the original paper of Church, Post, Turing, Kleene,  
please. They don't mention physics at all.
BTW, they prove that the arithmetical reality is NOT emulable by  
anything. the computable is only a quite tiny part of arithmetic.

and one sort of physical reality, like a electronic computer, can  
emulate another sort of physical reality, like a galaxy, but we have  
no evidence that arithmetic can emulate anything.

The proof is in all textbooks (Epstein & Carnielli, or Boolos and  
Jeffrey, makes it with some detail. Matiyasevich shows that the  
diophantine polynomial are enough for this. See his book to see how  
such polynomials emulate register machines.

> You can use this in the physical reality because we have good  
evidence that the physical reality is Turing universal.

You can ONLY use this in physical reality because that is the only  
thing we know of that is Turing universal;

This is ridiculous. It shows that you are completely ignorant of  
computer science. The sigma_1 arithmetical reality is Turing  
universal. Robinson arithmetic is Turing universal.

That arithmetic emulates all UMs has been proven. It is part of the  
basics, which does not mean it is simple to do, especially in a mail  
list.

that's the reason computer hardware companies have manufacturing  
costs that are not zero, and that's the only reason.

No, the reason is that they want buy physical computer, to enacted the  
computation relatively to our physical reality. But the physical  
reality is used only for that relative manifestation, like the  
duplicated brain. That does not make the computation in arithmetic  
disappearing.

> The fact that you need a physical computer, or a brain, to enacted  
computation relatively to the physical reality is not an argument  
that the computation, notably those related to us, is not due to the  
one done in arithmetic

I disagree, I think it's an excellent argument that arithmetic  
without matter that obeys the laws of physics can't do anything, in  
fact it would be hard to imagine a stronger argument.

Invalid argument, of the type "I understand the point, but I will  
continue to say that the real thing is that God made it".

(once you agree that 2+2=4 is a simpole truth on which we can agree  
on).

We may agree on that but Godel and Turing tell us that there are an  
infinite number of mathematical statements we will NEVER agree on,

They don't say that. They say that for all consistent machine there  
are statement that they cannot prove.

mathematical statements that even mathematics doesn't know if they  
are true or not.

By definition, math "knows" the truth of the statement. You confuse  
again the mathematical reality and the mathematical theories.

And since there is no way for ANYTHING to separate all true  
statements from all false statements even Platonia contains an  
infinite amount of Bullshit.

bruno

  John K Clark

Bruno

 John K Clark

 but to show a computation, we need to go through descriptions, and  
between physical being, we will use the physical means.

That confusion level error that I want to prevent here would be the  
same as a guy saying that neurophysiology is absurd because all the  
theories on how the brain might function are using brain!

On 09 May 2015, at 02:42, Russell Standish wrote:

On Fri, May 08, 2015 at 03:45:53PM -0400, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, May 7, 2015  Russell Standish  wrote:

In the case of chaotic systems (or Og for that matter), a
hypothetical Laplace daemon could simulate the system using exact
initial conditions

Even if we ignore Quantum Mechanics that would still be untrue  
because
today we know something that Laplace did not: even very small  
changes in
initial conditions can increase the number of calculations required  
to make
a prediction enormously, it will increase them to infinity if space  
or time
is continuous.  And today we know that even in theory it takes time  
and
energy to make a calculation, and the faster you make it the more  
energy
you need. If you calculate too slowly the event you're trying to  
predict
will have already happened before you finish, and if you calculate  
too

quickly you produce so much waste heat you'll alter the system you're
trying to predict.

That is an interesting objection, but not one that's really relevant
to the ca

Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"

On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 11:18 PM, LizR  wrote:

> On 11 May 2015 at 17:39, Samiya Illias  wrote:
>
>> European Space Agency (ESA) has this to report about Glacial Melt:
>> http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/GOCE/GOCE_reveals_gravity_dip_from_ice_loss
>>
>> What does this mean for Global Warming?
>>
>
> Well, it means it's happening, it's not 100% predictable by humans (no
> surprise really), and we should really do something about it before it's
> too late.
>
> The $64,000 question being - what?
>

I came across this report while trying to comprehend a verse of the Quran
which foretells the heating of the seas. This might be of interest:
http://signsandscience.blogspot.com/2014/10/when-seas-boil.html

Samiya

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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?



On 12 May 2015, at 03:54, Bruce Kellett wrote:


Brent wrote
Primitive matter is a strawman.  No one I've know, even Vic  
Stenger, has held that matter is anything more than the ontology of  
one's theory of physics.  Physicist make different models and some  
have field ontologies, some have spacetime, some have particles.   
So "matter" is just whatever the model says it is.  If the world is  
made of computations then we could call computations "matter".


I agree, and it is probably important to point out that nowhere does  
Bruno's argument say anything substantial, one way or another, about  
primitive matter. Lots of claims, but no substantive arguments.


All claims are justified. You need to quote the arguments and say what  
is wrong with them. "no substantive argument" is not an argument, as  
the whole work is intended (at the least) as an argument, indeed that  
there is a problem to solve with comp, and to solve in thisparticular  
way if we don't want to eliminate consciousness.


Negative remark needs argument, and here you are the one making a  
claim without showing what is wrong.


And neither matter nor consciousness is made of computations. Both are  
are (real) subjective 1p statistical appearances of subject  
implemented (infinitely often) by the UD or the sigma_1 relations in  
arithmetic.


Bruno

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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?



On 12 May 2015, at 09:01, Bruce Kellett wrote:


Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 11 May 2015, at 09:14, Bruce Kellett wrote:

Bruno Marchal wrote:
Hmm... On the contrary: the brain is necessary. It is the  
primitive physicalness of the brain which is not relevant.


That is not what you say in the paper. "Hence, consciousness is  
not a physical phenomenon, nor can it be a phenomenon relating to  
observed matter at all."
That is in the context of keeping physical supervenience, to go  
toward the absurdity.
The brain is necessary, like all universal and non universal  
numbers in the relevant relations.
It is just hat the "physical brains" are the result of the FPI on  
an infinity of computations.


As I said to Brent, if consciousness supervenes on physical brains,  
and all the evidence says that it does, and consciousness is to come  
from the dovetailer states, then so do all the physical laws that  
describe the operation of the physical brain -- not from some  
different set of dovetailer states,


The infinity of equivalent state (which can be different below the  
substitution level).





but from the *same* states.


So: equivalent (from my first person points of view).



And if these laws are to be consistent across the whole observable  
universe for all observable time, then all of these, and all other  
existing and previously existing consciousnesses, must come from  
*exactly the same* set of dovetailer states. You can't pick subsets  
of states to give one bit and other subsets to give different bits  
because you could not in this way ensure consistency.


OK. No problem with this.




Only one state is then needed, or at most a set of states of zero  
measure in the sum. All other states would not be consistent with  
what is observed. The FPI of quantum MWI is also a deterministic  
result -- Everettian QM follows from a deterministic physical law,  
so it must come from consistent states -- not just a random  
assortment.


Given this, the MGA appears to be irrelevant to the main argument,  
whether the MGA is valid or not becomes unimportant. It does not  
support the idea that primitive matter can be ruled out. It cannot  
support the idea that physical supervenience is false, since we know  
that it is not. So what does the MGA accomplish?




I reduce the mind-body problem to the problem of explaining the  
belief by machine in bodies, using as theory of mind  
computationalism + computer science.
You go on to say that the appearance of matter cannot be based on  
a notion of primitive matter.
Yes. When assuming comp, with comp in the sense of Church-Turing.  
(Not in the sense of some notion of physical computation, which I  
consider as a physical implementation of a computation)


But primitive matter, and the concept of such, does not appear in  
the argument, so you have not eliminated the possibility of  
primitive matter.


Primitive matter is supposed by the one want who does the  
ultrafinistic-physicalist move to avpoid the physics:arithmetic  
reversal of the step 7.


The MGA makes not just primitive matter into a problem, but  
physicalism too.


I recall that "primitive" here means only: "as to be assumed", or  
"cannot be derived from other assumption".





Not that physics necessarily believes in primitive matter, either.  
Physicists usually assumes a stance of scientific realism, which is  
just the assumption that the nature and laws of the external world,  
whatever they are, are independent of us. The purpose of science is  
then to explore the observed world and elucidate the laws that  
govern the behaviour we observe. The, as Brent often says, the  
fundamental ontology is theory dependent; it is liable to change as  
we replace theories by more successful ones. Few people assume that  
'matter', in some undefined sense, is the primitive 'ur-stuff' of  
the universe.


Indeed, and few physicists have a problem with UDA, nor logicians.  
Only physicalists, materialist, naturalist, etc.


Comp does not suggest to change anything in physics. Indeed, the point  
is that we can use physics to test computationalism.


The work is really a work in theology, and it shows that Aristotle  
theology, with primary matter and its naturalistic metaphysics does no  
more work, and that we are led to a theology of the type of Playo,  
where the physical reality arise from something else (a point made,  
from physical reason by Wheeler, but I extract it more constructively,  
from comp and cognitive fundamental science.


Physics does not change, but metaphysics change, and physics is no  
more the fundamental science, as it is a consequence of machine's  
theology, itself branch of computer science, itself branch of  
arithmetic.


We get a scheme of TOEs. Any first order specification of a (Church- 
Turing) universal system will do, and physics is shown machine  
"theory" independent. AUDA, the mathematical translation of UDA, shows  
how this can work (and actually does w

Re: What does the MGA accomplish?



On 12 May 2015, at 02:33, Bruce Kellett wrote:


LizR wrote:
On 11 May 2015 at 19:14, Bruce Kellett  
supervenience cannot be ruled out,

   then the way is open for primitive physicality. The comp argument,
   which claims that the appearance of the physical can be extracted
   from the UD running in Platonia, has no greater claim to credence
   than the physicalist's claim that mathematics is a human  
invention,

   extracted from our experience of the physical world.
The choice is actually between whether a recording can instantiate  
computation and hence consciousness, or not (assuming, as usual  
during this discussion, that consciousness exists and is Turing  
emulable, which I believe means it doesn't contain oracles,  
hypercomputers, etc). If a recording can instantiate consciousness  
then physical supervenience, far from failing, is in fact  
strengthened, in that consciousness can supervene on more things  
than we imagined it could.


Yes, that seems to be what would be implied.

   The choice between these might reduce to nothing more than  
personal

   preference.
Yes, although ISTM that a recording doesn't perform a general- 
purpose computation, but only - at most - a specific one. But given  
determinism, I'm not sure whether that matters or not.


The fact that projecting the film isn't a general purpose computer  
seems to me to be a red herring. It was never claimed that  
projecting the film of the brain substrate instantiated general  
consciousness -- the only claim ever made here is that this  
projection recreates the conscious moment that was originally  
filmed. That is all that is required. General purpose computing and  
counterfactual correctness are all beside the point. If the original  
conscious moment is recreated, then the film is a computation in any  
sense that is necessary to produce a conscious moment. This is  
sufficient to undermine the claim that consciousness does not  
supervene on the physical body.


The matter of whether the physical is primitive or not is also a red  
herring. No such assumption is required in order to show that the  
MGA fails to prove its point.


It is a reductio ad absurdum. If consciousnesss requires the physical  
activity and only the physical activity, then the recording is  
conscious. But anyone knowing what is a computation should understand  
that the recording does not compute more than a trivial sequence of  
projection, which is not similar to the computation of the boolean  
graph.


Bruno




Bruce

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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?



On 12 May 2015, at 02:24, Russell Standish wrote:


On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 11:29:05AM +1200, LizR wrote:



Yes, although ISTM that a recording doesn't perform a general-purpose
computation, but only - at most - a specific one. But given  
determinism,

I'm not sure whether that matters or not.



Yes, of course a recording is quite a specific (or restricted) sort of
computation, as I have mentioned. The trouble is that without a more
refined understanding of what consciousness is, we cannot just
sweepingly state that it is not a conscious recording.


We need only to understand that the recording of the computation X  
does not incarnate the computation X, for the argument to go through.


Bruno




I suspect the way to do so is to mount an argument along the lines
Brent point out - that a consciousness needs to be aware of something
(which we can call the environment for the sake of fixing terms),
and to be aware of that something requires being responsive to
the counterfactual nature of the environment, which a recording
clearly isn't.

Something along those lines is needed, otherwise the MGA is simply an
appeal to intuition, a rhetorical argument, as it were.


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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?



On 12 May 2015, at 02:01, Russell Standish wrote:


On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 10:36:55AM -0700, meekerdb wrote:

On 5/11/2015 12:14 AM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

Bruno Marchal wrote:


I think this obfuscates the point.  One says yes to the doctor not
because one's conscious thought is a computation, but rather because
the doctor proposes to replace part of your brain with something
that will perform ALL the computations that part of the brain could
do.  It is not that consciousness is a computation, rather it is a
class of computations that will map all possible (not just actual)
environmental inputs into outputs.  And that's why a recording is
ruled out - whether it would be conscious or not; it is not
counterfactually adequate.



I do think this insight is important, but it does require more
explicit treatment than simple dismissal along the lines of "a  
recording

is not a computation".


Of course we always meant: a recording of a computation X is not equal  
to the computation X.
That a recording can be seen as a computation of something else is not  
relevant.







Whether the ultrafinitism is
true or not, our theory of the world and consciousness should not
depend on there being infinities.  So within ultrafinitism all TM's
can be replaced by lookup tables.  Or looked at the other way
around, a sufficiently enormous lookup table is a computer.



Well, as Bruno points out, a lookup table can never be universal. What
is true is that a lookup table can replace any program that halts, and
the lookup table size is bounded by an exponential function of
whatever bound you wish to apply to the number of steps the program
must halt within. Within ultrafinitism, too, there cannot be lookup  
tables

for all TMs because of this exponential relationship.



But the interesting thing about Bruno's theory is that it proposes a
solution to the mind-body problem by making both of them
computations.  Aside from the UD, this is not particularly radical.
If you had an intelligent/conscious AI within a virtual environment
then the consciousness of the AI would be relative to that
environment and both of them would be computations.  Bruno proposes
that the relation can be expressed in terms of what the AI would
"believe", i.e. able to prove, about the environment.  I find this
interesting aside from arguments trying to defeat some imaginary
"primitive physicalists".


I'm not entire convinced they are imaginary. I used to think so, but
John Clark is giving an awfully good impersonation of one.


The UD is interesting because it makes
Tegmarks mathematical-universe idea more specific, something you
might be able to draw inferences from.



Exactly. Regardless of truth, it is an interesting model that could
well inform us about the truth. Provided it is tractable, of course,
which so far it has tended not to be  (John Clark's criticism).


No, the UD does not need to be tractable, because the first person are  
not aware of the delays.


John simply cannot understand this, because this needs step 3, 4, 5,  
6, 7.


Bruno





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



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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?



On 12 May 2015, at 01:41, Russell Standish wrote:


On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 07:23:10PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 11 May 2015, at 07:09, Jason Resch wrote:




Perhaps one way of looking at it that makes it more intuitive is
that a mirror implements a recording and playback aparatus. The
farther away it is, the more delayed the playback. But few would
attribute consciousness to  their reflection.


Nice point.

Bruno



A not particularly relevant point, I would think. A reflection such as
that Jason described is not a faithful recording of brain processes. I
don't believe anybody is proposing that the flickering image of
Humphrey Bogart in CasaBlanca is conscious.

Again - the sorts of recordings being discussed are something like an
EEG recording of every neuron in a brain. I still don't think our
intuition can cope with that. The recording needs to be sufficiently
faithful to the original such that playback is physically
indistinguishable from the original process. And need I mention the Z
word at this point.



The point is that the image of the movie in the mirror is as much  
faithful to the boolean circuit than the movie. If the movie is end to  
both W and M, but that in M it is played in front of a mirror; would  
you say that P(M) = 2/3 and P(W) = 1/3?
Then the diameter of the neuron would play a role in the measure, or  
the number of identical procesing, which is already absurd. Of course,  
as other said also, the measure relies only on the possibility of the  
manifestation of consciousness, and there are none in a movie.  
Consciousness requires computations, which requires the  
counterfactuals (and that is different of the actualization of the  
"parallel histories".


Bruno

PS Lot of works, I will comment some posts at the pause-café, from  
time to time.






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



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Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"

Well your eyes must be very old indeed, because methane releases go back at 
least 55 million years, when the great warming occurred and did change the 
climate. Moreover, what are you advocating for a fix for this dilemma? This is 
where X crosses Y. 
 

 

 

-Original Message-
From: LizR 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Tue, May 12, 2015 12:16 am
Subject: Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"


 
  
   
On 11 May 2015 at 15:04, spudboy100 via Everything List 
 wrote:

Hmmm. He does present a graph, but looking at the weather over 20 plus years, 
climate catastrophe as they now call it, is not happening. The cause and effect 
preached by the progressive intelligensia, or nomeklatura, is not occuring. 
What climate schmucks are peddling, is something once said by philosopher, 
Groucho Marx, who said: "who are you going to believe, me, or your own two 
eyes?"   



But it is happening, as Brent's graphs (plus thousands of scientific 
measurements, hundreds of articles, etc) illustrate. The fact that it isn't yet 
a "catastrophe" is down to the scale of the phenomena involved. You appear to 
be expecting a cartoon version of events, and when it doesn't arrive (within a 
ridiculously short timespan, to boot) saying that therefore it isn't happening. 
(Or something like that - it's always hard to tell exactly what you're saying, 
due to the weird political slant you put on everything.)

 


But since you've given me the choice, I guess I'm going to have to believe my 
own eyes. I've seen plenty of evidence for higher temperatures, melting ice, 
methane bubbling out of the sea, violent storms, low-lying islands being 
swamped ... yep, the eyes have it.

 

   
  
 
  
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Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"

Well, the researchers "pretended" that they knew, back then and are still 
advocating regulations rather then new tech, The validity of a science is it's 
ability to predict. I myself, advocate, solar energy and clean energy 
alternative research, Now! People who advocate regulations of the serfs require 
a vigorous woodplane, to the face. 
 

 

 

-Original Message-
From: LizR 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Sun, May 10, 2015 8:04 pm
Subject: Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"


 
Yes, I can't see any point in continuing to deny the science, attack the 
people, etc. Maybe it was reasonable in the 80s or 90s but the evidence is 
overwhelming now. No one (or very few people) do it with the LHC, so why the 
IPCC? - unless, of course, there are some vested interests involved, which are 
putting out disinformation. But you'd think most people would see through that 
... unless they have their own vested interests perhaps...?  
   
  
 
  
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Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!


 Yes, and there's geophysical phenomena to include-in, like the recently 
discovered active volcano's under antarctic ice. Melt's the underside of the 
ice shelf, while the top side has expanded. Now, the climate researchers have 
trouble getting to the antarctic waters that were ice free, last year. Is that 
the reason of warming? Don't know, but geophysics take precedent over human 
stuff :-(  Pinatubo Volcano in 91, for example. Vesuvius a few years ago. 

 

 

-Original Message-
From: LizR 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Sun, May 10, 2015 5:55 pm
Subject: Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!


 
I believe satellites and weather stations give a lot of samples of atmospheric 
temperature (and other properties, I assume). Why is it hard to believe that we 
can make an estimate of mean global temperatures based on such measurements 
plus observations of phenomena like shoreline erosion, glacier retreat, methane 
outgassing, sea level rise, changes in storm intensity and frequency, thinning 
of arctic ice, etc?  
   
  
 
  
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Re: The dovetailer disassembled

On 12 May 2015 at 17:36, Russell Standish  wrote:

> On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 04:28:16PM +1200, LizR wrote:
> > On 12 May 2015 at 15:18, Russell Standish  wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 03:06:49PM +1200, LizR wrote:
> > > > On 12 May 2015 at 14:14, Russell Standish 
> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Why would we assume that it wouldn't make a difference? That has
> never
> > > > > been made clear.
> > > > >
> > > > > For the same reason the calculator repeats the same calculation
> given
> > > the
> > > > same starting state and inputs. This is surely inherent in the
> nature of
> > > > computation? It doesn't matter how large (or small) the computation
> is,
> > > > it's deterministic (unless the machine breaks down) and should
> behave in
> > > > exactly the same way on each run.
> > >
> > > They are different computations, so by comp supervenience, the quales
> > > could be different, or they might not.
> > >
> > > You mean they are different computations because they occur at
> different
> > times? Everything else is identical, to start with (in the first stage of
> > the MGA, I mean - we only convert the computation being rerun into a
> > recording one step at a time, I think, so before we can get anywhere we
> > have to agree that the first step works, which is just to re-run the same
> > computation using recorded inputs. But so far there doesn't even seem to
> be
> > agreement on that, unless I've misunderstood.)
>
> The recording is a distinctly different computation, because they do
> not behave identically on all counterfactuals.
>
> We may be at cross purposes then. I was talking about rerunning the
computation with recorded inputs, not running a recording of the
computation.

If we're talking about whether a recording of a computation is not the same
computation, then I agree. But now I'm not sure where you stand on the MGA
(well, OK, I am fairly sure, because you've told me before - but for the
purposes of the present discussion, I've got a bit lost).

Somewhere along the line, someone (Bruce, I think) purported to show that
the MGA doesn't show anything useful, or at least that it didn't show what
Bruno claimed. But now I seem to have lost track of why that was. I thought
we were talking about the first step in the MGA, which I think is rerunning
the computation with the same (or same lack of) inputs and seeing that it
produces the same output (i.e. the same stream of consciousness). If we
agree that it does, according to physical supervenience, we can then move
on to the next step, which is to begin converting it from a computation
into a recording.

I think. Or maybe I just need to forget this sort of thing and have a large
glass of wine.

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Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!

2015-05-12 Thread Telmo Menezes

>
>
> I disagree. I think this criticisms comes from a misinterpretation of what
> the p-value means. The p-value estimates the probability of seeing results
> at least as helpful to the hypothesis as the ones found, assuming the null
> hypothesis. A high p-value is informative because it tells us that the null
> is a likely explanation when compared to the hypothesis. A low p-value
> tells us that the hypothesis merits further investigation.
>
>
> First, you've got high and low mixed up.  A low p-value, e.g. 0.05, is
> considered significant in medical tests, 1e-6 is considered significant in
> particle physics.
>

No, you misread me. Notice that I was arguing that a result in favor of the
null (high p-value) is perhaps more informative than a result in favor of
the hypothesis (low p-value), because the method is quite vulnerable to
false positives -- you can expect to find the same ratio of false positives
as the significance threshold you are using. Thus so many "cures for
cancer", as you say.


>
>
>   The p-value tells us nothing about the probability of any of the
> hypothesis being true. It's a filter for noise, given the available data.
>
>
> But the trouble is it generates noise.  The high value, 0.05, used in
> medicine with understandably small sample size is the reason the "New
> Scientist" can tout a new discovery for curing cancer every 6 months.
>

Yes.


> And on the other end when you have really big samples, as in the PEAR
> experiments, you're virtually certain to reject the null hypothesis at
> 0.001 simply because your testing a point hypothesis against an undefined
> alternative, i.e. "anything else".
>

Also true.


>
>
>>  Any useful analysis would have to be Bayesian and start with some prior
>> alternative hypotheses one of which would be Prob(temperature goes up|lots
>> of CO2 is added to the atmosphere).  That already has a high prior
>> probability based on the analysis of Savante Arrhenius in 1890.
>>
>
>  If you did Bayesian analysis in this fashion, you would be assuming at
> the start what you want to test for.
>
>
> Yeah, just as if you did a Bayesian analysis of whether gravity made
> things fall down: Yep, that one fell.  OK, that one fell. Yep, the third
> one fell...  Statistics isn't the best decision process for everything.
>

It's the worse, and should only be used when we don't have anything better.
The trouble is that this "anything better" must take the form of a model
capable of making reliable predictions. With gravity you don't need
statistics, because the laws of motion can predict the outcome perfectly
every single time. It would be silly to use statistics there, as you say.

With climate change and cures for cancer you need statistics, because there
are no such laws in these fields. There is no equation where you can
plug-in a CO2 concentration and get a correct prediction on global
temperature change.


>
>
>>   But if you'd like to actually formulate the alternative hypothesis I
>> might do the analysis.
>>
>
>  Ok. My alternative hypothesis is that there is no trend of global
> temperature increase in the period from 1998 to 2010 (as per Liz's chart's
> timeframe), when compared to temperature fluctuations in the 20th century
> (as defined by the metric in the chart).
>
>
> OK.  Here's one way to do it. The ten warmest years in the century from
> 1910 to 2010 all occurred in the interval 1998 to 2010, the last 13yrs of
> the century.  Under the null hypothesis, where the hottest year falls is
> uniform random, so the hottest year had probability 13/100 of falling in
> that interval.  The next hottest year then had probability 12/99 of falling
> in the remaining 12yr of that interval, given the hottest had already
> fallen it. The third hottest year had probability 11/98 of falling in that
> interval, given the first two had fallen in it, and so on.  So the
> probability of the 10 hottest years falling in that 13yr period is
>
> P = (13*12*...5*4)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 1.65e-11
>
> To this we must add the probability of the more extreme events, e.g. the
> probability that the ten hottest years were in the last 12
>
> P = (12*11*...*5*4*3)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 3.81e-12
>
> and that they were in the last 11
>
> P = (11*10*...*5*4*3*2)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 6.35e-13
>
> and that they were in the last 10
>
> P = (11*10*...*5*4*3*2)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 5.77e-14
>
> Summing we get P = 2.10e-11
>
> A p-value good enough for CERN.  But this isn't a very good analysis for
> two reasons.  First, it's not directly measuring trend, it's the same
> probability you'd get for any 10 of the observed temperatures falling on
> any defined 13 years.  So you have infer that it means a trend from the
> fact that these are the hottest years and they occur in the 13 at the end.
> Second, it implicitly assumes that yearly temperatures are independent,
> which they aren't.  If temperatures always occurred in blocks of ten for
> example the observed p-value would be

Re: What does the MGA accomplish?