date:20150524


On 5/24/2015 5:34 AM, Pierz wrote:



On Monday, May 4, 2015 at 9:08:30 PM UTC+10, spudb...@aol.com wrote:

I sure did, Telmo. Scroll to the bottom and you shall view my last, number 
26th, the
last one. 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. 



? Highly debatable! It's true that so far I'm not aware of any experiments in which NDE 
subjects reported the content of cards put in places only visible from the ceiling (as 
some researchers have tried), but plenty of information has "come back" if you're 
willing to allow experiencers' spontaneous reports as evidence. For instance, the well 
documented case of a woman who was able to report accurately on the neurosurgery that 
was performed on her, including describing surgical tools, conversations and detail 
about procedures she could have had no knowledge of - all while her body was drained of 
blood, with a flatlining EEG. There are tons of such reports,


And tons of them have been found to be confabulated and exaggerated, based on later 
memories and second hand reports..


Brent

and studies have looked at the accuracy of these reports and found that they far 
exceeded the accuracy of surgery descriptions of patients asked to describe that they 
*thought* they would have seen if witnessing their own surgery. Yes of course this does 
not constitute any kind of scientific proof, but to sweepingly say they have not come 
back with information is also inaccurate. What you /can/ say is attempts to find some 
kind of information that NDE-ers can report in a reliable, replicable manner have so far 
been unsuccessful.





-Original Message-
From: Telmo Menezes >
To: everything-list >
Sent: Mon, May 4, 2015 4:19 am
Subject: Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!



On Sun, May 3, 2015 at 9:19 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List
> wrote:

Hi Telmo,

I have tried the Other Side stuff for a bit, and found it wanting.


Not so surprising... The topic is a string attractor for quacks, for sure.

Steinhart, said he had some experiences but decided they were not that
significant to himself. He is more buzzed, he said, but the beauty of
mathematics, emotionally. Here is a crowd funded 3D augmented reality 
game, due
out next year, called Night Terrors, so much for the paranormal, yes? 
We maybe,
could, have the paranormal adventure any time we choose.


http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/05/01/survival-horror-augmented-reality-game-night-terrors-maps-your-house





Wow, this is a brilliant/terrifying idea!



I cross-posted a message to Ben Goetzel on his "Multiverse" website, as 
well as
on Guilio Prisco's Turing-Church website sight concerning Goetzel's
non-response, to my question to him, about afterlife ideas, if any?  He 
seemed
to touch on this in a recent article, as well as his 2006, The Hidden 
Pattern,
which I had downloaded, a couple of months ago. Any data or opinion on 
Goetzel's
view on all this?


Have you seen this?

http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.de/2015/03/paranormal-phenomena-nonlocal-mind-and.html




Telmo.


Mitch


-Original Message-
From: Telmo Menezes >
To: everything-list >
Sent: Sun, May 3, 2015 2:45 pm
Subject: Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!

Hi spudboy,

I follow Ben Goetzel and have some of the books he recommends on the 
topic on my
to-read list.

I remain agnostic on this stuff, and just try to consider the simplest
explanation, even if it's boring. In the case of this story, this 
sounds a lot
like the event was staged by some nice person who cares about the 
bride. This
doesn't mean that is the correct explanation, of course.

What I am more curious about are replicable laboratory experiments. 
Some people,
like Goetzel, are claiming that results with statistical significance 
are known.
Maybe this is a nice opportunity for amateur science, because dealing 
with this
topics would still career suicide for many people -- even if to find 
negative
results.

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.

Cheers,
Telmo.

On Sun, May 3, 2015 at 6:09 PM, spudboy100

Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

Most people find it more intuitive than QM.  But OK, consider people who experience 
Aristotelian physics.


Brent

On 5/24/2015 11:12 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
I don't think Newtonian physics is intuitive. Most people's intuition and experiences 
would not lead them to the idea that once set in motion an object continues to move 
forever, nor that the the total direction of matter is conserved. Even Descartes missed 
this.


Jason

On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 8:27 PM, meekerdb > wrote:


On 5/24/2015 5:05 AM, Pierz wrote:



On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 4:02:42 PM UTC+10, Brent wrote:

On 5/23/2015 9:58 PM, Pierz wrote:



On Saturday, May 23, 2015 at 8:36:40 PM UTC+10, Liz R wrote:

I'm not sure why comp would predict that physical laws are 
invariant for
all observers. I can see that it would lead to a sort of
super-anthropic-selection effect, but surely all possible observers 
should
exist somewhere in arithmetic, including ones who observe different
physics (that is compatible with their existence) ?


I really must dig up the old thread! But I'm not saying comp does entail
invariant physics for all observers, just that if there are different 
physics,
the substitution level must be very low indeed. Think of the original 
scenario
in the UDA: a person in Washington is suddenly annihilated, and then
duplicated in Helsinki and Moscow (or whatever). That operation creates 
a 50%
probability of finding oneself in Helsinki or Moscow. But the ultimate 
point
of the UDA is that one's actual probability of finding oneself in 
Helsinki or
Washington depends on the total measure of /all/ virtual environments 
within
which that observer is instantiated in an environment that looks like 
one of
those cities. One can't isolate a particular virtual system from the 
trace of
the UD. So you can't create an arbitrary physics in an environment that 
looks
like either city (or anywhere). Well you can, but any observer will 
always
find their own physics to be the measure of *all* their continuations in
arithmetic. So there can't be an environment that is like Helsinki or 
Moscow
at some point but that has different physical laws. Carry this logic 
over to
the scenario of a person standing in an empty room - the physics the 
person
experiences will be the measure of all such identical persons standing 
in
empty rooms.


"Experiencing physics" I think needs some explication.  If experiencing 
only
refers to consciously thinking propositions, then one may not be 
experiencing
much physics: the world seems 3D with colors, there's a mild 
temperature, air
smells OK,...  One doesn't directly, consciously experience the 2nd 
law, or the
Born rule.  The "laws of physics" are human inventions to describe and 
predict
events. They're not out there in Nature; which is why we have to revise 
them
from time to time as we find more comprehensive, more accurate "laws".

OK, but it doesn't seem relevant to the argument. We experience a world 
predictable
and stable in certain ways that, now we're so sophisticated, we formalise 
into the
science of physics. Bruno's claim is that these regularities are not 
intrinsic
properties of some primary stuff, but emergent from the computational 
properties of
observers - namely how often various continuations of those observers crop 
up
relatively to one another in the abstract space of all possible 
continuations. I'm
trying to make an admittedly difficult point about whether or not observers 
in
different places can experience different physics within this paradigm, and 
if so,
how that relates to "substitution level". If you're worried about people
"experiencing physics" let's just concentrate on observers who go to the 
trouble of
doing physics experiments. It really doesn't matter.


My point was that most people's conscious experience most of the time could 
be
accommodated within a large range of physics.  For example Newtonian 
physics seems
intuitive while quantum mechanics isn't; but we think QM is the better 
theory.  But
Bruno claims that his theory implies QM and not Newtonian mechanics. So if 
people
consciously experienced a Newtonian universe (which they once thought they 
did)
would that falsify comp or would it just imply that the UD can instantiate 
Newtonian
universes.

Brent



The question here is what constitutes the observer? How detailed would a
simulation of me have to be before it became a subjective /duplicate/ 
of me,
its continuations my continuations? If there is a person A somewhere in 
the UD
who is experiencing an empty room with physics A, and another 
ident

Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

I don't think Newtonian physics is intuitive. Most people's intuition and
experiences would not lead them to the idea that once set in motion an
object continues to move forever, nor that the the total direction of
matter is conserved. Even Descartes missed this.

Jason

On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 8:27 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 5/24/2015 5:05 AM, Pierz wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 4:02:42 PM UTC+10, Brent wrote:
>>
>>  On 5/23/2015 9:58 PM, Pierz wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Saturday, May 23, 2015 at 8:36:40 PM UTC+10, Liz R wrote:
>>>
>>>  I'm not sure why comp would predict that physical laws are invariant
>>> for all observers. I can see that it would lead to a sort of
>>> super-anthropic-selection effect, but surely all possible observers should
>>> exist somewhere in arithmetic, including ones who observe different physics
>>> (that is compatible with their existence) ?
>>>
>>
>>  I really must dig up the old thread! But I'm not saying comp does
>> entail invariant physics for all observers, just that if there are
>> different physics, the substitution level must be very low indeed. Think of
>> the original scenario in the UDA: a person in Washington is suddenly
>> annihilated, and then duplicated in Helsinki and Moscow (or whatever). That
>> operation creates a 50% probability of finding oneself in Helsinki or
>> Moscow. But the ultimate point of the UDA is that one's actual probability
>> of finding oneself in Helsinki or Washington depends on the total measure
>> of *all* virtual environments within which that observer is instantiated
>> in an environment that looks like one of those cities. One can't isolate a
>> particular virtual system from the trace of the UD. So you can't create an
>> arbitrary physics in an environment that looks like either city (or
>> anywhere). Well you can, but any observer will always find their own
>> physics to be the measure of *all* their continuations in arithmetic. So
>> there can't be an environment that is like Helsinki or Moscow at some point
>> but that has different physical laws. Carry this logic over to the scenario
>> of a person standing in an empty room - the physics the person experiences
>> will be the measure of all such identical persons standing in empty rooms.
>>
>>
>> "Experiencing physics" I think needs some explication.  If experiencing
>> only refers to consciously thinking propositions, then one may not be
>> experiencing much physics: the world seems 3D with colors, there's a mild
>> temperature, air smells OK,...  One doesn't directly, consciously
>> experience the 2nd law, or the Born rule.  The "laws of physics" are human
>> inventions to describe and predict events.  They're not out there in
>> Nature; which is why we have to revise them from time to time as we find
>> more comprehensive, more accurate "laws".
>>
>>  OK, but it doesn't seem relevant to the argument. We experience a world
> predictable and stable in certain ways that, now we're so sophisticated, we
> formalise into the science of physics. Bruno's claim is that these
> regularities are not intrinsic properties of some primary stuff, but
> emergent from the computational properties of observers - namely how often
> various continuations of those observers crop up relatively to one another
> in the abstract space of all possible continuations. I'm trying to make an
> admittedly difficult point about whether or not observers in different
> places can experience different physics within this paradigm, and if so,
> how that relates to "substitution level". If you're worried about people
> "experiencing physics" let's just concentrate on observers who go to the
> trouble of doing physics experiments. It really doesn't matter.
>
>
> My point was that most people's conscious experience most of the time
> could be accommodated within a large range of physics.  For example
> Newtonian physics seems intuitive while quantum mechanics isn't; but we
> think QM is the better theory.  But Bruno claims that his theory implies QM
> and not Newtonian mechanics. So if people consciously experienced a
> Newtonian universe (which they once thought they did) would that falsify
> comp or would it just imply that the UD can instantiate Newtonian universes.
>
> Brent
>
>
>
>
>>   The question here is what constitutes the observer? How detailed would
>> a simulation of me have to be before it became a subjective *duplicate* of
>> me, its continuations my continuations? If there is a person A somewhere in
>> the UD who is experiencing an empty room with physics A, and another
>> identically configured person B somewhere else experiencing physics B, what
>> is stopping the continuations of A mixing with the continuations of B, so
>> that the measures combine into a merged physics? There has to be something
>> in both observers' computational states that distinguishes them
>> sufficiently that their experiences cannot interfere with one another - the
>> comp equivalent of decoherence. (In fact if Q

Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level


On 5/24/2015 5:05 AM, Pierz wrote:



On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 4:02:42 PM UTC+10, Brent wrote:

On 5/23/2015 9:58 PM, Pierz wrote:



On Saturday, May 23, 2015 at 8:36:40 PM UTC+10, Liz R wrote:

I'm not sure why comp would predict that physical laws are invariant 
for all
observers. I can see that it would lead to a sort of 
super-anthropic-selection
effect, but surely all possible observers should exist somewhere in 
arithmetic,
including ones who observe different physics (that is compatible with 
their
existence) ?


I really must dig up the old thread! But I'm not saying comp does entail 
invariant
physics for all observers, just that if there are different physics, the
substitution level must be very low indeed. Think of the original scenario 
in the
UDA: a person in Washington is suddenly annihilated, and then duplicated in
Helsinki and Moscow (or whatever). That operation creates a 50% probability 
of
finding oneself in Helsinki or Moscow. But the ultimate point of the UDA is 
that
one's actual probability of finding oneself in Helsinki or Washington 
depends on
the total measure of /all/ virtual environments within which that observer 
is
instantiated in an environment that looks like one of those cities. One 
can't
isolate a particular virtual system from the trace of the UD. So you can't 
create
an arbitrary physics in an environment that looks like either city (or 
anywhere).
Well you can, but any observer will always find their own physics to be the 
measure
of *all* their continuations in arithmetic. So there can't be an 
environment that
is like Helsinki or Moscow at some point but that has different physical 
laws.
Carry this logic over to the scenario of a person standing in an empty room 
- the
physics the person experiences will be the measure of all such identical 
persons
standing in empty rooms.


"Experiencing physics" I think needs some explication.  If experiencing 
only refers
to consciously thinking propositions, then one may not be experiencing much 
physics:
the world seems 3D with colors, there's a mild temperature, air smells 
OK,...  One
doesn't directly, consciously experience the 2nd law, or the Born rule.  The 
"laws
of physics" are human inventions to describe and predict events.  They're 
not out
there in Nature; which is why we have to revise them from time to time as 
we find
more comprehensive, more accurate "laws".

OK, but it doesn't seem relevant to the argument. We experience a world predictable and 
stable in certain ways that, now we're so sophisticated, we formalise into the science 
of physics. Bruno's claim is that these regularities are not intrinsic properties of 
some primary stuff, but emergent from the computational properties of observers - namely 
how often various continuations of those observers crop up relatively to one another in 
the abstract space of all possible continuations. I'm trying to make an admittedly 
difficult point about whether or not observers in different places can experience 
different physics within this paradigm, and if so, how that relates to "substitution 
level". If you're worried about people "experiencing physics" let's just concentrate on 
observers who go to the trouble of doing physics experiments. It really doesn't matter.


My point was that most people's conscious experience most of the time could be 
accommodated within a large range of physics.  For example Newtonian physics seems 
intuitive while quantum mechanics isn't; but we think QM is the better theory.  But Bruno 
claims that his theory implies QM and not Newtonian mechanics. So if people consciously 
experienced a Newtonian universe (which they once thought they did) would that falsify 
comp or would it just imply that the UD can instantiate Newtonian universes.


Brent



The question here is what constitutes the observer? How detailed would a 
simulation
of me have to be before it became a subjective /duplicate/ of me, its 
continuations
my continuations? If there is a person A somewhere in the UD who is 
experiencing an
empty room with physics A, and another identically configured person B 
somewhere
else experiencing physics B, what is stopping the continuations of A mixing 
with
the continuations of B, so that the measures combine into a merged physics? 
There
has to be something in both observers' computational states that 
distinguishes them
sufficiently that their experiences cannot interfere with one another - the 
comp
equivalent of decoherence. (In fact if QM effects are the manifestation of 
UD
observer measures, the threshold at which these effects start to kick in 
should
probably give us a strong clue about how low the substitution level is!)

Observers and their experiences, including physical laws, can't be kept 
apart by
physical or temporal s

Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia


On 5/24/2015 4:27 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 25 May 2015 at 07:51, meekerdb  wrote:

On 5/24/2015 11:28 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


In a virtual environment, destroying the body destroys the consciousness,
but both are actually due to the underlying computations.


How can those thumped know it's virtual.  A virtual environment with virtual
people doing virtual actions seems to make "virtual" virtually meaningless.

The people won't necessarily know, but they could know, as it could be
revealed by the programmers or deduced from some programming glitch
(as in the film "The Thirteenth Floor"). But I don't think it makes a
difference if they know or not. The answer to the obvious objection
that if you destroy the brain you destroy consciousness, so
consciousness can't reside in Platonia, is that both the brain and
consciousness could reside in Platonia.


Where ever they reside though you have to explain how damaging the brain changes 
consciousness.  And if you can explain this relation in Platonia why won't the same 
relation exist in Physicalia.


Brent






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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

On Monday, May 25, 2015, Russell Standish  wrote:

> On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 07:19:46PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >
> > On 24 May 2015, at 10:21, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >I can't really see an alternative other than Russel's suggestion
> > >that the random activity might perfectly sustain consciousness
> > >until a certain point, then all consciousness would abruptly stop.
> >
> > That would lead to the non sensical partial zombie. Those who says
> > "I don't feel any difference".
> >
>
> Not at all. My suggestion is that there wouldn't be any partial
> zombies, just normally functioning consciousness, and full zombies,
> with respect to Chalmers fading qualia experiment, due to network effects.
>
> Obviously, with functionalism (and computationalism), consciousness is
> retained throughout, and no zombies appear. Chalmers was trying to
> show an absurdity with non-functionalism, and I don't think it works,
> except insofar as full zombies are absurd.
>

It could work the way you say, but it would mean the replacement neurons
would support consciousness, since if the neurons were simply removed and
not replaced consciousness would fade. So it would be a partial proof of
computationalism, since the electronic neurons would not be inert with
respect to consciousness, but could not sustain it in large enough numbers.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"

2015-05-24 Thread spudboy100 via Everything List


Ah! Think again, unless you are wedded to an ideology? This is real trouble, I 
think, what should we do about it?
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/13/science/la-sci-sn-volcanoes-antarctica-climate-20130712The
 
LA Times is a solid,  progressive news source, and I guess the science must've 
slipped through. 
 
 
-Original Message-
From: LizR 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Sun, May 24, 2015 6:31 am
Subject: Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"


 
Your graph shows the result of arctic sea ice disappearing while antarctic sea 
ice has been increasing. These can both be reasonably ascribed to climate 
change - less sea ice in the arctic means it's melting, more in the antarctic 
means it's coming off the ice cap into the sea because the ice cap is melting. 
The difference is that the sea ice increase in the south adds more volume to 
the oceans, since it was originally on land, while the ice in the north doesn't 
make any difference to sea level (except for the contribution from Greenland). 
So the two roughly balance in terms of sea ice extent, as your graph shows - 
but   not in terms of the effects on sea level; the overall effect is to raise 
it.  
 
  
  
   
   
  
 
  
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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

2015-05-24 Thread Russell Standish

On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 07:19:46PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
> On 24 May 2015, at 10:21, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> 
> >
> >I can't really see an alternative other than Russel's suggestion
> >that the random activity might perfectly sustain consciousness
> >until a certain point, then all consciousness would abruptly stop.
> 
> That would lead to the non sensical partial zombie. Those who says
> "I don't feel any difference".
> 

Not at all. My suggestion is that there wouldn't be any partial
zombies, just normally functioning consciousness, and full zombies,
with respect to Chalmers fading qualia experiment, due to network effects.

Obviously, with functionalism (and computationalism), consciousness is
retained throughout, and no zombies appear. Chalmers was trying to
show an absurdity with non-functionalism, and I don't think it works,
except insofar as full zombies are absurd.


-- 


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 Sun, May 24, 2015 at 12:36 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

> On 5/23/2015 11:47 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>> There is a common programming technique called memoization. Essentially
>> building automatic caches for functions within a program. I wonder: would
>> adding memorization to the functions implementing an AI eventually result
>> in it becoming a zombie recording rather than a program, if it were fed all
>> the same inputs a second time?
>>
>
> Isn't that exactly what happens when you learn to ride a bicycle, hit a
> tennis ball, touch type,...  Stuff you had to think about when you were
> learning becomes automatic - and subconscious.
>

Interesting. I wonder if there is a connection.

Jason


>
> I suspect a lot of these conundrums arise from taking consciousness to be
> fundamental, rather than a language related add-on to intelligence.
>
> Brent
>
>
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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 6:09 AM, Pierz  wrote:

>
>
> On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 4:47:12 PM UTC+10, Jason wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 12:40 AM, Pierz  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 1:07:15 AM UTC+10, Jason wrote:



 On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 12:44 PM, Bruno Marchal 
 wrote:

>
> On 19 May 2015, at 15:53, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 12:06 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <
> stat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 19 May 2015 at 14:45, Jason Resch  wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 9:21 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <
>> stat...@gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>>
>> >>
>> >> On 19 May 2015 at 11:02, Jason Resch  wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > I think you're not taking into account the level of the
>> functional
>> >> > substitution. Of course functionally equivalent silicon and
>> functionally
>> >> > equivalent neurons can (under functionalism) both instantiate
>> the same
>> >> > consciousness. But a calculator computing 2+3 cannot substitute
>> for a
>> >> > human
>> >> > brain computing 2+3 and produce the same consciousness.
>> >>
>> >> In a gradual replacement the substitution must obviously be at a
>> level
>> >> sufficient to maintain the function of the whole brain. Sticking a
>> >> calculator in it won't work.
>> >>
>> >> > Do you think a "Blockhead" that was functionally equivalent to
>> you (it
>> >> > could
>> >> > fool all your friends and family in a Turing test scenario into
>> thinking
>> >> > it
>> >> > was intact you) would be conscious in the same way as you?
>> >>
>> >> Not necessarily, just as an actor may not be conscious in the same
>> way
>> >> as me. But I suspect the Blockhead would be conscious; the
>> intuition
>> >> that a lookup table can't be conscious is like the intuition that
>> an
>> >> electric circuit can't be conscious.
>> >>
>> >
>> > I don't see an equivalency between those intuitions. A lookup table
>> has a
>> > bounded and very low degree of computational complexity: all
>> answers to all
>> > queries are answered in constant time.
>> >
>> > While the table itself may have an arbitrarily high information
>> content,
>> > what in the software of the lookup table program is there to
>> > appreciate/understand/know that information?
>>
>> Understanding emerges from the fact that the lookup table is immensely
>> large. It could be wrong, but I don't think it is obviously less
>> plausible than understanding emerging from a Turing machine made of
>> tin cans.
>>
>>
>>
> The lookup table is intelligent or at least offers the appearance of
> intelligence, but it makes the maximum possible advantage of the 
> space-time
> trade off: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space–time_tradeoff
>
> The tin-can Turing machine is unbounded in its potential computational
> complexity, there's no reason to be a bio- or silico-chauvinist against 
> it.
> However, by definition, a lookup table has near zero computational
> complexity, no retained state.
>
>
> But it is counterfactually correct on a large range spectrum. Of
> course, it has to be infinite to be genuinely counterfactual-correct.
>
>
 But the structure of the counterfactuals is identical regardless of the
 inputs and outputs in its lookup table. If you replaced all of its outputs
 with random strings, would that change its consciousness? What if there
 existed a special decoding book, which was a one-time-pad that could decode
 its random answers? Would the existence of this book make it more conscious
 than if this book did not exist? If there is zero information content in
 the outputs returned by the lookup table it might as well return all "X"
 characters as its response to any query, but then would any program that
 just returns a string of "X"'s be conscious?

 I really like this argument, even though I once came up with a (bad)
>>> attempt to refute it. I wish it received more attention because it does
>>> cast quite a penetrating light on the issue. What you're suggesting is
>>> effectively the cache pattern in computer programming, where we trade
>>> memory resources for computational resources. Instead of repeating a
>>> resource-intensive computation, we store the inputs and outputs for later
>>> regurgitation.
>>>
>>
>> How is this different from a movie recording of brain activity (which
>> most on the list seem to agree is not conscious)? The lookup table is just
>> a really long recording, only we use the input to determine to which
>> section of the recording to fast-forward/rewind to.
>>
>> It isn't different to a recording. But here's the thing: when we ask if
> the lookup machine is

Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 3:52 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 23 May 2015, at 17:07, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 12:44 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>>
>> On 19 May 2015, at 15:53, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 12:06 AM, Stathis Papaioannou > > wrote:
>>
>>> On 19 May 2015 at 14:45, Jason Resch  wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 9:21 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <
>>> stath...@gmail.com>
>>> > wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> On 19 May 2015 at 11:02, Jason Resch  wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> > I think you're not taking into account the level of the functional
>>> >> > substitution. Of course functionally equivalent silicon and
>>> functionally
>>> >> > equivalent neurons can (under functionalism) both instantiate the
>>> same
>>> >> > consciousness. But a calculator computing 2+3 cannot substitute for
>>> a
>>> >> > human
>>> >> > brain computing 2+3 and produce the same consciousness.
>>> >>
>>> >> In a gradual replacement the substitution must obviously be at a level
>>> >> sufficient to maintain the function of the whole brain. Sticking a
>>> >> calculator in it won't work.
>>> >>
>>> >> > Do you think a "Blockhead" that was functionally equivalent to you
>>> (it
>>> >> > could
>>> >> > fool all your friends and family in a Turing test scenario into
>>> thinking
>>> >> > it
>>> >> > was intact you) would be conscious in the same way as you?
>>> >>
>>> >> Not necessarily, just as an actor may not be conscious in the same way
>>> >> as me. But I suspect the Blockhead would be conscious; the intuition
>>> >> that a lookup table can't be conscious is like the intuition that an
>>> >> electric circuit can't be conscious.
>>> >>
>>> >
>>> > I don't see an equivalency between those intuitions. A lookup table
>>> has a
>>> > bounded and very low degree of computational complexity: all answers
>>> to all
>>> > queries are answered in constant time.
>>> >
>>> > While the table itself may have an arbitrarily high information
>>> content,
>>> > what in the software of the lookup table program is there to
>>> > appreciate/understand/know that information?
>>>
>>> Understanding emerges from the fact that the lookup table is immensely
>>> large. It could be wrong, but I don't think it is obviously less
>>> plausible than understanding emerging from a Turing machine made of
>>> tin cans.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> The lookup table is intelligent or at least offers the appearance of
>> intelligence, but it makes the maximum possible advantage of the space-time
>> trade off: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space–time_tradeoff
>>
>> The tin-can Turing machine is unbounded in its potential computational
>> complexity, there's no reason to be a bio- or silico-chauvinist against it.
>> However, by definition, a lookup table has near zero computational
>> complexity, no retained state.
>>
>>
>> But it is counterfactually correct on a large range spectrum. Of course,
>> it has to be infinite to be genuinely counterfactual-correct.
>>
>>
> But the structure of the counterfactuals is identical regardless of the
> inputs and outputs in its lookup table. If you replaced all of its outputs
> with random strings, would that change its consciousness? What if there
> existed a special decoding book, which was a one-time-pad that could decode
> its random answers? Would the existence of this book make it more conscious
> than if this book did not exist? If there is zero information content in
> the outputs returned by the lookup table it might as well return all "X"
> characters as its response to any query, but then would any program that
> just returns a string of "X"'s be conscious?
>
> A lookup table might have some primitive conscious, but I think any
> consciousness it has would be more or less the same regardless of the
> number of entries within that lookup table. With more entries, its
> information content grows, but it's capacity to process, interpret, or
> understand that information remains constant.
>
>
> You can emulate the brain of Einstein with a (ridiculously  large) look-up
> table, assuming you are ridiculously patient---or we slow down your own
> brain so that you are as slow as "einstein".
> Is that incarnation a zombie?
>
> Again, with comp, all incarnations are "zombie", because bodies do not
> think. It is the abstract person which thinks, and in this case "Einstein"
> will still be defined by the "simplest normal" computations, which here,
> and only here, have taken the form of that unplausible giant "Einstein
> look-up table" emulation at the right level.
>
>
That last bit is the part I have difficulty with. How can a a single call
to a lookup table ever be at the right level. It seems to be with only one
lookup, the table must always operate (by definition) at the highest level,
which is probably not low enough to be at the right level. On the other
hand, if we are talking about using lookup tables to implement and, or,
nand, not, etc. then I can see a CPU based on lookup tables for th

Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

On 25 May 2015 at 07:51, meekerdb  wrote:
> On 5/24/2015 11:28 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
> > In a virtual environment, destroying the body destroys the consciousness,
> > but both are actually due to the underlying computations.
>
>
> How can those thumped know it's virtual.  A virtual environment with virtual
> people doing virtual actions seems to make "virtual" virtually meaningless.

The people won't necessarily know, but they could know, as it could be
revealed by the programmers or deduced from some programming glitch
(as in the film "The Thirteenth Floor"). But I don't think it makes a
difference if they know or not. The answer to the obvious objection
that if you destroy the brain you destroy consciousness, so
consciousness can't reside in Platonia, is that both the brain and
consciousness could reside in Platonia.

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia


On 5/24/2015 11:28 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:



On Monday, May 25, 2015, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> 
wrote:


On 5/24/2015 1:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Again, with comp, all incarnations are "zombie", because bodies do not 
think. It is
the abstract person which thinks


But a few thumps on the body and the "abstract person" won't think either. 
So far as
we have observered *only* bodies think.  If comp implies the contrary isn't 
that so
much the worse for comp.


In a virtual environment, destroying the body destroys the consciousness, but both are 
actually due to the underlying computations.


How can those thumped know it's virtual.  A virtual environment with virtual people doing 
virtual actions seems to make "virtual" virtually meaningless.


Brent

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level


On 5/24/2015 4:43 AM, Pierz wrote:



Quite. Materialism has something of a head-start.


Not really. Spiritualism and animism ruled the world for millenia before Galileo and even 
before Democritus and Aristotle.  The idea that consciousness controlled clouds, planets, 
disease, seas, plants,... had a big head start that lead us to Catholicism, Islam, etc as 
the *consciousness* was gradually consolidated, distilled, and driven out of this world 
into a world beyond empirical testing.


Brent

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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Quali

2015-05-24 Thread David Nyman

Statements like this lead me to suspect that, when it comes down to it, you
don't really make any essential distinction between the 3p and 1p senses of
the term "consciousness". ISTM that the latter sense is probably what you
intend by "fundamental".  Whereas consciousness in the former sense can
perhaps be placed alongside intelligence in something like the manner you
suggest, in the latter sense it surely cannot, except by ignoring the
distinction in question. ISTM you conflate these two senses quite a lot. I
can't really decide whether you're hedging your bets on this, or whether
you really don't recognise any important difference. Care to elucidate?

David
On 24 May 2015 6:36 pm, "meekerdb"  wrote:

> On 5/23/2015 11:47 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>> There is a common programming technique called memoization. Essentially
>> building automatic caches for functions within a program. I wonder: would
>> adding memorization to the functions implementing an AI eventually result
>> in it becoming a zombie recording rather than a program, if it were fed all
>> the same inputs a second time?
>>
>
> Isn't that exactly what happens when you learn to ride a bicycle, hit a
> tennis ball, touch type,...  Stuff you had to think about when you were
> learning becomes automatic - and subconscious.
>
> I suspect a lot of these conundrums arise from taking consciousness to be
> fundamental, rather than a language related add-on to intelligence.
>
> Brent
>
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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

On 5/24/2015 4:09 AM, Pierz wrote:

On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 4:47:12 PM UTC+10, Jason wrote:

On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 12:40 AM, Pierz > 
wrote:

On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 1:07:15 AM UTC+10, Jason wrote:

On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 12:44 PM, Bruno Marchal  
wrote:

On 19 May 2015, at 15:53, Jason Resch wrote:

On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 12:06 AM, Stathis Papaioannou
 wrote:

On 19 May 2015 at 14:45, Jason Resch  
wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 9:21 PM, Stathis Papaioannou

> wrote:

>>
>> On 19 May 2015 at 11:02, Jason Resch 
 wrote:
>>
>> > I think you're not taking into account the level of 
the functional
>> > substitution. Of course functionally equivalent 
silicon and
functionally
>> > equivalent neurons can (under functionalism) both 
instantiate
the same
>> > consciousness. But a calculator computing 2+3 cannot
substitute for a
>> > human
>> > brain computing 2+3 and produce the same consciousness.
>>
>> In a gradual replacement the substitution must obviously 
be at a
level
>> sufficient to maintain the function of the whole brain. 
Sticking a
>> calculator in it won't work.
>>
>> > Do you think a "Blockhead" that was functionally 
equivalent to
you (it
>> > could
>> > fool all your friends and family in a Turing test 
scenario
into thinking
>> > it
>> > was intact you) would be conscious in the same way as 
you?
>>
>> Not necessarily, just as an actor may not be conscious 
in the
same way
>> as me. But I suspect the Blockhead would be conscious; 
the intuition
>> that a lookup table can't be conscious is like the 
intuition that an
>> electric circuit can't be conscious.
>>
>
> I don't see an equivalency between those intuitions. A 
lookup
table has a
> bounded and very low degree of computational complexity: 
all
answers to all
> queries are answered in constant time.
>
> While the table itself may have an arbitrarily high 
information
content,
> what in the software of the lookup table program is there 
to
> appreciate/understand/know that information?

Understanding emerges from the fact that the lookup table 
is immensely
large. It could be wrong, but I don't think it is obviously 
less
plausible than understanding emerging from a Turing machine 
made of
tin cans.

The lookup table is intelligent or at least offers the 
appearance of
intelligence, but it makes the maximum possible advantage of the
space-time trade off: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space–time_tradeoff

The tin-can Turing machine is unbounded in its potential 
computational
complexity, there's no reason to be a bio- or silico-chauvinist 
against
it. However, by definition, a lookup table has near zero 
computational
complexity, no retained state.

But it is counterfactually correct on a large range spectrum. 
Of course,
it has to be infinite to be genuinely counterfactual-correct.

But the structure of the counterfactuals is identical regardless of 
the
inputs and outputs in its lookup table. If you replaced all of its 
outputs
with random strings, would that change its consciousness? What if 
there
existed a special decoding book, which was a one-time-pad that 
could decode
its random answers? Would the existence of this book make it more 
conscious
than if this book did not exist? If there is zero information 
content in the
outputs returned by the lookup table it might as well return all "X"
characters as its response to any query, but then would any program 
that
just returns a string of "X"'s be conscious?

I really like this argument, even though I once came up wit

Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"

On 5/24/2015 3:31 AM, LizR wrote:
Your graph shows the result of arctic sea ice disappearing while antarctic sea ice has
been increasing. These can both be reasonably ascribed to climate change - less sea ice
in the arctic means it's melting, more in the antarctic means it's coming off the ice
cap into the sea because the ice cap is melting.

While more ice slips off into the antarctic sea, the ice cap may in net be growing. This
is because warmer oceans result in more snowfall on the antarctic mountains. In the short
term this might produce a net reduction in sea level.

The difference is that the sea ice increase in the south adds more volume to the oceans,
since it was originally on land, while the ice in the north doesn't make any difference
to sea level (except for the contribution from Greenland). So the two roughly balance in
terms of sea ice extent, as your graph shows - but /not/ in terms of the effects on sea
level; the overall effect is to raise it.

Quite right. And even apart from the glaciers calving, the ocean warming means the water
expands.

Brent

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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

On Monday, May 25, 2015, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 24 May 2015, at 10:21, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>
>
> On Saturday, May 23, 2015, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>>
>> On 22 May 2015, at 10:34, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Friday, May 22, 2015, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 21 May 2015, at 01:53, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, May 20, 2015, Jason Resch  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Partial zombies are absurd because they make the concept of
>>> consciousness meaningless.
>>>
>>>
>>> OK.
>>>
>>>
>>> Random neurons, separated neurons and platonic computations sustaining
>>> consciousness are merely weird, not absurd.
>>>
>>>
>>> Not OK. Random neurone, like the movie, simply does not compute. They
>>> only mimic the contingent (and logically unrelated) physical activity
>>> related to a special implementation of a computation. If you change the
>>> initial computer, that physical activity could mimic another computation.
>>> Or, like Maudlin showed: you can change the physical activity arbitrarily,
>>> and still mimic the initial computation: so the relation between
>>> computation, and the physical activity of the computer running that
>>> computation is accidental, nor logical.
>>>
>>> Platonic computation, on the contrary, does compute (in the original
>>> sense of computation).
>>>
>>
>> You're assuming not only that computationalism is true, but that it's
>> exclusively true.
>>
>>
>> That is part of the definition, and that is why I add often that we have
>> to say "yes" to the doctor, in virtue of surviving "qua computatio".  I
>> have often try to explain that someone can believe in both Church thesis,
>> and say yes to the doctor, but still believe in this not for the reason
>> that the artficial brain will run the relevant computation, but because he
>> believes in the Virgin Mary, and he believes she is good and compensionate,
>> so that if the artificial brain is good enough she will save your soul, and
>> reinstall it in the digital physical brain. That is *not* computationalism.
>> It is computationalism + magic.
>>
>
> But it's not obvious that *only* computations can sustain consciousness.
> Maybe appropriate random behaviour can do so as well.
>
>
> May be you need to add the Holy Water and the Pope benediction.
>

I still don't understand why you think it's absurd that randomness can lead
to consciousness; not just wrong, but absurd.

> Alternatively, perhaps appropriate random behaviour would at least not
> destroy the consciousness that was there to begin with, because the real
> source of consciousness was neither the brain's normal physical activity
> nor the random activity.
>
>
> That is like the movie. It keeps the relevant information to reinstal some
> instantaneous description on the boolean graph which was filmed.
>
> Whatever possible makes the counterfactual correct in some sufficiently
> large spectrum, makes the audittor of the entity connected to the "real"
> person, which is an abstraction in Platonia.
>
>
>
> I can't really see an alternative other than Russel's suggestion that the
> random activity might perfectly sustain consciousness until a certain
> point, then all consciousness would abruptly stop.
>
>
> That would lead to the non sensical partial zombie. Those who says "I
> don't feel any difference".
>
> I think you illustrate my point.  If we want to avoid partial zombie, and
> keep the invariance of consciousness for the digital substitution, we must
> recognize and understand that invoking a rome of matter or god as a
> computation selector, appears as a magical explanation, like if we should
> not isolate that measure with the means of computer science, and then test
> it with the empirical physics.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
> Go back several steps and consider why we think computationalism might be
>> true in the first place. The usual start is that computers can behave
>> intelligently and substitute for processes in the brain.
>>
>>
>> OK.
>>
>>
>>
>> So if something else can behave intelligently and substitute
>> for processes in the brain, it's not absurd to consider that it might be
>> conscious. It's begging the question to say that it can't be conscious
>> because it isn't a computation.
>>
>>
>>
>> The movie and the lucky random brain are different in that respect.
>>
>> The movie doesn't behave like if it was conscious. I can tell the movie
>> that mustard is a mineral, or an animal, the movie does not react. it fails
>> at the Turing tests, and the zombie test. There is neither computations,
>> nor intelligent behaviors, relevant with the consciousness "associated' to
>> the boolean circuit.
>>
>> The "inimagibly lucky" random brain, on the contrary,  does behave in a
>> way making a person acting like a p-zombie or a conscious individual. We
>> don't see the difference with a conscious being, by definition/construction.
>>
>> Well, if a random event mimics by chance a computation, that means at the
>> least that the computa

Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

On Monday, May 25, 2015, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 5/24/2015 1:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Again, with comp, all incarnations are "zombie", because bodies do not
> think. It is the abstract person which thinks
>
>
> But a few thumps on the body and the "abstract person" won't think
> either.  So far as we have observered *only* bodies think.  If comp implies
> the contrary isn't that so much the worse for comp.
>

In a virtual environment, destroying the body destroys the consciousness,
but both are actually due to the underlying computations.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level



On 23 May 2015, at 12:36, LizR wrote:

I'm not sure why comp would predict that physical laws are invariant  
for all observers


I can see that it would lead to a sort of super-anthropic-selection  
effect, but surely all possible observers should exist somewhere in  
arithmetic, including ones who observe different physics (that is  
compatible with their existence) ?


Those with different physics will have measure zero. Why? Because the  
laws of physics must be given by the sum on all computations below the  
substitution level, whatever any universal machine state can be in.  
Only geography will need the anthropic element, the physics needs only  
a mathematical statistics on all computation, going in "actual state"  
which are any state.


Physics become a theorem of machine theology, itself a theorem of  
arithmetic (+ comp).


Of course, today, we don't know how much the "standard model" is  
contingent or absolute. String theory diminish a large part of the  
contingent parts, but introduces complexity in other direction, with  
panorama of different sorts of physics. All this are open problem in  
comp.
The goal of comp is to provide an explanation of the relation between  
consciousness/mind and appearance of matter and persistence, and this  
in some testable way. It is an explanation in the form of the  
formulation of a problem, or a reduction of a problem into another one.


Bruno







On 23 May 2015 at 21:23, Pierz  wrote:
Some time ago on this list I had a fascinating exchange with Bruno  
that has stayed with me, fuelling some attacks of 4am philosophical  
insomnia - an affliction I imagine I'm not the only person on this  
list to suffer from! If you try to nail Bruno down on some aspects  
of his theory, he has a tendency to get all Sg Grz* and p[]<>p on  
you at a certain point, making it difficult to progress without a  
PhD in modal logic - despite the fact that I suspect that the ideas  
are fundamentally simple. Nevertheless in the course of the  
discussion, Bruno did acknowledge that his theory predicts that the  
laws of physics are invariant across space and time, because they  
are supposed to arise out of pure arithmetic (being the hypostases  
of the FPI bla blas).  Indeed, for the dissolution of the material  
within the arithmetical to go through (logically), then the  
regularities that we call physical law cannot depend on geography,  
since ex hypothesi they arise from number relations which are prior  
to time and space. Yet physics - or cosmology - seems to be headed  
full-steam in a different direction, towards the conclusion that  
physical law is indeed dependent on geography, the laws we observe  
being dependent upon an observer selection process. That is, we see  
physical laws finely honed for life, because life can only exist in  
those regions where the laws are conducive to life. I'm less sure  
about this, but I think it might still be OK for physical law to  
geographically determined in this sense, so long as there are no  
other observers in different parts of the multiverse who see  
different laws, but to assume such a thing seems foolish. Why should  
we believe that of all the possible permutations of the parameters  
which determined physical, there is only a single solution which  
permits life? There might be many different


So on the face of it, the recent measurements of the mass of the  
Higgs boson, which are strongly suggestive of a multiverse might be  
seen as empirical evidence against 'comp'. Yet there is a way -  
namely an extremely low substitution level. You'll recall that the  
substitution level is the level at which a digital substitute can be  
made for a brain such that the self (whatever that is) survives the  
substitution. This might be quite high - perhaps its sufficient to  
mimic neuronal interconnections in software? Or it might be very low  
- maybe we need to go down to the molecular level and simulate  
chemistry. However, it would be a big surprise I imagine for the  
digital survival enthusiasts if the required level was the entire  
multiverse! Yet that conclusion seems inescapable if the emerging  
multiverse cosmology (and comp) is correct.


Why would a low substitution level save the day for comp? Because,  
as stated before, if the physics observed by some conscious being is  
dependent solely on number relations (as UDA purports to prove),   
and number relations are pure abstractions prior to matter, space  
and time, then physics cannot be contingent on geography, because it  
is contingent on matter, space and time. So if comp is correct, and  
it is also correct that we live in a multiverse such that observers  
see different apparent laws in different parts of that structure,  
then the only solution (ISTM) is to make the observer large enough  
to encompass the geographical variation.


But such a low substitution level seems counter to most of the  
common sense assumptions about consciousness t

Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level



On 23 May 2015, at 11:23, Pierz wrote:

Some time ago on this list I had a fascinating exchange with Bruno  
that has stayed with me, fuelling some attacks of 4am philosophical  
insomnia - an affliction I imagine I'm not the only person on this  
list to suffer from! If you try to nail Bruno down on some aspects  
of his theory, he has a tendency to get all Sg Grz* and p[]<>p on  
you at a certain point, making it difficult to progress without a  
PhD in modal logic - despite the fact that I suspect that the ideas  
are fundamentally simple.


It is not difficult, but Gödel's theorem, without Church's thesis,  
needs some tedious work done at least one times, to get the "real"  
thing.
Then modal logic happens to summarize the logic of (simple, but with  
rich introspective abilities) machine self-reference.
The important idea is self-reference. Modal logic is the tool. Modal  
logic is to self-reference what Tensor analysis is the General  
Relativity.





Nevertheless in the course of the discussion, Bruno did acknowledge  
that his theory predicts that the laws of physics are invariant  
across space and time, because they are supposed to arise out of  
pure arithmetic (being the hypostases of the FPI bla blas).  Indeed,  
for the dissolution of the material within the arithmetical to go  
through (logically), then the regularities that we call physical law  
cannot depend on geography, since ex hypothesi they arise from  
number relations which are prior to time and space.



Due to the invariance of the first person experience for all the  
infinitely many delays in the infinitely redundant self-representation  
in the UD*, or the sigma_1 reality.






Yet physics - or cosmology - seems to be headed full-steam in a  
different direction, towards the conclusion that physical law is  
indeed dependent on geography, the laws we observe being dependent  
upon an observer selection process. That is, we see physical laws  
finely honed for life, because life can only exist in those regions  
where the laws are conducive to life. I'm less sure about this, but  
I think it might still be OK for physical law to geographically  
determined in this sense, so long as there are no other observers in  
different parts of the multiverse who see different laws, but to  
assume such a thing seems foolish. Why should we believe that of all  
the possible permutations of the parameters which determined  
physical, there is only a single solution which permits life? There  
might be many different


There are many different, but below our substitution level, we must  
find the burred sum of all computation leading to "my" (first person)  
experience.


Those laws have thus a theoretical computer science origin, reflected  
in the mind of the "thinking universal machine", and indeed reflected  
by the intensional modal variant of consistency/provability (in the  
ideal a case e need to find the correct laws of physics).





So on the face of it, the recent measurements of the mass of the  
Higgs boson, which are strongly suggestive of a multiverse might be  
seen as empirical evidence against 'comp'.


On the contrary/ A mutitverse is the only way to diminish the white  
rabbits probability. As we cannot makes them disappearing, arithmetic  
can only multiply the "normal history" to diminish they relative  
appearances.


Only evidence for a collapse of the wave packet would be a problem for  
computationalism.







Yet there is a way - namely an extremely low substitution level.  
You'll recall that the substitution level is the level at which a  
digital substitute can be made for a brain such that the self  
(whatever that is) survives the substitution. This might be quite  
high - perhaps its sufficient to mimic neuronal interconnections in  
software? Or it might be very low - maybe we need to go down to the  
molecular level and simulate chemistry. However, it would be a big  
surprise I imagine for the digital survival enthusiasts if the  
required level was the entire multiverse! Yet that conclusion seems  
inescapable if the emerging multiverse cosmology (and comp) is  
correct.


Why would a low substitution level save the day for comp? Because,  
as stated before, if the physics observed by some conscious being is  
dependent solely on number relations (as UDA purports to prove),   
and number relations are pure abstractions prior to matter, space  
and time, then physics cannot be contingent on geography, because it  
is contingent on matter, space and time. So if comp is correct, and  
it is also correct that we live in a multiverse such that observers  
see different apparent laws in different parts of that structure,  
then the only solution (ISTM) is to make the observer large enough  
to encompass the geographical variation.


But the laws of physics are the same in the entire multiverse. I  
suppose here a theory like Dwitt-Wheeler, or just Everett Universal  
wave.


But the hamiltonian can vari

Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level


On 5/24/2015 2:12 AM, LizR wrote:
The stability of natural laws is also the simplest situation, I think? (Isn't there 
something in Russell's TON about this?) Natural laws remain stable due to symmetry 
principles, which are simpler than anything asymmetric (although physics contains some 
asymmetries, of course, like matter vs antimatter).


I'm not sure about this "person in an empty room" - surely they experience all sorts of 
phenomena that can ultimately be traced to the laws of physics? An obvious one is the 
pull of gravity (or lack thereof).


But I have to admit I can't see how one gets from the UDA to physics. The notion that 
physics "falls out of" all the computations passing through a specific observer moment 
seems approximately as difficult to explain as how physics operates if one assumes 
"primary materialism" - but of course physics based on primary materialism comes with 
the benefit that for 100s of years, people have believed the ontology to be correct, and 
they have slowly built up a body of knowledge on that basis. Hence comp finds itself 
doubly disadvantaged in that no one has worked out how it might work in practice, and 
also in that most people react with an "argument from incredulity" because they've been 
taught that physics is based on primary materialism.


This is a bit like the situation with cars that run on something other than petrol, or 
subcritical nuclear reactors. No one has put in a century of research to work out how 
(say) alcohol driven cars might work, or 50 years of research on how thorium reactors 
might work. Or 300 years of thinking on how reality might be derived from computations.


Well actually cars running on alcohol raced on U.S. tracks through most of the 20th 
century.  A thorium reactor was built and operated in the 50's.  I think a more accurate 
analogy would working out how cars would run on trigonometry or philology.


Brent

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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia


On 5/24/2015 1:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Again, with comp, all incarnations are "zombie", because bodies do not think. It is the 
abstract person which thinks


But a few thumps on the body and the "abstract person" won't think either.  So far as we 
have observered *only* bodies think.  If comp implies the contrary isn't that so much the 
worse for comp.


Brent

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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia


On 5/23/2015 11:47 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
There is a common programming technique called memoization. Essentially building 
automatic caches for functions within a program. I wonder: would adding memorization to 
the functions implementing an AI eventually result in it becoming a zombie recording 
rather than a program, if it were fed all the same inputs a second time?


Isn't that exactly what happens when you learn to ride a bicycle, hit a tennis ball, touch 
type,...  Stuff you had to think about when you were learning becomes automatic - and 
subconscious.


I suspect a lot of these conundrums arise from taking consciousness to be fundamental, 
rather than a language related add-on to intelligence.


Brent

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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia



On 24 May 2015, at 10:21, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:




On Saturday, May 23, 2015, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

On 22 May 2015, at 10:34, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:




On Friday, May 22, 2015, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

On 21 May 2015, at 01:53, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:




On Wednesday, May 20, 2015, Jason Resch   
wrote:


Partial zombies are absurd because they make the concept of  
consciousness meaningless.


OK.


Random neurons, separated neurons and platonic computations  
sustaining consciousness are merely weird, not absurd.


Not OK. Random neurone, like the movie, simply does not compute.  
They only mimic the contingent (and logically unrelated) physical  
activity related to a special implementation of a computation. If  
you change the initial computer, that physical activity could mimic  
another computation. Or, like Maudlin showed: you can change the  
physical activity arbitrarily, and still mimic the initial  
computation: so the relation between computation, and the physical  
activity of the computer running that computation is accidental,  
nor logical.


Platonic computation, on the contrary, does compute (in the  
original sense of computation).


You're assuming not only that computationalism is true, but that  
it's exclusively true.


That is part of the definition, and that is why I add often that we  
have to say "yes" to the doctor, in virtue of surviving "qua  
computatio".  I have often try to explain that someone can believe  
in both Church thesis, and say yes to the doctor, but still believe  
in this not for the reason that the artficial brain will run the  
relevant computation, but because he believes in the Virgin Mary,  
and he believes she is good and compensionate, so that if the  
artificial brain is good enough she will save your soul, and  
reinstall it in the digital physical brain. That is *not*  
computationalism. It is computationalism + magic.


But it's not obvious that *only* computations can sustain  
consciousness. Maybe appropriate random behaviour can do so as well.


May be you need to add the Holy Water and the Pope benediction.


Alternatively, perhaps appropriate random behaviour would at least  
not destroy the consciousness that was there to begin with, because  
the real source of consciousness was neither the brain's normal  
physical activity nor the random activity.


That is like the movie. It keeps the relevant information to reinstal  
some instantaneous description on the boolean graph which was filmed.


Whatever possible makes the counterfactual correct in some  
sufficiently large spectrum, makes the audittor of the entity  
connected to the "real" person, which is an abstraction in Platonia.





I can't really see an alternative other than Russel's suggestion  
that the random activity might perfectly sustain consciousness until  
a certain point, then all consciousness would abruptly stop.


That would lead to the non sensical partial zombie. Those who says "I  
don't feel any difference".


I think you illustrate my point.  If we want to avoid partial zombie,  
and keep the invariance of consciousness for the digital substitution,  
we must recognize and understand that invoking a rome of matter or god  
as a computation selector, appears as a magical explanation, like if  
we should not isolate that measure with the means of computer science,  
and then test it with the empirical physics.


Bruno




Go back several steps and consider why we think computationalism  
might be true in the first place. The usual start is that computers  
can behave intelligently and substitute for processes in the brain.


OK.



So if something else can behave intelligently and substitute for  
processes in the brain, it's not absurd to consider that it might  
be conscious. It's begging the question to say that it can't be  
conscious because it isn't a computation.



The movie and the lucky random brain are different in that respect.

The movie doesn't behave like if it was conscious. I can tell the  
movie that mustard is a mineral, or an animal, the movie does not  
react. it fails at the Turing tests, and the zombie test. There is  
neither computations, nor intelligent behaviors, relevant with the  
consciousness "associated' to the boolean circuit.


The "inimagibly lucky" random brain, on the contrary,  does behave  
in a way making a person acting like a p-zombie or a conscious  
individual. We don't see the difference with a conscious being, by  
definition/construction.


Well, if a random event mimics by chance a computation, that means  
at the least that the computation exists (in arithmetic), and I  
suggest to associate consciousness to it.
Then if I have the way to learn that from time t1 to time t2 the  
neuron fired randomly, but correctly, by chance, that would only add  
to my suspicion that the physical activity has some relationship  
with consciousness. It is just a relative implementation of the  
abstract computation. That o

Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!



On Monday, May 4, 2015 at 9:08:30 PM UTC+10, spudb...@aol.com wrote:
>
> I sure did, Telmo. Scroll to the bottom and you shall view my last, 
> number 26th, the last one. 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. 


? Highly debatable! It's true that so far I'm not aware of any experiments 
in which NDE subjects reported the content of cards put in places only 
visible from the ceiling (as some researchers have tried), but plenty of 
information has "come back" if you're willing to allow experiencers' 
spontaneous reports as evidence. For instance, the well documented case of 
a woman who was able to report accurately on the neurosurgery that was 
performed on her, including describing surgical tools, conversations and 
detail about procedures she could have had no knowledge of - all while her 
body was drained of blood, with a flatlining EEG. There are tons of such 
reports, and studies have looked at the accuracy of these reports and found 
that they far exceeded the accuracy of surgery descriptions of patients 
asked to describe that they *thought* they would have seen if witnessing 
their own surgery. Yes of course this does not constitute any kind of 
scientific proof, but to sweepingly say they have not come back with 
information is also inaccurate. What you *can* say is attempts to find some 
kind of information that NDE-ers can report in a reliable, replicable 
manner have so far been unsuccessful. 
 

>  
>  
>  
>  -Original Message-
> From: Telmo Menezes >
> To: everything-list >
> Sent: Mon, May 4, 2015 4:19 am
> Subject: Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!
>
>  
>  
>  On Sun, May 3, 2015 at 9:19 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List <
> everyth...@googlegroups.com > wrote: 
>
>>  Hi Telmo,
>>
>> I have tried the Other Side stuff for a bit, and found it wanting. 
>>  
>  
>  Not so surprising... The topic is a string attractor for quacks, for 
> sure. 
>
>
>>   Steinhart, said he had some experiences but decided they were not that 
>> significant to himself. He is more buzzed, he said, but the beauty of 
>> mathematics, emotionally. Here is a crowd funded 3D augmented reality game, 
>> due out next year, called Night Terrors, so much for the paranormal, yes? 
>> We maybe, could, have the paranormal adventure any time we choose. 
>>
>>   
>> http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/05/01/survival-horror-augmented-reality-game-night-terrors-maps-your-house
>>  
>>  
>  
>  Wow, this is a brilliant/terrifying idea! 
>
>
>>  
>>
>> I cross-posted a message to Ben Goetzel on his "Multiverse" website, as 
>> well as on Guilio Prisco's Turing-Church website sight concerning Goetzel's 
>> non-response, to my question to him, about afterlife ideas, if any?  He 
>> seemed to touch on this in a recent article, as well as his 2006, The 
>> Hidden Pattern, which I had downloaded, a couple of months ago. Any data or 
>> opinion on Goetzel's view on all this?
>>   
>  
>  Have you seen this? 
>  
> http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.de/2015/03/paranormal-phenomena-nonlocal-mind-and.html
>  
>  
>  Telmo. 
>
>
>>   
>> Mitch
>>
>>   
>>  -Original Message-
>> From: Telmo Menezes >
>> To: everything-list >
>>   Sent: Sun, May 3, 2015 2:45 pm 
>> Subject: Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism! 
>>
>>  Hi spudboy, 
>>
>>  I follow Ben Goetzel and have some of the books he recommends on the 
>> topic on my to-read list. 
>>  
>>  I remain agnostic on this stuff, and just try to consider the simplest 
>> explanation, even if it's boring. In the case of this story, this sounds a 
>> lot like the event was staged by some nice person who cares about the 
>> bride. This doesn't mean that is the correct explanation, of course. 
>>  
>>  What I am more curious about are replicable laboratory experiments. 
>> Some people, like Goetzel, are claiming that results with statistical 
>> significance are known. Maybe this is a nice opportunity for amateur 
>> science, because dealing with this topics would still career suicide for 
>> many people -- even if to find negative results. 
>>  
>>  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. 
>>  
>>  Cheers, 
>>  Telmo. 
>>  
>>  On Sun, May 3, 2015 at 6:09 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List <
>> everyth...@googlegroups.com > wrote: 
>>
>>> If you know of Ben Goetzel, and Damien Broderick, as well as Eric 
>>> Steinhart, they have claimed Psi experiences, or spiritual experiences, but 
>>> are split on the true significance? At the end of the day, it either works 
>>> for us, or it doesn't.  
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  -Original Message- 
>>> From: LizR < liz...@gmail

Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level



On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 4:02:42 PM UTC+10, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 5/23/2015 9:58 PM, Pierz wrote:
>  
>
>
> On Saturday, May 23, 2015 at 8:36:40 PM UTC+10, Liz R wrote: 
>>
>>  I'm not sure why comp would predict that physical laws are invariant 
>> for all observers. I can see that it would lead to a sort of 
>> super-anthropic-selection effect, but surely all possible observers should 
>> exist somewhere in arithmetic, including ones who observe different physics 
>> (that is compatible with their existence) ?
>>  
>
>  I really must dig up the old thread! But I'm not saying comp does entail 
> invariant physics for all observers, just that if there are different 
> physics, the substitution level must be very low indeed. Think of the 
> original scenario in the UDA: a person in Washington is suddenly 
> annihilated, and then duplicated in Helsinki and Moscow (or whatever). That 
> operation creates a 50% probability of finding oneself in Helsinki or 
> Moscow. But the ultimate point of the UDA is that one's actual probability 
> of finding oneself in Helsinki or Washington depends on the total measure 
> of *all* virtual environments within which that observer is instantiated 
> in an environment that looks like one of those cities. One can't isolate a 
> particular virtual system from the trace of the UD. So you can't create an 
> arbitrary physics in an environment that looks like either city (or 
> anywhere). Well you can, but any observer will always find their own 
> physics to be the measure of *all* their continuations in arithmetic. So 
> there can't be an environment that is like Helsinki or Moscow at some point 
> but that has different physical laws. Carry this logic over to the scenario 
> of a person standing in an empty room - the physics the person experiences 
> will be the measure of all such identical persons standing in empty rooms. 
>  
>
> "Experiencing physics" I think needs some explication.  If experiencing 
> only refers to consciously thinking propositions, then one may not be 
> experiencing much physics: the world seems 3D with colors, there's a mild 
> temperature, air smells OK,...  One doesn't directly, consciously 
> experience the 2nd law, or the Born rule.  The "laws of physics" are human 
> inventions to describe and predict events.  They're not out there in 
> Nature; which is why we have to revise them from time to time as we find 
> more comprehensive, more accurate "laws".
>
> OK, but it doesn't seem relevant to the argument. We experience a world 
predictable and stable in certain ways that, now we're so sophisticated, we 
formalise into the science of physics. Bruno's claim is that these 
regularities are not intrinsic properties of some primary stuff, but 
emergent from the computational properties of observers - namely how often 
various continuations of those observers crop up relatively to one another 
in the abstract space of all possible continuations. I'm trying to make an 
admittedly difficult point about whether or not observers in different 
places can experience different physics within this paradigm, and if so, 
how that relates to "substitution level". If you're worried about people 
"experiencing physics" let's just concentrate on observers who go to the 
trouble of doing physics experiments. It really doesn't matter.
 

>  The question here is what constitutes the observer? How detailed would a 
> simulation of me have to be before it became a subjective *duplicate* of 
> me, its continuations my continuations? If there is a person A somewhere in 
> the UD who is experiencing an empty room with physics A, and another 
> identically configured person B somewhere else experiencing physics B, what 
> is stopping the continuations of A mixing with the continuations of B, so 
> that the measures combine into a merged physics? There has to be something 
> in both observers' computational states that distinguishes them 
> sufficiently that their experiences cannot interfere with one another - the 
> comp equivalent of decoherence. (In fact if QM effects are the 
> manifestation of UD observer measures, the threshold at which these effects 
> start to kick in should probably give us a strong clue about how low the 
> substitution level is!)
>
>  Observers and their experiences, including physical laws, can't be kept 
> apart by physical or temporal space, but only by differences in the 
> computational states that define them. Physics is emergent from the 
> computational properties of observers, and therefore any difference in 
> physics experienced by different observers is a function of their 
> mathematical configuration. If we find that there are observers in other 
> universes who experience different physics, then it must be the case that 
> the substitution level for those observers includes their entire universe.
>
>  That said, if I recall our previous discussion correctly, Bruno 
> disfavoured the idea of different physics for different obser

Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 7:13:01 PM UTC+10, Liz R wrote:
>
> The stability of natural laws is also the simplest situation, I think? 
> (Isn't there something in Russell's TON about this?) Natural laws remain 
> stable due to symmetry principles, which are simpler than anything 
> asymmetric (although physics contains some asymmetries, of course, like 
> matter vs antimatter).
>
> I'm not sure about this "person in an empty room" - surely they experience 
> all sorts of phenomena that can ultimately be traced to the laws of 
> physics? An obvious one is the pull of gravity (or lack thereof).
>

Sorry if it wasn't clear. That paragraph was rather muddled as I tried to 
write my way from dim intuition to clear logic. It's probably best to 
ignore the empty room guy and just focus on the argument I finally got 
clear(er) in this paragraph: "Observers and their experiences, including 
physical laws, can't be kept apart by physical or temporal space, but only 
by differences in the computational states that define them. Physics is 
emergent from the computational properties of observers, and therefore any 
difference in physics experienced by different observers is a function of 
their mathematical configuration. If we find that there are observers in 
other universes who experience different physics, then it must be the case 
that the substitution level for those observers includes their entire 
universe."

> But I have to admit I can't see how one gets from the UDA to physics. The 
> notion that physics "falls out of" all the computations passing through a 
> specific observer moment seems approximately as difficult to explain as how 
> physics operates if one assumes "primary materialism"
>

I don't think so. Physics in primary materialism is just "PFM" (Pure 
F#&%ing Magic). Easy enough to explain what the laws are. Impossible to 
explain how they came to be what they are. Comp at least gives a mechanism 
for a possible explanation. Of course it's of about the same value for 
actually deriving equations as Monty Python's lesson on how to cure all 
known diseases (Well you become a doctor and then you discover a wonderful 
cure and then jolly well tell everyone what to do and there'll never be any 
more diseases ever again!). 

> - but of course physics based on primary materialism comes with the 
> benefit that for 100s of years, people have believed the ontology to be 
> correct, and they have slowly built up a body of knowledge on that basis. 
> Hence comp finds itself doubly disadvantaged in that no one has worked out 
> how it might work in practice, and also in that most people react with an 
> "argument from incredulity" because they've been taught that physics is 
> based on primary materialism.
>
> This is a bit like the situation with cars that run on something other 
> than petrol, or subcritical nuclear reactors. No one has put in a century 
> of research to work out how (say) alcohol driven cars might work, or 50 
> years of research on how thorium reactors might work. Or 300 years of 
> thinking on how reality might be derived from computations.
>
> Quite. Materialism has something of a head-start. 

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level



On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 4:59:52 PM UTC+10, Jason wrote:
>
> I think Bruno has explained to me previously that things like the mass of 
> the electron may be geographical, rather than physical. But things like 
> quantum logic/measure may be a necessary part of the "global physics".
>
> If that is the case, then the dream of deriving any useful physics from 
computer science alone seems even more far-fetched, because we'd need to 
discover all those geographies in the maths, much worse than finding 'our' 
M-theory manifold configuration among all those 10^500 options or whatever 
it is. But disregarding that, if electron mass is geographical, and there 
are other observers who observe different electron masses, then the 
substitution level has to be really, really low. (According to my logic, 
though I'm open to correction.)
 

> Even without comp, I think the evolution of life requires that laws be 
> relatively stable locally. So on that basis alone, maybe we shouldn't be 
> surprised that given our position we find the laws to remain stable.
>

Yes well I'm not surprised. But I'm not trying to understand why laws are 
stable or anything like that. I'm not interested (for the sake of this 
argument) in "even without comp". 
 

>
> Jason
>
> On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 4:23 AM, Pierz > 
> wrote:
>
>> Some time ago on this list I had a fascinating exchange with Bruno that 
>> has stayed with me, fuelling some attacks of 4am philosophical insomnia - 
>> an affliction I imagine I'm not the only person on this list to suffer 
>> from! If you try to nail Bruno down on some aspects of his theory, he has a 
>> tendency to get all Sg Grz* and p[]<>p on you at a certain point, making it 
>> difficult to progress without a PhD in modal logic - despite the fact that 
>> I suspect that the ideas are fundamentally simple. Nevertheless in the 
>> course of the discussion, Bruno *did* acknowledge that his theory 
>> predicts that the laws of physics are invariant across space and time, 
>> because they are supposed to arise out of pure arithmetic (being the 
>> hypostases of the FPI bla blas).  Indeed, for the dissolution of the 
>> material within the arithmetical to go through (logically), then the 
>> regularities that we call physical law cannot depend on geography, since *ex 
>> hypothesi* they arise from number relations which are prior to time and 
>> space. Yet physics - or cosmology - seems to be headed full-steam in a 
>> different direction, towards the conclusion that physical law is indeed 
>> dependent on geography, the laws we observe being dependent upon an 
>> observer selection process. That is, we see physical laws finely honed for 
>> life, because life can only exist in those regions where the laws are 
>> conducive to life. I'm less sure about this, but I think it might still be 
>> OK for physical law to geographically determined in this sense, so long as 
>> there are no other observers in different parts of the multiverse who see 
>> different laws, but to assume such a thing seems foolish. Why should we 
>> believe that of all the possible permutations of the parameters which 
>> determined physical, there is only a single solution which permits life? 
>> There might be many different 
>>
>> So on the face of it, the recent measurements of the mass of the Higgs 
>> boson, which are strongly suggestive of a multiverse might be seen as 
>> empirical evidence against 'comp'. Yet there is a way - namely an 
>> *extremely* low substitution level. You'll recall that the substitution 
>> level is the level at which a digital substitute can be made for a brain 
>> such that the self (whatever that is) survives the substitution. This might 
>> be quite high - perhaps its sufficient to mimic neuronal interconnections 
>> in software? Or it might be very low - maybe we need to go down to the 
>> molecular level and simulate chemistry. However, it would be a big surprise 
>> I imagine for the digital survival enthusiasts if the required level was 
>> the entire multiverse! Yet that conclusion seems inescapable if the 
>> emerging multiverse cosmology (and comp) is correct.
>>
>> Why would a low substitution level save the day for comp? Because, as 
>> stated before, if the physics observed by some conscious being is dependent 
>> solely on number relations (as UDA purports to prove),  and number 
>> relations are pure abstractions prior to matter, space and time, then 
>> physics cannot be contingent on geography, because *it* is contingent on 
>> matter, space and time. So if comp is correct, and it is also correct that 
>> we live in a multiverse such that observers see different apparent laws in 
>> different parts of that structure, then the only solution (ISTM) is to make 
>> the observer large enough to encompass the geographical variation.  
>>
>> But such a low substitution level seems counter to most of the common 
>> sense assumptions about consciousness that are the basis for the logic of 
>> UD

Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia



On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 4:47:12 PM UTC+10, Jason wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 12:40 AM, Pierz > 
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 1:07:15 AM UTC+10, Jason wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 12:44 PM, Bruno Marchal  
>>> wrote:
>>>

 On 19 May 2015, at 15:53, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 12:06 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <
 stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 19 May 2015 at 14:45, Jason Resch  wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 9:21 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <
> stat...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
>
> >>
> >> On 19 May 2015 at 11:02, Jason Resch  wrote:
> >>
> >> > I think you're not taking into account the level of the functional
> >> > substitution. Of course functionally equivalent silicon and 
> functionally
> >> > equivalent neurons can (under functionalism) both instantiate the 
> same
> >> > consciousness. But a calculator computing 2+3 cannot substitute 
> for a
> >> > human
> >> > brain computing 2+3 and produce the same consciousness.
> >>
> >> In a gradual replacement the substitution must obviously be at a 
> level
> >> sufficient to maintain the function of the whole brain. Sticking a
> >> calculator in it won't work.
> >>
> >> > Do you think a "Blockhead" that was functionally equivalent to 
> you (it
> >> > could
> >> > fool all your friends and family in a Turing test scenario into 
> thinking
> >> > it
> >> > was intact you) would be conscious in the same way as you?
> >>
> >> Not necessarily, just as an actor may not be conscious in the same 
> way
> >> as me. But I suspect the Blockhead would be conscious; the intuition
> >> that a lookup table can't be conscious is like the intuition that an
> >> electric circuit can't be conscious.
> >>
> >
> > I don't see an equivalency between those intuitions. A lookup table 
> has a
> > bounded and very low degree of computational complexity: all answers 
> to all
> > queries are answered in constant time.
> >
> > While the table itself may have an arbitrarily high information 
> content,
> > what in the software of the lookup table program is there to
> > appreciate/understand/know that information?
>
> Understanding emerges from the fact that the lookup table is immensely
> large. It could be wrong, but I don't think it is obviously less
> plausible than understanding emerging from a Turing machine made of
> tin cans.
>
>
>
 The lookup table is intelligent or at least offers the appearance of 
 intelligence, but it makes the maximum possible advantage of the 
 space-time 
 trade off: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space–time_tradeoff

 The tin-can Turing machine is unbounded in its potential computational 
 complexity, there's no reason to be a bio- or silico-chauvinist against 
 it. 
 However, by definition, a lookup table has near zero computational 
 complexity, no retained state. 


 But it is counterfactually correct on a large range spectrum. Of 
 course, it has to be infinite to be genuinely counterfactual-correct. 


>>> But the structure of the counterfactuals is identical regardless of the 
>>> inputs and outputs in its lookup table. If you replaced all of its outputs 
>>> with random strings, would that change its consciousness? What if there 
>>> existed a special decoding book, which was a one-time-pad that could decode 
>>> its random answers? Would the existence of this book make it more conscious 
>>> than if this book did not exist? If there is zero information content in 
>>> the outputs returned by the lookup table it might as well return all "X" 
>>> characters as its response to any query, but then would any program that 
>>> just returns a string of "X"'s be conscious?
>>>
>>> I really like this argument, even though I once came up with a (bad) 
>> attempt to refute it. I wish it received more attention because it does 
>> cast quite a penetrating light on the issue. What you're suggesting is 
>> effectively the cache pattern in computer programming, where we trade 
>> memory resources for computational resources. Instead of repeating a 
>> resource-intensive computation, we store the inputs and outputs for later 
>> regurgitation. 
>>
>
> How is this different from a movie recording of brain activity (which most 
> on the list seem to agree is not conscious)? The lookup table is just a 
> really long recording, only we use the input to determine to which section 
> of the recording to fast-forward/rewind to.
>
> It isn't different to a recording. But here's the thing: when we ask if 
the lookup machine is conscious, we are kind of implicitly asking: is it 
having an experience *now*, while I ask the question and see a response. 
But what does such a quest

Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia



On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 7:15:41 PM UTC+10, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 23 May 2015, at 08:06, Pierz wrote:
>
>
>
> On Saturday, May 23, 2015 at 2:14:07 AM UTC+10, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 22 May 2015, at 10:34, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Friday, May 22, 2015, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 21 May 2015, at 01:53, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, May 20, 2015, Jason Resch  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Partial zombies are absurd because they make the concept of 
>>> consciousness meaningless. 
>>>
>>>
>>> OK. 
>>>
>>>
>>> Random neurons, separated neurons and platonic computations sustaining 
>>> consciousness are merely weird, not absurd.
>>>
>>>
>>> Not OK. Random neurone, like the movie, simply does not compute. They 
>>> only mimic the contingent (and logically unrelated) physical activity 
>>> related to a special implementation of a computation. If you change the 
>>> initial computer, that physical activity could mimic another computation. 
>>> Or, like Maudlin showed: you can change the physical activity arbitrarily, 
>>> and still mimic the initial computation: so the relation between 
>>> computation, and the physical activity of the computer running that 
>>> computation is accidental, nor logical.
>>>
>>> Platonic computation, on the contrary, does compute (in the original 
>>> sense of computation).
>>>
>>
>> You're assuming not only that computationalism is true, but that it's 
>> exclusively true. 
>>
>>
>> That is part of the definition, and that is why I add often that we have 
>> to say "yes" to the doctor, in virtue of surviving "qua computatio".  I 
>> have often try to explain that someone can believe in both Church thesis, 
>> and say yes to the doctor, but still believe in this not for the reason 
>> that the artficial brain will run the relevant computation, but because he 
>> believes in the Virgin Mary, and he believes she is good and compensionate, 
>> so that if the artificial brain is good enough she will save your soul, and 
>> reinstall it in the digital physical brain. That is *not* computationalism. 
>> It is computationalism + magic. 
>>
>>
>>
>> Go back several steps and consider why we think computationalism might be 
>> true in the first place. The usual start is that computers can behave 
>> intelligently and substitute for processes in the brain.
>>
>>
>> OK.
>>
>>
>>
>> So if something else can behave intelligently and substitute 
>> for processes in the brain, it's not absurd to consider that it might be 
>> conscious. It's begging the question to say that it can't be conscious 
>> because it isn't a computation.
>>
>>
>>
>> The movie and the lucky random brain are different in that respect.
>>
>> The movie doesn't behave like if it was conscious. I can tell the movie 
>> that mustard is a mineral, or an animal, the movie does not react. it fails 
>> at the Turing tests, and the zombie test. There is neither computations, 
>> nor intelligent behaviors, relevant with the consciousness "associated' to 
>> the boolean circuit.
>>
>> The "inimagibly lucky" random brain, on the contrary,  does behave in a 
>> way making a person acting like a p-zombie or a conscious individual. We 
>> don't see the difference with a conscious being, by definition/construction.
>>
>> Well, if a random event mimics by chance a computation, that means at the 
>> least that the computation exists (in arithmetic), and I suggest to 
>> associate consciousness to it. 
>>
>
> I suspect you're wrong. In the case of the recording, the movie might 
> still pass the Turing test *if we invert the flukey coincidence* and 
> allow the possibility the questioner might ask questions that exactly 
> correspond to the responses that the film happens to output. I remember 
> watching a Blues Brothers midnight screening once, and all the cult fans 
> who'd go every week would yell things out at certain points in the action 
> and the actors would appear to respond to their shouted questions and 
> interjections. In this case the illusion of conversation was constructed, 
> but it could occur by chance. Would the recording then be conscious? In 
> both the random and fixed response cases, there is no actual link other 
> than coincidence between inputs and outputs, and this is the key. The 
> random brain is not responding or processing inputs at all, any more than 
> the film is. So the key to these types of thought experiments is whether 
> intelligence and consciousness are functions of the responsive relationship 
> between inputs and outputs, or merely the appearance of responsiveness. I 
> think we have to say that actual responsiveness is required, and therefore 
> fearless commit to the idea that a zombie is indeed 'possible', if the 
> infinitely unlikely is possible! I think that arguments based on 'infinite 
> improbability' (white rabbits) must surely be the weakest of all possible 
> arguments in philosophy, and should really just be dismissed out of han

Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia



On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 8:18:41 PM UTC+10, Liz R wrote:
>
> On 24 May 2015 at 17:40, Pierz > wrote:
>>
>> I really like this argument, even though I once came up with a (bad) 
>> attempt to refute it. I wish it received more attention because it does 
>> cast quite a penetrating light on the issue. What you're suggesting is 
>> effectively the cache pattern in computer programming, where we trade 
>> memory resources for computational resources. Instead of repeating a 
>> resource-intensive computation, we store the inputs and outputs for later 
>> regurgitation. The cached results 'store' intelligence in an analogous way 
>> to the storage of energy as potential energy. 
>>
>
> Another valid comparison, in my opinion, is the storage of "intelligence" 
> in DNA. Instinctive behaviour coded in DNA is effectively substituting a 
> lookup table for "work-it-out-on-the-fly" type intelligence.
>  
>
Yes, I nearly said that myself - the intelligence encoded in the organism 
by evolution.
 

> We effectively flatten out time (the computational process) into the 
>> spatial dimension (memory). The cache pattern does not allow us to cheat 
>> the law that intelligent work must be done in order to produce intelligent 
>> results, it merely allows us to do that work at a time that suits us. The 
>> intelligence has been transferred into the spatial relationships built into 
>> the table, intelligent relationships we can only discover by doing the 
>> computations. The lookup table is useless without its index. 
>>
>
> It's also akin to the MGA, where subsequent re-running of the original 
> computation fails to add anything to it (like more consciousness).
>  
>
>> So what your thought experiment points out is pretty fascinating: that 
>> intelligence can be manifested spatially as well as temporally, contrary to 
>> our common-sense intuition, and that the intelligence of a machine does not 
>> have to be in real time. That actually supports the MGA if anything - 
>> because computations are abstractions outside of time and space. We should 
>> not forget that the memory resources required to duplicate any kind of 
>> intelligent computer would be absolutely enormous, and the lookup table, 
>> although structurally simple, would embody just a vast amount of 
>> computational intelligence. 
>>
>> I think you anticipated my comment above but I'm not 100% sure if we're 
> saying the same thing so I'll let it stand, just in case we aren't :-)
>

We are :) 
 

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Re: "Physicists Are Philosophers, Too"

2015-05-24 Thread LizR

Your graph shows the result of arctic sea ice disappearing while antarctic
sea ice has been increasing. These can both be reasonably ascribed to
climate change - less sea ice in the arctic means it's melting, more in the
antarctic means it's coming off the ice cap into the sea because the ice
cap is melting. The difference is that the sea ice increase in the south
adds more volume to the oceans, since it was originally on land, while the
ice in the north doesn't make any difference to sea level (except for the
contribution from Greenland). So the two roughly balance in terms of sea
ice extent, as your graph shows - but *not* in terms of the effects on sea
level; the overall effect is to raise it.

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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

2015-05-24 Thread LizR

On 24 May 2015 at 17:40, Pierz  wrote:
>
> I really like this argument, even though I once came up with a (bad)
> attempt to refute it. I wish it received more attention because it does
> cast quite a penetrating light on the issue. What you're suggesting is
> effectively the cache pattern in computer programming, where we trade
> memory resources for computational resources. Instead of repeating a
> resource-intensive computation, we store the inputs and outputs for later
> regurgitation. The cached results 'store' intelligence in an analogous way
> to the storage of energy as potential energy.
>

Another valid comparison, in my opinion, is the storage of "intelligence"
in DNA. Instinctive behaviour coded in DNA is effectively substituting a
lookup table for "work-it-out-on-the-fly" type intelligence.


> We effectively flatten out time (the computational process) into the
> spatial dimension (memory). The cache pattern does not allow us to cheat
> the law that intelligent work must be done in order to produce intelligent
> results, it merely allows us to do that work at a time that suits us. The
> intelligence has been transferred into the spatial relationships built into
> the table, intelligent relationships we can only discover by doing the
> computations. The lookup table is useless without its index.
>

It's also akin to the MGA, where subsequent re-running of the original
computation fails to add anything to it (like more consciousness).


> So what your thought experiment points out is pretty fascinating: that
> intelligence can be manifested spatially as well as temporally, contrary to
> our common-sense intuition, and that the intelligence of a machine does not
> have to be in real time. That actually supports the MGA if anything -
> because computations are abstractions outside of time and space. We should
> not forget that the memory resources required to duplicate any kind of
> intelligent computer would be absolutely enormous, and the lookup table,
> although structurally simple, would embody just a vast amount of
> computational intelligence.
>
> I think you anticipated my comment above but I'm not 100% sure if we're
saying the same thing so I'll let it stand, just in case we aren't :-)

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Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

On 23 May 2015, at 17:07, Jason Resch wrote:

On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 12:44 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:

On 19 May 2015, at 15:53, Jason Resch wrote:

On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 12:06 AM, Stathis Papaioannou > wrote:

On 19 May 2015 at 14:45, Jason Resch  wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 9:21 PM, Stathis Papaioannou >

> wrote:
>>
>> On 19 May 2015 at 11:02, Jason Resch  wrote:
>>
>> > I think you're not taking into account the level of the  
functional
>> > substitution. Of course functionally equivalent silicon and  
functionally
>> > equivalent neurons can (under functionalism) both instantiate  
the same
>> > consciousness. But a calculator computing 2+3 cannot  
substitute for a

>> > human
>> > brain computing 2+3 and produce the same consciousness.
>>
>> In a gradual replacement the substitution must obviously be at a  
level

>> sufficient to maintain the function of the whole brain. Sticking a
>> calculator in it won't work.
>>
>> > Do you think a "Blockhead" that was functionally equivalent to  
you (it

>> > could
>> > fool all your friends and family in a Turing test scenario  
into thinking

>> > it
>> > was intact you) would be conscious in the same way as you?
>>
>> Not necessarily, just as an actor may not be conscious in the  
same way
>> as me. But I suspect the Blockhead would be conscious; the  
intuition
>> that a lookup table can't be conscious is like the intuition  
that an

>> electric circuit can't be conscious.
>>
>
> I don't see an equivalency between those intuitions. A lookup  
table has a
> bounded and very low degree of computational complexity: all  
answers to all

> queries are answered in constant time.
>
> While the table itself may have an arbitrarily high information  
content,

> what in the software of the lookup table program is there to
> appreciate/understand/know that information?

Understanding emerges from the fact that the lookup table is  
immensely

large. It could be wrong, but I don't think it is obviously less
plausible than understanding emerging from a Turing machine made of
tin cans.

The lookup table is intelligent or at least offers the appearance  
of intelligence, but it makes the maximum possible advantage of the  
space-time trade off: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space– 
time_tradeoff

The tin-can Turing machine is unbounded in its potential  
computational complexity, there's no reason to be a bio- or silico- 
chauvinist against it. However, by definition, a lookup table has  
near zero computational complexity, no retained state.

But it is counterfactually correct on a large range spectrum. Of  
course, it has to be infinite to be genuinely counterfactual-correct.

But the structure of the counterfactuals is identical regardless of  
the inputs and outputs in its lookup table. If you replaced all of  
its outputs with random strings, would that change its  
consciousness? What if there existed a special decoding book, which  
was a one-time-pad that could decode its random answers? Would the  
existence of this book make it more conscious than if this book did  
not exist? If there is zero information content in the outputs  
returned by the lookup table it might as well return all "X"  
characters as its response to any query, but then would any program  
that just returns a string of "X"'s be conscious?

A lookup table might have some primitive conscious, but I think any  
consciousness it has would be more or less the same regardless of  
the number of entries within that lookup table. With more entries,  
its information content grows, but it's capacity to process,  
interpret, or understand that information remains constant.

You can emulate the brain of Einstein with a (ridiculously  large)  
look-up table, assuming you are ridiculously patient---or we slow down  
your own brain so that you are as slow as "einstein".

Is that incarnation a zombie?

Again, with comp, all incarnations are "zombie", because bodies do not  
think. It is the abstract person which thinks, and in this case  
"Einstein" will still be defined by the "simplest normal"  
computations, which here, and only here, have taken the form of that  
unplausible giant "Einstein look-up table" emulation at the right level.

Does an ant trained to perform the look table's operation become  
more aware when placed in a vast library than when placed on a  
small bookshelf, to perform the identical function?

Are you not doing the Searle's level confusion?

I see the close parallel, but I hope not. The input to the ant when  
interpreted as a binary string is a number, that tells the ant how  
many pages to walk past to get to the page containing the answer,  
where the ant stops the paper is read. I don't see how this system  
consisting of the ant, and the library, is conscious. The system is  
intelligent, in that it provides meaningful answers to queries, but  
it processes no information besides evaluating the magnitude of an  
input (represented

Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia



On 23 May 2015, at 08:06, Pierz wrote:




On Saturday, May 23, 2015 at 2:14:07 AM UTC+10, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 22 May 2015, at 10:34, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:




On Friday, May 22, 2015, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

On 21 May 2015, at 01:53, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:




On Wednesday, May 20, 2015, Jason Resch   
wrote:


Partial zombies are absurd because they make the concept of  
consciousness meaningless.


OK.


Random neurons, separated neurons and platonic computations  
sustaining consciousness are merely weird, not absurd.


Not OK. Random neurone, like the movie, simply does not compute.  
They only mimic the contingent (and logically unrelated) physical  
activity related to a special implementation of a computation. If  
you change the initial computer, that physical activity could mimic  
another computation. Or, like Maudlin showed: you can change the  
physical activity arbitrarily, and still mimic the initial  
computation: so the relation between computation, and the physical  
activity of the computer running that computation is accidental,  
nor logical.


Platonic computation, on the contrary, does compute (in the  
original sense of computation).


You're assuming not only that computationalism is true, but that  
it's exclusively true.


That is part of the definition, and that is why I add often that we  
have to say "yes" to the doctor, in virtue of surviving "qua  
computatio".  I have often try to explain that someone can believe  
in both Church thesis, and say yes to the doctor, but still believe  
in this not for the reason that the artficial brain will run the  
relevant computation, but because he believes in the Virgin Mary,  
and he believes she is good and compensionate, so that if the  
artificial brain is good enough she will save your soul, and  
reinstall it in the digital physical brain. That is *not*  
computationalism. It is computationalism + magic.





Go back several steps and consider why we think computationalism  
might be true in the first place. The usual start is that computers  
can behave intelligently and substitute for processes in the brain.


OK.



So if something else can behave intelligently and substitute for  
processes in the brain, it's not absurd to consider that it might  
be conscious. It's begging the question to say that it can't be  
conscious because it isn't a computation.



The movie and the lucky random brain are different in that respect.

The movie doesn't behave like if it was conscious. I can tell the  
movie that mustard is a mineral, or an animal, the movie does not  
react. it fails at the Turing tests, and the zombie test. There is  
neither computations, nor intelligent behaviors, relevant with the  
consciousness "associated' to the boolean circuit.


The "inimagibly lucky" random brain, on the contrary,  does behave  
in a way making a person acting like a p-zombie or a conscious  
individual. We don't see the difference with a conscious being, by  
definition/construction.


Well, if a random event mimics by chance a computation, that means  
at the least that the computation exists (in arithmetic), and I  
suggest to associate consciousness to it.


I suspect you're wrong. In the case of the recording, the movie  
might still pass the Turing test if we invert the flukey coincidence  
and allow the possibility the questioner might ask questions that  
exactly correspond to the responses that the film happens to output.  
I remember watching a Blues Brothers midnight screening once, and  
all the cult fans who'd go every week would yell things out at  
certain points in the action and the actors would appear to respond  
to their shouted questions and interjections. In this case the  
illusion of conversation was constructed, but it could occur by  
chance. Would the recording then be conscious? In both the random  
and fixed response cases, there is no actual link other than  
coincidence between inputs and outputs, and this is the key. The  
random brain is not responding or processing inputs at all, any more  
than the film is. So the key to these types of thought experiments  
is whether intelligence and consciousness are functions of the  
responsive relationship between inputs and outputs, or merely the  
appearance of responsiveness. I think we have to say that actual  
responsiveness is required, and therefore fearless commit to the  
idea that a zombie is indeed 'possible', if the infinitely unlikely  
is possible! I think that arguments based on 'infinite  
improbability' (white rabbits) must surely be the weakest of all  
possible arguments in philosophy, and should really just be  
dismissed out of hand. Just as Deutsch argues that there are no  
worlds in the multiverse where magic works, only some worlds where  
it has worked and will never work again, we can admit the  
possibility of being fooled into believing that a randomly jerking  
zombie is conscious, or a typewriter-jabbering monkey is the new

Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

2015-05-24 Thread LizR

The stability of natural laws is also the simplest situation, I think?
(Isn't there something in Russell's TON about this?) Natural laws remain
stable due to symmetry principles, which are simpler than anything
asymmetric (although physics contains some asymmetries, of course, like
matter vs antimatter).

I'm not sure about this "person in an empty room" - surely they experience
all sorts of phenomena that can ultimately be traced to the laws of
physics? An obvious one is the pull of gravity (or lack thereof).

But I have to admit I can't see how one gets from the UDA to physics. The
notion that physics "falls out of" all the computations passing through a
specific observer moment seems approximately as difficult to explain as how
physics operates if one assumes "primary materialism" - but of course
physics based on primary materialism comes with the benefit that for 100s
of years, people have believed the ontology to be correct, and they have
slowly built up a body of knowledge on that basis. Hence comp finds itself
doubly disadvantaged in that no one has worked out how it might work in
practice, and also in that most people react with an "argument from
incredulity" because they've been taught that physics is based on primary
materialism.

This is a bit like the situation with cars that run on something other than
petrol, or subcritical nuclear reactors. No one has put in a century of
research to work out how (say) alcohol driven cars might work, or 50 years
of research on how thorium reactors might work. Or 300 years of thinking on
how reality might be derived from computations.

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Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia

On Saturday, May 23, 2015, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 22 May 2015, at 10:34, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>
>
> On Friday, May 22, 2015, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>>
>> On 21 May 2015, at 01:53, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, May 20, 2015, Jason Resch  wrote:
>> 
>> Partial zombies are absurd because they make the concept of consciousness
>> meaningless.
>>
>>
>> OK.
>>
>>
>> Random neurons, separated neurons and platonic computations sustaining
>> consciousness are merely weird, not absurd.
>>
>>
>> Not OK. Random neurone, like the movie, simply does not compute. They
>> only mimic the contingent (and logically unrelated) physical activity
>> related to a special implementation of a computation. If you change the
>> initial computer, that physical activity could mimic another computation.
>> Or, like Maudlin showed: you can change the physical activity arbitrarily,
>> and still mimic the initial computation: so the relation between
>> computation, and the physical activity of the computer running that
>> computation is accidental, nor logical.
>>
>> Platonic computation, on the contrary, does compute (in the original
>> sense of computation).
>>
>
> You're assuming not only that computationalism is true, but that it's
> exclusively true.
>
>
> That is part of the definition, and that is why I add often that we have
> to say "yes" to the doctor, in virtue of surviving "qua computatio".  I
> have often try to explain that someone can believe in both Church thesis,
> and say yes to the doctor, but still believe in this not for the reason
> that the artficial brain will run the relevant computation, but because he
> believes in the Virgin Mary, and he believes she is good and compensionate,
> so that if the artificial brain is good enough she will save your soul, and
> reinstall it in the digital physical brain. That is *not* computationalism.
> It is computationalism + magic.
>

But it's not obvious that *only* computations can sustain consciousness.
Maybe appropriate random behaviour can do so as well. Alternatively,
perhaps appropriate random behaviour would at least not destroy the
consciousness that was there to begin with, because the real source of
consciousness was neither the brain's normal physical activity nor the
random activity.

I can't really see an alternative other than Russel's suggestion that the
random activity might perfectly sustain consciousness until a certain
point, then all consciousness would abruptly stop.

> Go back several steps and consider why we think computationalism might be
> true in the first place. The usual start is that computers can behave
> intelligently and substitute for processes in the brain.
>
>
> OK.
>
>
>
> So if something else can behave intelligently and substitute for processes
> in the brain, it's not absurd to consider that it might be conscious. It's
> begging the question to say that it can't be conscious because it isn't a
> computation.
>
>
>
> The movie and the lucky random brain are different in that respect.
>
> The movie doesn't behave like if it was conscious. I can tell the movie
> that mustard is a mineral, or an animal, the movie does not react. it fails
> at the Turing tests, and the zombie test. There is neither computations,
> nor intelligent behaviors, relevant with the consciousness "associated' to
> the boolean circuit.
>
> The "inimagibly lucky" random brain, on the contrary,  does behave in a
> way making a person acting like a p-zombie or a conscious individual. We
> don't see the difference with a conscious being, by definition/construction.
>
> Well, if a random event mimics by chance a computation, that means at the
> least that the computation exists (in arithmetic), and I suggest to
> associate consciousness to it.
> Then if I have the way to learn that from time t1 to time t2 the neuron
> fired randomly, but correctly, by chance, that would only add to my
> suspicion that the physical activity has some relationship with
> consciousness. It is just a relative implementation of the abstract
> computation. That one should have its normal measure guarantied by the
> statistical "sum" on all computations below its substitution level.
>
> Now, the movie was a constructive object. A brain which is random but
> lucky is equivalent with a white rabbit event, and using it in a thought
> experiment might not convey so much. In this case, it seems to make my
> point that we need very special event, infinite luck or Virgin Mary, to
> resist the consequence of the idea that our consciousness is invariant for
> Turing-equivalence. Matter becomes then the symptom that some numbers win
> some (self) measure theoretical game. Comp suggests we can explain the
> appearances and relative persistence of physical realities from a
> statistical bio or psycho or theo -logy. And that is confirmed by the
> "interview of the Löbian machine" (by the results of Gödel, Löb, Solovay,
> Visser, ...).
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -

Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level