Re: If the universe is computational, what is the computing platform? What are the options?

[meekerdb]

On 8/31/2015 3:19 PM, John Clark wrote:



On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 2:14 PM, meekerdb > wrote:

 ​


​ >>
Aristotle
​ believed that heavy objects fell more quickly than light ones, something 
that
could have been easily disproved even on his own day but he understood it 
so well,
or thought he did, that he didn't bother to make any observations on the 
matter.


​ > ​
But he did observe that a rock fell faster than a leaf. He also believed 
that an
active force was necessary to sustain motion because he observed that if 
you stopped
pulling a wagon it came to a halt.


​
Pure logic can't prove that a physical theory is correct but it can prove that 
it's wrong i
​ f​
it's self contradictory and Aristotle's theory was.
​ ​
If you take a heavy rock and tie it to a slightly lighter rock with some string that has 
some slack in it and drop them then both rocks would fall slower than the big rock alone 
because the slower moving lighter rock would bog it down, but the tied together object

​
would fall faster than the heavy rock because the new object is heavier than the heavy 
rock alone.


Suppose he'd done this with a leaf and a rock.  He'd have found it depended on whether 
they were just tethered together or tightly bound.


Brent

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Re: Tri Alpha Energy

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

For either fusion or thorium, or anything else, it's largely, pushed, by 
money/cost/price. Cost killed uranium-235 reactors, not protests, not 3 mile 
island, nor Chernobyl, nor Fukashima. China and Korea build them, still, but 
sticker shock forces most utilities and government boards to opt for natural 
gas turbines Me-thane gas to those of the UK). Thorium is being worked on by 
India and may well succeed. But that is still 10 years away from a  
"commercial" reactor. 


Moreover, we could have, as a species, traveled to Mars, if we wanted to, 
anytime in the last years. The costs in 1980 currencies would have approached 1 
trillion, in about 10 years of funding, and like the US moon missions, once we 
go there and see a dry, stony, planet, the emotional return on investment, 
would have been a big yawn. My point is that human beings are economic apes, as 
you already know, and we are driven by the symbolics of everything. It controls 
or influences our behavior. This is the way things seem to be.



-Original Message-
From: John Clark 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Thu, Aug 27, 2015 1:14 pm
Subject: Re: Tri Alpha Energy


 
  
   
  
  
   
On Wed, Aug 26, 2015  spudboy100 via Everything List 
 wrote:   
   



   
​> ​
John, I am guessing that these guys are working hard, but achieving commercial, 
nuclear fusion is not in the cards.   


 


 
​It certainly won't be in the cards if nobody even tries. I think Thorium power 
would be vastly easier than fusion power but I could be wrong and these guys 
are using their own money not government money so I wish them luck.  


 

   
   
​> ​
It may never be in the cards, as an electricity power source, except as, a 
means of fast interplanetary travel.  


 


 
​I don't follow, how can if work in an 
  interplanetary  
​ spaceship but not in your local power plant?​  


   
   
  


   
 John K Clark  


   
   
  

 
  
 
   
  
 
  
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Re: A scary theory about IS

[smitra]

The real problem i.m.o. is that big powers tend to have a big inertia, 
it takes them a long time to see that the World has changed and that 
they need to focus on other issues than they currently are engaged with. 
In some cases that can lead to escalation of a pointless conflict that 
has its roots in past issues that are no longer relevant, as is the case 
with the war on drugs. And that then can cause a lot of harm.


But I think the general issue is this huge inertia. So, when Gorbachov 
was in power and he was ready to deal seriously with the West, it took 
us a very long time to engage with him. A point on which we never 
engaged with the Soviets in a constructive way was Afghanistan.


The Soviets were willing to withdraw from  Afghanistan, even before 
Gorbachov came to power, but on certain conditions like leaving behind a 
stable government. We never wanted to engage with the Soviets on that, 
because of pur mondset that the root of all evil was communism, and the 
Soviets were just talking bullshit about our allies there, the 
Jihadists.


Them posing a threat to the World? that to us was just ridiculous. We 
knew for sure that with the Soviets gone out of Afghanistan, their 
communist puppet government dismantled, the Afghan population would be 
able to form a democratic state. We were so sure about this that we 
never critically analyzed all the hidden assumptions made here.


It later turned out that we were wrong and that the Soviets were right, 
not in their general approach but about seeing the threat of Jihadism 
that we helped to fuel. Also they were right about the dangers of having 
failed states. Our ideology at the time was that a failed state would 
quickly get itself organized into  a flourishing democracy if you could 
only keep the evil communists out.


Another fallout of this was that Gorbachov's political position was 
weakened in the Soviet Union, which made his  nationalist opposition who 
were critical of the West politically stronger. When Yeltsin took over 
he had to deal with an economically weak Russia while in the background 
there were forces lurking who were extremely critical of the West. In 
any country you'll have the opposition that tends to question the 
government's policy especially if things are not going well economically 
and especially when there has been a recent radical change. In the years 
after the collapse of communism that move was democratization, 
liberalization of the economy etc. etc.


 It's easy for us to say that the Russians who were critical at the time 
were stupid, just look at the opposition in the US against a universal 
health care system. Now, if we could turn back the clock and had dealt 
with Afghanistan differently, then the outcome of that might not just 
have prevented the rise of international Jihadism, you would also have 
had the pro-Western reformists in Russia to be in a politically far 
stronger position. Likely you would not have had Putin in power today, 
or Putin may not have become that anti-Western (he wasn't when came into 
power).


Another thing is that we would have improved the UN Security Council 
System to deal with complex problems. As it currently functions, the 
UNSC is a panel of prosecutors who are the World's policemen, 
prosecutor, jury and judge at the same time without a requirement for 
members to recuse themselves when they are involved.


The system works fine in emergency situations, like when Iraq invaded 
Kuwait, just like a police can intervene effectively when there is a 
bank robbery going on. But when the emergency situation is dealt with, 
we all know that you need a proper justice system to deal with the 
problem on the longer term. We know that what cannot work is a system 
where the local police can have a caucus with other  police officers 
from neighboring areas to deal with that. Even if you assume that police 
officers can be 100% objective, you would still not have much faith in a 
system where the police officers could be the prosecutors juries, 
judges, appeals judges  and Supreme Court judges all at the same time.


This i.m.o. is the reason why Iraq was invaded. Iraq under Saddam 
Hussein (supported by both superpowers in the 1980s) could never prove 
that it had no WMD within the current system once some prosecutors 
decided to throw the book at him.


Had instead the Western powers thought critically about how to improve 
the international institutions instead of seeing the collapse of the 
Soviet Union as a big gain in their power within the current system, the 
UNSC could have been reformed.  You can think of a system where the UNSC 
continues to exist in its present form but that it creates a new 
institution where judges rule on contentious fundings of facts. The UNSC 
could then have referred difficult dossiers like the Iraq WMD case, 
Iran's nuclear program etc. to such an institution where decisions are 
made on the basis of real evidence instead of political rhetoric.

Re: Uploaded Worm Mind

[Bruno Marchal]

On 31 Aug 2015, at 14:56, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:




On Monday, August 31, 2015, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

On 31 Aug 2015, at 00:42, Russell Standish wrote:

On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 12:34:18PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 30 Aug 2015, at 03:08, Russell Standish wrote:

Well as people probably know, I don't believe C. elegans can be
conscious in any sense of the word. Hell - I have strong doubts about
ants, and they're massively more complex creatures.

I think personally that C. Elegans, and Planaria (!), even amoeba,
are conscious, although very plausibly not self-conscious.

I tend to think since 2008 that even RA is already conscious, even
maximally so, and that PA is already as much self-conscious than a
human (when in some dissociative state).

But I don't know if PA is more or less conscious than RA. That
depends of the role of the higher part of the brain consists in
filtering consciousness or enacting it.


But it probably won't be long before we simulate a mouse brain in toto
- about 2 decades is my guess, maybe even less given enough dollars -
then we're definitely in grey philosophical territory :).

I am slightly less optimistic than you. It will take one of two
decades before we simulate the hippocampus of a rat, but probably
more time will be needed for the rest of their brain. And the result
can be a conscious creature, with a quite different consciousness
that a rat, as I find plausible that pain are related to the glial
cells and their metabolism, which are not  taken into account by the
current "copies".

What is blocking us is not the computing power - already whole "rat
brain" simulations have been done is something like 1/1 of real
time - so all we need is about a decade of performane improvement
through Moores law.

What development is needed is ways of determining the neural
circuitry. There have been leaps and bounds in the process of slicing
frozen brains, and imaging the slices with electron microscopes, but
clearly it is still far too slow.

As for the hypothesis that glial cells have something to do with it,
well that can be tested via the sort of whole rat brain simulation
I've been talking about. Run the simulation in a robotic rat, and
compare the behaviour with a real rat. Basically what the open worm
guys a doing, but scaled up to a rat. If the simulation is way
different from the real rat, then we know something else is required.


I can imagine that the rat will have a "normal behavior", but as he  
cannot talk to us, we might fail to appreciate some internal change  
or even some anosognosia. The rat would not be a zombie rat, but  
still be in a quite different conscious state (perhaps better, as it  
seems the glial cell might have some role in the chronic pain.


In general, if there is a difference in consciousness then there  
should be a difference in behaviour. If the difference in  
consciousness is impossible to detect then arguably it is no  
difference.



How would you detect that the rat has a slight headache?

Some drugs change *only* the "volume" of consciousness (notably alcool  
on high dose, but this one change also the behavior). It is quite  
unpleasant, like listening to music with a the sound made too much  
high, but you can behave in your normal way, and unless somebody ask,  
there is no noticeable difference in behavior.


First order experiences are usually wider than anything we can  
communicate in a third person way, so it is natural that difference in  
consciousness does not necessarily entail a difference in behavior,  
especially for a finite time.


The problem of inverse-spectrum for the qualia of color illustrates  
also that a difference of consciousness might not lead to a difference  
in behavior.


Bruno





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Re: If the universe is computational, what is the computing platform? What are the options?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 28 Aug 2015, at 16:01, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:




On Thursday, August 27, 2015, meekerdb  wrote:



 Forwarded Message 
Subject:	Re: If the universe is computational, what is the computing  
platform? What are the options?

Date:   Wed, 26 Aug 2015 17:32:37 +1000
From:   Stathis Papaioannou 
Reply-To:   everything-list@googlegroups.com
To:	everything-list@googlegroups.com l...@googlegroups.com>




On 26 August 2015 at 17:21, Peter Sas  wrote:
Hi guys and girls,

I'm sure this question has already come up many times before, but  
it's an important one, so I guess it can't do any harm to go over it  
again.


If the universe is thoroughly computational, what are the  
computations 'running' on? What I especially like to know is what  
options are discussed in digital physics. So far I have encountered  
only the following possibilities:


(1) Mathematical platonism: all natural numbers, and all mappings  
between them (i.e. all algorithms), simply exist in 'Plato's  
heaven', including those algorithms that compute our universe. The  
simple non-spatiotemporal existence of those algorithms is enough to  
'instantiate' a spatiotemporal world. This type of solution can be  
found in Tipler, Tegmark and our own Bruno Marchal.


I thought Tipler's theory is that there will be an actual physical  
computer that will be able to do all possible computations as the  
Universe collapses - although since he came up with the idea it has  
been shown that the Universe won't collapse in the required way.


Major problem: the hard problem of consciousness.

Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness a problem in the  
computerless computation scenario?


Because then it's not clear why there should be the connection  
between brains and consciousness.  If they are both just  
computations, why do they have this tight causal relation. Why can't  
the consciousness be computed independently.  If it can't, if it  
depends on the brain being also computer - then you're back to the  
"hard problem".


Yes; I meant that it's no more or less a problem if there is no  
physical computer.


I see your point, and agree.

But strictly speaking, if there is no physical computer, we must  
explain also how and why beliefs in physical computer occurred, and  
seems persistently confirmed.


Now, if it is "easy" to establish the existence of computations  
supporting people believing in physical computers, the arithmetical  
first person indeterminacy makes that not enough to explain the  
internal stability of those dreams.


Then the quale part of the mind-"no-body" problem is not that  
difficult when we take into account the logic of correct machine self- 
reference, which introduces all the nuances needed, in their 3p  
justifiable (or not), and in their 3p expressible (or not) nuances.  
(The 8 stases). I guess I might need to come back on this.


Bruno






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Re: Uploaded Worm Mind

[Bruno Marchal]

On 31 Aug 2015, at 12:14, Russell Standish wrote:


On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 11:19:00AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 31 Aug 2015, at 00:42, Russell Standish wrote:


On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 12:34:18PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:





I guess that you remember that I am not yet convinced by your
argument that ants are not conscious, as it relies on anthropic use
of the Absolute Self-Sampling Assumption (ASSA) which I prefer to
avoid because the domain of  its statistic is not clear to me. (I  
am

not impressed by the doomsday argument for the same reason).



Yes, I've heard that a lot. "I'm not impressed" = "It sounds like a
crock of shit, but I can't put my finger on why".

Probably the best way forward is to put forward a toy model showing
the anthropic argument failing, and then the mechanism is clear.


It does not fail. It can explain some of the geography by bayesian
reasoning, but it can't explain the difference between physical
laws, and local physical/geographical fact. For the lwas, we have to
find something which does not depend on anything particular above
being Turing universal or Löbian.



I'm in agreement with your comments here, however I fail to see the
connection with the doomsday argument, or my anthropic ants argument,
as these are fundamentally about geography (in one case about how long
humans might be here on Earth, and the other about the consciousness
of certain Earthling creatures).


The problem for me is in the use of a "probability to be a human", or  
"probability to be an ant" without some relative conditional. I have  
no frame or universe or reference for the ASSA. We can get  
geographical 3p conclusion from 3p data, but when sampling on oneself  
I have difficulties to make sense of the absolute probabilities. (I  
think that was part of the old RSSA versus ASSA debate).


Best,

Bruno



--


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


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Re: A scary theory about IS

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

Yes, big powers do have inertia. The old soviets played a weak hand in 
Afghanistan, simply because they did not wish to rouse the Muslims against 
them, which would have occurred if the soviets had sent in more than 150,000 
troops to eliminate the mujaheddin. Self constraint loses wars, and please view 
the US in Vietnam as an example. I am guessing that the US was more afraid of 
rousing a hydrogen bomb owning-China, (1967), and kept 600,000 troops (1969) 
out of the DMZ. The way to have won, was to take troops to the North and won 
there. Now would it have been worth it for the US to do this? China and Russia 
had a bloody border skirmish in 69, that set in motion Kissinger and Nixon's 
Entente with China. We are now pals with the government of Vietnam 
(supposedly), and the entente with China is ending. 


A side issue with IS is not IS as a radical and successful radical Sunni 
movement, but it's clash with the Shia and Alwawi, in Syria and Iraq. WE have 
now a low-grade war between Sunni and Shia (more or less) in the Near East. As 
of this morning, I learned of a interview with retired US air force general, 
James Vallaley (sp?) who claimed that Iran now has a fission weapon, which 
Putin and China's Ji, helped the Iranians test, and along with North Korea, 
helped miniaturize the warhead for rocket and telemetry development. Moreover, 
Iran doesn't need 10,000 gaseous centrifuges to make enough weapons to explode 
on Israel, for it seems the Iranians (Shia) are going for bigger game, the US. 
This, coming from a guy in a position to know, is shocking, if true. The 
Iranians have long institutionalized the barbarism that the IS uses everyday in 
their propaganda videos. The Iranians use the Basiji as well as the 
Revolutionary Guard, against internal opposition. The are audacious, while the 
Persians are nuclear armed jihadists (like Pakistan?) and seek a direct path to 
Janah, like their Sunni brethren, and avoid hell, for being peaceable. Janah is 
Muslim paradise, and hell is punishment for not taking up the sword for Allah.  
Putin and China and North Korea are underwriting Iran, in hopes of  
Destabilization of the US and EU?  Avoiding a nuclear retaliation if, the US is 
hit by many fission war heads?? 


I am just a small player, a nothing, but I am guessing this is what is going 
on, unreported, or unappreciated. The world may or may not become suddenly very 
ugly indeed. Sigh!





-Original Message-
From: smitra 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Mon, Aug 31, 2015 10:52 am
Subject: Re: A scary theory about IS


The real problem i.m.o. is that big powers tend to have a big inertia, 
it
takes them a long time to see that the World has changed and that 
they need to
focus on other issues than they currently are engaged with. 
In some cases that
can lead to escalation of a pointless conflict that 
has its roots in past
issues that are no longer relevant, as is the case 
with the war on drugs. And
that then can cause a lot of harm.

But I think the general issue is this huge
inertia. So, when Gorbachov 
was in power and he was ready to deal seriously
with the West, it took 
us a very long time to engage with him. A point on
which we never 
engaged with the Soviets in a constructive way was
Afghanistan.

The Soviets were willing to withdraw from  Afghanistan, even
before 
Gorbachov came to power, but on certain conditions like leaving behind
a 
stable government. We never wanted to engage with the Soviets on that,

because of pur mondset that the root of all evil was communism, and the

Soviets were just talking bullshit about our allies there, the

Jihadists.

Them posing a threat to the World? that to us was just
ridiculous. We 
knew for sure that with the Soviets gone out of Afghanistan,
their 
communist puppet government dismantled, the Afghan population would be

able to form a democratic state. We were so sure about this that we 
never
critically analyzed all the hidden assumptions made here.

It later turned out
that we were wrong and that the Soviets were right, 
not in their general
approach but about seeing the threat of Jihadism 
that we helped to fuel. Also
they were right about the dangers of having 
failed states. Our ideology at the
time was that a failed state would 
quickly get itself organized into  a
flourishing democracy if you could 
only keep the evil communists
out.

Another fallout of this was that Gorbachov's political position was

weakened in the Soviet Union, which made his  nationalist opposition who

were critical of the West politically stronger. When Yeltsin took over 
he
had to deal with an economically weak Russia while in the background 
there
were forces lurking who were extremely critical of the West. In 
any country
you'll have the opposition that tends to question the 
government's policy
especially if things are not going well economically 
and especially when there
has been a recent radical 

Re: Tri Alpha Energy

[John Clark]

On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 , spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

​> ​
> For either fusion or thorium, or anything else, it's largely, pushed, by
> money/cost/price.


​And political will.​


> ​> ​
> Cost killed uranium-235 reactors, not protests, not 3 mile island, nor
> Chernobyl, nor Fukashima.


​For decades France has gotten over 75% of its electricity from nuclear
energy and has done so cost effectively ​
and safely, or at least safer than any other power source now in use.
Thorium would be even cheaper and safer.  ​


> ​> ​
> Thorium is being worked on by India and may well succeed. But that is
> still 10 years away from a  "commercial" reactor.


​Several commercial liquid Thorium reactors could be online in 18 months,
perhaps less, if people ​decided that the future of their civilization
depended on building them. In the early 1940s nuclear power was only a
remote theoretical possibility that had never actually produced one watt of
power, and just a year before that it wasn't possible even theoretically.
And yet by the mid 1940s 3 nuclear bombs had been made that produced an
astronomical number of watts because people decided that their very
survival depended on building them. Requiring an environmental impact
statement and other red tape before building the huge isotope separation
plants at Oak Ridge would have been unthinkable in 1942.  Things can be
built very fast if people decide they really REALLY need them.

 John K Clark






>





>
> Moreover, we could have, as a species, traveled to Mars, if we wanted to,
> anytime in the last years. The costs in 1980 currencies would have
> approached 1 trillion, in about 10 years of funding, and like the US moon
> missions, once we go there and see a dry, stony, planet, the emotional
> return on investment, would have been a big yawn. My point is that human
> beings are economic apes, as you already know, and we are driven by the
> symbolics of everything. It controls or influences our behavior. This is
> the way things seem to be.
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: John Clark 
> To: everything-list 
> Sent: Thu, Aug 27, 2015 1:14 pm
> Subject: Re: Tri Alpha Energy
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2015  spudboy100 via Everything List <
> everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> ​> ​
>> John, I am guessing that these guys are working hard, but achieving
>> commercial, nuclear fusion is not in the cards.
>>
>
> ​It certainly won't be in the cards if nobody even tries. I think Thorium
> power would be vastly easier than fusion power but I could be wrong and
> these guys are using their own money not government money so I wish them
> luck.
>
>
>> ​> ​
>> It may never be in the cards, as an electricity power source, except as,
>> a means of fast interplanetary travel.
>>
>
> ​I don't follow, how can if work in an
>   interplanetary
> ​ spaceship but not in your local power plant?​
>
>  John K Clark
>
>
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Re: Uploaded Worm Mind

[meekerdb]

On 8/31/2015 1:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 30 Aug 2015, at 20:25, meekerdb wrote:


On 8/30/2015 3:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 30 Aug 2015, at 03:08, Russell Standish wrote:


Well as people probably know, I don't believe C. elegans can be
conscious in any sense of the word. Hell - I have strong doubts about
ants, and they're massively more complex creatures.


I think personally that C. Elegans, and Planaria (!), even amoeba, are conscious, 
although very plausibly not self-conscious.


I tend to think since 2008 that even RA is already conscious, even maximally so, and 
that PA is already as much self-conscious than a human (when in some dissociative state).


But I don't know if PA is more or less conscious than RA. That depends of the role of 
the higher part of the brain consists in filtering consciousness or enacting it.




But it probably won't be long before we simulate a mouse brain in toto
- about 2 decades is my guess, maybe even less given enough dollars -
then we're definitely in grey philosophical territory :).


I am slightly less optimistic than you. It will take one of two decades before we 
simulate the hippocampus of a rat, but probably more time will be needed for the rest 
of their brain. And the result can be a conscious creature, with a quite different 
consciousness that a rat, as I find plausible that pain are related to the glial cells 
and their metabolism, which are not taken into account by the current "copies".


So now you agree with me that there are different kinds and degrees of consciousness; 
that it is not just a binary attribute of an axiom + inference system.


?

Either you are conscious, or you are not. 


But is a roundworm either conscious or not?  an amoeba?  If they can be conscious, but not 
self-conscious then there are two kinds of "being conscious".  And being self-conscious 
can have different modes.  A Mars Rover is conscious of itself having a certain location, 
battery charge, temperature,...but it's not conscious of its purpose or the effect it's 
success has on engineers at JPL.


Then there are many type of consciousness states, and some can have some notion of 
degrees assigned to them. In the case I was talking, I might be obliged to accept the 
idea that RA is maximally conscious, and PA might be less conscious or more delusional 
about its consciousness. (but that is counter-intuitive, and depends on the validity of 
the "Galois connection" account of consciousness. I have no certainty here (even in the 
comp frame).


For another example,  I have strong evidences that we are conscious at *all* moment of 
the nocturnal sleep. It is a question of training to be able to memorize the episodes 
enough well to realize this, but apparently we are programmed to forget those experiences.


Sure, if your wife whispers your name at night while you're asleep you wake up instantly.  
But you don't if you're anesthetized.




Obviously "to be unconscious" cannot be a first person experience.


But it can be a first body experience.



To believe that *we have been unconscious* is consistent, but plausibly false, and 
probably false with computationalism, where, to put it with Otto Rossler's phrasing: 
consciousness is a prison.


I'd say it's more than plausibly true.  If there are time intervals during which we are 
inert and unresponsive and which we have no memory of, that's pretty good evidence we were 
unconscious - in fact it's the operational defintion.


Brent

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Re: Uploaded Worm Mind

[meekerdb]

On 8/31/2015 5:56 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:



On Monday, August 31, 2015, Bruno Marchal > 
wrote:



On 31 Aug 2015, at 00:42, Russell Standish wrote:

On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 12:34:18PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 30 Aug 2015, at 03:08, Russell Standish wrote:

Well as people probably know, I don't believe C. elegans can be
conscious in any sense of the word. Hell - I have strong doubts 
about
ants, and they're massively more complex creatures.


I think personally that C. Elegans, and Planaria (!), even amoeba,
are conscious, although very plausibly not self-conscious.

I tend to think since 2008 that even RA is already conscious, even
maximally so, and that PA is already as much self-conscious than a
human (when in some dissociative state).

But I don't know if PA is more or less conscious than RA. That
depends of the role of the higher part of the brain consists in
filtering consciousness or enacting it.


But it probably won't be long before we simulate a mouse brain 
in toto
- about 2 decades is my guess, maybe even less given enough 
dollars -
then we're definitely in grey philosophical territory :).


I am slightly less optimistic than you. It will take one of two
decades before we simulate the hippocampus of a rat, but probably
more time will be needed for the rest of their brain. And the result
can be a conscious creature, with a quite different consciousness
that a rat, as I find plausible that pain are related to the glial
cells and their metabolism, which are not  taken into account by the
current "copies".


What is blocking us is not the computing power - already whole "rat
brain" simulations have been done is something like 1/1 of real
time - so all we need is about a decade of performane improvement
through Moores law.

What development is needed is ways of determining the neural
circuitry. There have been leaps and bounds in the process of slicing
frozen brains, and imaging the slices with electron microscopes, but
clearly it is still far too slow.

As for the hypothesis that glial cells have something to do with it,
well that can be tested via the sort of whole rat brain simulation
I've been talking about. Run the simulation in a robotic rat, and
compare the behaviour with a real rat. Basically what the open worm
guys a doing, but scaled up to a rat. If the simulation is way
different from the real rat, then we know something else is required.



I can imagine that the rat will have a "normal behavior", but as he cannot 
talk to
us, we might fail to appreciate some internal change or even some 
anosognosia. The
rat would not be a zombie rat, but still be in a quite different conscious 
state
(perhaps better, as it seems the glial cell might have some role in the 
chronic pain.


In general, if there is a difference in consciousness then there should be a difference 
in behaviour. If the difference in consciousness is impossible to detect then arguably 
it is no difference.


I'd say more-than-arguably we don't know and can't know.  Which is why I think "the hard 
problem" will be dissolved by AI engineering rather than solved by philosophers.


Brent

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Re: Uploaded Worm Mind

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 31 Aug 2015, at 12:14, Russell Standish wrote:
>
> On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 11:19:00AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 31 Aug 2015, at 00:42, Russell Standish wrote:
>>>
>>> On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 12:34:18PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:

>
>
 I guess that you remember that I am not yet convinced by your
> argument that ants are not conscious, as it relies on anthropic use
> of the Absolute Self-Sampling Assumption (ASSA) which I prefer to
> avoid because the domain of  its statistic is not clear to me. (I am
> not impressed by the doomsday argument for the same reason).
>
>
 Yes, I've heard that a lot. "I'm not impressed" = "It sounds like a
 crock of shit, but I can't put my finger on why".

 Probably the best way forward is to put forward a toy model showing
 the anthropic argument failing, and then the mechanism is clear.

>>>
>>> It does not fail. It can explain some of the geography by bayesian
>>> reasoning, but it can't explain the difference between physical
>>> laws, and local physical/geographical fact. For the lwas, we have to
>>> find something which does not depend on anything particular above
>>> being Turing universal or Löbian.
>>>
>>>
>> I'm in agreement with your comments here, however I fail to see the
>> connection with the doomsday argument, or my anthropic ants argument,
>> as these are fundamentally about geography (in one case about how long
>> humans might be here on Earth, and the other about the consciousness
>> of certain Earthling creatures).
>>
>
> The problem for me is in the use of a "probability to be a human", or
> "probability to be an ant" without some relative conditional.


Is it necessarily even an exclusive? It feels like it is, but that might
just be an illusion. Can we not be both an ant and a human, but be
relatively unaware of it such that we can't comment on the knowledge of
being an ant from the human organism's point of view, nor can the ant react
to its human sensations from the ant organism's view.

Jason



> I have no frame or universe or reference for the ASSA. We can get
> geographical 3p conclusion from 3p data, but when sampling on oneself I
> have difficulties to make sense of the absolute probabilities. (I think
> that was part of the old RSSA versus ASSA debate).
>
> Best,
>
> Bruno
>
>
> --
>>
>>
>> 
>> Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
>> Principal, High Performance Coders
>> Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
>> University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au
>>
>> 
>>
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>>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
> --
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Re: 1P/3P CONFUSION again and again

[John Clark]

On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 4:30 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
​>>​
>> Bruno Marcha
>> ​l
>> was alluding on how you predict your subjective experience when you do an
>> experience in physics
>> ​ ​
>> where "you" has been duplicated and thus making that personal pronoun
>> ambiguous.
>
>
> ​>​
> I have repeated many times that the question is always asked before the
> duplication.
>

​And the question is about what one and only one thing will happen to YOU
after YOU ​has been duplicated and becomes TWO. In other words the question
was about gibberish.

​I can't prove mathematics is more fundamental than physics and I can't
>> prove it isn't, and as of September 30 2015 nobody else has been able to do
>> any better. ​
>
>
> ​> ​
> If my body is a machine, then there is not much choice in the matter.
>

​If we're dealing in philosophy and not everyday conversation and it my
body is a machine then I don't know what "choice" ​

​means. And if my body is not a machine I still don't know what "choice"
means.​


> ​> ​
> You beg the question with respect to step 3.
>

​There may be a question mark but there is no question. And I have no
answer because gibberish has no answer.  ​

> ​>> ​
>> ​When I don't know I'm not afraid to say I don't know. ​
>
> ​> ​
> Then you contraidct yourself. By the way, your argument that there is no
> computation in arithmetic is isomorph to the argument that a simulated
> typhon cannot make someone wet, which I know you don't believe in.
>

​A computer can make a simulated hurricane but because it uses only numbers
to build the
​storm​
 and numbers (probably) have no physical properties the simulated hurricane
would always lack something the real hurricane had, the physical ability to
get the computer wet.

However if it turned out that you're right and math is more fundamental
than physics and numbers have everything physics has and more then a
clever enough programmer *could *write a program that would cause the
computer to actually get wet. I'm very skeptical that such a program
is possible but I can't prove it's impossible so maybe you're right.

​>> ​
>> ​No it does not. What I said was that up to now nobody​ has ever made
>> one single calculation without the use of physical hardware
>
>
> ​> ​
> How do you know that?
> ​
>

​Because every time a calculation ​is made something physical in
​a ​
computer changes and if I change something physical in a computer the
calculation changes.


> ​
> ​>
> How do you know that there is physical hardware?
>

​Because I can touch the hardware with my physical hand​.

​

> ​> ​
> If you don't know if math is or not the fundamental science,
>

​Observations can be made regardless of it math or physics is
the fundamental science. ​

​> ​
> But we know as a fact that elementary arithmetic (Robinson Arithmetic)
> contains all terminating computations, and all pieces on the non
> terminating computations.
>

Then computer chips would be unnecessary and Raphael M Robinson should be
the principle stockholder of the Robinson computer corporation and be a
trillionare
​, but I don't believe that is the case.

​
A physical brain or a physical computer can perform calculations that
produce
​
Robinson
​
arithmetic
​
, it can describe how a calculation was done
​,​
but Robinson
arithmetic
​
can't actuality calculate a damn thing. .


> ​>> ​
>> why hasn't at least one of those numerous scientists started their own
>> computer hardware company with zero manufacturing costs and become a
>> trillionaire? This is not a rhetorical question, I'd really like an answer.
>>
>
> ​> ​
> For the same reason that nobody would drink simulated water, unless they
> are simulated themselves.
>

​
That is a very bad analogy because there is such a thing as simulated water
but there is no such thing as simulated arithmetic; simulated water is
different from physical water but arithmetic is always just arithmetic. I
think we would both agree that when a simulated computer calculates 2+2 the
4 it produces is exactly the same as the 4 a
​ ​
non-
​si
mulated computer would make when doing the same calculation, and the same
would be true if the simulated computer itself simulate
​d​
a computer. But we also agree that simulated water would not quench your
thirst the way that physical water would, so if physical water has
attributes that numbers can not produce
​, so​
you tell me if physics or mathematics is
​the ​
more fundamental.



> ​>>
>> ​>​>
>> ​Convince the National Academy of Science or the Royal Society that
>> you're not talking nonsense and have them make you a member; and then
>> convince the International Congress of Mathematicians and have them award
>> you the Fields Metal and announce it all here.
>
>
>>
>> ​>
>> ​>>​
>> ​
>> You are basically making an argument by authority here,
>
>
> ​
> ​>>> ​
> And your multiple statements that I have not convinced anybody else on
> this list is not an argument from authority??
>
> ​>​
> No, it is not. It is 

Re: Tri Alpha Energy

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

No disagreement on all this. Yet, I content that we in the US are ruled by an 
oligarchy over an uncaring public (sometimes I am uncaring too), and the rule 
of the plutocrats upends whatever the commoners may desire. It helps that most 
of of serfs, are blissfully ignorant as well. So projects to make a solar or 
thorium 232  powered world, go by the wayside, as focus is on Miley Cyrus's 
nipple. Even in a crisis, the public demands go unheeded as the rich fund the 
pols. Grassroots movements seem to be a useful fiction.

Sent from AOL Mobile Mail


-Original Message-
From: John Clark 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Mon, Aug 31, 2015 12:44 PM
Subject: Re: Tri Alpha Energy





 
  
   On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 , spudboy100 
via Everything List 
   everything-list@googlegroups.com>
wrote:
   

  
  
   



 
  
​> ​
  For either fusion or thorium, or anything else, it's largely, 
pushed, by money/cost/price.



 




 
​And political will.​
 



 


  
  
​> ​
  Cost killed uranium-235 reactors, not protests, not 3 mile island, 
nor Chernobyl, nor Fukashima.



 




 
​For decades France has gotten over 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy 
and has done so cost effectively ​
 
 
and safely, or at least safer than any other power source now in use. Thorium 
would be even cheaper and safer.  ​
 



 


 
  
​> ​
  Thorium is being worked on by India and may well succeed. But that 
is still 10 years away from a  "commercial" reactor.



 




 
​Several commercial liquid Thorium reactors could be online in 18 months, 
perhaps less, if people ​decided that the future of their civilization depended 
on building them. In the early 1940s nuclear power was only a remote 
theoretical possibility that had never actually produced one watt of power, and 
just a year before that it wasn't possible even theoretically. And yet by the 
mid 1940s 3 nuclear bombs had been made that produced an astronomical number of 
watts because people decided that their very survival depended on building 
them. Requiring an environmental impact statement and other red tape before 
building the huge isotope separation plants at Oak Ridge would have been 
unthinkable in 1942.  Things can be built very fast if people decide they 
really REALLY need them.
 
 
  

 
 
 John K Clark
 
 




 




 




 




 


  



 




 




 


  
  

   
 
   
  

Moreover, we could have, as a species, traveled to Mars, if we wanted to, 
anytime in the last years. The costs in 1980 currencies would have approached 1 
trillion, in about 10 years of funding, and like the US moon missions, once we 
go there and see a dry, stony, planet, the emotional return on investment, 
would have been a big yawn. My point is that human beings are economic apes, as 
you already know, and we are driven by the symbolics of everything. It controls 
or influences our behavior. This is the way things seem to be.
   
 
   
 
   
 
   
-Original Message-
 From: John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com>
 To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com>

 Sent: Thu, Aug 27, 2015 1:14 pm
 Subject: Re: Tri Alpha Energy
 
 
 
 
  

 
  
  
 
  
  
  
 On Wed, Aug 26, 2015  spudboy100 via Everything List 
   everything-list@googlegroups.com>
 wrote: 
   
   
   
 
   
 
 
 
 
   
   
 ​> ​ 
John, I am guessing that these guys are working hard, but 
achieving commercial, nuclear fusion is not in the cards.  
   

   
 

 

   
 

 ​It certainly won't be in the cards if nobody even tries. I think Thorium 
power would be vastly easier than fusion power but I could be wrong and these 
guys are using their own money not government money so I wish them luck.  
 

   

   

   
 
 
 
 
   
   
 ​> ​ 
It may never be in the cards, as an electricity power 
source, except as, a means of fast interplanetary travel. 
   

   
 

 

   
 
 

Re: If the universe is computational, what is the computing platform? What are the options?

[John Clark]

On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 2:14 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
 ​
>
>
>> ​>>
>> Aristotle
>> ​ believed that heavy objects fell more quickly than light ones,
>> something that could have been easily disproved even on his own day but he
>> understood it so well, or thought he did, that he didn't bother to make any
>> observations on the matter.
>>
>
> ​> ​
> But he did observe that a rock fell faster than a leaf. He also believed
> that an active force was necessary to sustain motion because he observed
> that if you stopped pulling a wagon it came to a halt.
>

​
Pure logic can't prove that a physical theory is correct but it can prove
that it's wrong i
​f​
it's self contradictory and Aristotle's theory was.
​ ​
If you take a heavy rock and tie it to a slightly lighter rock with some
string that has some slack in it and drop them then both rocks would fall
slower than the big rock alone because the slower moving lighter rock would
bog it down, but the tied together object
​
would fall faster than the heavy rock because the new object is heavier
than the heavy rock alone.

​ John K Clark​

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Re: Uploaded Worm Mind

[Bruno Marchal]

On 30 Aug 2015, at 20:25, meekerdb wrote:


On 8/30/2015 3:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 30 Aug 2015, at 03:08, Russell Standish wrote:


Well as people probably know, I don't believe C. elegans can be
conscious in any sense of the word. Hell - I have strong doubts  
about

ants, and they're massively more complex creatures.


I think personally that C. Elegans, and Planaria (!), even amoeba,  
are conscious, although very plausibly not self-conscious.


I tend to think since 2008 that even RA is already conscious, even  
maximally so, and that PA is already as much self-conscious than a  
human (when in some dissociative state).


But I don't know if PA is more or less conscious than RA. That  
depends of the role of the higher part of the brain consists in  
filtering consciousness or enacting it.




But it probably won't be long before we simulate a mouse brain in  
toto
- about 2 decades is my guess, maybe even less given enough  
dollars -

then we're definitely in grey philosophical territory :).


I am slightly less optimistic than you. It will take one of two  
decades before we simulate the hippocampus of a rat, but probably  
more time will be needed for the rest of their brain. And the  
result can be a conscious creature, with a quite different  
consciousness that a rat, as I find plausible that pain are related  
to the glial cells and their metabolism, which are not taken into  
account by the current "copies".


So now you agree with me that there are different kinds and degrees  
of consciousness; that it is not just a binary attribute of an axiom  
+ inference system.


?

Either you are conscious, or you are not. Then there are many type of  
consciousness states, and some can have some notion of degrees  
assigned to them. In the case I was talking, I might be obliged to  
accept the idea that RA is maximally conscious, and PA might be less  
conscious or more delusional about its consciousness. (but that is  
counter-intuitive, and depends on the validity of the "Galois  
connection" account of consciousness. I have no certainty here (even  
in the comp frame).


For another example,  I have strong evidences that we are conscious at  
*all* moment of the nocturnal sleep. It is a question of training to  
be able to memorize the episodes enough well to realize this, but  
apparently we are programmed to forget those experiences.


Obviously "to be unconscious" cannot be a first person experience.

To believe that *we have been unconscious* is consistent, but  
plausibly false, and probably false with computationalism, where, to  
put it with Otto Rossler's phrasing: consciousness is a prison.


Bruno





Brent

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



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Re: Uploaded Worm Mind

[Bruno Marchal]

On 31 Aug 2015, at 00:42, Russell Standish wrote:


On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 12:34:18PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 30 Aug 2015, at 03:08, Russell Standish wrote:


Well as people probably know, I don't believe C. elegans can be
conscious in any sense of the word. Hell - I have strong doubts  
about

ants, and they're massively more complex creatures.


I think personally that C. Elegans, and Planaria (!), even amoeba,
are conscious, although very plausibly not self-conscious.

I tend to think since 2008 that even RA is already conscious, even
maximally so, and that PA is already as much self-conscious than a
human (when in some dissociative state).

But I don't know if PA is more or less conscious than RA. That
depends of the role of the higher part of the brain consists in
filtering consciousness or enacting it.



But it probably won't be long before we simulate a mouse brain in  
toto
- about 2 decades is my guess, maybe even less given enough  
dollars -

then we're definitely in grey philosophical territory :).


I am slightly less optimistic than you. It will take one of two
decades before we simulate the hippocampus of a rat, but probably
more time will be needed for the rest of their brain. And the result
can be a conscious creature, with a quite different consciousness
that a rat, as I find plausible that pain are related to the glial
cells and their metabolism, which are not  taken into account by the
current "copies".


What is blocking us is not the computing power - already whole "rat
brain" simulations have been done is something like 1/1 of real
time - so all we need is about a decade of performane improvement
through Moores law.

What development is needed is ways of determining the neural
circuitry. There have been leaps and bounds in the process of slicing
frozen brains, and imaging the slices with electron microscopes, but
clearly it is still far too slow.

As for the hypothesis that glial cells have something to do with it,
well that can be tested via the sort of whole rat brain simulation
I've been talking about. Run the simulation in a robotic rat, and
compare the behaviour with a real rat. Basically what the open worm
guys a doing, but scaled up to a rat. If the simulation is way
different from the real rat, then we know something else is required.



I can imagine that the rat will have a "normal behavior", but as he  
cannot talk to us, we might fail to appreciate some internal change or  
even some anosognosia. The rat would not be a zombie rat, but still be  
in a quite different conscious state (perhaps better, as it seems the  
glial cell might have some role in the chronic pain.












One intersting test I'd like to see is applying Tononi's integrated
information measure to these simple creatures to see if they're
producing any integrated information. I suspect Integrated  
Information

is a necessary requirement for conscious, but not so sure about
sufficiency.


It is offred freely with the notion of self-reference, I would say.
The eight hypostases/persons-pov constitute each a different mode of
the self-integration. If Kauffman's idea that the DNA results from
something akin to Kleene's diagonalization (which I think too) the
amoeba and most protozoans are already quite self-integrated being.
Then elementary invertebrates might loose that integration (like
perhaps hydra), but quickly get it back, like with planaria.



You might be right that integrated information can be obtained from
your hypostases, but it is not obvious. More work is required before
you can plausibly make that claim.


Why? I think that by using the self-reference logic, we start from an  
integrated whole.








I guess that you remember that I am not yet convinced by your
argument that ants are not conscious, as it relies on anthropic use
of the Absolute Self-Sampling Assumption (ASSA) which I prefer to
avoid because the domain of  its statistic is not clear to me. (I am
not impressed by the doomsday argument for the same reason).



Yes, I've heard that a lot. "I'm not impressed" = "It sounds like a
crock of shit, but I can't put my finger on why".

Probably the best way forward is to put forward a toy model showing
the anthropic argument failing, and then the mechanism is clear.


It does not fail. It can explain some of the geography by bayesian  
reasoning, but it can't explain the difference between physical laws,  
and local physical/geographical fact. For the lwas, we have to find  
something which does not depend on anything particular above being  
Turing universal or Löbian.


Bruno






--


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
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University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au

Re: If the universe is computational, what is the computing platform? What are the options?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 30 Aug 2015, at 19:35, John Clark wrote:




On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 2:16 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


​> ​The dogma did not come from Plato, nor even Aristotle,

​All the ancient greeks in your own words "​believe in what they  
understand, not necessarily in what they observe​" and that was the  
problem.​ Aristotle​ believed that heavy objects fell more  
quickly than light ones, something that could have been easily  
disproved even on his own day but he understood it so well, or  
thought he did, that he didn't bother to make any observations on  
the matter. In the same way Aristotle "understood" that women had  
fewer teeth than men so he never thought it necessary to actually  
count the teeth in his wife's mouth even though he was married  
twice. And that sort of thinking is exactly why science made such  
little progress for 2000 years, from the ancient Greeks to the  
renaissance​.​


But theology the science did not get through, and today, despite your  
critics on Aristotle, you continue to take his theology for granted,  
and apparently without noticing it. But then you have just made  
contradictory statements about this in your other post, making me  
unsure why I try to answer to you, ... probably to make some pause as  
I have a lot of works today-and-sequel.


Bruno





  John K Clark





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Re: 1P/3P CONFUSION again and again

[Bruno Marchal]

On 30 Aug 2015, at 19:04, John Clark wrote:

On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 6:09 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


​>> ​​I saw several question marks in the last post but I saw  
no questions. Ask me any question and I'll give you an answer or say  
I don't know, but I can't respond to gibberish.​


​> ​I was alluding on how you predict your subjective experience  
when you do an experience in physics


​That is true but only part of the truth, ​Bruno Marchal​ ​ 
was alluding on how you predict your subjective experience when you  
do an experience in physics​ where "you" has been duplicated and ​ 
thus making that personal pronoun ambiguous.


I have repeated many times that the question is always asked before  
the duplication. In this case the question is asked to anybody in a  
physical universe where a universal dovetailer is executed.







​> ​you said that you were open to the idea that mathematics  
could be more fundamental than physics.


​I can't prove mathematics is more fundamental than physics and I  
can't prove it isn't, and as of September 30 2015 nobody else has  
been able to do any better. ​


If my body is a machine, then there is not much choice in the matter.  
You beg the question with respect to step 3.






​When I don't know I'm not afraid to say I don't know. ​


Then you contraidct yourself. By the way, your argument that there is  
no computation in arithmetic is isomorph to the argument that a  
simulated typhon cannot make someone wet, which I know you don't  
believe in.






​> ​This contradict your use of primitive "hardware" to pretend  
that a computation needs to be run physically to exist.


​No it does not. What I said was that up to now nobody​ has ever  
made one single calculation without the use of physical hardware


How do you know that?

How do you know that there is physical hardware?

If you don't know if math is or not the fundamental science, then you  
cannot refer to primary hardware physical hardware in your argument.






and that statement is 100% correct.


Adding this show how much you are not sure.




There is some evidence that physics is more fundamental but it falls  
far short of a proof. It could still go either way.



But we know as a fact that elementary arithmetic (Robinson Arithmetic)  
contains all terminating computations, and all pieces on the non  
terminating computations.
That is already a reason to be skeptical with ontological physical  
universe. But then if you could progress a little bit in the argument,  
you would see that any invocation of an ontological physical reality  
is equivalent with a non-computationalist god-of-the-gap type of  
argument.






​> ​This is even more astonishing, given that everybody in the  
filed knows that​ [...]​


​And it is even more astonishing given that here is zero evidence  
that anybody in any field would know anything ​at all ​without  
physical hardware.  ​



The fact that nature obeys to the physical hypostases is a strong  
evidences that the notion of hardware is an internal and relative  
arithmetical notion. Of course you need to stop at some step in the UD  
Argument to deny this.







​> [...] ​computations and computability are provably  
arithmetical notion


And ​up to now nobody ​​has been able to perform one single ​ 
arithmetical​ operation without the use of physical hardware. ​ 
And up to now nobody has ever had a "notion" without physical  
hardware either.


As you said above, you don't know if there is physical hardware. You  
continue to contradict yourself.






​> ​If you have heard of some scientist having both read the  
work, and disagree with it, just give me a name, as I have never  
encouter one.


​If they are so common then please answer just one question, why  
hasn't at least one of those numerous scientists started their own  
computer hardware company with zero manufacturing costs and become a  
trillionaire? This is not a rhetorical question, I'd really like an  
answer.  ​


For the same reason that nobody would drink simulated water, unless  
they are simulated themselves. The math ^part of the theory explain  
why hardware seems to exist, in the same phenomenological way that  
Everett explains why a collapse seems to exists, despite it doesn't.








​>> ​Convince the National Academy of Science or the Royal  
Society that you're not talking nonsense and have them make you a  
member; and then convince the International Congress of  
Mathematicians and have them award you the Fields Metal and announce  
it all here.


​> ​You are basically making an argument by authority here,

​And your multiple statements that I have not convinced anybody  
else on this list is not an argument from authority??


No, it is not. It is a simple observation that anybody can verify.



If you're going to make an argument from authority​ it's best to  
have a good authority, and I think ​the average member of the  
National Academy of Science or 

Re: Uploaded Worm Mind

[Bruno Marchal]

On 31 Aug 2015, at 01:54, Jason Resch wrote:




On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 6:34 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


On 30 Aug 2015, at 03:08, Russell Standish wrote:

Well as people probably know, I don't believe C. elegans can be
conscious in any sense of the word. Hell - I have strong doubts about
ants, and they're massively more complex creatures.

I think personally that C. Elegans, and Planaria (!), even amoeba,  
are conscious, although very plausibly not self-conscious.


I tend to think since 2008 that even RA is already conscious, even  
maximally so, and that PA is already as much self-conscious than a  
human (when in some dissociative state).


What realization did you have in 2008 that changed your mind?


The salvia experience. It corroborates the idea that the brain filter  
consciousness. By disabling or dissociating some neuronal pathway, you  
can get quite amnesic (not even remembering what a person is, nor what  
is time, space, ...), knowing basically nothing, and yet feeling much  
more conscious than in the "mundane state" + a felling that this is  
your normal basic state.


Of course I am biased on this, but some salvia experience are like  
remembering that we are indeed immaterial creature living in an  
immaterial reality (arithmetic?), and that our consciousness is  
processed mainly there. The brain is used only to make that  
consciousness able to manifest itself relatively to deep (in Bennett  
sense) first person plural sharable computations/experiences. It is an  
interface, and a local self-accelerator.


With salvia, Chardin statement is quite senseful: "we ar not hulan  
having divine experiences from time to time, but divine beings having  
human experiences from time to time".


But the "consciousness filter" theory of brain leads also to some  
difficulties. I can come back on them someday.


Bruno






But I don't know if PA is more or less conscious than RA. That  
depends of the role of the higher part of the brain consists in  
filtering consciousness or enacting it.



But it probably won't be long before we simulate a mouse brain in toto
- about 2 decades is my guess, maybe even less given enough dollars -
then we're definitely in grey philosophical territory :).

I am slightly less optimistic than you. It will take one of two  
decades before we simulate the hippocampus of a rat, but probably  
more time will be needed for the rest of their brain.


Perhaps 2 decades from simulating a rat brain on a PC, but super  
computers are generally up to a million times more powerful than a  
single CPU, which means they are roughly 2 decades ahead in  
computing power (assuming annual doubling in computational capacity).


OK. Maybe.




And the result can be a conscious creature, with a quite different  
consciousness that a rat, as I find plausible that pain are related  
to the glial cells and their metabolism, which are not  taken into  
account by the current "copies".


Interesting. Why do you think glial cell metabolism plays a roll in  
pain sensation?


I was thinking about the discovery that glial cells play a role in the  
nociceptive pathway.

See this for example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20581331
You can google on "glial cells chronic pain" to find many papers on  
this. We know that glial cells communicate with each others, although  
not with axons but with wave of chemical influences, and we know also  
that glial cells communicate with neurons, (and with the immune system).


I would not say "yes" to a doctor who does not take into account the  
glial cells, unless there is no choice. I can imagine staying  
conscious, but having different qualia. I can imagine supporting this  
for some weeks, but that it would be an heavy handicap for a longer  
survival.


Bruno




Jason





One intersting test I'd like to see is applying Tononi's integrated
information measure to these simple creatures to see if they're
producing any integrated information. I suspect Integrated Information
is a necessary requirement for conscious, but not so sure about  
sufficiency.


It is offred freely with the notion of self-reference, I would say.  
The eight hypostases/persons-pov constitute each a different mode of  
the self-integration. If Kauffman's idea that the DNA results from  
something akin to Kleene's diagonalization (which I think too) the  
amoeba and most protozoans are already quite self-integrated being.  
Then elementary invertebrates might loose that integration (like  
perhaps hydra), but quickly get it back, like with planaria.


I guess that you remember that I am not yet convinced by your  
argument that ants are not conscious, as it relies on anthropic use  
of the Absolute Self-Sampling Assumption (ASSA) which I prefer to  
avoid because the domain of  its statistic is not clear to me. (I am  
not impressed by the doomsday argument for the same reason).


Bruno





Cheers

On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 09:00:14AM +0200, Bruno 

Re: Uploaded Worm Mind

[Russell Standish]

On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 11:19:00AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
> On 31 Aug 2015, at 00:42, Russell Standish wrote:
> 
> >On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 12:34:18PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >>
> >
> >>I guess that you remember that I am not yet convinced by your
> >>argument that ants are not conscious, as it relies on anthropic use
> >>of the Absolute Self-Sampling Assumption (ASSA) which I prefer to
> >>avoid because the domain of  its statistic is not clear to me. (I am
> >>not impressed by the doomsday argument for the same reason).
> >>
> >
> >Yes, I've heard that a lot. "I'm not impressed" = "It sounds like a
> >crock of shit, but I can't put my finger on why".
> >
> >Probably the best way forward is to put forward a toy model showing
> >the anthropic argument failing, and then the mechanism is clear.
> 
> It does not fail. It can explain some of the geography by bayesian
> reasoning, but it can't explain the difference between physical
> laws, and local physical/geographical fact. For the lwas, we have to
> find something which does not depend on anything particular above
> being Turing universal or Löbian.
> 

I'm in agreement with your comments here, however I fail to see the
connection with the doomsday argument, or my anthropic ants argument,
as these are fundamentally about geography (in one case about how long
humans might be here on Earth, and the other about the consciousness
of certain Earthling creatures).

Cheers

-- 


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


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Re: A scary theory about IS

[Bruno Marchal]

On 30 Aug 2015, at 22:34, meekerdb wrote:


On 8/30/2015 10:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 - the governments know that prohibition is the main fuel of  
criminality and terrorism.


So Muslims flew planes into buildings government (which one?)  
prohibited something (what?).


?

I am just saying that the prohibition of drugs create a huge  
underground markets. We know also that a big percentage of the  
benefits is used to corrupt the governments notably to pursue the  
politics of prohibition.
In fact prohibition create the criminals. The black money is often  
used directly to buy weapon, organize armed groups, etc. The  
international prohibition of drugs lead to international mafia, whose  
budget is bigger than many government. There are accomplices with  
weapon constructers, jail builders, arm dealers, the alcohol  
industries, tobacco industries, etc., but also with sects, like  
notably scientology. The banks have all been taken into hostages by a  
clever reinvestment of the black money in "normal societies": they  
can't no more live without it. All this is a false secret, well  
explained in document that you can find on the LEAP site.


They made recently a beautiful documentary (deeper than it can seem)  
on the failure of the war on drug:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=407=gqdVXnrYSAs

Bruno






Brent

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Re: Uploaded Worm Mind

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Monday, August 31, 2015, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 31 Aug 2015, at 00:42, Russell Standish wrote:
>
> On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 12:34:18PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 30 Aug 2015, at 03:08, Russell Standish wrote:
>>>
>>> Well as people probably know, I don't believe C. elegans can be
 conscious in any sense of the word. Hell - I have strong doubts about
 ants, and they're massively more complex creatures.

>>>
>>> I think personally that C. Elegans, and Planaria (!), even amoeba,
>>> are conscious, although very plausibly not self-conscious.
>>>
>>> I tend to think since 2008 that even RA is already conscious, even
>>> maximally so, and that PA is already as much self-conscious than a
>>> human (when in some dissociative state).
>>>
>>> But I don't know if PA is more or less conscious than RA. That
>>> depends of the role of the higher part of the brain consists in
>>> filtering consciousness or enacting it.
>>>
>>>
 But it probably won't be long before we simulate a mouse brain in toto
 - about 2 decades is my guess, maybe even less given enough dollars -
 then we're definitely in grey philosophical territory :).

>>>
>>> I am slightly less optimistic than you. It will take one of two
>>> decades before we simulate the hippocampus of a rat, but probably
>>> more time will be needed for the rest of their brain. And the result
>>> can be a conscious creature, with a quite different consciousness
>>> that a rat, as I find plausible that pain are related to the glial
>>> cells and their metabolism, which are not  taken into account by the
>>> current "copies".
>>>
>>
>> What is blocking us is not the computing power - already whole "rat
>> brain" simulations have been done is something like 1/1 of real
>> time - so all we need is about a decade of performane improvement
>> through Moores law.
>>
>> What development is needed is ways of determining the neural
>> circuitry. There have been leaps and bounds in the process of slicing
>> frozen brains, and imaging the slices with electron microscopes, but
>> clearly it is still far too slow.
>>
>> As for the hypothesis that glial cells have something to do with it,
>> well that can be tested via the sort of whole rat brain simulation
>> I've been talking about. Run the simulation in a robotic rat, and
>> compare the behaviour with a real rat. Basically what the open worm
>> guys a doing, but scaled up to a rat. If the simulation is way
>> different from the real rat, then we know something else is required.
>>
>
>
> I can imagine that the rat will have a "normal behavior", but as he cannot
> talk to us, we might fail to appreciate some internal change or even some
> anosognosia. The rat would not be a zombie rat, but still be in a quite
> different conscious state (perhaps better, as it seems the glial cell might
> have some role in the chronic pain.
>

In general, if there is a difference in consciousness then there should be
a difference in behaviour. If the difference in consciousness is impossible
to detect then arguably it is no difference.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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