Re: The problem with physics

[John Clark]

On Sun, Dec 8, 2019 at 6:30 AM Bruno Marchal  wrote:


>  >>> when you listen to each of them, you realise that they know
> perfectly who they are.
>
> >> Yes, one knows he is the Washington Man and one knows he is the Moscow
> Man.
>
> *> Sure, but the key point here is that both known that could not have
> predict which one they are seeing NOW, before the duplication occurred*
>

Before the duplication there was only ONE, so either answer the following
or admit there are "questions" so brain dead dumb that even a question mark
lacks the power to transform it from gibberish into an inquiry:

*Yesterday before the duplication when there was only ONE, which ONE of the
ONE ended up seeing what ONE of them is seeing NOW? *

Upon the above chaotic word salad with the question mark at the end you
have built your entire philosophy, with such silly foundations it's little
wonder that you can build up to the ethereal heights and reach all sorts of
silly conclusions; like ASCII characters in books having the power to prove
that ASCII characters can make calculations all on their own.

> *yesterday, the man in H could not have guessed that he would, here and
> now, be the one seeing W.*
>

The day before yesterday the man in H could not only guess but could KNOW
with absolute certainty that on the next day the W Man would be the one
seeing W, and he could be absolutely certain because he knew that whatever
their faults may be it remains a fact that tautologies are ALWAYS true.
And if logic isn't enough there is experimental evidence too, today looking
back on the events of yesterday we can see that the prediction made the day
before yesterday turned out to be, of course, absolutely positively 100%
correct.

*> You are the only one I ever met having a problem with this *


Wow, you need to get out of your rut and meet some smarter people.

John K Clark

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3RHTdsgzamS%2BMCzqE%3DHDY9XcrsRYzWtnKWnBeviu-60A%40mail.gmail.com.

Re: How Mathematics Meets the World, by Tim Maudlin

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 12/8/2019 3:43 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 7 Dec 2019, at 22:17, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> wrote:




On 12/7/2019 1:57 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:

Physicists seeking such a mesh between mathematics and physics can only
alter one side of the equation. The physical world is as it is, and 
will not change at our command.


It is generally overlooked that the above is not strictly true.  
Physics has often moved phenomena from the category of "explained by 
science" to "accident of nature" and sometimes back.  For example 
Kepler thought the number of planets should be a consequence of 
natural law.  Newton dropped this from his theory.  The shape of 
continents was considered a geological accident...until Wegner showed 
they came from the breakup of a single continent.  The world may not 
change, but the part we take to be "law like" and the part we 
consider "accident of nature" are flexible.


It is here that mechanism is at its best, as it delineates completely 
what is geographical/contingent, and what is necessary, for physics, 
for all universal machine (or all but finitely many exceptions of 
measure null).


And of course, mechanism explain easily what physics obey to math, as 
the physical appearances proceed from a mathematical phenomenon 
occurring in the arithmetical reality. We use mathematics because we 
are living in a mathematical reality.


Sadly it explains easily as theologians usually do..."God did it." is an 
easy explanation for everything...assuming a God reality.


That's why scientists are impressed by predictions, but not so much by 
explanations.


Brent

Note that the phenomenology is not entirely mathematical though, but 
psychological or theological.


Maudlin is a materialist, but at least he got right the deep 
incompatibility of physicalism with digital Mechanism (in its Olympia 
paper, published in 1989, I publish this in 1988, btw).


Bruno




Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google 
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, 
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com 
.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/ba2e528b-4387-fcb6-9487-a2ac8ad641d6%40verizon.net 
.


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google 
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send 
an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com 
.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/BBC12F4A-700C-4C1B-865B-0F6AC3EC0CC6%40ulb.ac.be 
.


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/d23301ce-380e-e672-fa84-23a83eca9ae4%40verizon.net.

Re: Energy conservation in many-worlds

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 12/8/2019 2:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 7 Dec 2019, at 00:17, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> wrote:




On 12/6/2019 6:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 6 Dec 2019, at 00:53, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> wrote:




On 12/5/2019 9:05 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 5 Dec 2019, at 02:12, Bruce Kellett > wrote:


On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 10:44 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything 
List > wrote:


On 12/3/2019 1:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

This absurd conclusion depends only on the single world assumption, it's a 
consequence of the non-existence of counterfactuals. Clearly actions as a 
response to counterfactual inputs must be relevant for consciousness,

It's not clear to me.  How can there be a response to an input ("input" to 
what) that doesn't occur?  And why would such a response be anything but crazy?

Why necessarily crazy? If you can prove this, you refute Mechanism.


Wow, I didn't expect it to be so easy.  I have a dog.   If my
dog died I'd get another dog.  My dog didn't die today.  The
counterfact then is that my dog did die today.  So responding
the counterfact I get another dog.  The same thing eventuates
tomorrow.  Soon my neighbors report me to the authorites and
when I explain this to the judge he mandates psychiatric care.

Hence Mechanism is false.


I think the point Bruno is making is that consciousness requires 
"counterfactual correctness”,



Not just “consciousness”, also the simpler notion of computation 
requires or even define a notion of counterfactual correctness. It 
is not much more than a semantic for the “if A then B else C”.




by which he appears to mean that consciousness must be such that 
if the inputs are changed (counterfactually), then the output 
must also change.


… must also change (counterfactually). OK.


This hypothesis -- that consciousness requires this 
"counterfactuall correctness" -- was introduced ad hoc in order 
to protect the movie graph argument. If we take the sequence of 
states through which a computation proceeds to give a particular 
conscious experience and reproduce exactly those states on a film 
or something similar, then running through those states will 
reproduce the same conscious experience. They want to avoid this 
conclusion, so they impose the restriction that the sequence of 
state must be "counterfactually correct", i.e., it must respond 
differently to different input -- which the movie graph, being 
fixed, clearly cannot.


Who they? Not me, and Maudlin makes that move to get a reductio ad 
absurdum of having both mechanism and materialism. Then at the end 
he choses materialism, where I keep Mechanism, but both Maudlin 
and me showed that indeed it is absurd to believe in both 
mechanism and the idea that consciousness is related exclusively 
to some material events.





That this ad hoc manoeuvre does not prove anything about 
consciousness was shown by Maudlin in his "Olympia" argument.


That is weird. Maudlin, and men  did prove something about 
consciousness, mechanism and materialism.


We show that materialism -> non mechanism, or equivalently that 
mechanism -> non materialism. You can’t have them both.


But it assumes that computation exists in the abstract…


Abstract, may be for an Aristotelian who believe in a “concrete” 
physical reality.


Personally, only the natural numbers are concrete object to me, and 
computations are rather very concrete too, as they are as singular 
as the natural number, well defined, etc.


2 is concrete. 2 apples is far more abstract. We are not aware of 
this because we use quasi unconsciously highly sophisticated 
measuring apparatus (eyes, the nose, …) and a very sophisticated 
computer (the nervous system, billions of neurons, etc.) to analyse 
quickly the observation, and to eat the apple, making us feeling 
that it is concrete, when it is actually very abstract, and even 
more so if we accept the current description of what could be an 
apple (a partial trace of a quantum wave in an Hilbert space?).





simply because there's a thing we invented called the existential 
quantifier.


Prime numbers and computations existed in the arithmetical reality 
in a way which does not depend of time, space, or humans for that 
matter. And we don’t need to make existence into a notion of 
metaphysical existence. Computations exists like a solution to the 
equation x + 1 = 3 exists.


Only in your topsy-turvy world where my apple is abstract and 
arithmetic is concrete.  Like Alice's caterpillar, your words mean 
whatever you want them to mean.


No. In arithmetic.
If you don’t believe in the elementary arithmetical formula, you can’t 
invoke any theory.


If you think that an apple is not abstract, I might ask you what you 
mean by an apple, without using an ostentatious defini

Carlton Frederick: Crypto-Stochastic Space-Time

[Philip Thrift]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Frederick#Physics

Carlton Frederick

*“In November of 2013, I was roughing out a hard SF story where the 
protagonist was a physicist. As I worked on the ideas in the story, I 
realized I was not so much working on fiction as I was actually doing 
physics, and theoretical physics at that. Almost as an epiphany, I realized 
that the time had come; I should be working on physics again. I had the 
time and freedom. And if I didn't resume research then, I probably never 
would.”*

*Frederick took up physics again. He allocated five months where he devoted 
his full energy to do nothing but physics: thinking about quantum theory 
every waking moment and taking it to bed with him. Frederick’s starting 
point was his Stochastic Space-time paper from many years back.*

*“After relentlessly beating my head against the brick wall of an 
uncompromising theory, the wall began to crumble (as did arguably, my 
head). I realized that stochasticity had its limits; there was something 
else at play in the universe. That realization forced a major alteration of 
my Stochastic Space-time theory, a modification I call Crypto-stochastic 
Spacetime theory.”*

*Almost immediately, Crypto-stochastic Space-time theory gave results: he 
could explain the two-slit experiment, superposition in general, and 
explain photon polarization (a more compelling explanation than afforded by 
conventional quantum mechanics).*

*The joining of Frederick’s stochastic and crypto-stochastic approaches 
resulted in a paper called 'Towards a Conceptual Model for Quantum 
Mechanics'. * [?]



On stochastic space-time and quantum theory

*Much of quantum mechanics may be derived if one adopts a very strong form 
of Mach's Principle, requiring that in the absence of mass, space-time 
becomes not  flat but stochastic.This is manifested in the metric tensor 
which is considered to be a collection of stochastic variables. *

*Stochastic space-time and quantum theory: Part A*
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/923e/383eb86e6122b4383e5dae926ce54031b5b8.pdf

*Stochastic space-time and quantum theory: Part B (Granular space-time)*
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bc36/8c78a97d705f28d785132018d476b8c13468.pdf

*Stochastic, Granular Space-time, and a new interpretation of (complex) 
time: a root model for both relativity and quantum mechanics*
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1601.07171.pdf


@philipthrift

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2abbf39c-157a-46dc-9ada-ae7dcbda31c8%40googlegroups.com.

A Logic Programming Language for Computational Nucleic Acid Devices

[Philip Thrift]

*A Logic Programming Language for Computational Nucleic Acid Devices*
Carlo Spaccasassi, Matthew R. Lakin, Andrew Phillips
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssynbio.8b00229

*The syntax of our language is formally defined in the style of process 
calculi and combines a syntax for nucleic acid strands. ... The semantics 
follows the unification modulo equational theory approach: it adopts the 
standard semantics of Prolog, plus a modular extension to its unification 
algorithm by a novel equational theory of DNA strands.*

@philipthrift

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/be134455-c617-4c67-9464-5c09784b20c2%40googlegroups.com.

Re: How Mathematics Meets the World, by Tim Maudlin

[Philip Thrift]

On Sunday, December 8, 2019 at 5:43:21 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> We use mathematics because we are living in a mathematical reality. Note 
> that the phenomenology is not entirely mathematical though, but 
> psychological or theological.
>
>
>
>
Therein lies the camel's nose under the tent.

@philipthrift 

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/30a52d64-ba39-40a4-9a78-a395b5b6bb63%40googlegroups.com.

Re: Energy conservation in many-worlds

[Philip Thrift]

On Sunday, December 8, 2019 at 5:01:24 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> When doing metaphysics with the scientific attitude and method, we know 
> that we can only refute a metaphysical theory. We can’t prove anything 
> positive about Reality, nor even that there is one. That would be similar 
> to proving our own consistency, which we can’t when assuming Mechanism or 
> even quite weakened version of mechanism. When metaphysics/theology is done 
> with the scientific attitude, it has to become rather modest in its claim. 
>
> Bruno
>
>
It seems that you (numericalists) say there's a hidden mystery within 
numbers that is forever beyond our analysis and we (Strawsonian) 
materialists say  there's a hidden mystery within matter that is forever 
beyond our analysis.

It's two of Kant's noumenon. 

(But I come back to reports in *materials science news*, where matter is 
always surprising us: *This stuff does something completely novel*.)

@philipthrift




 

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/c09a1801-b5b3-40d6-83d5-d10c385f8201%40googlegroups.com.

Re: How Mathematics Meets the World, by Tim Maudlin

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 7 Dec 2019, at 22:17, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 12/7/2019 1:57 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>> Physicists seeking such a mesh between mathematics and physics can only
>> alter one side of the equation. The physical world is as it is, and will not 
>> change at our command.
> 
> It is generally overlooked that the above is not strictly true.  Physics has 
> often moved phenomena from the category of "explained by science" to 
> "accident of nature" and sometimes back.  For example Kepler thought the 
> number of planets should be a consequence of natural law.  Newton dropped 
> this from his theory.  The shape of continents was considered a geological 
> accident...until Wegner showed they came from the breakup of a single 
> continent.  The world may not change, but the part we take to be "law like" 
> and the part we consider "accident of nature" are flexible.

It is here that mechanism is at its best, as it delineates completely what is 
geographical/contingent, and what is necessary, for physics, for all universal 
machine (or all but finitely many exceptions of measure null).

And of course, mechanism explain easily what physics obey to math, as the 
physical appearances proceed from a mathematical phenomenon occurring in the 
arithmetical reality. We use mathematics because we are living in a 
mathematical reality. Note that the phenomenology is not entirely mathematical 
though, but psychological or theological.

Maudlin is a materialist, but at least he got right the deep incompatibility of 
physicalism with digital Mechanism (in its Olympia paper, published in 1989, I 
publish this in 1988, btw). 

Bruno


> 
> Brent
> 
> -- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com 
> .
> To view this discussion on the web visit 
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/ba2e528b-4387-fcb6-9487-a2ac8ad641d6%40verizon.net
>  
> .

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/BBC12F4A-700C-4C1B-865B-0F6AC3EC0CC6%40ulb.ac.be.

Re: The problem with physics

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 7 Dec 2019, at 01:12, John Clark  wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 7:05 AM Bruno Marchal  > wrote:
> 
> > In the duplicating machine case even after it's all over it's not at all 
> > clear who has won because I hear 2 equally loud and equally valid voices 
> > demanding that they deserve to receive the title "you”. 
> 
> > That is right, and it is nice to listen to them both,
> 
> I have,

I doubt this, as both assess seeing only one city, without remembering any clue 
capable of determining which one before the duplication.



> 
> > as you should (given the definition of first person),
> 
> Given the definition and given the circumstances there are now 2 first 
> persons,

That is right.



> and there is nothing indeterminate about that, it's a precise statement and 
> was correctly predicted to happen yesterday in Helsinki.

Yes. It is simply part of the protocol, but as both lives one city, it is as 
easy to understand that they could not have been able to say which one in 
advance.



> 
> > and when you listen to each of them, you realise that they know perfectly 
> > who they are.
> 
> Yes, one knows they are the Washington  Man and one knows he is the Moscow 
> Man.

Sure, but the key point here is that both known that could not have predict 
which one they are seeing NOW, before the duplication occurred some moments 
before.




> 
> > The guy in W says “I find myself clearly in W, and could not have guessed 
> > this in H”,
> 
> Nonsense. Yesterday in H anybody could have predicted that the man who saw W 
> would become the W man,

Sure, but yesterday, the man in H could not have guessed that he would, here 
and now, be the one seeing W.

I know, assuming QM, that if I look to the Schroedinger cat, I will both see in 
dead, and alive, but I know that none of the superposed observer will see the 
cat being simultaneously dead and alive. That is why it looks like if a 
collapse occurred. 



> I don't understand  what else somebody should have said yesterday in H.

There is about 1/2 chance I will see M, and 1/2 chance I will see W.




> 
> > and the guy in M says "“I find myself clearly in M, and could not have 
> > guessed this in H”.
> 
> This? In the above "I" is clear, it is the man who saw M, but if "this" in 
> the above does not mean the man who sees M will become the M Man (which is 
> easily predictable) then "this" can not be guessed at because nobody knows 
> what the hell they're suposed to be guessing about.


The execution of seing this or that city.



> And atop this ridiculous foundation you have built a huge tower reaching 
> toward the ethereal heights.   
> 
> And you wonder why I stopped reading your "proof"! 
> 
> > both confirms that they got “THE” experience.
> 
> Then yesterday in Helsinki it was a ridiculous question to ask "what one and 
> only one will get THE experience?", it's so ridiculous it wasn't a question 
> at all, it was just gibberish. 

It follow logically from the definition of the first person given. You are the 
only one I ever met having a problem with this (I mean: lasting so long).

Bruno




> 
> > you can no more invoke a god [...]
> 
> And at this point I say goodnight because I know from experience that after 
> you invoke that particularly ridiculous word (or start babbling about ancient 
> Greeks) nothing intelligent ever follows.
> 
>  John K Clark
> 
> 
> -- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com 
> .
> To view this discussion on the web visit 
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv36eu9Edc%2BTNEhY_P1eq89riJb_mSBSZgF_asCEBwq8UA%40mail.gmail.com
>  
> .

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/7CA1B01F-BCE6-4980-9F2D-CB4762CB044D%40ulb.ac.be.

Re: Superdeterminism in comics

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 7 Dec 2019, at 18:56, John Clark  wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 8:43 AM Bruno Marchal  > wrote:
> 
> >> that very silly theory can not say who that shadowy mysterious person 
> >> called Mr.You is,
> 
> > The mechanist hypothesis assures that both copy have the right to be 
> > qualified as you.
> 
> So yesterday before the duplication when there was only one it would be 
> idiotic to ask which one of the one will see Moscow!


That does not follow, given that the question is on the first person 
experience, and the Helsinki guy know that he will survive (as he believes in 
Mechanism and we assume mechanism to be correct), he know that whoever he will 
be, he will only been able to see one city, and so he know, in Helsinki, that 
he cannot have any certainty if he will live personally the experience “I see 
M” or the experience “I see W”.



>  
> >> nor can it say what the correct answer to a obvious question turned out to 
> >> be, "what one and only one city did Mr.You end up seeing??”
> 
> > Indeed. That is the point. That is the first person indeterminacy,
> 
> I agree that is the point, and that's exactly why first person indeterminacy 
> is complete gibberish,  


Only because you forget that the mechanist believes that he will survive the 
duplication, and that in all accessible situation, he will live a unique 
singular experience.



> as rational a concept as asking " How many blitzphits will a klogknee have 
> tomorrow?"
> 
> > that you are using each time you defend Everett.
> 
> Yes, with Everett if you ask me which version of me will be the man that sees 
> the coin come up heads when the coin is tossed tomorrow I will say it will be 
> the version of me that sees heads. And yes the answer is banal, but then it 
> was a banal question.  

That makes my point.



> 
> >> It can't say what the correct answer was EVEN AFTER the "experiment" is 
> >> long over.
> 
> > That is where you forget to put yourself in the shoes of the guy making the 
> > experience. 
> 
> It's physically impossible to put myself in the shoes of the guys having the 
> experiences because 4 feet are involved and I only have 2, there are 2 guys 
> having A first person experience.


In the 3p description. But that is not what is asked.





> 
> > After the experiment, it is easy to understand that both know very well the 
> > answer,
> 
> Forget the answer, both before and after the "experiment" nobody even knew 
> what the hell the question was!


The question was “where do you expect to survive”. The sewer is plain, simple 
and banal: I expect to find myself feeling having arrived in Moscow, or in 
Washington, and never in both.  And both copies can assess that fact, which 
would not be the case if he claim that he would have lived both. As you say, 
two feet cannot get four shoes, indeed. That’s the point.





> 
> >> So the outcome of the "experiment"  has produced precisely ZERO bits of 
> >> new information because everybody already know the man who saw Moscow 
> >> would become the Moscow Man and the man who say Washington would become 
> >> the Washington Man.
> 
> > But that is tautological.
> 
> DUH, I KNOW! But it's your scenario not mine,


The point is not on the scenario, but on the question.



> something that is not an experiment and something that contains very little 
> thought. 
> 
> > After the experience, each copy get one bit of information.
> 
> Before the experience everybody and everything already knew that the man who 
> saw Moscow would be the Moscow Man and the man who saw Washington would 
> become the Washington Man,

Indeed. And the guy expect a probability one for “drinking a cup of coffee in a 
unique city”.




> so after the experience everybody received precisely ZERO bits of new 
> information.

In the 3p description, but obviously not in each 1p description of the result. 
The W guy will say, NOW I see that I see W, but I could not have guess that in 
Helsinki, and similarly for the M guy. So, FROM THEIR FIRST PERSON VIEW,  they 
did get one bit of information.

You just keep moving from what is asked, which concerns the 1p many resulting 
views after the self duplication/multiplication, to the third person 
description of the experience, which is, tautologically, the description of the 
protocol of the experience.

It is easy to understand that in the iterated self-duplication experience, not 
only the majority of copies will assess to be unable to make definite 
prediction, but the majority will assess the P(W) = 1/2 prediction correctly.

Bruno






> 
> > Your use of matter is similar to the pseudo-explanation “God did it”.
> 
> And that is my cue to say goodnight because i know from experience you never 
> say anything of interest after you invoke that word.
> 
> John K Clark
>  
> 
> -- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receivi

Re: Energy conservation in many-worlds

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 7 Dec 2019, at 01:43, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 12/6/2019 6:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 6 Dec 2019, at 02:30, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>>> >> > wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 12/5/2019 4:28 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
 On Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 10:45 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
 >>> > wrote:
 On 12/5/2019 8:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> On 5 Dec 2019, at 00:44, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>> > > wrote:
>> 
>> On 12/3/2019 1:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> This absurd conclusion depends only on the single world assumption, 
> it's a consequence of the non-existence of counterfactuals. Clearly 
> actions as a response to counterfactual inputs must be relevant for 
> consciousness, 
 It's not clear to me.  How can there be a response to an input 
 ("input" to what) that doesn't occur?  And why would such a response 
 be anything but crazy?
>>> Why necessarily crazy? If you can prove this, you refute Mechanism.
>> 
>> Wow, I didn't expect it to be so easy.  I have a dog.   If my dog died 
>> I'd get another dog.  My dog didn't die today.  The counterfact then is 
>> that my dog did die today.  So responding the counterfact I get another 
>> dog. 
> 
> In the counter situation, yes (relatively real or not, that is not 
> relevant here, but it has to make sense)
 
 So you didn't really mean "response to counterfactual inputs".  You meant 
 responses in some different world, where the input and the response (and 
 maybe everything else) are different.
 
 The whole question about counterfactuals relates back to philosophical 
 questions about what counterfactuals can possible mean when the antecedent 
 is manifestly false. I think it was Lewis who proposed an analysis of 
 causation in terms of counterfactuals, giving them meaning through the 
 concept of "possible worlds". Philosophy has moved on past this 
 understanding of counterfactuals, but it seems that Bruno is attached to 
 the idea of multiple worlds, so he thinks that consciousness depends on a 
 "possible worlds" understanding of the response to counterfactual inputs.
>>> 
>>> Bruno is a logician, so he looks at in terms of Kripke's possible worlds 
>>> modal logic. 
>> 
>> I started from biology. I discovered Mechanism in the work of Descartes and 
>> Darwin. I have just been lucky to discover Gödel’s theorem before deciding 
>> to study biology, and it makes me realise that what Descartes and Darwin 
>> described is realised in the number relations. I will still remain a bit 
>> skeptical on this until I eventually understood how solid the Church-Turing 
>> thesis is.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> But unlike a physicist who takes mathematics and logic to be rules of 
>>> language intended to conserve the validity of inferences in the language, 
>>> he takes them to be proscriptive of reality. 
>> 
>> No less than any physicist who use mathematics. Not just the mathematical 
>> language, but also some mathematical truth.
> 
> You probably meant "No more than…" 

? 



> But what you wrote is correct: 
> 
> "The direct, platonic, correspondence of physical theories to the nature of 
> reality ... is fraught with problems: 

That’s what I said. But that is what the physicists do all the time, when using 
the brain-mind identity thesis, which is already similar to building a 
correspondence between theories and reality, and in this case, the brain-mind 
identity thesis is made inconsistent with Mechanism.




> First, theories are notoriously temporary. We can never know if quantum field 
> theory will not someday be replaced with another more powerful model that 
> makes no mention of fields (or particles, for that matter). Second, as with 
> all physical theories, quantum field theory is a model—a human contrivance. 
> We test our models to find out if they work; but we can never be sure, even 
> for highly predictive models like quantum electrodynamics, to what degree 
> they correspond to “reality.”

No problem with this, except that when we assume the Mechanist Theory, we know 
physicalism to be wrong. That’s a logical consequence. 




> To claim they do is metaphysics.

And with Mechanism, such claim can be refuted (and are refuted, as the greek 
theologian understood even before the Church-Turing thesis).



> If there were an empirical way to determine ultimate reality, it would be 
> physics, not metaphysics;

That is not correct, unless you assume a physical primary reality, which of 
course I do not, as I show this to be refuted by facts. Vic is just adopting 
the physicalist Aristotelian criterion of Reality, which is inconsistent with 
Mechanism, and of course with Platonism.


> but it see

Re: Energy conservation in many-worlds

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 7 Dec 2019, at 00:17, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 12/6/2019 6:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 6 Dec 2019, at 00:53, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>>> >> > wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 12/5/2019 9:05 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
> On 5 Dec 2019, at 02:12, Bruce Kellett  > wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 10:44 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  > wrote:
> On 12/3/2019 1:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 This absurd conclusion depends only on the single world assumption, 
 it's a consequence of the non-existence of counterfactuals. Clearly 
 actions as a response to counterfactual inputs must be relevant for 
 consciousness, 
>>> It's not clear to me.  How can there be a response to an input ("input" 
>>> to what) that doesn't occur?  And why would such a response be anything 
>>> but crazy?
>> Why necessarily crazy? If you can prove this, you refute Mechanism.
> 
> Wow, I didn't expect it to be so easy.  I have a dog.   If my dog died 
> I'd get another dog.  My dog didn't die today.  The counterfact then is 
> that my dog did die today.  So responding the counterfact 
>   I get another dog.  The same thing eventuates tomorrow.  
> Soon my neighbors report me to the authorites and when I explain this to 
> the judge he mandates psychiatric care.
> 
> Hence Mechanism is false.
> 
> I think the point Bruno is making is that consciousness requires 
> "counterfactual correctness”, 
 
 
 Not just “consciousness”, also the simpler notion of computation requires 
 or even define a notion of counterfactual correctness. It is not much more 
 than a semantic for the “if A then B else C”. 
 
 
 
> by which he appears to mean that consciousness must be such that if the 
> inputs are changed (counterfactually), then the output must also change.
 
 … must also change (counterfactually). OK.
 
 
> This hypothesis -- that consciousness requires this "counterfactuall 
> correctness" -- was introduced ad hoc in order to protect the movie graph 
> argument. If we take the sequence of states through which a computation 
> proceeds to give a particular conscious experience and reproduce exactly 
> those states on a film or something similar, then running through those 
> states will reproduce the same conscious experience. They want to avoid 
> this conclusion, so they impose the restriction that the sequence of 
> state must be "counterfactually correct", i.e., it must respond 
> differently to different input -- which the movie graph, being fixed, 
> clearly cannot.
 
 Who they? Not me, and Maudlin makes that move to get a reductio ad 
 absurdum of having both mechanism and materialism. Then at the end he 
 choses materialism, where I keep Mechanism, but both Maudlin and me showed 
 that indeed it is absurd to believe in both mechanism and the idea that 
 consciousness is related exclusively to some material events.
 
 
> 
> That this ad hoc manoeuvre does not prove anything about consciousness 
> was shown by Maudlin in his "Olympia" argument.
 
 That is weird. Maudlin, and men  did prove something about consciousness, 
 mechanism and materialism.
 
 We show that materialism -> non mechanism, or equivalently that mechanism 
 -> non materialism. You can’t have them both. 
>>> 
>>> But it assumes that computation exists in the abstract…
>> 
>> Abstract, may be for an Aristotelian who believe in a “concrete” physical 
>> reality.
>> 
>> Personally, only the natural numbers are concrete object to me, and 
>> computations are rather very concrete too, as they are as singular as the 
>> natural number, well defined, etc. 
>> 
>> 2 is concrete. 2 apples is far more abstract. We are not aware of this 
>> because we use quasi unconsciously highly sophisticated measuring apparatus 
>> (eyes, the nose, …) and a very sophisticated computer (the nervous system, 
>> billions of neurons, etc.) to analyse quickly the observation, and to eat 
>> the apple, making us feeling that it is concrete, when it is actually very 
>> abstract, and even more so if we accept the current description of what 
>> could be an apple (a partial trace of a quantum wave in an Hilbert space?).
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> simply because there's a thing we invented called the existential 
>>> quantifier. 
>> 
>> Prime numbers and computations existed in the arithmetical reality in a way 
>> which does not depend of time, space, or humans for that matter. And we 
>> don’t need to make existence into a notion of metaphysical existence. 
>> Computations exists like a solution to the equation x + 1 = 

Re: Energy conservation in many-worlds

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 7 Dec 2019, at 00:12, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 12/6/2019 6:05 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 6 Dec 2019, at 00:45, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>>> >> > wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 12/5/2019 8:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
> On 5 Dec 2019, at 00:44, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  > wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 12/3/2019 1:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 This absurd conclusion depends only on the single world assumption, 
 it's a consequence of the non-existence of counterfactuals. Clearly 
 actions as a response to counterfactual inputs must be relevant for 
 consciousness, 
>>> It's not clear to me.  How can there be a response to an input ("input" 
>>> to what) that doesn't occur?  And why would such a response be anything 
>>> but crazy?
>> Why necessarily crazy? If you can prove this, you refute Mechanism.
> 
> Wow, I didn't expect it to be so easy.  I have a dog.   If my dog died 
> I'd get another dog.  My dog didn't die today.  The counterfact then is 
> that my dog did die today.  So responding the counterfact I get another 
> dog. 
 
 In the counter situation, yes (relatively real or not, that is not 
 relevant here, but it has to make sense)
>>> 
>>> So you didn't really mean "response to counterfactual inputs".  You meant 
>>> responses in some different world, where the input and the response (and 
>>> maybe everything else) are different.
>> 
>> That is modal realism, but I made precise I don’t use this here. That is why 
>> I said “relatively real or not”. Usually, the counterfactuals and their 
>> consequences are judged unreal, but in modal realist context, like with 
>> Everett and with Mechanism, they get real (with high or low relative 
>> measure).
>> The counterfactual reality are always as close as possible as the factual 
>> input. We can say, if Hitler was a nice guy there would not have been an 
>> holocaust (that is a common reasonable counterfactual). But we cannot say 
>> (to illustrate counterfactuals) “If Hitler was good, pigs would been able to 
>> fly”. That is not a counterfactual. It is at best a statement that Hitler 
>> (perhaps by definition of Hitler) is intrinsically bad, or something.
>> 
>> Similarly “if the alarm did not ring, the plane would have crashed” is a 
>> reasonable counterfactual statement. But “If the alarm did not ring chicken 
>> would have teeth”, would mean that it is absolutely impossible that the 
>> alarm could not ring.
> 
> You take extreme examples, but where is the line. How do you know that in the 
> world where Hitler is a nice guy it is necessarily true that pigs fly? 

Yes, that is not a counterfactual. Assuming that Hitler is not nice guy, the 
fact that pigs can fly is implied by the fact that Hitler is a nice guy. That 
is why the classical implication is NOT a counterfactuals. It is also classical 
true that if Hither is a nice guy, Pigs cannot fly. So if Hitler is a nice guy, 
pigs can and cannot fly, which is a contradiction, and that is a proof by 
absurdum reductio that Hitler is not a nice guy, and not a very convincing one, 
given that it assumes this at the start.



> You claim that all that is real is the same as the totality of computation.

I claim that if we assume digital mechanism, elementary arithmetic cannot be 
completed for the ontology. But that does not mean that only number and 
computation are real, as the whole 1p internal phenomenology is provable much 
richer than arithmetic. The whole of mathematics is not enough to get the whole 
internal (to arithmetic) phenomenology. 


>   So from you premise can you prove what you asserted...or is it just an 
> assertion?

I can prove it, but that is irrelevant, as the goal is to derive physics from 
what machines can prove and  cannot prove, as we should, when we assume 
Mechanism.

Bruno



> 
> Brent
> 
> -- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com 
> .
> To view this discussion on the web visit 
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/7963e261-b1a9-bb87-62fc-1f4518dd6686%40verizon.net
>  
> .

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/8D3F7C54-0FE3-468B-A08

Re: How Mathematics Meets the World, by Tim Maudlin

[Philip Thrift]

On Saturday, December 7, 2019 at 3:17:45 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/7/2019 1:57 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
> Physicists seeking such a mesh between mathematics and physics can only
> alter one side of the equation. The physical world is as it is, and will 
> not change at our command.
>
>
> It is generally overlooked that the above is not strictly true.  Physics 
> has often moved phenomena from the category of "explained by science" to 
> "accident of nature" and sometimes back.  For example Kepler thought the 
> number of planets should be a consequence of natural law.  Newton dropped 
> this from his theory.  The shape of continents was considered a geological 
> accident...until Wegner showed they came from the breakup of a single 
> continent.  The world may not change, but the part we take to be "law like" 
> and the part we consider "accident of nature" are flexible.
>
> Brent
>



There is a hidden code of nature—the code written into its fabric. Our 
theories—our hypothetical code—are our evolving best-guess translations of 
the code of nature, which remains hidden from our knowledge—within 
nature-in-itself.

@philipthrift 

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/09557a68-d460-4106-8ea2-4b8999a6715c%40googlegroups.com.