Re: How Mathematics Meets the World, by Tim Maudlin

[Philip Thrift]

On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 7:53:35 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/10/2019 5:37 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 7:27:59 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/10/2019 5:13 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 6:05:14 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/10/2019 3:06 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 2:39:55 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 

 Materialists say consciousness is process, and as such is realized in 
 matter, but is not itself matter.  This is well supported by empirical 
 observations of everything from drunkenness to brain surgery.

 Brent


>>>
>>> No materialist would say there are processes and matter and that 
>>> processes are not matter. 
>>>
>>>
>>> Sure they would.  Just as JKC said race cars are fast but being fast 
>>> isn't a race car, it's a process.
>>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> A fast car is still a car. Fast matter is still matter. A conscious brain 
>> is still a brain.
>>
>> A parked (*not moving at all*) car is still a car, too. *A parked car is 
>> no more or less of a car than a fast car*. (What process is occurring 
>> with a parked car? Is 'stationary' a process?)
>>
>> 'fast',  'conscious', 'parked', 'stationary' have no existence of their 
>> own.
>>
>>
>> Are they matter?  No.  Do they exist?  Yes.
>>
>> Brent
>>
>
>
> Show me where fast exists. What are its spacetime coordinates?
>
>
> It's an attribute not a thing.  So it exists where things have space 
> coordinates changing relative to time coordinates (as you well know).
>
> And I don't need  lecture on nominalism.
>
> Brent
>
>
>
That works for 'fast' -  *"it exists where things have space coordinates 
changing relative to time coordinates".*

Is a running river matter? Is a an ocean wave matter? They 'things have 
space coordinates changing relative to time coordinates".

According to what you wrote (about matter+process) above the answer would 
be that they are only partly matter.


What about 'stationary'? Where is that?


*it exists where things have space coordinates unchanging relative to time 
coordinates ?*


@philipthrift

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Re: How Mathematics Meets the World, by Tim Maudlin

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 12/10/2019 5:37 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:



On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 7:27:59 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:



On 12/10/2019 5:13 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:



On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 6:05:14 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:



On 12/10/2019 3:06 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:



On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 2:39:55 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:

Materialists say consciousness is process, and as such
is realized in matter, but is not itself matter.  This
is well supported by empirical observations of
everything from drunkenness to brain surgery.

Brent



No materialist would say there are processes and matter and
that processes are not matter.


Sure they would.  Just as JKC said race cars are fast but
being fast isn't a race car, it's a process.

Brent



A fast car is still a car. Fast matter is still matter. A
conscious brain is still a brain.

A parked (*not moving at all*) car is still a car, too. /A parked
car is no more or less of a car than a fast car/. (What process
is occurring with a parked car? Is 'stationary' a process?)

'fast',  'conscious', 'parked', 'stationary' have no existence of
their own.


Are they matter?  No.  Do they exist?  Yes.

Brent



Show me where fast exists. What are its spacetime coordinates?


It's an attribute not a thing.  So it exists where things have space 
coordinates changing relative to time coordinates (as you well know).


And I don't need  lecture on nominalism.

Brent



https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_nominalism.html

Nominalism is the doctrine that abstract concepts, general terms or 
universals have no independent existence but exist only as names. 
Therefore, various objects labeled by the same term have nothing in 
common but their name. Put another way, only actual physical 
particulars are real, and universals exist only subsequent to 
particular things, being just verbal abstractions.


Nominalism arose in reaction to the problem of universals and in 
particular to Plato's solution to it, known as Platonic Realism, which 
holds that abstract objects like universals and Forms exist in their 
own right and are wholly independent of the physical world, and that 
particular physical objects merely exemplify or instantiate the 
universal. Nominalists ask exactly where this universal realm might 
be, and find it unusual and unlikely that there could be a single 
thing that exists in multiple places simultaneously.



@philipthrift
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Re: How Mathematics Meets the World, by Tim Maudlin

[Philip Thrift]

On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 7:27:59 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/10/2019 5:13 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 6:05:14 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/10/2019 3:06 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 2:39:55 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 
>>>
>>> Materialists say consciousness is process, and as such is realized in 
>>> matter, but is not itself matter.  This is well supported by empirical 
>>> observations of everything from drunkenness to brain surgery.
>>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>>
>>
>> No materialist would say there are processes and matter and that 
>> processes are not matter. 
>>
>>
>> Sure they would.  Just as JKC said race cars are fast but being fast 
>> isn't a race car, it's a process.
>>
>> Brent
>>
>>
>>
> A fast car is still a car. Fast matter is still matter. A conscious brain 
> is still a brain.
>
> A parked (*not moving at all*) car is still a car, too. *A parked car is 
> no more or less of a car than a fast car*. (What process is occurring 
> with a parked car? Is 'stationary' a process?)
>
> 'fast',  'conscious', 'parked', 'stationary' have no existence of their 
> own.
>
>
> Are they matter?  No.  Do they exist?  Yes.
>
> Brent
>


Show me where fast exists. What are its spacetime coordinates?

https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_nominalism.html

Nominalism is the doctrine that abstract concepts, general terms or 
universals have no independent existence but exist only as names. 
Therefore, various objects labeled by the same term have nothing in common 
but their name. Put another way, only actual physical particulars are real, 
and universals exist only subsequent to particular things, being just 
verbal abstractions.

Nominalism arose in reaction to the problem of universals and in particular 
to Plato's solution to it, known as Platonic Realism, which holds that 
abstract objects like universals and Forms exist in their own right and are 
wholly independent of the physical world, and that particular physical 
objects merely exemplify or instantiate the universal. Nominalists ask 
exactly where this universal realm might be, and find it unusual and 
unlikely that there could be a single thing that exists in multiple places 
simultaneously.


@philipthrift 

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Re: How Mathematics Meets the World, by Tim Maudlin

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 12/10/2019 5:13 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:



On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 6:05:14 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:



On 12/10/2019 3:06 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:



On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 2:39:55 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:

Materialists say consciousness is process, and as such is
realized in matter, but is not itself matter.  This is well
supported by empirical observations of everything from
drunkenness to brain surgery.

Brent



No materialist would say there are processes and matter and that
processes are not matter.


Sure they would.  Just as JKC said race cars are fast but being
fast isn't a race car, it's a process.

Brent



A fast car is still a car. Fast matter is still matter. A conscious 
brain is still a brain.


A parked (*not moving at all*) car is still a car, too. /A parked car 
is no more or less of a car than a fast car/. (What process is 
occurring with a parked car? Is 'stationary' a process?)


'fast',  'conscious', 'parked', 'stationary' have no existence of 
their own.


Are they matter?  No.  Do they exist?  Yes.

Brent

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Re: How Mathematics Meets the World, by Tim Maudlin

[Philip Thrift]

On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 6:05:14 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/10/2019 3:06 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 2:39:55 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 
>>
>> Materialists say consciousness is process, and as such is realized in 
>> matter, but is not itself matter.  This is well supported by empirical 
>> observations of everything from drunkenness to brain surgery.
>>
>> Brent
>>
>>
>
> No materialist would say there are processes and matter and that processes 
> are not matter. 
>
>
> Sure they would.  Just as JKC said race cars are fast but being fast isn't 
> a race car, it's a process.
>
> Brent
>
>
>
A fast car is still a car. Fast matter is still matter. A conscious brain 
is still a brain.

A parked (*not moving at all*) car is still a car, too. *A parked car is no 
more or less of a car than a fast car*. (What process is occurring with a 
parked car? Is 'stationary' a process?)

'fast',  'conscious', 'parked', 'stationary' have no existence of their own.

@philipthrift

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Re: How Mathematics Meets the World, by Tim Maudlin

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 12/10/2019 3:06 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:



On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 2:39:55 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:

Materialists say consciousness is process, and as such is realized
in matter, but is not itself matter.  This is well supported by
empirical observations of everything from drunkenness to brain
surgery.

Brent



No materialist would say there are processes and matter and that 
processes are not matter.


Sure they would.  Just as JKC said race cars are fast but being fast 
isn't a race car, it's a process.


Brent


If they did, they would be a kind of dualist, not a materialist.

@philipthrift
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Re: How Mathematics Meets the World, by Tim Maudlin

[Philip Thrift]

On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 2:39:55 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>
> Materialists say consciousness is process, and as such is realized in 
> matter, but is not itself matter.  This is well supported by empirical 
> observations of everything from drunkenness to brain surgery.
>
> Brent
>
>

No materialist would say there are processes and matter and that processes 
are not matter. If they did, they would be a kind of dualist, not a 
materialist.

@philipthrift 

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Re: Energy conservation in many-worlds

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 12/10/2019 7:35 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 11:23 AM Bruno Marchal > wrote:


/> mind is not much what it does, as what it feels,/


I don't think much of the Star Trek/Mr.Spock philosophy. I think 
something could be conscious and unintelligent but not the other way 
around. And I don't think it's feelings that distinguishes humans from 
the other animals, it's intelligence.


>> I don't think mind (intelligence + consciousness) is a form of
matter anymore than fast is a form of racing car,

/> Very good point!/


Thank you.

>>mind is what a form of matter does when it is organized in certain
ways.

> /OK; if you want to implement that mind relatively to you./

//
Not OK if you want to assign mind to other people. I know for sure 
that in my case mind does 2 things, it does intelligence and it does 
consciousness,  perhaps the same 2 things are true for other people's 
mind too but only one of those attributes can be directly tested by 
me; so to avoid solipsism I just have to assume that the one implies 
the other. Actually I can do a bit more than that, although falling short
of a proof of Euclidean quality there is good evidence that one 
implies the other and solipsism is probably untrue:


I am conscious and Evolution produced me.
Evolution can NOT directly detect consciousness in others any better 
than I can.

SO consciousness can NOT confer a Evolutionary advantage.
So consciousness can NOT be selected for.
I am more intelagent than a rock.
Evolution CAN directly detect intelligence.
So intelligence CAN confer a Evolutionary advantage.
So intelligence  CAN be selected for.
Therefore consciousness is a byproduct of intelligence.



And I think you can even add to that.  Intelligence, and it's 
evolutionary advantage, is learning and planning.  Planning requires 
modeling imagined events which include ones self and anticipating not 
only what will happen physically, but also how you will feel about the 
events:  I'll be happy about this.  I'll die if that.  And for a social 
animal the planning must include how other people will react, what 
planning it will induce in them, and (discounting solipism) what will 
they think of you?  Will that good looking blonde abandon Gorg and come 
to my cave?  So this level of intelligence requires not just awareness, 
but self-awareness and the attribution of the same others.


Brent



/> If not, you need to explain more on what is matter, and how it
makes some computations more real than some others. /


A good operational definition of "real" is something that produces 
results, so you need to explain why some programs, like those inside a 
computer connected to a power supply, produce results, but other 
programs, like those printed out in ASCII characters in the pages of a 
dusty old book, do not.


John K Clark

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Re: Superdeterminism in comics

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 12/10/2019 5:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


There is. It is what you can expect to feel when doing the experience. 
In Helsinki, you believe that you will survive (because you believe in 
Mechanism, say), and you know with certainty that you will bring a cup 
of coffee, because this has been promised by both the Washingtonians 
and the Moscowians. But for that same reason, you know in Helsinki 
that both copies will have incompatible first person experience, as 
none will feel to drink Russian and American coffee simultaneously. So 
in H, you know that (always assuming Mechanism of course) whatever 
happens, you will feel to find yourself in one city, and you know that 
it is impossible in Helsinki to write its name in the first person 
diary (the one embarked in the annihilation-copy box).


Aside from the silly back and forth over pronouns, I wonder how the 
copies in Moscow and Washington can believe they were the man in 
Helsinki?  Of course the easy answer is they remember being the man in 
Helsinki.  But given this copying ability, they could have been given 
false memories of being in Helsinki, and in fact they cannot be made of 
the same atoms as the Helsinki man.  So maybe there was no Helsinki man 
and their "memories" are just fictions.  Are they then conscious of 
things that never happened?


Brent

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Re: How Mathematics Meets the World, by Tim Maudlin

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 12/10/2019 4:51 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 8 Dec 2019, at 21:57, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> wrote:




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 is exactly my point, with “matter” instead of God. The 
physicalist say “matter selects the ‘conscious’ computation”, but they 
fail to give any rôle to that matter in the consciousness selection.


These physicalists you are always refuting are strawmen.  No scientist 
or philosopher I've read says, “matter selects the ‘conscious’ 
computation”.  Materialists say consciousness is process, and as such is 
realized in matter, but is not itself matter.  This is well supported by 
empirical observations of everything from drunkeness to brain surgery.


Brent



Either that selection process is Turing emulable, but then we are led 
to the mechanist formulation of the mind-body problem, or that 
selection process is not Turing emulable. In that case, either it is 
recoverable from the First Person Indeterminacy in arithmetic, in 
which case we are closer to the mechanist explanation of the origin of 
the physical laws, or it does not, and that is what we can tested.






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


An explanation without a prediction is a waste of time. We agree on 
this. But my whole point is that Mechanism vs Materialism is testable, 
and that the facts confirms Mechanism, and refute Materialism (as 
guessed by many theologian at the time this was done by scientists, 
indeed).


Bruno





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

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<

Re: Energy conservation in many-worlds

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 12/10/2019 4:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I wrote "my apple" so it is indicial and I define it ostensively, 
which is concrete.


Relatively to you and me. It seems concrete because we have billions 
of interconnected amoebas working hard to make us easily recognising 
fruits from poison and preys from predators. There is huge implicit 
context, but we still have no theory capable of explaining what an 
apple is, especially explaining why it falls on the ground (cf the 
lack of a coherent quantum theory of gravitation). Concreteness is in 
the eye of the beholder ...




You seem to have swapped the meanings  "concrete" and "abstract".  Dr 
Johnson could kick my apple, even if he can't kick apple.


That’s the problem. How do you relate “your apple” with apple. With 
mechanism, even “your apple” is still a sort of type for infinitely 
many “apples” in a complex superposition state, and nobody agree how 
to interpret those state.


Not when I define it ostensively.

With mechanism, we know that any piece of matter is a projection from 
a space of computations into itself.


But you can't exhibit this projection.  You just assume it must exist 
since otherwise "mechanism" is false.




Your notion of “concreteness” is all we need here and now to eat apple 
and make simple prediction, but this simplicity is misleading when the 
question becomes more fundamental, on the how and why.


What it misleading is to take a word who's use we agreed on to 
communicate clearly and assert it must have a different meaning because 
that satisfies your theory.  It's the same move you make with "God" and 
"theology".


Brent

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Hedda Hassel Mørch: protoconsciousness pervades the cosmos

[Philip Thrift]

By John Horgan on December 9, 2019

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/beyond-physicalism/


ref:
The Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness
 Hedda Hassel Mørch (2017)
https://philosophynow.org/issues/121/The_Integrated_Information_Theory_of_Consciousness


   https://heddahasselmorch.com/
   https://twitter.com/heddamorch 


@philipthrift

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Re: Energy conservation in many-worlds

[John Clark]

On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 11:23 AM Bruno Marchal  wrote:

*> mind is not much what it does, as what it feels,*


I don't think much of the Star Trek/Mr.Spock philosophy. I think something
could be conscious and unintelligent but not the other way around. And I
don't think it's feelings that distinguishes humans from the other animals,
it's intelligence.

>> I don't think mind (intelligence + consciousness) is a form of matter
> anymore than fast is a form of racing car,
>
> *> Very good point!*
>

Thank you.

>>mind is what a form of matter does when it is organized in certain ways.
>
> > *OK; if you want to implement that mind relatively to you.*
>

Not OK if you want to assign mind to other people. I know for sure that in
my case mind does 2 things, it does intelligence and it does consciousness,
 perhaps the same 2 things are true for other people's mind too but only
one of those attributes can be directly tested by me; so to avoid solipsism
I just have to assume that the one implies the other. Actually I can do a
bit more than that, although falling short
of a proof of Euclidean quality there is good evidence that one implies the
other and solipsism is probably untrue:

I am conscious and Evolution produced me.
Evolution can NOT directly detect consciousness in others any better than I
can.
SO consciousness can NOT confer a Evolutionary advantage.
So consciousness can NOT be selected for.
I am more intelagent than a rock.
Evolution CAN directly detect intelligence.
So intelligence CAN confer a Evolutionary advantage.
So intelligence  CAN be selected for.
Therefore consciousness is a byproduct of intelligence.

*> If not, you need to explain more on what is matter, and how it makes
> some computations more real than some others. *
>

A good operational definition of "real" is something that produces results,
so you need to explain why some programs, like those inside a computer
connected to a power supply, produce results, but other programs, like
those printed out in ASCII characters in the pages of a dusty old book, do
not.

John K Clark

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Re: The largest and smallest Black Holes

[Lawrence Crowell]

Astronomical objects and events are nothing to fear. The probabilities are 
small. Earth has been here 4.6 billion years and so far no black hole event or 
strangelet wipeout. Even large asteroids are a one in ten million year event. 
Only one person has been documented to be hit by a small meteor.

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Re: The largest and smallest Black Holes

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 6 Dec 2019, at 16:38, Lawrence Crowell  
> wrote:
> 
> Strangelets are a baryon state (d,u,s) where this has a lower energy state 
> than a proton state (d,u,u). There is a large potential barrier obstructing a 
> flavor changing weak interaction u --> s + e +  nu_ e-bar. However, this is 
> not so much for s + u --> s + s + e + nu_ e-bar. So this is self catalysing 
> interaction. If there is enough "seed" strangelets this could run away.
> 
> If a neutron star has a strange core and it collides with another this stuff 
> could slash out and covert more matter to strangelets. However, I suspect 
> this is no more a threat than that of a black hole coming through the solar 
> system and gravitationally flinging planets and Earth around.


Thanks for the precisions. I guess I fear less the neutron stars and the black 
holes than an asteroid. Apparently there is one coming at us which might 
collide with Earth in 175 years. We can hope we will manage to deflect its 
path. It looks also that a rapid star might go through the solar system in 
19000 years. He might provoke some havoc in it, but again, we can hope to solve 
this problem during those 19,000 years to come …
Neutron stars are still a very fascinating topic though. Some exotic matter 
might inspire some generation of quantum computing, and vice versa, I think.

Bruno



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Re: Superdeterminism in comics

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 9 Dec 2019, at 18:58, John Clark  wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Dec 8, 2019 at 6:20 AM Bruno Marchal  > wrote:
>  
> > the question is on the first person experience,
> 
> For the 998th time, given that in Bruno's scenario a first person experience 
> duplicating machine is invoked there is no such thing as THE first person 
> experience;



There is. It is what you can expect to feel when doing the experience. In 
Helsinki, you believe that you will survive (because you believe in Mechanism, 
say), and you know with certainty that you will bring a cup of coffee, because 
this has been promised by both the Washingtonians and the Moscowians. But for 
that same reason, you know in Helsinki that both copies will have incompatible 
first person experience, as none will feel to drink Russian and American coffee 
simultaneously. So in H, you know that (always assuming Mechanism of course) 
whatever happens, you will feel to find yourself in one city, and you know that 
it is impossible in Helsinki to write its name in the first person diary (the 
one embarked in the annihilation-copy box).







> so if the "question" is about THE first person then the "question" is about 
> absolutely positively nothing.


Then you admit that you die in that experience, but that contradicts Mechanism.




>  
> > he cannot have any certainty if he will live personally the experience “I 
> > see M” or the experience “I see W”.
> 
> That's 4 personal pronouns with no referent in just 21 words,


We did agree on the reference of the pronouns. The first “he” is the guy, when 
unique, in Helsinki. The second “he” refers to each copies’ first person 
experience accessible from H in this setting. We agree that in the 3p 
description, the guy finds himself in both places (indeed, that is part of the 
protocol). We did agree that each first person experience is felt as a well 
definite experience of feeling to be in a well determined city. It can only be 
W or M.

Just do the thought experience. 
Imagine that in H, the guy write “W and M”. Then both copies refute the 
prediction, given that one lives “W but not M” and the other lives “M but not 
W”.
Imagine that in H, the guy write “W”. Then the W guy get his prediction 
confirmed, but the guy in M refutes the prediction, and that makes the 
prediction false. (We agreed that both copies are digne successor of the guy in 
H, by Mechanism). It is the same if the guy predicts “M”.
Imagine that the guy in H write “W or M”. Then both copies get the prediction 
confirms. Success!.

It is as simple and banal as that. Your semantical trick reminds me the GOP 
republicans, so brilliant in evading the questions they dislike. 



> and that rate is not unusual, such flagrant use of personal pronouns is 
> typical in Bruno's entire thought "experiment" even though the entire purpose 
> of the thing is to discover new stuff about personal identity and forms the 
> foundation of the entire "proof". And yet you ask with a straight face why I 
> stopped reading it!
> 
> 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.
> 
> Then we agree, when your conclusions are not dead wrong they are banal.


You have often agreed. So now, move to step 4, perhaps. The banality of a 
result does not make it wrong, and it is just a passage toward something more 
interesting: the necessity to derive physics from arithmetic when we assume 
computationalism (aka indexical digital mechanism).




> 
> 
> 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.
> 
> It's impossible to say if that's true or not because nobody knows what 
> question was asked, certainly Bruno doesn’t.


The question is simple, and most people get the answer by themselves when asked 
(and when they have a bit of training in reasoning with mechanism). The 
question is asked to any candidate to a duplication, or a superposition, about 
what they expect to live. There is no ambiguity about who is who. The only 
difficulty is that in the duplication experience, we need to be clear is the 
question is about *THE* possible first experience that the candidate will live 
just after having push the button. We know that this experience has to be “I am 
in once city right now and it is W”, or “ am in once city right now and it is 
M”.




>  
> > The question was “where do you expect to survive”.
> 
> And my question is who exactly is the referent to the personal pronoun "you" 
> in the above?


The guy in Helsinki, before the experience.



> If the referent is the man that is experiencing H righ

Re: The problem with physics

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 8 Dec 2019, at 22:55, John Clark  wrote:
> 
> 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?


We are in the semi-duplication context, so your question is badly formulated or 
ambiguous. But things are very simple. Yesterday, a computationalist has put on 
the annihilation copy button. He predicted that he will feel to be in only once 
city, but that he was incapable of saying with certainty which one in 
particular. And today, BOTH are happy that their experience confirms the 
prediction that both remember having written in their personal diary. That 
would not have been the case with a prediction like “I will feel to be in 
Washington”, or like “I will feel to be simultaneously in both city”, for 
example. By definition of the correct first person prediction, all copies have 
to confirm it in the finite self-multiplication case, and all copies except for 
a set of measure zero have to confirm it in the infinite self-multiplication 
case.




> 
> 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,


That describes the protocol that we already knew, and does not adress the 
question of the prediction of the first person experience, which is never an 
experience of living the two outcomes simultaneously. Everett exploits this in 
the quantum context, and I just show that we have to exploit this in the 
“amoeba context”.

Bruno



> 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
> 
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Re: How Mathematics Meets the World, by Tim Maudlin

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 8 Dec 2019, at 21:57, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 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 is exactly my point, with “matter” instead of God. The physicalist say 
“matter selects the ‘conscious’ computation”, but they fail to give any rôle to 
that matter in the consciousness selection.

Either that selection process is Turing emulable, but then we are led to the 
mechanist formulation of the mind-body problem, or that selection process is 
not Turing emulable. In that case, either it is recoverable from the First 
Person Indeterminacy in arithmetic, in which case we are closer to the 
mechanist explanation of the origin of the physical laws, or it does not, and 
that is what we can tested.



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

An explanation without a prediction is a waste of time. We agree on this. But 
my whole point is that Mechanism vs Materialism is testable, and that the facts 
confirms Mechanism, and refute Materialism (as guessed by many theologian at 
the time this was done by scientists, indeed).

Bruno



> 
> 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
>>> 
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Re: Energy conservation in many-worlds

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 8 Dec 2019, at 21:29, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 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

Re: Energy conservation in many-worlds

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 8 Dec 2019, at 12:51, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 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.)

I just derive the consequences of CT (and sometimes CT + YD). The advantage of 
the numbers (or any universal machinery) is that it explains why there is 
necessary a “mystery”. It is a very general phenomenon related to the 
possibility of partially embedding semantics and meta-level in the objects of 
study by the theory.
Like Everett made the physicists obeying to the laws of physics, Gödel 
illustrated how the mathematician is partially, but only partially, embeddable 
in the Arithmetical Reality. From this we do get an explanation of how and why 
there is a stable appearance of a physical reality, emerging from the 
statistical interference of *all* computations, as seen from “inside” (and that 
has made precise through the laws of self-reference (cf Gödel, Löb, Solovay). 
Of course nobody can know if this is true or false, but everybody can see that 
it is testable, and thanks to Everett QM, but also quantum logic, the evidences 
side pretty much with Mechanism, and not so much in favour of physicalism.

Bruno



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> 
> 
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