Re: A question for Bruno
Thank you, we should have remembered that zig-zag approach! -- 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 post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
A question for Bruno
Hi everyone and everything, I was discussing comp and similar things with Liz the other day and we came across a sticking point in what I think (from memory) is step 7 of the UDA. Maybe you can help? I'm assuming AR, "Yes, Doctor" and so on. At step 7 we reach the point where we assume that a physical Universal Dovetailer can be created and that it runs forever, and ask what is the probability that my observer moments are generated by it, rather than by my brain. Now ISTM that the UD will have an infinite number of possible programmes to run, so even if it runs forever, how does it get on to the second step in any of them? -- 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 post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Digest for everything-list@googlegroups.com - 25 Messages in 6 Topics
Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net Sep 05 07:06PM -0400 On 9/5/2012 6:52 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote: I think he was just saying that point events do not exist. So why discuss them? Yes, what's the point? :-) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Self-driving cars
Black hole evaporation. I am thinking about some work by Hawking. Could you point me towards it? I know Hawking conceded a bet on this recently but I'm not sure why. But $any* true erasing of information is forbid in any theory where QM applies universally. Unitary evolution cannot erase information, although it can hide it and makes it very hard to recompose. Truebut I don't suppose anyone is sure that QM necessarily applies universally (altho I would bet that it did if I had to!) I think some cosmological observations confirm this. It makes QM necessary to justify the existence and stability of Black Hole. More information, please!!! :-) Happy new year Charles, Thank you, and happy new year to you, too! Best wishes, Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Self-driving cars
Hi Bruno What observable properties of black holes may be explained by the fact that they don't erase information? Is that a purely hypothetical suggestion, or is it something we may observe in the near future, or may have already observed, indirectly? Thanks! Cheers, Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/HR152WFadHgJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Are our brains in that VAT? Yep.
That's a bit simplistic. The nett result of EPR/Bell/Aspect is either- indeterminism-or-nonlocal-hidden-variable. If NLHV's can be disproved, that proves indeterminism Actually there is a third alternative, which is to take the time symmetry of physical law seriously, as suggested by Huw Price in Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point. That explains all the above (EPR/ Bell/Aspect) without any additional assumptions such as FTL signalling, causality violation, hidden variables etc. (Bell himself admitted that this was the only loophole in his argument.) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: Digest for everything-list@googlegroups.com - 6 Messages in 2 Topics
Fred Hoyle suggested the idea of quantum suicide for a civilisation in “October the 1st is too late” written around 1964 I think. That’s the first occurrence I know of it. Charles _ From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of everything-list+nore...@googlegroups.com Sent: Friday, 16 July 2010 7:02 p.m. To: Digest Recipients Subject: Digest for everything-list@googlegroups.com - 6 Messages in 2 Topics Today's Topic Summary Group: http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/topics * Civilization-level quantum suicide [4 Updates] * Does time exist? [2 Updates] Topic: Civilization-level quantum suicide http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/t/e7f6fce4d3f61dc9 Mark Buda her...@acm.org Jul 16 05:13AM -0700 ^ I came across this link some time ago and found it interesting: http://www.paul-almond.com/CivilizationLevelQuantumSuicide.htm In fact, I believe it is what introduced me to the term quantum suicide. I had been googling something I had been thinking about in the shower one day and to my surprise this guy had written a paper about it. What an amazing coincidence. My life since then has been an increasingly bizarre series of meaningful coincidences. Meaningful in a personal way that I can't explain easily. Bruno understands and can explain why I can't explain; it's to do with his G and G* logics. But the upshot of it is this: I have found out what happens when you commit quantum suicide. You discover that you believe a contradiction, and that even though nothing about the world has changed, you understand the universe. But you have a hard time explaining it. Because you discover that you are, in Bruno's terms, a Lobian machine interviewing itself for the laws of physics. But you can't get the laws of physics yourself, even though you have all the answers. Because you don't care any more - you have a different motivation. You understand that since you have all the answers but none of the questions, you need to talk to people. You figure out the right people to talk to because your intuition guides you, because that's what it's for. There are people all around the world killing themselves and each other for crazy reasons. Suicide bombers, for instance. People who read stuff about the 2012 Mayan calendar thing and kill themselves because they think the end of the world is coming. They're right and wrong, and I understand why, but I can't explain it, and Bruno understands why. But all that stuff happening around the world is happening for a reason, and it doesn't matter what you - you can't stop it. Neither can I. But you can listen to this and think about it, and do whatever you feel like doing: you will anyway. If any of you can help me contact Richard Dawkins and talk to him, I can explain all of this. I can explain all of it to anybody if they're willing to talk to me. But I have to talk face to face, because it's too hard for me, psychologically, to figure out how to put it in writing or over the phone, because a lot of human communication is non- verbal, and there's an evolutionary reason for that which is part of the whole thing. Perhaps I sound mad, but I have a testable prediction: if I don't contact Richard Dawkins, sooner or later somebody, somewhere is going to be researching the 2012 Mayan calendar thing and be led, by an amazing chain of coincidences, to me. And I can explain how that works. Bruno, when you read this, you are literally an angel of God. Figure out who you need to talk to next. I certainly don't know. Maybe it's me. Whatever works for you. Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com Jul 16 02:20PM +0200 ^ Well your posts were funny for five minutes... but you know what ? T'es lourd ! Bye. 2010/7/16 Mark Buda her...@acm.org -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be Jul 16 04:05PM +0200 ^ On 16 Jul 2010, at 14:13, Mark Buda wrote: increasingly bizarre series of meaningful coincidences. Meaningful in a personal way that I can't explain easily. Bruno understands and can explain why I can't explain; it's to do with his G and G* logics. This is on the fringe of authoritative argument. commit quantum suicide. You discover that you believe a contradiction, and that even though nothing about the world has changed, you understand the universe. That seems very weird. But you have a hard time explaining it. Because you discover that you are, in Bruno's terms, a Lobian machine interviewing itself for the laws of physics. But I am saying this to explain that we can use reason to understand where the laws of physics come from. Not to mystified people with a lack of explanation. But you can't get the laws of physics yourself, even though you have all the answers. On the contrary: you can. Everyone can. You cannot besure because you cannot know that you are correct
Re: problem of size '10
On Mar 5, 8:43 am, Jack Mallah jackmal...@yahoo.com wrote: and in any case is a thought experiment. The term seems particularly appropriate in this case! Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
--- On Wed, 3/3/10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not sure if you overlooked it but the key condition in my paper is that the inputs to the remaining brain are identical to what they would have been if the whole brain were present. Thus, the neural activity in the partial brain is by definition identical to what would have occured in the corresponding part of a whole brain. It is of course grossly implausible that this could be done in practice for a real biological brain (for one thing, you'd pretty much have to know in advance the microscopic details of everything that would have gone on in the removed part of the brain, or else guess and get incredibly lucky), but it presents no difficulties in priciple for a digital simulation, The only fundamental difficulty I can see with this is if the brain actually uses quantum computation, as suggested by some evidence that photopsynthesis does (quoted by Bruno in another thread) - in which case it might be impossible, even in principle, to reproduce the activity of the rest of the brain (I'm not sure whether it would, but it seems a lot more likely). Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: R/ASSA query
I'm sorry to hear that, Bruno. Hope you get well soon! Charles On Mar 4, 3:26 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I may be absent for a period, for reason of sciatica. Best, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 26, 10:34 am, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: But isn't the EPR experiment a way of avoiding a past constraint. The past constraint is just that the net angular momentum is zero, so there is no constraint on the polarization of either photon. When one is measured it can be thought of as sending a message back to the origin and forward to the other photon so as to produce the QM correlation. So the amplification takes place on the other particle in the forward direction. Of course you can't send a signal via a correlation. I should just add that although this avoids a past constraint, it doesn't do so in a useful way that allows us to measure the past- directed influence, and that there is no way to do so. As you say, you can deduce the existence of the retrocausal influence from the correlation, but not use it to send signals. (I believe this is also Price's point of view, by the way.) Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
) may be an additional hurdle...) Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 26, 6:38 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: One approach to the problem that I heard regarding the arrow of time relates to the fact that storing information (either by the brain or in a DNA molecule in the course of evolution) requires the expendature of energy. The expendature of energy results in an increase in entropy of the universe. Thus life evolves and we remember new things in the same direction of time. This is all true. All biological processes are driven by the entropy gradient. However this doesn't explain the AOT; it's a consequence of it. Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: [Fwd: The Brain's Dark Energy Scien amer]
On Feb 23, 9:02 am, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: But recent analysis produced by neuroimaging technologies has revealed something quite remarkable: a great deal of meaningful activity is occurring in the brain when a person is sitting back and doing nothing at all. The best way to come up with an idea or solve a problem is often to sleep on it, or to at least to take a break, maybe go for a walk and let your mind idle. I used to find that cigarette breaks were very useful in my work as a software developer before I gave up smoking (now I have to enforce breaks), and in my attempts at writing a novel I often find that the way forward - resolving a scene, say - often comes to me if I happen to wake up in the middle of the night. Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 26, 10:34 am, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: But isn't the EPR experiment a way of avoiding a past constraint. The past constraint is just that the net angular momentum is zero, so there is no constraint on the polarization of either photon. When one is measured it can be thought of as sending a message back to the origin and forward to the other photon so as to produce the QM correlation. So the amplification takes place on the other particle in the forward direction. Of course you can't send a signal via a correlation. Here's a good discussion of this and some other retrocausation ideas by William Wharton: Good point. (Mind you, that link you posted doesn't seem quite right! :-) Should it be this? http://www.fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Wharton_time_and_causality.pdf -- it looks interesting, anyway!) Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 26, 2:05 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Isn't the AOT explained in terms of probability? E.g. There are far more combinations for a system to be disordered rather than ordered, as such the universe overall will tend to fall into these more likely configurations. You are right things on earth are very different but we benefit from the sun's creation of far more combinations in the distribution of photons and neutrinos vs the number of ways hydrogen atoms might be arranged in the core. So our perspective is fairly atypical. That isn't an explanation for the AOT, it's a consequence of it. An explanation for the AOT would require showing *why* the universe is in an improbable state in the past. Once you've explained that, the fact that it then evolves into more probable states is to be expected. As you say, a universe could have a future constraint on its entropy, and everything would evolve towards less likely states - but if conscious beings existed in that universe, they would view whichever time direction had the low entropy constraint as the past...A universe, like the one envisaged by Thomas Gold, with such a constraint at both temporal extremities, would be a very weird place to live (unless it existed for a long enough time to come to thermal equilibrium in the middle). Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 26, 6:19 pm, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: That isn't an explanation for the AOT, it's a consequence of it. An explanation for the AOT would require showing *why* the universe is in an improbable state in the past. If it were in an improbable state in the future, the future would be the past. :-) Exactly! (Which is why a Gold universe would be a rather strange place to live...) Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
Schulmann has written a nice little book about this considering both a classical and quantum universe. /Time's Arrows and Quantum Measurement/. L. S. Schulman. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997 Thank you, if I have worlds enough and time (and money) I will get a copy. Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 26, 10:34 am, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: But isn't the EPR experiment a way of avoiding a past constraint. The past constraint is just that the net angular momentum is zero, so there is no constraint on the polarization of either photon. When one is measured it can be thought of as sending a message back to the origin and forward to the other photon so as to produce the QM correlation. So the amplification takes place on the other particle in the forward direction. Of course you can't send a signal via a correlation. Here's a good discussion of this and some other retrocausation ideas by William Wharton: file:///G:/Physics/QM/Reverse-causation.htm I broadly agree with what he's saying, with a couple of caveats. His insistence that his view *contrasts* with the block universe is rather puzzling, as is his idea that there is some form of becoming in nature that in some way isn't embedded in space-time (or a multiverse equivalent) - this appears to be postulating an extra time dimension in which things change outside the normal one? Also, his comments about atomic nuclei being in stationary states and therefore not experiencing time (if that's what he's saying, I may have misunderstood) seems at odds with the existence of radioactivity. Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
I hope you don't mind if I don't quote the entire exchange, which is now rather long. Unfortunately I only have a short time in which to reply, as well, so excuse the brevity! I was under the impression that Price was NOT arguing for any special kind of retrocausation, but I may have misunderstood him. The impression I received was that, in his opinion, it would be impossible to send messages back in time (e.g. by performing a particular future measurement on a photon) because there is no way to detect this influence except indirectly. (This would be a general property of quantum systems that operates in either time sense, and leads to us having limited knowledge of them.) If you measure the state of a photon, say, you introduce an extra interaction that changes the state of the system: the state of the photon between its emission and your first measurement is determined by the constraints introduced by these events, and the state between your measurement and the final measurement is determined by those two operations. This doesn't appear to involve any special cases, hidden variables etc - as far as I know, the wave equations involved are time-symmetric, hence it would seem to be necessary to explain why the state of the system would NOT be influenced by a future measurement - wouldn't it? I don't think there is an issue with T violation; we're agreed that this doesn't have any noticeable effect on the entropy gradient. The type of thing I was thinking of, which as you say is always presented in a sensational manner by NS, is more along the lines of, for example, finding a way to use a spin-foam model of space-time to obtain an arrow of time at a fundamental level. I can't remember the details, but several examples of that sort of thing has appeared in NS (and occasionally Scientific American), and seems to me to be unnecessarily complicating the issue until the standard laws of physics has been shown conclusively not to be up to the job. Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: R/ASSA query
On Jan 15, 5:15 pm, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 10:16 PM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: There is no real distinction between the different possibilities you mention, but evolution has programmed me to think that I am a single individual travelling in the forward direction through time. How did evolution do that? By what means? Using what causal powers? Evolution can't really be used as an explanation for anything can it? Evolution is just a useful fictional narrative that helps us think about what we observe. For example, if deterministic physicalism is true, then the initial configuration of matter at the universe’s first instant, plus the causal laws that govern the subsequent behavior of this matter as applied over 13.7 billion years fully determines the current state of the universe today. In this case, there is nothing for evolution to do. It is purely a description of what we observe, not an explanation of it. The state of the world is today was fixed by the initial conditions plus the causal laws of physics. Any explanation for the way you are lies there, not with evolution. There is no “competition” for survival. There is no “selection”. Instead, events involving fundamental particles unfold as they must…in the only way that they can. When we say “competition among creatures”, what we really mean is “it is as though there were competition among creatures”. Because what really exists are fundamental particles (quantum fields, strings, whatever), not “creatures”. It is only in our minds that we take collections of quarks and electrons and form them into creatures. Since they aren't fundamental laws, evolution and natural selection have no causal power. We just speak of them as if they did. Further, even allowing for some kind of quantum randomness still doesn’t give “evolution” anything to do. Though it does muddy the water a bit. Right? Or wrong? That argument must apply to any form of explanation, of course. So rather than me deciding to reply to your post, say, there are only complicated fundamental processes doing their thing. But even so, surely the higher-level descriptions have some explanatory power? The fact that everything boils down to physics is generally assumed, by me at least, but I also realise that it isn't always useful to look at things like that. If you wish to explain something, you often need useful higher-level approximations. Natural selection is one such, which appears to have some explanatory power However, I agree that the statement evolution has programmed us to think of ourselves as a single individual, etc is rather contentious as an explanation of why we think this way. It seems to imply that there are many other ways we *could* think of ourselves, and that evolution has been at work on our genes to choose those of us who think of ourselves this way because it confers some survival / reproductive advantage. However, it's possible that there are no other choices: we move forward in time, for example, because the entropy gradient won't allow any other form of creatures to exist, we think of ourselves as individuals because, fictional ant colonies aside, that's the only realistic (or simple) way to build conscious creatures (actually, it's quite possible we aren't individuals - we seem to contain at least two individuals who share a lot of their resources, as split-brain operations show). Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 23, 8:42 pm, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: I think it's an example of the radiation arrow of time making a time-reversed process impossible - or maybe just vanishingly improbable. Bruce Kellet has written a paper about these problems, see pp 35. http://members.optusnet.com.au/bhkellett/radasymmetry.pdf I am reading this, and have just come across this passage: One possibility that is sometimes raised is that the overall expansion of the universe provides the local arrow for the direction of time. While cosmology, particularly the cosmological initial conditions, might be relevant to any final understanding of the arrow of time, particularly the thermodynamic arrow, it is difficult to see the expansion of the universe as being sufficient to explain the local asymmetry of every single independent radiation event. The basic reason is that the expansion of the universe is a cosmological phenomenon; the usual understanding of the Friedmann-Roberston-Walker solution to Einstein’s equations of General Relativity that governs the overall evolution of the universe is that, although the fabric of spacetime expands on the large scale, individual galaxies do not expand, they merely move apart. The expansion actually takes place only on the scale at which the universe can be seen as homogeneous and isotropic. This is the scale of galaxies and galactic clusters—only there is the ‘Friedmann dust’ model applicable. The model that describes the expansion of the universe simply does not apply within galaxies, much less within the solar system or on the surface of the earth. So the universal expansion is simply unable to provide an effective arrow of time that is locally available for every independent radiation event. This seems to me to miss a fundamental point, namely that emission and absorption events are only local if you ignore what happens to the photon beforehand or afterwards. If you trace the trajectory of the photon, you will arrive at some other event, and this event in turn is linked to a previous / future one. Ultimately all chains of trajectories of photons, electrons, quarks and so on connect to either the Big Bang or the distant future (timelike infinity, say). If the trajectories (or, presumably, waves) are constrained by whatever is at either end of their trajectory, as time-symmetry implies, then this stops them being local. They are part of a universe-filling web, which is anchored to whatever boundary conditions obtain on the universe as a whole. Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 23, 7:13 pm, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote: Such a theory would also have to explain why we are not able to use things like the delayed choice quantum eraser to actually send information backwards in time--for example, we can't look at the screen behind a double-slit and determine whether the which-path information for the particles that hit the screen will in the future be erased or preserved (see the last two paragraphs of the section 'The experiment' athttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_choice_quantum_eraser#The_experi...for a summary of why this doesn't work). Further to my earlier comment about this, I would like to add that this experiment appears to illustrate the time-symmetry principle. That is to say, whatever is ultimately done in a quantum system will effect its past behaviour, so long as the intervening quantum states have been preserved. Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 23, 8:42 pm, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: No, it's an anti-neutrino and an electron colliding with a proton to produce a neutron (the inverse of beta decay). But an electron approaching a proton interacts via the EM field and a photon will be emitted - yet, in the beta decay no photon need be absorbed. I think it's an example of the radiation arrow of time making a time-reversed process impossible - or maybe just vanishingly improbable. I haven't yet had a chance to read the paper, so excuse me if this is missing the point, but it seems to me that this is just a product of the thermodyamic arrow of time. If the laws of physics mandate that the time-reversed process is impossible (as appears to happen in a few cases) then the Price principle doesn't apply. But if the process is allowed by the LOP but highly unlikely, that's most likely down (ultimately) to the low-entropy conditions near the Big Bang. Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
I'm afraid I don't have time to give a detailed answer to everything you've said, but thank you for the response. I will respond to a couple of points (see below). On Feb 24, 5:06 pm, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote : When you mention hidden variables, I assume you mean that particles are in a definite state at a given time, rather than undecided until measured ? If so, then I believe that is (supposedly) an outcome of Price's approach, assuming I've understood him correctly. I don't think there is a problem explaining why you can't send information back in time. Surely to obtain a useful back-in-time signal from the system would require some form of amplification that would also have to operate backwards in time? But Price is only suggesting that time- symmetry is significant within a given quantum interaction; it can't be ampified. What exactly do you mean by amplification? When we send information from the past to the future, do you think this involves some notion of amplification, and if so what does it mean in this case? I'm also not clear what you mean by Price is only suggesting that time-symmetry is significant within a given quantum interaction--what does significant mean here, given that the laws of physics governing *all* processes, even large collections of interacting particles, are completely time-symmetric? Is the time-symmetry somehow insignificant for these more complex processes involving many particles, and if so why? The point about amplification is that all normal detection events require amplification, such as photographic film, photomultipliers and so on. We never detect a quantum event directly, but rather the result of that event having caused some sort of cascade process. My point was that it would be impossible to arrange for this to occur in the time- reversed case. However, the comment about amplification was in response to a previous question, and was probably in any case a side issue. The original question was why we can't use this approach to send messages into the past (IIRC), and the fact that detections involve amplification and that equivalent processes can't be arranged in a past-directed time sense is, although true, not the fundamental reason, which is concerned with what it would *mean* to detect a message being sent into the past. (We would have to somehow read the state of a photon that is about to be emitted, for example.) Price's idea (if I undersand him correctly) is that the behaviour of a particle is constrained by both path and future boundary conditions, hence my use of significant. In a broader sense, all quantum interactions are (according to Price - if I understand him correctly - please take that as read in future comments!) equally constrained by the past and future, but we live in a universe in which (for some reason) there is an entropy gradient. Time symmetry is pervasive within the network of interactions between the particles making up the world, but isn't obviously manifested on any other scale, where the entropy gradient dominates (except as puzzling results in quantum measurements). If you view the universe as a large Feynman diagram, then each branch of it should be equally constrained by the event at its past and future end points. However, superimposed on top of this is an entropy gradient that puts the pastward end of all the trajectories into a very special configuration that we describe as low entropy. Hence the time-symmetry is quite hard to see from out perspective, as creatures made up of processes that are all oriented along the entropy gradient. Isn't his explanation for the arrow of time the same as most other physicists, namely the idea that it should be explained in terms of the low entropy of the Big Bang? Yes, but he is interpreting this in a slightly different way to how it is normally perceived. Many attempts to explain the arrow of time (at least many attempts reported in New Scinetist, which seems to go in for them regularly) involve in some sense local conditions, in particular something inherent in the laws of physics. Price is suggesting that there are no such local conditions, and that the initial low entropy is sufficient to explain everything about the arrow of time. This moves the explanatory burden, of course. Sorry, that seems rather obvious - did I miss the point of the question? Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 22, 8:12 pm, rmiller rmil...@legis.com wrote: From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jason Resch Sent: Sunday, February 21, 2010 11:38 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds Certainly there's a substructure that involves time. Cramer's Transactional theory includes particles that travel from the future to the past, and there are a few things about quantum mechanics-the Delayed Choice Experiment comes to mind-that suggests the future may influence the past-or some version of it. German physicist Helmut Schmidt once decided to (effectively) expand Bohr's Copenhagen theorem to real-life experiments. As a result, he was able to show with scientific probability (p 0.05) that a group of students can change the past. It's commonly known as the retrocausality experiments and he took a lot of heat for them. In 1995 I asked him what he thought the results meant: Did causality run in reverse, or was it a matter of a group of 25 students choosing the universe they wanted to be in? His answer: probably the latter. But if you're a fan of Richard Feinman, you may conclude that this is evidence that causality does indeed run in reverse---you can affect the past (or a version of it.) Once Cramer gets his laser experiment to work, we'll be that much closer to knowing the answer. Huw Price suggests that our view of causality is strongly influenced by the way we're embedded / oriented in space-time. He points out in Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point that the laws of physics are almost entirely time-symmetric, with the result that (for example) you can't tell which way up a Feynman diagram is - either time-orientation is equally valid. If we accept what the laws of physics appear to say, that nature is for the most part indifferent to the direction of time, this implies that quite a few things are a lot less strange than we think. Delayed-choice and ERP experiments become trivial to explain, for example, once we stop thinking of the particles involved as similar to macroscopic objects with a clear arrow of time, and assume their state is equally constrained by past and future boundary conditions (e.g. the emitter and detector). This view is similar to Cramer's Transactional Interpretation and Wheeler-Feynman Absorber Theory, but makes them both look unnecessarily complicated, since it doesn't require any new physics, it merely suggests we take the existing physics at face value (as Hugh Everett III once did, with similarly interesting results). Price's view allows us to focus on the real mystery of time, which is not why it appears to flow in one direction, but why the region of space-time near the Big Bang was in a state of very low entropy. I have a suspicion that the answer is something to do with the shape of space-time (but I haven't yet been able to get my head around how this connects with breaking eggs and melting ice...) Admittedly that only pushes the why back a step but that is still progress: rather than attempting to explain a non-existent preference for one time direction that we thought was embedded somehow in the laws of physics, we now need to explain why the universe has a particular boundary condition. (Possibly Tegmark's MUH comes in here?) Helmut Schmidt's experiments appear to (purportedly) involve psychokinesis; I have a feeling that I've read various attempts to debunk these claims in the Skeptical Enquirer but unfortunately my subscription lapsed some years ago, and I can't recall the details. It does sound like an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence to back it up. The website I looked at was a mass of statistics that I didn't really follow, unfortunately. As for the role of consciousness in all of this, I believe some answers have already been found-back in 1978 when Stanford Clinical Psychologist Ernest R. Hilgard discovered the Hidden Observer phenomenon. Seems there's an executive function in each of us that comes to the fore only under extremely deep (60+) hypnosis. His book on the subject, Divided Consciousness is fascinating reading. Someone familiar with Many Worlds theory will come away with the impression that there evolved as a mechanism to keep track of the local many-world space we inhabit. This is a facinating idea, although Hidden Observer theory is still contraversial (since the experiments involved deep hypnosis, presumably the results may have been the result of suggestion by the experimenters?). Apparently the Stoic philosopher Epictetus believed that the hidden observer (or Daemon) had foreknowledge of the person's fate, an idea which if true would fit in well with retrocausality (but tend to discredit the MWI, since the latter states that the person has many fates!) Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
the fact. In some cases, certainly (as mentioned, in ERP it probably means we aren't taking full account of the time-symmetry of the laws of physics). It does sound like an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence to back it up. The website I looked at was a mass of statistics that I didn't really follow, unfortunately. My own rules of thumb: 1. Follow Fischer: if it's p0.05 (chance of random is 1 in 20) then it's good. And. 2. Avoid meta-analysis. As for the role of consciousness in all of this, I believe some answers have already been found-back in 1978 when Stanford Clinical Psychologist Ernest R. Hilgard discovered the Hidden Observer phenomenon. Seems there's an executive function in each of us that comes to the fore only under extremely deep (60+) hypnosis. His book on the subject, Divided Consciousness is fascinating reading. Someone familiar with Many Worlds theory will come away with the impression that there evolved as a mechanism to keep track of the local many-world space we inhabit. This is a facinating idea, although Hidden Observer theory is still contraversial (since the experiments involved deep hypnosis, presumably the results may have been the result of suggestion by the experimenters?). There's always that possibility, but much of this apparently has been double-blinded. Ah, good. If you can find a Finnish translator, I suggest you look into the work by the (rather obscure) psychologist Reima Kamppman. He pursued the Hidden Observer with a vengeance, and came up with some weird and impressive results. Unfortunately, it's in only in Finnish. Apparently the Stoic philosopher Epictetus believed that the hidden observer (or Daemon) had foreknowledge of the person's fate, an idea which if true would fit in well with retrocausality (but tend to discredit the MWI, since the latter states that the person has many fates!) Good point, but among the many fates there is always the optimal path. Perhaps evolution resulted in a mechanism able to visualize all of the possible (MW) paths and choose the most advantageous one? There's certainly enough evidence to suggest that in moments of crisis, some of us are afforded advice from an elevated perspective. Maybe what some describe as guardian angels are merely our hidden observers, directing us in a path through the multiworlds? Unfortunately, given the walls between physics, philosophy and psychology--it's unlikely that we're going to see any unifying theories any time soon. This is something I'd really like to believe! (I'm trying to write a story which is based on this sort of premise, as it happens :-) A colleague of mine in a previous job believed he'd had experiences that illustrated this principle, and he certainly sounded convincing, although only anecdotal of course. I certainly think we still have a lot to learn about the mind and consciousness (always assuming it's possible to do so). Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 23, 7:13 pm, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote: Having read the book a while ago, my memory is that Price offered this idea as a conceptual argument for how one *might* explain things using the EPR experiment, but I don't think he ever would have said that this idea makes delayed-choice and EPR trivial to explain--to really explain them, you'd have to provide a quantitative theory showing the precise connection between these ideas about causality and the results of those experiments, and Price didn't have one. it's true that Price is not a physicist, so he has to rely on others to provide a theoretical underpinning, or not as the case may be. if understand him correctly, and I'm quite willing to admit that I may have failed to do so, his suggestion is that the physical theory already exists, and is the standard formulation of quantum mechanics. My use of trivial was only intended to indicate that using his approach allows these phenomena to be explained using standard quantum theory, while most other explanations require some sort of extra input - faster than light signalling, and so on. (I believe the MWI doesn't require any extras to explain EPR?) When you mention hidden variables, I assume you mean that particles are in a definite state at a given time, rather than undecided until measured ? If so, then I believe that is (supposedly) an outcome of Price's approach, assuming I've understood him correctly. I don't think there is a problem explaining why you can't send information back in time. Surely to obtain a useful back-in-time signal from the system would require some form of amplification that would also have to operate backwards in time? But Price is only suggesting that time- symmetry is significant within a given quantum interaction; it can't be ampified. Another thing to keep in mind is that Newtonian laws dealing with things like gravity and elastic collisions are time-symmetric too, as are Maxwell's laws of classical electromagnetism, but you don't see anything analogous to the EPR experiment or the delayed choice experiment in classical physics (including relativity without quantum theory). So merely pointing to the time-symmetry of QM doesn't in itself explain much about these phenomena. I wouldn't say that Price is merely pointing to the time-symmetry. He is suggesting that, given the time symmetry that most physicists agree exists, then there are certain outcomes we should expect in systems where the information content is very limited, i.e. to quantum states, and that these seem to match those we observe (e.g. Bell's inequality, etc). Having read any number of very complex attempts to explain why there is an arrow of time given the apparent indifference of most physical laws, this seems to me to be a line of enquiry that is at least worth pursuing. Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 23, 7:57 pm, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Retro causation solves the EPR problem (i.e. provides a local explanation of the correlations without hidden variables). See Vic Stenger's book Timeless Quantum in which he uses this kind of explanation to good effect. The problem is that some things, like the radiation arrow of time and inverse beta decay seem hard to fit in. Price has done extensive work on the radiation arrow, but I haven't read it for a while and can't recall offhand what conclusions he reaches. Is inverse beta decay an example of T-symmetry breaking, like neutral kaon decay (IIRC) ? If so, it won't fit into his scheme! Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: ODP: Free will/consciousness/ineffability
It seems unlikely that it could be otherwise. Presumably the impulse to make a decision has to originate from a lower level, assuming that consciousness is supported by layers of unconscious processing? However the decisions in question were to do with when to perform a simple action - pressing a key, or something similar. What about conscious decisions that are arrived at by evaluating evidence, weighing possibilities, etc? Presumably they are also supported by unconscious layers which know how to evaluate evidence etc... Surely the feeling of free will comes from us not being aware of these underlying processes. Charles -Original Message- From: Brent Meeker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, 24 October 2001 9:34 a.m. To: rwas Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: ODP: Free will/consciousness/ineffability Whatever free will is, it is very doubtful that it depends on consciousness. See Daniel Dennett's dicussion of the Grey Walter carousel experiment. This experiment shows (although there is a little ambiguity left) that free will decisions occure *before* on is conscious of them. Brent Meeker The freedom of the will consists in the fact that future actions cannot be known now. --- Ludwig Wittgenstein
RE: ODP: Free will/consciousness/ineffabili
-Original Message- From: Brent Meeker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, 24 October 2001 12:06 p.m. To: Charles Goodwin Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: ODP: Free will/consciousness/ineffabili My intuition doesn't tell me whether or not I would have a 'feeling' of free will if I were aware of my subconscious decision processes; but it's pretty clear that I could be completely un-conscious and still behave with 'free will'; whatever it is. My suggestion is that it's lack of knowledge of these subconscious processes which gives you a feeling of free will. If you don't know what a feeling of free will means (hence the quotes?) I'd suggest it's the feeling that you reached a decision uninfluenced by anything external to yourself. However if you could follow all the subconscious processes (you couldn't of course, by definition your consciousness isn't aware of them) then you'd see that what felt like an 'uninfluenced' decision was actually the result of past numerous influences, which had caused your brain to have a particular configuration. Yes, presumably you *could* be unconscious and have free will, in the sense that your actions couldn't be predicted accurately by some other agent. (Try to swat a fly and you will see what I mean!) What if your subconscious decision processes became known to you *after* you had made your decision and 'felt' that free will. Would you feel something different then? I don't see what you mean. You'd probably feel different from how you felt when you made your decision whether you became aware of the subconscious processes or not. If you DID become aware of the s.p.s it could only be as the result of years of laboriously tracing through neural connections inside some map that someone made of your brain while you were making the decision. (And presumably more years of tracing through previous maps of your brain which showed how various events in the past caused it to be configured the way it was at the time, if you want a FULL understanding.) I'm not sure that you could ever become aware of all this in any realistic sense of the word. Perhaps a super-intelligent alien could apprehend the processes in your brain at a glance and see what was going on, and THEY would feel that your decision was an inevitable consequence of how your brain was configured, but YOU couldn't. Charles
RE: Immortality
-Original Message- From: Brent Meeker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, 10 October 2001 2:23 a.m. But then why do you say that a duplicate of your brain processes in a computer would not be conscious. You seem to be discriminating between a biological duplicate and a silicon duplicate. The use of the word 'duplicate' seems contentious to me. The question is whether you *can* duplicate the processes in the brain at a suitable level of abstraction, and whether (if you can) such a duplicate would be conscious. I don't think anyone knows the answer to this (yet) ! Charles
RE: Immortality
-Original Message- From: Brent Meeker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, 10 October 2001 4:06 a.m. It was a hypothetical that Bruno used. It's pretty certain nobody knows how to do it now and it might never be practical. But if the processes, including the sensory ones, were duplicated I have no reason to think that it would not be conscious. The contrary conclusion would seem to imply vitalism and magic. The question is more whether there *is* a level of abstraction that can be skimmed off the biological substrate. Although I suppose it would be possible (in theory) to simulate the behaviour of all the cells in the brain to arbitrary accuracy - if necessary at the level of molecules, or atoms (I can't see you having to go any lower than that). And leaving aside any problems with speed and memory, at *that* point it seems unlikely that you'd be able to argue the thing wasn't conscious. Charles
RE: Who is the enemy?
-Original Message- From: George Levy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, 21 September 2001 8:18 a.m. To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Who is the enemy? I just say this because I consider real atheist as very religious people, and, what is worth is that most of the time they want us to believe they have no religion. Only the agnostic can be said not having still made its religion (yet). The problem arises because the modalities []-x and -[]x are confused in most natural language. Richard Dawkins strikes me as a militant or indeed a religious atheist, for example. Charles
RE: FW: Conditional probability continuity of consciousness
I agree that the Fred Hoyle style spotlight isn't needed, leads to an unnecessary external time and infinite regress, etc. Charles -Original Message- From: Marchal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, 16 September 2001 4:46 a.m. To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: FW: Conditional probability continuity of consciousness Charles Goodwin wrote: From: Marchal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] I mean the feeling of being spotted could perhaps be explained, and certainly is in need for an explanation. You lost me with that last sentence, and just when I thought I was doing so well. (I assume it has nothing to do with chicken pox...) Jesse Mazer was proposing a collection of all observer-moment, but was adding a sort of external spotlight going through that set for justifying actuality. I was saying that that feeling of actuality is build in in the observer-moment. No need of that spot, which would have need an external absolute time (if I don't simplify to much Jesse Mazer post). Bruno
RE: Immortality
-Original Message- From: rwas [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, 15 September 2001 3:08 p.m. Sequential, temporal, in-the-box thinking is not how to transcend the physical in my view. I think some of the people here would argue that you *can't* transcend the physical (or possibly the computational). I appreciate that that sounds very in-the-box, but if you look at the sort of thing physicists (who *tend* to be materialists - not always) have come up with in last 20-30 years, I'd say there has definitely been *some* jumping out of the box... including quite a lot by David Deutsch. In addition, if there is anything my own personal journey has taught me is that to breach boundaries in understanding, must discard preconceived notions. It would seem that if one were interested in truth, one adopt a realm of purely abstract thinking to find answers to such an esoteric question as consciousness. But what I feel is happening here is an attempt to force understanding to fit an almost certainly flawed initial assumption about existence. I agree. Every breakthrough in human thought has been at the expense of preconceived notions. Are you saying we *should* adopt a realm of purely abstract thinking to find answers to such an esoteric question as consciousness ? (If so I think a lot of the people here would agree - the approach using computationalism is VERY abstract). However - what I'm most interested to know is, what is the almost certainly flawed initial assumption about existence ? Charles
RE: In one page or less
-Original Message- From: Hal Ruhl [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] I think I get it. If nothing exists, that is a state which contains some information (i.e. nothing exists). To reduce the total information content of the system to zero, the state of nothing existing must be balanced by states in which something exist. Is that right (roughly) ? Yes that is my current offering to the effort. I see the Everything since it contains all information as both manifest and not manifest simultaneously. It would be in a sort of fuzzy logic state like 1/2 rather than either 0 or 1. If nothing exists, including any external time, then the Everything (also known as the Plenitude, perhaps) contains all available states as a fixed N-dimensional structure (N might well be uncountable infinity). If there *is* an external time, on the other hand, one can imagine some sort of alternation between Nothing and Something. (Otherwise the only sort of alternation possible is a sort of logical one, perhaps?) Charles
RE: In one page or less
-Original Message- From: Hal Ruhl [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 2) The Nothing contains at least some information: Whenever it is manifest any question asking if it is manifest must receive the response yes. I don't understand this bit at all, sorry! The idea here is that while manifest the Nothing must consider itself to be true. This is information in the form of the ability to resolve a meaningful question. I think I get it. If nothing exists, that is a state which contains some information (i.e. nothing exists). To reduce the total information content of the system to zero, the state of nothing existing must be balanced by states in which something exist. Is that right (roughly) ? (SNIP) This sounds very interesting. I wish I could understand it better! If you have time could you post something which is more understandable to the layman? I will try as soon as I see what all the initial comments are. OK, I look forward to reading more... Charles
RE: In one page or less
-Original Message- From: Hal Ruhl [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, 13 September 2001 4:35 p.m. To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: In one page or less Dear Charles: In response to another of your comments and to clarify: If nothing exists, including any external time, then the Everything (also known as the Plenitude, perhaps) contains all available states as a fixed N-dimensional structure (N might well be uncountable infinity). I think it is important to identify a fixed system as a selection which is itself information. The alternation between a Nothing and a new randomly selected Something out of the ensemble of Somethings is not a fixed system. The succession of Somethings is a little like generating a random number [the Everything] by adding a new random string of bits of random length to an existing random string of bits. The final result is for sure all and no information simultaneously, but the particular string that will be produced remains fuzzy. Unfortunately our language frequently defaults to words that hint of the concept of time since we have not yet created an adequate vocabulary for describing a timeless construct. Yes, words like alternation and succession definitely imply that time is involved. But you are saying that this is a timeless construct (like Platonia of the multiverse) ? Charles
RE: Conventional QTI = False
-Original Message- From: Russell Standish [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] I wasn't referring to that snippet, but another one discussing the evolution of superclusters of galaxies. The theory predicts that the universe will ultimately come to be dominated by said clusters. The snippet I mentioned seems to be referring to our measured velocity of ca 600km/s in the direction of the Virgo supercluster, although that wasn't explicitly mentioned in the article. Yes, I know the one you mean (the snippet and the supercluster). An article on the future evolution of the universe. That suffers from the same objection to the prediction that we'll fall into our galaxy's black hole, namely that the dynamics of the situation might be such that our galaxy is 'evaporated off' from the supercluster's potential well rather than 'relaxed into' it. (However I realise you were just making a casual remark in passing so maybe all this analysis is getting a bit over the top) Re our own supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way - I assume we're in a stable orbit about that one, with the usual caveat that its impossible to prove stability of any arbitrary n-body orbit of course. The sun does seem to be in a very stable orbit about the galaxy - almost circular, in fact. See Rare Earth for an explanation of why this is one of the many factors that had to come out just right for us to exist at all... Charles
RE: In one page or less
-Original Message- From: Hal Ruhl [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] This is a simple and short effort to present my current ideas. To aid communication it is not intended to follow an established means of mathematical expression. I am completely out of time so I hope it reads ok. Please let me know if I've misunderstood... 1) The single postulate is The total system contains no information. That's a good starting point. It implies a sort of information symmetry in which every bits of information is cancelled out somewhere else. 2) The Nothing contains at least some information: Whenever it is manifest any question asking if it is manifest must receive the response yes. I don't understand this bit at all, sorry! 3) #2 violates the postulate so the system must contain more component(s), i.e. a Something or succession of Somethings or an ensemble of all possible Somethings that balance or neutralize this information. 4) The Nothing since it contains information can not be stable with respect to the manifestation of the other component(s) or the system again violates the postulate because no neutralization is possible. Why is no neutralisation possible for a stable Nothing ? Can't it be balanced by another stable Something (or Nothing, perhaps) ? 5) Any individual Something or a simultaneously manifest ensemble of all possible Somethings must also comply with #2 so are violations of the postulate and unstable with respect to the Nothing. 6) The instabilities result in an alternation between the Nothing and the other component(s). 7) The incorporation into the system of a FIXED other component which is either an individual Something or the complete ensemble of Somethings is a selection representing additional information which can not be balanced out by corresponding antipodal information present in the Nothing. 8) The way to make the total system comply with the postulate: a) The Nothing alternates with a succession of Somethings randomly selected [no rules of selection control] from the ensemble. b) The selection of the next Something out of the ensemble must be random or the selection process is additional information in violation of the postulate. c) The ensemble contains an infinite number of individual Somethings so there can be no endless loops of repeats which would represent additional information and are forbidden by the postulate. --- Evolving universes are successive isomorphisms to some portion of each successive Something. Each manifestation of the Nothing corresponds to the emptiness or gap between successive discrete isomorphisms of universe evolution. Enduring evolving universes with fully deterministic rules of isomorphism succession find no home in this model because the gap for such universes would quickly become open ended. This violates the Nothing Something alternation. The total system or Grand Ensemble is the Everything. It contains no information and it can not contain enduring fully deterministic universes. This sounds very interesting. I wish I could understand it better! If you have time could you post something which is more understandable to the layman? Charles
RE: Conventional QTI = False
Re wrapping around - I've set MS Outlook to wrap at 132 characters (the largest value it will accept). It insists that I wrap somewhere (unfortunately). If you know any way to improve the situation let me know (I often go through and manually stick together the short lines). I could miss out the 's on quoted bits, but that might be confusing Re the SWE versus logical consistency. I suspect that at some deep level the two might become the same thing. If you are thinking of logical consistency from the pov of a conscious observer, I'm not sure what that entails. Is it logically consistent to find that you're really a 30-D octopus playing a 3D virtual reality game? I suppose it might be... But then I'm not sure what LC consists of on this argument. It can't consist of continuity or a lack of surprises! Using the SWE is definitely basing the argument on the known laws of QM, if not GR. The underlying assumption of the MWI is that the SWE describes *everything* (or that it's a very good approximation to the real explanation). Since QTI is based on the MWI, it has to assume the SWE as its basis, I would say. Logical consistency is probably a lower level requirement that in some manner generates the SWE (according to comp. theory at least). But if we're operating on the level of QM and not worrying about what goes on underneath then I'd say the SWE has got to be the basis of QTI. However I must admit I don't see how using the SWE limits the size of the multiverse. The SWE predicts a continuum of resultant states from a given initial states, which leads me to assume that (if the MWI is correct) the multiverse must contain a continuum / uncountable infinity of states. If that's a limit it's a fairly large one by most standards! Re logically possible vs physically possible universes. The set (or whatever one shoud call it) of all logically possible universes is called Platonia by Julian Barbour. The set of all physically possible universes with the same laws of physics as ours (plus some extra information, as David Deutsch has pointed out) is called the Multiverse. Platonia is either as big as the MV (both being continua) or bigger (a higher order of infinity than the Multiverse). All the above assumes the MWI is correct (evidence: quantum interference), and that Platonia exists (evidence (?) : the weak anthropic principle). Charles -Original Message- From: George Levy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, 12 September 2001 10:48 a.m. To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Conventional QTI = False Charles Goodwin wrote: George Levy wrote I don't know if there is an accepted formulation for QTI and the conservation of memory, however, the only constraint that seems logical to me is that the consciousness extensions should be logically consistent, because logical consistenty is a prerequisite for consciousness. I think the only constraint is that the extensions should be physically possible, i.e. possible outcomes of the schrodinger wave equation. If those are also logical outcomes then fine, but the SWE is the constraining factor. Interesting. You claim that the only constraint is the SWE. You opinion is based I presume on our current knowledge of physical laws. This puts a definite limit on the size of the multiverse. I claim the only constraint is logical consistency basing myself on the anthropic principle. This also puts a limit on the size of the multiverse. Bruno Marshall claims he can bridge the two by deriving the SWE (or maybe a simplified form) from logical consistency which implies that the currently conceivable physical multiverse is equal in size with the logical multiverse. BTW, your posts are the only ones that do not automatically wrap around at the end of a line, unless you start a new paragraph. Is there any way you or I (us?) could fix this? George
FW: FIN too
-Original Message- From: Jacques Mallah [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] The problem is that the probability isn't 0% that you'd find yourself at your current age (according to the QTI - assume I put that after every sentence!). Because you HAVE to pass through your current age to reach QTI-type ages, the probability of finding yourself at your current age at some point is 100%. At some point, yes. At a typical point? 0%. My (ahem) point is, though, that none of us ARE at a typical point (again, assuming QTI). In fact we're in a very atypical point, just as the era of stars might be a very atypical point in the history of the universe - but it's a point we (or the universe) HAVE TO PASS THROUGH to reach more typical points (e.g. very old, no stars left...). Hence it's consistent with QTI that we find ourselves passing through this point... I'm not arguing for QTI here, but I do think that you can't argue from finding yourself at a particular point on your world-line to that world-line having finite length, because you are guaranteed to find yourself at that particular point at some (ah) point. So I'm rejecting, not Bayesian logic per se, but the application of it to what (according to QTI) would be a very special (but still allowable) case. The basic problem is that we experience observer moments as a sequence. Hence we *must* experience the earlier moments before the later ones, and if we happen to come across QTI before we reach QTI-like observer moments then we might reject it for lack of (subjective) evidence. But that doesn't contradict QTI, which predicts that we have to pass through these earlier moments, and that we will observe everyone else doing so as well. I wish I could put that more clearly, or think of a decent analogy, but do you see what I mean? Our observations aren't actually *incompatible* with QTI, even if they do only cover an infinitsimal chunk of our total observer moments. Charles
RE: Conventional QTI = False
-Original Message- From: Jacques Mallah [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] I suspect you are trying to find ways of making QTI compatible with Jacques ASSA based argument, when it is clear his argument fails completely. Not that the argument is unimportant, as the reasons for the failure are also interesting. What the hell are you babbling about? I don't know whether he's thinking about my objections to the SSA argument, but mine certainly *appear* to undermine it (at least I haven't yet heard a good reason why they don't). Briefly, (1) the SSA argument neglects the fact that even with an infinitely long worldline, everyone must pass through every age from 0 upwards, which is precisely what we observe. It also (2) ignores a selection effect, namely that only in a thermodynamically low number of universes can a person who is not QTI-old expect to communicate with someone who *is* (and hence 99....% of discussion groups will necessarily be composed of QTI-young people). The SSA argument also (3) gives the strong impression (though this could *perhaps* be argued away) that it relies on us treating our worldlines as though we've just been dropped into them at some random point, like Billy Pilgrim; which is, of course, not what happens in reality. Maybe there are some more technical objections to the SSA argument, but these are the simplest and most obvious. Charles
FW: FIN insanity
-Original Message- From: Jacques Mallah [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 2) You would also be the same person if the surgeon made a new brain identically to yours. I'm not sure what you mean here. The new brain would be the same as the old you, the old one would remain the same, the old one was destroyed, or what? As far as I understand quantum physics, this is only true if the new brain is in the same quantum state as the old one - like atoms in a bose-einstein condensate, they would then be literally, physically indistinguishable. However (also as far as I understand quantum physics) it's actually impossible to create two macroscopic objects in the same quantum state, at least, it's impossible to measure the state of one object accurately enough to create one which is idnetical in this sense (which is the only sense the universe recognises). This does not, however, prevent the universe itself from creating two objects in the same quantum state, if it's allowed to generate every conceivable arrangement of mass-energy - as may be the case in a single, infinite universe, and is definitely the case according to the MWI. Charles
FW: FIN Again (was: Re: James Higgo)
-Original Message- From: Jacques Mallah [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] I've explained that in other posts, but as you see, the idea is indeed mathematically incoherent - unless you just mean the conditional effective probability which a measure distribution defines by definition. And _that_ one, of course, leads to a finite expectation value for ones's observed age (that is, no immortality). Although I have other objections to the quantum theory of immortality, I still don't see how the sampling argument refutes it. Because (as I've said elsewhere) you don't know what a typical observer is. If the QTI is correct then a typical observer moment may *well* be someone who is 10^32 years old wondering why all the other protons have decayed except the ones in his body. But you have no way to find that out *except* by reaching that age yourself, because it's very very very very (keep typing very for another couple of weeks) unlikely that you will meet up with a typical observer who isn't yourself. Charles
RE: FIN Again (was: Re: James Higgo)
-Original Message- From: Jacques Mallah [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] I've explained that in other posts, but as you see, the idea is indeed mathematically incoherent - unless you just mean the conditional effective probability which a measure distribution defines by definition. And _that_ one, of course, leads to a finite expectation value for ones's observed age (that is, no immortality). I've just realised that according to the Bayesian argument, the chances of someone with an infinite world-line being ANY specific age are infinitesimal. (It also makes the chances of me being the age I am pretty infinitesimal too, come to think of it). That would seem to indicate that the Bayesian argument *assumes* that infinite world-lines (and possibly infinite anythings) are impossible. Sorry I took so long to spot that objection to the SSA argument, which I will call (4). Charles
RE: Conventional QTI = False
-Original Message- From: Russell Standish [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Except that it is possible to perform an infinite amount of computation in the big crunch due to Tipler's argument, and only a finite amount of computation with the open universe (Dyson's argument). Sort of the opposite of what you might expect... I trust Dyson's argument more than Tipler's - the latter relies on a raft of unproven assumptions about what might be possible during the collapse. I was assuming a conventional big crunch in my argument. Anyway, it looks like we're falling into a supermassive black hole right now, but we've got about 100 billion (10^11) years before we hit the event horizon. (Reported in New Scientist a couple of issue ago). Enough time to move elsewhere I guess. Charles
RE: Conventional QTI = False
Another thought on the Bayesian / SSA argument. Suppose (recent cosmological discoveries aside) that we discovered that the universe was going to fall back on itself into a big crunch in, say, 1 googol years' time. In such a universe QTI could still operate, but would only operate until the big crunch, which would act as a cul-de-sac. Now the SSA would say that typically you'd expect to find yourself (whatever that means) with an age around 0.5 googol, but that nevertheless there was a finite chance that you'd find yourself at age, say, 20. So assuming the SSA is valid for a moment, it wouldn't rule out QTI (although it would make it seem rather unlikely) if we discussed it when aged 20 in a closed universe. But it would be *impossible* if had the same discussion in an open universe! Odd that the average density of our branch of the multiverse should make all the difference to a theory based on the MWI . . . odd too (though not impossible) that the distant future history of the universe should determine the probability of events in the present . . . (BTW, would I be right in thinking that, applying the SSA to a person who finds himself to be 1 year old, the chances that he'll live to be 80 is 1/80?) Charles -Original Message- From: Russell Standish [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, 12 September 2001 12:35 p.m. To: Charles Goodwin Cc: Everything-List (E-mail) Subject: Re: Conventional QTI = False The reason for failure of Jacques' argument is no. 1) from Charles's list below, which he obviously thought of independently of me. I originally posted this at http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m583.html, on 10th May 1999. Unfortunately, I couldn't find where the orginal SSA argument was posted - perhaps this was via some other papers. The discussion that followed over the following year was quite interesting at times, and boringly technical at other times. It clarified a number of technical concepts, in particular what became known as the ASSA - which seems exactly like point 3) of Charles's post below: random hoppings of some soul between observer moments. Despite your protestations to the contrary Jacques, which I never found convincing. By contrast, soul hopping does not happen in the usual formulation of QTI, although I grant it is a feature of some computational theories of immortality based on infinite sized universes. I find it very droll that Jacques attempted to tar his opposition's theories with the very same brush that tars his own ASSA theory. The point of this is not to say that QTI is true (for which I retain my usual degree of scepticism), but simply that the Jacques Mallah SSA argument simply does not work as a counter argument. Cheers Charles Goodwin wrote: -Original Message- From: Jacques Mallah [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] I suspect you are trying to find ways of making QTI compatible with Jacques ASSA based argument, when it is clear his argument fails completely. Not that the argument is unimportant, as the reasons for the failure are also interesting. What the hell are you babbling about? I don't know whether he's thinking about my objections to the SSA argument, but mine certainly *appear* to undermine it (at least I haven't yet heard a good reason why they don't). Briefly, (1) the SSA argument neglects the fact that even with an infinitely long worldline, everyone must pass through every age from 0 upwards, which is precisely what we observe. It also (2) ignores a selection effect, namely that only in a thermodynamically low number of universes can a person who is not QTI-old expect to communicate with someone who *is* (and hence 99....% of discussion groups will necessarily be composed of QTI-young people). The SSA argument also (3) gives the strong impression (though this could *perhaps* be argued away) that it relies on us treating our worldlines as though we've just been dropped into them at some random point, like Billy Pilgrim; which is, of course, not what happens in reality. Maybe there are some more technical objections to the SSA argument, but these are the simplest and most obvious. Charles -- -- Dr. Russell Standish Director High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile) UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 () Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] Room 2075, Red Centre http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
RE: Immortality
-Original Message- From: Marchal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Perhaps. But if you do that move, everyone is resurrected in everyone, and there is only one person in the multiverse. I don't know. James Higgo was more radical on this, he defended the idea of zero person. With just comp this issue is probably undecidable. I guess comp (perhaps QM too) can lead to a vast variety of incompatible but consistent point of view on those matter. Comp is compatible whith a lot of personal possible interpretations of what is identity. What is possible to prove with comp is the non normative principle according to which personal identity is *in part* necessarily a matter of personal opinion. What remains to do is to compute the real probabilities to backtrack with amnesia compare to the probability to quantum/comp-survive big injuries. I doubt we have currently the tools to do those computations. I will be interested to know the results when you do! Of course the doctrine of reincarnation (it always seemed to me) only requires one soul - a bit like Feynman's one-electron universe, it just zip-zags back and forth... Charles
RE: Narrow escapes
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Suppose you almost cause a terrible accident. You are driving too fast down a quiet street and a child suddenly steps out. You swerve and manage to miss him. You drive on, nervous and anxious, and feeling very lucky that you did not hit and perhaps kill the child. It's all a matter of probabilities. In some universes you do hit him and in some you miss. By taking the action of driving recklessly, you increase the number of universes in which you kill the child. Suppose you cause a different accident. You drive into a crowd of 100 children and kill 20. Do you feel relief that 80 survived? No, you feel terrible that you have taken 20 children from the universe. The same feeling is appropriate in the first example, the narrow escape. You decreased the number of children in the multiverse by your actions. It is irrelevant that this instance of your consciousness happened to end up in a universe where nothing happened. The multiverse has been affected, the measure of that child has been reduced. You have killed children just as surely as in the second example where you drove into a crowd. In general, when you do something and you get lucky or unlucky with regard to the consequences, you shouldn't look too closely at the particular outcome you saw. Morally speaking your actions spread out through the multiverse. The fact that the results, good or bad, are not immediately visible to you does not decrease their reality. I don't think that this reasoning implies any differences in how we should make our decisions. We already base them on probabilites and the multiverse view retains probability based decision theory. However it does perhaps change how we should view the outcomes and the effects of what we do. Hal Finney Hmbut according to the MWI all possible universes exist, including ones in which you aren't speeding, or aren't driving at all, or someone else is, or some other person runs out in front of you, or doesn't. If you drive carefully are you merely ensuring that elsewhere in the multiverse you aren't??? I'm not sure where this leads in probability terms, especially given an uncountable infinity of universes branching off every second. Not that I'm advocating dangerous driving. Charles
RE: Conventional QTI = False
-Original Message- From: Saibal Mitra [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] In the case of a person suffering from a terminal disease, it is much more likely that he will survive in a branch where he was not diagnosed with the disease, than in a branch where the disease is magically cured. The latter possibility (conventional qti) can't be favoured above the first just because the surviving person is more similar to the original person. I don't understand this argument. The person survives (according to QTI) in both branches. In fact QTI postulates that an infinite number of copies of a person survives (although the *proportion* of the multiverse in which he survives tends to zero - but that is because the multivese is growing far faster than the branches in which a person survives). QTI postulates that ALL observer moments are part of a series (of a vast number of series') which survive to timelike infinity. You could object that in the first case your consciousness is somehow transferred to a different person (you ``jump´´ to a different branch that separated from the dying branch before you were diagnosed), but I would say that the surviving person has the same consciousness the original person would have if you cured his disease and erased all memory of having the disease. That isn't necessary (according to QTI). The multiverse is large enough to accomodate an uncountable infinity of branches in which a given person survives from ANY starting state, as well as a (larger) uncountable infinity in which he doesn't. Charles
RE: fin insanity
-Original Message- From: Saibal Mitra [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] So, I would say that you will always find yourself alive somewhere. But it is interesting to consider only our universe and ignore quantum effects. Even then you will always find yourself alive somewhere, but you won't find yourself becoming infinitely old (see above). Because this is a classical continuation of you, it is much more likely than any quantum continuation that allows you to survive an atomic bomb exploding above your head. QTI can give you some idea of the size of the multiverse if you consider that there are branches in which every organism that has ever existed (including bacteria, viruses etc) are immortal - as well as every non-living configuration of matter (e.g. snowflakes, rocks, grains of sand...) - on every planet (and star, and empty space) in the universe ... According to QTI *no* observer moments ever lead to death. Every observer moment of every organism that has ever lived has timelike-infinite continuity. This leads to very very very big numbers, even if we allowed the output from the SWE to be quantised - which it isn't. Charles
RE: FIN insanity
Thank you for the explanation. I think FIN stands for something derogatory - possibly invented by Jaques Mallah (in much the way that Fred Hoyle coined the term 'Big Bang' to make his opponents' views sound ridiculous, or art critics coined 'Cubism' for similar reasons, only to see the derisively-termed ideas go on to achieve fame while the original reason for the name was forgotten). The IN part of FIN is (I think) Immortality Nonsense - the F I'm not sure about although some ideas come to mind . . . so anyway, it *is* another name for QTI. I think the idea of continuity of consciousness between duplicates, no matter how widely separated in space, time or the multiverse, assumes that they are (at least momentarily) in the same quantum state. According to quantum theory this means that they are literally identical, as atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate are identical - there is no test, even in theory, that will distinguish them. The MWI postulates that the initial state of some system evolves through the schrodinger wave eqn to a continuum of derived states, and hence that a person (for example) is continuously becoming an (uncountably infinite) number of copies, all of which have continuity of consciousness with the original. Of these outcomes, we typically experience the most likely, which is to say that our experiences are normally of the laws of physics holding, including probablistic 'laws' like thermodynamics. There are SOME copies of me who are experiencing their PCs turning into a bowl of petunias, or all the air molecules rushing out of the room, but the chances that you will be getting an email from one of them rather than one in which things go on as normal is very unlikely - thermodynamically unlikely. As I understand the QTI (from your post and others) it goes on to postulate that in the event of imminent death (including the infamous quantum suicide experiment) we would start to experience *unlikely* outcomes, because in all the likely ones we'd die (which we wouldn't experience for the reasons you mention below). So if in a fit of depression I try to shoot myself, the QTI suggests that I would experience the most likely outcome that provides continuity of consciousness. (This reminds me of a Larry Niven story in which a race of aliens discovered the meaning of life (I forget how they managed this) and promptly committed suicide en masse.) Of course the most likely outcome that provides continuity of consciousness is unlikely to be pleasant: if I shot myself, I'd probably experience acquiring very bad injuries (and doctors exclaiming in delight over the opportunity to work out how someone can survive with half his head missing). The QTI assumes that the possibility of identical quantum states arising for any arbitrary collection of matter is 100% - which is true in the MWI (or any infinite collection of space-time slices which have the same laws of physics). So it actually seems at least a possible theory, given certain assumptions - but not easily testable in the sense that most theories try to be (i.e. third person testable, so to speak). Charles -Original Message- From: Jesse Mazer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, 7 September 2001 7:21 a.m. To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: FIN insanity From: Charles Goodwin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: FIN insanity Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 12:26:24 +1200 On the other hand I can't see how FIN is supposed to work, either. I *think* the argument runs something like this... Even if you have just had, say, an atom bomb dropped on you, there's still SOME outcomes of the schrodinger wave equation which just happen to lead to you suriviving the explosion. Although these are VERY unlikely - less likely than, say, my computer turning into a bowl of petunias - they do exist, and (given the MWI) they occur somewhere in the multiverse. For some reason I can't work out, all the copies who are killed by the bomb don't count. Only the very very very (etc) small proportion who miraculously survive do, and these are the only ones you personally experience. Is that a reasonable description of FIN? Ignoring statistical arguments, what is wrong with it? Charles What does FIN stand for, anyway? Is it just another version of the quantum theory of immortality? Anyway, the idea behind the QTI is not just that we arbitrarily decide copies who die don't count, rather it has to do with some supplemental assumptions about the laws governing first-person experience, namely: 1. Continuity of consciousness is real (see my recent post on this) 2. Continuity of consciousness does not depend on spatial or temporal continuity, only on some kind of pattern continuity between different observer moments. I won't try to explain #1 any more for now, but I'll try explaining #2 (Bruno Marchal is much better at this sort of thing). Basically, you want to imagine
RE: Conditional probability continuity of consciousness (was: Re: FIN Again)
-Original Message- From: Jacques Mallah [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] The appeal of that kind of model is based on the illusion that we can remember past experiences. We can't remember past experiences at all, actually. We only experience memory because of the _current_ way our brains are structured. Thank you for that, that's just what I was trying to put across when I was asked how observer moments seem to link up. (Although some semantically pedantic people might argue that We can't remember past experiences at all isn't true, because accessing our current brain state on the assumption that we have an accurate record of past experience *is* what we mean by remembering past experience. But I know what you mean, and I agree!) Charles
RE: Conditional probability continuity of consciousness (was:
scientific endeavour, it's just a fact which still has consequences and requries explanation and so on. Similarly, if the Hoyle spotlight turns out to be fictitious (as it was intended to be, since it appeared in a novel - as was his consciousness field which appeared in Fifth planet :-) that doesn't make the whole edifice of science collapse, no more than it collapsed when phlogiston or the aether turned out not to exist. Charles
RE: My history or Peters??
-Original Message- From: Fred Chen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] A codified description of how the all-universes model works would be nice. Will a program that executes all programs really suffice? It seems more like an analogy than an actual model. With a computational model of bacterial growth, for example, one can simulate this on a computer screen as multiplying dots, or possibly even provide a realistic visual image of a growing bacterial population, but is that the same as an actual petri dish? Did someone suggest it was? The 'laws of physics' is now a really outdated term, I think. The scope is not so clear these days (where does physics end, and another field begin?). One can even consider the all-universe model to be almost a 'law' of physics, in the sense that it is often invoked to explain certain problems in physics. The term 'laws of physics' is shorthand for whatever rules the universe operates by on the most fundamental scale. What you call it or what field you consider yourself to be in isn't really relevant. For example the currently understood 'laws of physics' include the four forces, the nature of matter and the nature of space-time. The sort of thing we're discussing here can often be conveniently abbreviated as 'the laws of physics'. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by arguing about semantics? Charles - Original Message - From: Charles Goodwin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 2:15 PM Subject: RE: My history or Peters?? I was talking about the laws of physics. It's possible in principle for those to be known (I think). One can also know all there is to know while knowing that one's knowledge is incomplete! Obviously a complete description of reality is impossible (where would you store the information about the state of every particle?) but a complete codified description of how reality works is another story. Charles -Original Message- From: Marchal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, 6 September 2001 4:14 a.m. To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: My history or Peters?? Charles wrote (sometimes ago): On the other hand we may eventually learn all there is to learn. That's also possible. There is no unifying complete theory of just number theory or Arithmetic, neither computer science. You can try to solve the riddle in diagonalisation 1. It is a shortcut for understanding that Church thesis entails varieties of incompleteness phenomena. (http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3079.html) That will have bearing with David Deutsch Cantgotu environments. Universal machines (like amoebas, brain, fractran, computer and cosmos apparently) are just sort of relative self-speeding up anticipation on possible realities. Even without comp, the simple arithmetical existence of the universal turing machine, makes any unifying attempt to describe completely reality infinite. Even if we are more than a universal computing machine, it is easy to explain there is a sense in which we are *at least* universal computing machines (even the kind which can know that(°)), and that is enough for making the world possibly very complex. There are tranfinities of surprises there, including uncomputable and even unnameable one. And there is no universal rules saying how to manage them. Is that not apparent with just number theory? In any case this follows from incompleteness. We can bet on rules which manage partially the things; Chaitin is right there is pure empirical truth in arithmetic, and this is necessarily so and part of machine's worlds/psychology. (°) we can know we are universal machine. But we cannot know we are consistent universal machine (unless we *are* inconsistent ...). Bruno
RE: Conditional probability continuity of consciousness (was: Re: FIN Again)
-Original Message- From: Jesse Mazer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Well, I hope you'd agree that which observer-moment I am right now is not a matter of definition, but a matter of fact. My opinion is that the global measure on all observer-moments is not telling us something like the number of physical instantiations of each one, but rather the probability of *being* one particular observer-moment vs. some other one. I would be interested to hear what you think the measure means, though, since my version seems to require first-person facts which are separate from third-person facts (i.e., which observer-moment *I* am). I don't see how you can talk about the probability of being a particular observer moment. The probability is 1 at that moment! We don't get dropped into observer moments from some metaphysical realm (like Fred Hoyle's flashlight-and-pigeonholes analogy in October the 1st is too late) - we ARE those observer moments. It's a bit like the probability of me being born as me. The probability was 1, because otherwise I wouldn't be me! Similarly for this particular observer moment. Charles
RE: My history or Peters??
I was talking about the laws of physics. It's possible in principle for those to be known (I think). One can also know all there is to know while knowing that one's knowledge is incomplete! Obviously a complete description of reality is impossible (where would you store the information about the state of every particle?) but a complete codified description of how reality works is another story. Charles -Original Message- From: Marchal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, 6 September 2001 4:14 a.m. To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: My history or Peters?? Charles wrote (sometimes ago): On the other hand we may eventually learn all there is to learn. That's also possible. There is no unifying complete theory of just number theory or Arithmetic, neither computer science. You can try to solve the riddle in diagonalisation 1. It is a shortcut for understanding that Church thesis entails varieties of incompleteness phenomena. (http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3079.html) That will have bearing with David Deutsch Cantgotu environments. Universal machines (like amoebas, brain, fractran, computer and cosmos apparently) are just sort of relative self-speeding up anticipation on possible realities. Even without comp, the simple arithmetical existence of the universal turing machine, makes any unifying attempt to describe completely reality infinite. Even if we are more than a universal computing machine, it is easy to explain there is a sense in which we are *at least* universal computing machines (even the kind which can know that(°)), and that is enough for making the world possibly very complex. There are tranfinities of surprises there, including uncomputable and even unnameable one. And there is no universal rules saying how to manage them. Is that not apparent with just number theory? In any case this follows from incompleteness. We can bet on rules which manage partially the things; Chaitin is right there is pure empirical truth in arithmetic, and this is necessarily so and part of machine's worlds/psychology. (°) we can know we are universal machine. But we cannot know we are consistent universal machine (unless we *are* inconsistent ...). Bruno
RE: FIN too
I'll have another go at explaining my position (maybe I'll spot a flaw in it if I keep examininig it long enough). Bayesian reasoning assumes (as far as I can see) that I should treat my present observer moment as typical. My objection to doing so is that this assumes the result you want to prove, because if my observer moment is typical and QTI is correct, then the likelihood of me experiencing a moment at which my age is less than infinity is infinitesimal. This either demonstrates that (1) my present observer moment is typical and QTI is wrong or (2) the present observer moment isn't typical and Bayesian reasoning is inappropriate ((2) doesn't imply that QTI is correct, of course, merely that it's compatible with observation). *Assuming* that QTI is correct, then the chances of you and me interacting at a typical observer moment (for either of us) is negligible. QTI guarantees that almost all interactions between observers will occur at highly non-typical observer moments, because (scary thought) for 99.999% of any given person's observer moments, the rest of the human race will be extinct. Hence Bayesian reasoning isn't appropriate because the fact that we're communicating with one another guarantees that at least one of us, and with overwhelming probability both of us, is experiencing highly atypical observer moments. The assumption of typicality can't be made without first checking that you're not dealing with a special case. To take an obvious example, if I was to apply Bayesian reasoning to myself I would be forced to assume that I am almost certainly a peasant of indeterminate sex living in the third world. Or more likely a beetle... Or even more likely a microbe (assuming microbes have observer moments). Which I believe isn't the case! (Even on those rare occassions when I argue with my better half, she very rarely calls me a microbe...) Charles PS - I could be a butterfly dreaming that I'm a man, I suppose... -Original Message- From: Jacques Mallah [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, 4 September 2001 2:32 p.m. To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: FIN too From: Charles Goodwin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Um, OK, I don't want to get into an infinite argument here. I guess we both understand the other's viewpoint. (For the record: I don't see any reason to accept QTI as correct, but think that *if* it is, it would fit in with the available (subjective) observational evidence - that being the point on which we differ. Um, no, I still don't understand your view. I think the point that Bayesian reasoning would work with 100% reliability, even though the FIN is technically compatible with the evidence, is perfectly clear. Any reason for disagreeing, I have no understanding of. It may help you to think of different moments of your life as being different observers (observer-moments). That's really just a matter of definition. - - - - - - - Jacques Mallah ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Physicist / Many Worlder / Devil's Advocate I know what no one else knows - 'Runaway Train', Soul Asylum My URL: http://hammer.prohosting.com/~mathmind/ _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
RE: FIN too
Oh, I forgot my main problem with QTI :-) Basically it's to do with the rate at which decoherence spreads (presumably at the speed of light?) and the finite time it takes someone to die. So if you were shot (say) the QTI would predict that there was some point in the process of your body ceasing to operate at which some unlikely quantum processes separated branches of the multiverse in which you died to ones in which you remained alive (forever, presumably). The problem is working out exactly where that happens (I suspect it gets worse if you include relativistic considerations). Another question is what happens in cases of very violent death, e.g. beheading. After someone's head is cut off, so they say, it remains conscious for a few seconds (I can't see why it wouldn't). According to QTI it experiences being decapitated but then survives indefinitely - somehow . . . well, I'd like to hear what QTI supporters think happens next (from the pov of the victim). Are they magically translated into a non-decapitated version of themselves, and if so, how? Surely it can't be in the same quantum state that they're in? If not, do they experience indefinitely continued survival as a severed head, or . . . what??? Just curious! Charles -Original Message- From: Charles Goodwin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, 4 September 2001 1:42 p.m. To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: FIN too Um, OK, I don't want to get into an infinite argument here. I guess we both understand the other's viewpoint. (For the record: I don't see any reason to accept QTI as correct, but think that *if* it is, it would fit in with the available (subjective) observational evidence - that being the point on which we differ. I also think that for QTI to be correct, a number of other things would have to hold - space-time would have to be quantised, objects in the same quantum state would have to be literally identical (no matter where they happened to be in the uni/multiverse) . . . and, either the multiverse has to exist, or our universe has to be infinite . . . and probably a few other points I can't think of right now!) Charles -Original Message- From: Jacques Mallah [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, 4 September 2001 1:12 p.m. To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: FIN too From: Charles Goodwin [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Jacques Mallah wrote] But there's one exception: your brain can only hold a limited amount of information. So it's possible to be too old to remember how old you are. *Only if you are that old, do you have a right to not reject FIN on these grounds.* Are you that old? Yeah, that's one of my objections to QTI. Although perhaps add-on memory chips will become available one day :-) OK. (And even if the chips become available, you'd probably only be able to add a finite # before collapsing into a black hole.) Right. Do you think you are in an infinitesimal fraction, or in a typical fraction? Infinitesimal, if QTI is correct, otherwise fairly typical. Assuming QTI is correct and ignoring any other objections to it, it's *possible* for me to be in an infinitesimal fraction - in fact it's necessary. Right - which is why Bayesian reasoning falsifies FIN, but only with 100% reliability as opposed to complete reliability. but according to QTI I *must* pass through a phase when I see the unlikely bits, no matter how unlikely it is that a typical moment will fall into that phase. Even if I later spend 99.999% of my observer moments seeing the stars going out one by one, there still has to be that starting point! Right, again, that's why the reliability is just 100%. My (ahem) point is, though, that none of us ARE at a typical point (again, assuming QTI). In fact we're in a very atypical point, just as the era of stars might be a very atypical point in the history of the universe - but it's a point we (or the universe) HAVE TO PASS THROUGH to reach more typical points (e.g. very old, no stars left...). Hence it's consistent with QTI that we find ourselves passing through this point... Right, consistent with it but only 0% of the time, hence the Bayesian argument is to put 0 credence in the FIN rather than strictly no credence. I'm not arguing for QTI here, but I do think that you can't argue from finding yourself at a particular point on your world-line to that world-line having finite length, because you are guaranteed to find yourself at that particular point at some (ah) point. Right, which is why I'm (now) careful not to make *that* argument by arbritarily using one's current age to base a reference point on. (e.g. in my reply to Bruno.) Rather, I argue that from being at a point prior to some _natural reference point_ such as the can calculate my age crierion, one
RE: FIN
Hi, I'm sorry, it's an accident. I keep hitting 'reply' rather than 'reply to all' and because of the way the list is set up, which means I reply to the person who posted the message. It's a bad habit, because other lists I post to allow you to just hit 'reply' and your message goes to the list. There's something in the email header which tells it where to send the reply to, apparently Apologies to anyone I've replied to directly, it wasn't intentional. Charles -Original Message- From: Brent Meeker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, 2 September 2001 6:59 a.m. To: Everything-list Subject: Re: FIN Hello Jacques On 01-Sep-01, Jacques Mallah wrote: Hello. (This is not posted to the list as you just replied to me directly. If that was unintentional you can sent replies to the list, I'm just pointing it out.) Ok, although I would say to be more precise that you should identify yourself with an implementation of a computation. A computation must be performed (implemented) for it to give rise to consciousness. This seems incoherent. What's the point of a computational explanation of the world if it requires that the computation be implemented...in some super-world? The basic computational explanation is not of the world - it's of conscious observations. As for the arena where things get implemented - that could either be a physical world, or it could be Plato's realm of math. Either way makes little difference for these issues, but surely at least one of those exists. That an implementation might be in another physical world I can understand. I don't see how an implementation can be in Plato's realm of mathematics. In mathematics there are axioms and theorems and proofs - none of these imply any occurence in time. You might be able to impose an order on theorems (ala' Godel) and it might be possible to identify this with time (although I doubt this can work), but even so it is just a single order that is implicit - there is no way to distinguish two different implementations of this order. Brent Meeker The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference. ---Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden
FW: FIN insanity
-Original Message- From: Saibal Mitra [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] There are different versions of QTI (let's not call it FIN). The most reasonable one (my version, of course) takes into account the possibility that you find yourself alive somewhere else in the universe, without any memory of the atomic bomb that exploded. I totally ignore the possibility that one could survive an atomic bomb exploding above one's head. My version doesn't imply that your a priory expected lifetime should be infinite. Death involves the destruction of your brain. But there are many brains in the universe which are almost identical to yours. Jacques says that you can't become one of them. I say: 1) If you are hurt in a car accident and the surgeon performes brain surgery and you recover fully, then you are the same person. 2) You would also be the same person if the surgeon made a new brain identically to yours. 3) From 2) it follows that if your brain was first copied and then destroyed, you would become the copy. 4) From 3) you can thus conclude that you will always experience yourself being alive, because copies of you always exist. 5) It doesn't follow that you will experience surviving terrible accidents. Saibal Ok, that's a similar argument to the one Frank Tipler used in 'The physics of immortality' (except that he allowed a simulation of a brain to have continuous consciousness with the original physical brain). Your version is more reasonable that Tiplers, imo, because it only assumes that 2 objects in the same quantum state *are* the same object (rather than an object and its simulation). There will almost certainly be objects in the same quantum state if the universe is infinite OR the MWI is correct, AND space-time really is quantised, AND quantum-identical objects really *are* the same object. This seems like a reasonable theory on the face of it. Hard to prove, though, unless you've had personal experience of living a *very* long time Charles
FW: FIN too
-Original Message- From: Jacques Mallah [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] The problem is that the probability isn't 0% that you'd find yourself at your current age (according to the QTI - assume I put that after every sentence!). Because you HAVE to pass through your current age to reach QTI-type ages, the probability of finding yourself at your current age at some point is 100%. At some point, yes. At a typical point? 0%. My (ahem) point is, though, that none of us ARE at a typical point (again, assuming QTI). In fact we're in a very atypical point, just as the era of stars might be a very atypical point in the history of the universe - but it's a point we (or the universe) HAVE TO PASS THROUGH to reach more typical points (e.g. very old, no stars left...). Hence it's consistent with QTI that we find ourselves passing through this point... I'm not arguing for QTI here, but I do think that you can't argue from finding yourself at a particular point on your world-line to that world-line having finite length, because you are guaranteed to find yourself at that particular point at some (ah) point. So I'm rejecting, not Bayesian logic per se, but the application of it to what (according to QTI) would be a very special (but still allowable) case. The basic problem is that we experience observer moments as a sequence. Hence we *must* experience the earlier moments before the later ones, and if we happen to come across QTI before we reach QTI-like observer moments then we might reject it for lack of (subjective) evidence. But that doesn't contradict QTI, which predicts that we have to pass through these earlier moments, and that we will observe everyone else doing so as well. I wish I could put that more clearly, or think of a decent analogy, but do you see what I mean? Our observations aren't actually *incompatible* with QTI, even if they do only cover an infinitsimal chunk of our total observer moments. Charles
RE: FIN too
-Original Message- From: Russell Standish [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] This case bothers me too. The initial (or perhaps traditional) response is that consciousness is lost the instant blood pressure drops in the brain, a few hundred milliseconds after the neck is severed, thus the beheading is not experienced. However, there is some anecdotal evidence (eg the beheading of Lavoisier) that consciousness can survive up to 10-20 seconds after the neck is severed. Even if this is true, it still does not eliminate magical solutions, such as waking up Matrix-style in an alternative reality. Yesor in a tipler style afterlife inside some megacomputer trillions of years in the future (or equivalently, I suppose, somewhere else in the multiverse). Definitely starts to sound like an act of faith to believe that's what would happen, though Even if you lost consciousness a split second after having your head removed, QTI would still have to explain how you got from 'immediately after being beheaded' to anywhere else...! Charles
RE: FIN
Hi, I have just joined this list after seeing it mentioned on the Fabric of Reality list Would someone mind briefly explaining what FIN is (or at least what the letters stand for)? Is it some version of QTI (Quantum theory of immortality) ? Assuming it *is* related to QTI... Why should a typical observer find himself to be older than the apparent lifetime of his species? Given that survival for indefinite time becomes thermodynamically unlikely (TU) after some age (i.e. has a measure incredibly close to zero compared to other outcomes for anyone except the observer concerned) - say this age is 120 for a human being, then he still has to live through 120 years to get there. But most of his copies in the multiverse (you are assuming MWI for this argument, I assume?) will in fact die at a reasonable age, so *very* few observeres are going to notice the TU versions of anyone else. So the only way to actually experience this phenomenon is to live to be that old yourself. I must ask, though, what makes you think that a typical observer ISN'T much older than the lifetime of his species would allow? Given that you can't observe anyone but yourself in this state (or it's TU that you ever will) (and I'm assuming you haven't reached 120 yet), you can't really use a self-sampling argument on this, surely? if FIN isn't related to QTI (it appears to be from the stuff I'm replying to but you never know) please ignore the above comments :-) Charles -Original Message- From: Saibal Mitra [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, 30 August 2001 9:05 p.m. To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: FIN Jacques Mallah wrote: From: Saibal Mitra [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jacques Mallah wrote: `` I have repeated pointed out the obvious consequence that if that were true, then a typical observer would find himself to be much older than the apparent lifetime of his species would allow; the fact that you do not find yourself so old gives their hypothesis a probability of about 0 that it is the truth. However, they hold fast to their incomprehensible beliefs.´´ According to FIN, however, the probability of being alive at all is almost zero, which contradicts our experience of being alive. Whatchya mean? I wouldn't mind acquiring a new argument against FIN to add to the ones I give, but your statement doesn't appear to make any sense. You wrote earlier that consciousness can't be transferred to a copy. But consciousness isn't transferred, the copies had the same consciousness already because they were identical. I would say: I exist because somewhere I am computed. You appear to say that (forgive me if I am wrong) I must identify myself with one computation. Even an identical computation performed somewhere else will have a different identity. My objection is that the brain is constantly changing due to various processes. The typical timescales of these processes is about a millisecond. FIN thus predicts that I shouldn't find myself alive after a few milliseconds. Saibal
