SV: Civilization-level quantum suicide

[Lennart Nilsson]

Now, Mark Buda is either sarcastic or mad. I think he is pulling your leg
here Bruno.

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Ämne: Re: Civilization-level quantum suicide


On 16 Jul 2010, at 14:13, Mark Buda wrote:

> 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.

This is on the fringe of authoritative argument.


>
> 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.

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, so the usual doubt of the cartesian  
scientist remains. Computationalism explains in detail why any form of  
certainty, when made public, is a symptom of non correctness.


> 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,

I don't see any sense here.


> 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.

2012 is the year of the election in France. The Maya consider their  
own prediction as a prediction that some reasonable man will arrive.  
They never talk of apocalypse. "2012" is like prohibition: making  
money by selling fears.


>
> They're right and wrong, and I understand why, but I can't explain it,
> and Bruno understands why.

I guess I have been unclear at some point. I am just a poor scientist  
trying to be honest with myself and the others.


> 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.

Why do you want to convince Richard Dawkins? You give him credit.  
Actually you do his very own error, because when Dawkins try to  
convince the Christians that they are wrong on God, he gives them  
credit on their notion of God. No one care about fairy tales, once we  
tackle the fundamental question with the scientific (= modest,  
hypotheses-based) approach.



> 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.

Restrain yourself to communicate what is communicable. And just hope  
that the people will figure out by themselves what is not communicable  
yet true (like consciousness to take the simplest candidate).


>
> 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.

I don't believe in coincidence. Or better I believe coincidences are  
just that: coincidences. The brain has an habit to over-interpret  
coincidences, and if you search them, you will find more and more, and  
you will take the risk of believing anything, that is to become  
inconsistent. The prohibition of drugs is based on similar form of  
unsound "reasoning".



> And I can explain how t

reality, a non-computable fractal ?

[Lennart Nilsson]

This looks interesting. Has it been noticed here?
 
The Invariant Set Hypothesis: A New Geometric Framework for the Foundations
of Quantum Theory and the Role Played by Gravity
Authors: T.N.Palmer
 
(Submitted on 5 Dec 2008 (v1  ), last
revised 17 Feb 2009 (this version, v3))
Abstract: The Invariant Set Hypothesis proposes that states of physical
reality belong to, and are governed by, a non-computable fractal subset I of
state space, invariant under the action of some subordinate deterministic
causal dynamics D. The Invariant Set Hypothesis is motivated by key results
in nonlinear dynamical-systems theory, and black-hole thermodynamics. The
elements of a reformulation of quantum theory are developed using two key
properties of I: sparseness and self-similarity. Sparseness is used to
relate counterfactual states to points not on I thus providing a basis for
understanding the essential contextuality of quantum physics. Self
similarity is used to relate the quantum state to oscillating coarse-grain
probability mixtures based on fractal partitions of I, thus providing the
basis for understanding the notion of quantum coherence. Combining these, an
entirely analysis is given of the standard "mysteries" of quantum theory:
superposition, nonlocality, measurement, emergence of classicality, the
ontology of uncertainty and so on. It is proposed that gravity plays a key
role in generating the fractal geometry of I. Since quantum theory does not
itself recognise the existence of such a state-space geometry, the results
here suggest that attempts to formulate unified theories of physics within a
quantum theoretic framework are misguided; rather, a successful quantum
theory of gravity should unify the causal non-euclidean geometry of space
time with the atemporal fractal geometry of state space. 
 
http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.1148
 


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SV: Smolin's View of Time

[Lennart Nilsson]

How does this compare with Einstein´s discovery that there is no moment that
is the same NOW for everyone?

LN

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Ämne: Smolin's View of Time


Edge Question 2009: "What Will Change Everything?"

http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_9.html#smolin



What do we think about this? Smolin seems to disagree with most of  
what we are on about on this list. My mind remains open in all  
directions, particularly as Smolin appears to be enjoying substantial  
advances in his field of Quantum Gravitation. Does his argument about  
time have legs?

Maybe we can get him back on this list to talk to us if we yell loud  
enough in his direction...



regards,



Kim



LEE SMOLIN
Physicist, Perimeter Institute; Author, The Trouble With Physics

THE LIBERATION OF TIME

I would like to describe a change in viewpoint, which I believe will  
alter how we think about everything from the most abstract questions  
on the nature of truth to the most concrete questions in our daily  
lives. This change comes from the deepest and most difficult problems  
facing contemporary science: those having to do with the nature of time.

The problem of time confronts us at every key juncture in fundamental  
physics: What was the big bang and could something have come before  
it? What is the nature of quantum physics and how does it unify with  
relativity theory? Why are the laws of physics we observe the true  
laws, rather than other possible laws? Might the laws have evolved  
from different laws in the past?

After a lot of discussion and argument, it is becoming clear to me  
that these key questions in fundamental physics come down to a very  
simple choice, having to do with the answers to two simple questions:  
What is real? And what is true?

Many philosophies and religions offer answers to these questions, and  
most give the same answer: reality and truth transcend time. If  
something is real, it has a reality which continues forever, and if  
something is true, it is not just true now, it was always true, and  
will always be. The experience we have of the world existing within a  
flow of time is, according to some religions and many contemporary  
physicists and philosophers, an illusion. Behind that illusion is a  
timeless reality, in modern parlance, the block universe. Another  
manifestation of this ancient view is the currently popular idea that  
time is an emergent quality not present in the fundamental formulation  
of physics.

The new viewpoint is the direct opposite. It asserts that what is real  
is only what is real in the moment, which is one of a succession of  
moments. It is the same for truth: what is true is only what is true  
in the moment. There are no transcendent, timeless truths.

There is also no past. The past only lives as part of the present, to  
the extent that it gives us evidence of past events. And the future is  
not yet real, which means that it is open and full of possibilities,  
only a small set of which will be realized. Nor, on this view, is  
there any possibility of other universes. All that exists must be part  
of this universe, which we find ourselves in, at this moment.

This view changes everything, beginning with how we think of  
mathematics. On this view there can be no timeless, Platonic, realm of  
mathematical objects. The truths of mathematics, once discovered, are  
certainly objective. But mathematical systems have to be invented-or  
evoked- by us. Once brought into being, there are an infinite number  
of facts which are true about mathematical objects, which further  
investigation might discover. There are an infinite number of possible  
axiomatic systems that we might so evoke and explore-but the fact that  
different people will agree on what has been shown about them does not  
imply that they existed, before we evoked them.

I used to think that the goal of physics was the discovery of a  
timeless mathematical equation that was isomorphic to the history of  
the universe. But if there is no Platonic realm of timeless  
mathematical object, this is just a fantasy. Science is then only  
about what we can discover is true in the one real universe we find  
ourselves in.

More specifically, this view challenges how we think about cosmology.  
It opens up new ways to approach the deepest questions, such as why  
the laws we observe are true, and not others, and what determined the  
initial conditions of the universe. The philosopher Charles Sanders  
Pierce wrote in 1893 that the only way of accounting for which laws  
were true would be through a mechanics of evolution, and I believe  
this remains true today. But the evolution of laws requires time to be  
real. Furthermore, there is, I believe, evidence on technical grounds  
that the correct formulations of quantum gravity and co

SV: Little test

[Lennart Nilsson]

I got this and the others you mentioned.
 
LN
 
  _  

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Ämne: Little test
 
Hi,

Sorry but this is just a little test. I don't get any message from the
everything-list since the 3 april, including mine, although I can see them
in some archive.
Actually I did not get any of:

2008/04/07 Re: An Equivalence Principle Colin Hales 
2008/04/07 Re: Bostrom Paper Günther Greindl 
2008/04/07 An Equivalence Principle Youness Ayaita 
2008/04/06 Re: Neuroquantology John Mikes 
2008/04/04 Re: Bostrom Paper Bruno Marchal 
2008/04/03 Re: Bostrom Paper Stathis Papaioannou 
2008/04/03 Re: Bostrom Paper Russell Standish


Are there other people with mail problem? I thought it was my emailer, but
it seems ok. I got the usual messages and spam.
Thanks for suggestions,

Bruno

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


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SV: Neuroquantology

[Lennart Nilsson]

If it had not been first of april that is...
 
  _  

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Ämne: Re: Neuroquantology
 
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/01/poltergeists-and-qua.html

I think that answers that question
On 28/03/2008, Russell Standish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I just had a cold call from an editor of a fairly new journal called
NeuroQuantology (http://www.neuroquantology.com/), which has its focus
area on the intersection of cognitive science and quantum physics. The
nature of this topic, of cause, gives rise to no end of kookiness, but
this doesn't mean there isn't a serious subject here waiting to be
explored (indeed this is a major theme of my book Theory of Nothing).

I was wondering if anyone has had experience of this journal, and
whether its publishing standards are as rigorous as they claim. They
claim to be indexed by ISI (they're not in the 2006 JCR, but since
they only claimed to have just received ISI indexing, that is not
suprising). Some of the paper titles look intriguing, but you have to
register in order to download abstracts, so I haven't done that yet.

Cheers
--


A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au




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assumptions

[Lennart Nilsson]

I think you are only discussing the meaning of the 
starting assumption here. Have you grasp the whole 8-steps argument? If 
I'm wrong or unclear just tell me where and let us discuss where the 
precise problems are. Please keep in mind that I am open to the idea 
that the physics extracted from comp is incompatible with the empirical 
physics making comp not sustain by empirical evidences.
Perhaps you could also tell me what is your opinion on Everett or 
Deutsch. People who dislikes Everett's work could hardly appreciate 
mine.

Bruno


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


Oh, I am very much proEverett and proDeutsch and, I might add proStandish
(having translated his book Theory of Nothing into swedish). And you are
right of course, it was your assumptions I questioned...

LN


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[no subject]

[Lennart Nilsson]

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=C4mne: Re: UDA paper


> It arises from the fact
> that my classical state is duplicable...


And of course your quantumstate is not...

So your argument that the duplication can be said to be on any level,
including a whole universe if need be, is not an airproof argument?

LN


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SV: Observer Moment = Sigma1-Sentences

[Lennart Nilsson]

Bruno says:

"...the notion of computability is absolute." 

David Deutsch says:

"We see around us a computable universe; that is to say, of all
possible mathematical objects and relationships, only an infinitesimal
proportion
are ever instantiated in the relationships of physical objects and physical
processes. (These are essentially the computable functions.) Now it might
seem that one approach to explaining that amazing fact, is to say "the
reason
why physical processes conform to this very small part of mathematics,
'computable mathematics,' is that physical processes really are computations
running on a computer external to what we think of as physical reality." But
that relies on the assumption that the set of computable functions -- the
Turing computable functions, or the set of quantum computable operations
-- is somehow inherently privileged within mathematics. So that even a
computer
implemented in unknown physics (the supposed computer that we're
all simulations on) would be expected to conform to those same notions of
computability, to use those same functions that mathematics designates as
computable. But in fact, the only thing that privileges the set of all
computational
operations that we see in nature, is that they are instantiated by
the laws of physics. It is only through our knowledge of the physical world
that we know of the difference between computable and not computable. So
it's only through our laws of physics that the nature of computation can be
understood. It can never be vice versa."

http://www.qubit.org/people/david/Articles/PPQT.pdf


If it is only through our knowledge of the physical world
that we know of the difference between computable and not computable, and I
don´t see any flaw in David´s argument that leads up to that statement, then
the notion of computability definitely is not absolute.

LN



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SV: Rép : Observer Moment = Sigma1-Sentences

[Lennart Nilsson]

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Ämne: Re: Rép : Observer Moment = Sigma1-Sentences


>I don't think Church thesis can be grasped 
>conceptually without the understanding that the class of programmable 
>functions is closed for the diagonalization procedure. 

This is something I never grasped but would love to understand.

LN



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SV: Rép : Observer Moment = Sigma1-Sentences

[Lennart Nilsson]

Le 12-août-07, à 18:00, John Mikes a écrit :
>Please, do not tell me that your theories are as well applicable to
faith-items! Next time sopmebody will calculate the enthalpy of the
resurrection.

Frank Tipler calculated the probability of the resurrection in his last book
"The Physics of Christianity" as follows: 
 
"This probability is 10 raised to the power of -100. We must then raise this
enormously small number to a power equal to the number of atoms in a human
body, something like 10 raised to the power of 29".

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SV: Pedagogy question (was: out-of-line)

[Lennart Nilsson]

Bruno Marchal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Concerning the math, do you know the book by Torkel Franzen on the uses 
>and misuses of Godel theorems? Despite some big mistake I will talk 
>about, it is a quite excellent book which I would recommend 

I have read this book and would very much want to know what big mistake you
are talking about.

LN



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SV: The difference between a 'chair' concept and a 'mathematical concept' ;)

[Lennart Nilsson]

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Ämne: Re: The difference between a 'chair' concept and a 'mathematical
concept' ;)


David Nyman wrote:
> 
> 
> On Oct 10, 9:12 pm, Brent Meeker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Then
>>a calculation of pi is picked out among all instantiations of all
computations - but
>>it is still possible to calculate pi many different ways on many different
physical
>>systems.  And it is possible by inspection of these systems to determine
whether they
>>calculate pi.
> 
> 
> But it isn't possible to determine by inspection that they are
> conscious. 

Are you claiming it's impossible in principle, or just that we don't know
how?

>'Calculating pi' in the final analysis can be satisfied by
> the system in question externalising its results (e.g. printing out the
> value of pi). But it isn't so simple to test a system that is claimed
> to be conscious. Be that as it may, would you be content with the
> conclusion that the 'properties' of materialism claimed to be jointly
> relevant to both computationalism and consciousness are purely
> relational? In this case, we needn't argue further. But this conclusion
> is, I think, why Bruno thinks that 'matter' has no real explanatory
> role in the account of conscious experience. This isn't quite
> equivalent to claiming that it can't be the primary reality, but rather
> to claim that it adds nothing to the accounts of computationalism or
> consciousness to do so, beyond the role of 'relational placeholder'.

I would think that identifying the relata would be relevant to explaining a
relation. 
  But I agree that computation is mostly a matter of relations.  What matter
adds is 
that it allows the computation to be instantied.  To dismiss it from the
explanation 
seems like dismissing hydrogen and oxygen from an explanation of water.

Brent Meeker


A passage in Gary L. Drescher's book "GOOD AND REAL. Demystifying pradoxes
from physics to ethics." comes to mind. On page 324 he compares what he
calls
"the spark of existence" with the dualist' "spark of awareness". And he
continues:

"Both putative sparks face the same problem: even if they were real, we
could not know of them, could not percieve them - because any such
perception would constitute a miraclulous violation of the definitive
physics equations that already specify all our thoughts and perceptions;
percieving the extra spark would be responding to something beyond the
equations themselves. Whatever it is that we percieve when we think we
percieve the extraphysical or metaphysical spark, it cannot be something
extraphysical or metaphysical".

I think similar thinking goes behind the thinking of Deutsch and others as
to why "our" universe is not distinguished from other possible ones.

LN


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SV: Maudlin's argument

[Lennart Nilsson]

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Ämne: Re: Maudlin's argument



Le 07-oct.-06, à 11:37, 1Z a écrit :

>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
"It exist a number which is equal to 5".

I hope you agree with the fact that in this sense everybody is
*arithmetical* platonist--~~~~--~~--~--~---

Not me... 

LN


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SV: SV: Barbour's mistake: An alternative to a timless Platonia

[Lennart Nilsson]

To
be an atheist means to deny God, not to believe i ”nature”.

 









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Ämne: Re: SV: Barbour's mistake:
An alternative to a timless Platonia



 


Le 05-oct.-06, à 16:03, Lennart Nilsson a écrit :


Only
atheist have reason to dislike the consequence of comp. Not
because they would be wrong, but because their belief
in "nature" is shown to need an act of faith (and atheists hate the
very notion of faith).

Bruno

That
is the most absurd statement so far… 





Unless you are confusing atheism and agnosticism, or ... you
should explain why you find this absurd. the UDA precisely illustrates
that the "modest scientist" should not take "nature" for
granted. Of course by nature, I mean the aristotelian
conception of nature as something primitive, i.e. which is at the root of
everything else. This does not necessarily jeopardize
the actual *theories* of nature, just the interpretation of those theories.
This is a good thing given that physicists today admit there is no unanimity on
the interpretation of physical theories.
And I argue since that if we assume comp physics cannot be the fundamental
science, it has to be derive from psychology, biology, theology, number theory,
computer science, well chose your favorite name, they are all imprecise enough.

Bruno



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


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SV: Barbour's mistake: An alternative to a timless Platonia

[Lennart Nilsson]

Only atheist have reason to dislike the consequence of
comp. Not because they would be wrong, but
because their belief in "nature" is shown to need an act of faith
(and atheists hate the very notion of faith).

Bruno

That is the most absurd statement so far…


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SV: SV: computationalism and supervenience

[Lennart Nilsson]

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Ämne: Re: SV: computationalism and supervenience


Lennart Nilsson wrote:
...
> But my point is that this may come down to what we would mean by a
computer
> being 
> conscious.  Bruno has an answer in terms of what the computer can prove.
> Jaynes (and 
> probably John McCarthy) would say a computer is conscious if it creates a
> narrative 
> of its experience which it can access as memory.
> 
> Brent Meeker
> 
> Humphrey says it has to have an evolutionary past.
> LN

I've read some of Humphrey's books, but I don't recall that.  What's his
argument? 
Whats the citation?

Brent Meeker

His book "Seeing red" is based on lectures he gave at Harvard University
2004. What makes Humphrey´s theory special is that he thinks sensation is a
side show separated from perception. Dennett has also somewhat come around
to this view. He says in "It´s Not a Bug, It´s a Feature" in Journal of
Consciousness Studies 7 (2000): "Humphrey has convinced me that something
like his distinction between visual sensation and visual perception must be
drawn".

Why would evolution create a side show and not just perception? What is it
for? asks Humphrey. He has been studying cases of blindsight and found that
although they have perception THEY DON´T CARE. The creation of a side show
is what having a sensation is, concludes Humphrey, and when sensation is
absent the subject thinks of him/herself as less of a Self.

Humphey thinks that sensation and perception from a common beginning take
relatively independent paths in evolution. Sensations in this view are
descendents of a kind of activity which once upon a time actually was a kind
of bodily expression but "nowadays is virtual, privatixed, adressed to an
as-if body; but there is every reason to suppose that its characteristics -
its dimensions - have remained in line with what they were". He further
notes that "the experience of creating a sensation has many of the
characteristics of creating a bodily expression".

LN



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SV: computationalism and supervenience

[Lennart Nilsson]

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Ämne: Re: computationalism and supervenience


Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> Brent Meeker writes:
> 
> 
I could make a robot that, having suitable thermocouples, would quickly
withdraw it's 
hand from a fire; but not be conscious of it.  Even if I provide the
robot with 
"feelings", i.e. judgements about good/bad/pain/pleasure I'm not sure it
would be 
conscious.  But if I provide it with "attention" and memory, so that it
noted the 
painful event as important and necessary to remember because of it's
strong negative 
affect; then I think it would be conscious.
>>>
>>>
>>>It's interesting that people actually withdraw their hand from the fire
*before* they experience 
>>>the pain. The withdrawl is a reflex, presumably evolved in organisms with
the most primitive 
>>>central nervour systems, while the pain seems to be there as an
afterthought to teach us a 
>>>lesson so we won't do it again. Thus, from consideration of evolutionary
utility consciousness 
>>>does indeed seem to be a side-effect of memory and learning. 
>>
>>Even more curious, volitional action also occurs before one is aware of
it. Are you 
>>familiar with the experiments of Benjamin Libet and Grey Walter?
> 
> 
> These experiments showed that in apparently voluntarily initiated motion,
motor cortex activity 
> actually preceded the subject's awareness of his intention by a
substantial fraction of a second. 
> In other words, we act first, then "decide" to act. These studies did not
examine pre-planned 
> action (presumably that would be far more technically difficult) but it is
easy to imagine the analogous 
> situation whereby the action is unconsciously "planned" before we become
aware of our decision. In 
> other words, free will is just a feeling which occurs after the fact. This
is consistent with the logical 
> impossibility of something that is neither random nor determined, which is
what I feel my free will to be.
> 
> 
>>>I also think that this is an argument against zombies. If it were
possible for an organism to 
>>>behave just like a conscious being, but actually be unconscious, then why
would consciousness 
>>>have evolved? 
>>
>>An interesting point - but hard to give any answer before pinning down
what we mean 
>>by consciousness.  For example Bruno, Julian Jaynes, and Daniel Dennett
have 
>>explanations; but they explain somewhat different consciousnesses, or at
least 
>>different aspects.
> 
> 
> Consciousness is the hardest thing to explain but the easiest thing to
understand, if it's your own 
> consciousness at issue. I think we can go a long way discussing it
assuming that we do know what 
> we are talking about even though we can't explain it. The question I ask
is, why did people evolve 
> with this consciousness thing, whatever it is? The answer must be, I
think, that it is a necessary 
> side-effect of the sort of neural complexity that underpins our behaviour.
If it were not, and it 
> were possible that beings could behave exactly like humans and not be
conscious, then it would 
> have been wasteful of nature to have provided us with consciousness. 

This is not necessarily so.  First, evolution is constrained by what goes
before. 
Its engineering solutions often seem rube-goldberg, e.g. backward retina in
mammals. 
  Second, there is selection against some evolved feature only to the extent
it has a 
(net) cost.  For example, Jaynes explanation of consciousness conforms to
these two 
criteria.  I think that any species that evolves intelligence comparable to
ours will 
be conscious for reasons somewhat like Jaynes theory.  They will be social
and this 
combined with intelligence will make language a good evolutionary move.
Once they 
have language, remembering what has happened, in order to communicate and
plan, in 
symbolic terms will be a easy and natural evolvement.  Whether that leads to
hearing 
your own narrative in your head, as Jaynes supposes, is questionable; but it
would be 
consistent with evolution. It takes advantage of existing structure and
functions to 
realize a useful new function.

>This does not necessarily 
> mean that computers can be conscious: maybe if we had evolved with
electronic circuits in our 
> heads rather than neurons consciousness would not have been a necessary
side-effect. 

But my point is that this may come down to what we would mean by a computer
being 
conscious.  Bruno has an answer in terms of what the computer can prove.
Jaynes (and 
probably John McCarthy) would say a computer is conscious if it creates a
narrative 
of its experience which it can access as memory.

Brent Meeker

Humphrey says it has to have an evolutionary past.
LN



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SV: SV: Only logic is necessary?

[Lennart Nilsson]

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Ämne: Re: SV: Only logic is necessary?

I'd say the decision to use classical logic is an 
assumption that you're applying it to sentences or propositions where it
will work (i.e. declarative, timeless sentences), not an assumption about
logic.  Same for geometry.  I use 
Euclidean geometry to calculate distances in my backyard, I use spherical
geometry to calculate 
air-miles to nearby airports, I use WGS84 to calculate distance between
naval vessels at sea.

Brent Meeker

Cooper says that all sentences have substans. The logic asumption is that
there are some that have not and are timless.

LN



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SV: SV: SV: Only logic is necessary?

[Lennart Nilsson]

You seem to think that evolution (or matter, or the multiverse) must adapt
to a preordained logic. Adjusting, approximately, to a fixed metaphysical
truth. 

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Ämne: Re: SV: SV: Only logic is necessary?




Lennart Nilsson wrote:

> Cooper says that a formalist, with only formal constraints on his logic
> (such as consistensy) is at the mercy of the formalism itself.

Meaning what ? That the formalism might not be giving answers
that are "really" right ? How would we tell ? using some
other logic ? Or empricial disproof ? But empirical disproof
itself rests on the logical principle of non-contradiction.

The only kind of logic that can be shown to be wrong
is informal logic (e.g. the Wasson Test), which can be shown
to be wrong using formal logic.

> He calls for a relativistic
> evolutionary logic where classical logic only would be justified for
certain
> special classes of problems. An evolutionary metatheory of logic would
> recognize which those problems are.

And would itself be ineveitably based on some kind of logic.





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SV: SV: Only logic is necessary?

[Lennart Nilsson]

Cooper says that a formalist, with only formal constraints on his logic
(such as consistensy) is at the mercy of the formalism itself. Such a
formalism is allways a special case, but Cooper warns of the danger that
classical logic is not recognized as such. He calls for a relativistic
evolutionary logic where classical logic only would be justified for certain
special classes of problems. An evolutionary metatheory of logic would
recognize which those problems are.

LN

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Ämne: Re: SV: Only logic is necessary?


Brent Meeker wrote:
>
>
>1Z wrote:
> >
> > Brent Meeker wrote:
> >
> >
> >>You misunderstand "population models".  It's not a question of what 
>members of a species think or
> >>vote for; it's a matter of whether their logic will lead to their 
>survival in the evolutionary
> >>biological sense.  So the majority can be wrong.
> >
> >
> > Cooper is making valid comments about *something*, but it isn't logic.
> > Logic is what tells us the majority can be wrong
>
>Cooper is not talking about logic in the formal sense; he's talking about 
>reasoning, making
>decisions, acting.  This can be "wrong" in the sense that there is a better

>(in terms of survival)
>way of reasoning.
>
>I'm not sure that logic in the formal sense can be right or wrong; it's a 
>set of conventions about
>language and inference.  About the only standard I've seen by which a logic

>or mathematical system
>could be called "wrong" is it if it is inconsistent, i.e. the axioms and 
>rules of inference allow
>everything to be a theorem.

If this is all that Cooper is talking about, I probably wouldn't have any 
objection to it--but Lennart Nilsson seemed to be making much stronger 
claims about the contingency of logic itself based on his interpretation of 
Cooper.

Jesse






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SV: Only Existence is necessary?

[Lennart Nilsson]

I really think that we should infer both the substantial world and the
numerical world from the middleground so to speak, from our observations.

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Ämne: Re: Only Existence is necessary?



Le 09-juil.-06, à 14:26, 1Z a écrit :



> So how do insubstantial numbers generate a substantial world ?




I guess there is no substantial world and I explain in all details here 
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ (and on this list) why insubstantial 
numbers generate inescapably, by the mixing of their additive and 
multiplicative structures,  local coherent webs of beliefs in 
substantial worlds, and how the laws of physics must emerge (with comp) 
from those purely mathematical webs ... making "comp" testable in the 
usual Popperian sense. In that sense "comp" already succeeds some first 
tests.


Bruno






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SV: Only logic is necessary?

[Lennart Nilsson]

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Ämne: Re: Only logic is necessary?

Numbers per se are what make 
If "being able to count" an evolutionary advantage.

Bruno

This is precisely the notion Cooper undermines in his book...

LN



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SV: SV: Only logic is necessary?

[Lennart Nilsson]

We use mathematics as a meta-language, just like you kan describe what is
said in latin by using italian. That does not make italian
logically/evolutionary prior to latin of course.

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Ämne: RE: SV: Only logic is necessary?


Lennart Nilsson wrote:

>
>No, you have the burden of showing what possible worlds could possibly mean
>outside a real biological setting.
>
>Cooper shows that logical laws are dependent on which population model they
>refer to. Of course that goes for the notion of possibility also...

That sounds incoherent to me...how can you even define "population models" 
without assuming various things about math and logic? Do you think the 
(mathematical) laws of population genetics have some sort of objective 
existence outside the human mind, but laws of math and logic themselves do 
not?

Jesse






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SV: Only logic is necessary?

[Lennart Nilsson]

No, you have the burden of showing what possible worlds could possibly mean
outside a real biological setting.

Cooper shows that logical laws are dependent on which population model they
refer to. Of course that goes for the notion of possibility also...

LN

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Ämne: Re: Only logic is necessary?



Brent Meeker wrote:
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
> > Le 05-juil.-06, à 15:55, Lennart Nilsson a écrit :
> >
> >
> >>William S. Cooper says: "The absolutist outlook has it that if a logic
> >>is valid at all it is valid period. A sound logic is completely sound
> >>everywhere and for everyone, no exceptions! For absolutist logicians a
> >>logical truth is regarded as 'true in all possible worlds', making
> >>logical laws constant, timeless and universal."

Of course "logical laws are true in all logically possible worlds"
is a (logical) tautology. An "X-possible world" is just a hypothetical
state of affairs that does not contradict X-rules (X is usually
logic or physics).

> >>Where do the laws of logic come from? he asks the absolutist.
> >>Bruno

First you have to ask if they could possibly have been different.
Then you have to ask what notion of possibility you are appealling
to...





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SV: SV: Only logic is necessary?

[Lennart Nilsson]

I
see from your questionmarks that an idea like Coopers, that logic is a  branch of biology (the subtitle of the book ”The
Evolution of reason) is ”out of bounds”.

 









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Ämne: Re: SV: Only logic is
necessary?



 


Le 06-juil.-06, à 21:49, Lennart Nilsson a écrit :

Bruno;
According
to Cooper classical analysis is plain bad biology, 






?




and
not a matter of subjective judgement or philosophical preferens (such as taking
atithmetical truth for granted). 







??



I
think this is where he would say your whole castle in the sky tumbles, and that
has nothing to do with trying to find a fault in your argument J







???

I don't understand what you are trying to say at all. Perhaps you could
elaborate? What do you or Cooper mean by "classical analysis is bad
biology"?

Bruno



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







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SV: Only logic is necessary?

[Lennart Nilsson]

Bruno;

According
to Cooper classical analysis is plain bad biology, and not a matter of
subjective judgement or philosophical preferens (such as taking atithmetical
truth for granted). I think this is where he would say your whole castle in the
sky tumbles, and that has nothing to do with trying to find a fault in your
argument J

 









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Ämne: Re: Only logic is necessary?



 


Le 05-juil.-06, à 15:55, Lennart Nilsson a écrit :

William
S. Cooper says: ”The absolutist outlook has it that if a logic is valid
at all it is valid period. A sound logic is completely sound everywhere and for
everyone, no exceptions! For absolutist logicians a logical truth is regarded
as ‘true in all possible worlds’, making logical laws constant,
timeless and universal.”
Where
do the laws of logic come from? he asks the absolutist.
Bruno?






If you believe in the more primary notion of arithmetical truth (for example if
you believe that proposition like "317 is prime" are independent of
you) then you can justify classical logic by the Plato Realm (perhaps limited
to numbers and their relations), and the many logics will be filtered through
the "mind" of the consistent extension of machines.
Classical logic is the best tool machines can have to go beyond classical
logics.
But logic and logics are not fundamental, with comp those
emerge from numbers. And nobody knows where numbers come from, and with
comp, we can understand what it must be so.

Bruno

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


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SV: Only logic is necessary?

[Lennart Nilsson]

" We are a quite sinple system (depicted in 3+1 D), so
our logic is also pretty simple (one-way pragmatic)."

Actually Cooper shows that even our simple system is not classically
logical...

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Ämne: Re: Only logic is necessary?


Lennart:
J.Cohen and I.Stewart in their chef d'oeuvre "Collapse
of Chaos" play around with aliens who they call
Zarathustrans, and who display a different 'alien'
logic. It is quite refreshing. You say: Sound? brings
up the tune of the Latin maxim:
mens sana in corpore  sano assigning the 'mental' to
the body we deal with. I reformulated this latter as:
the mind is limited by the 'material' tools we use.
Other tools? - maybe other logic, other math. 

A uiniverse IMO is structured by the ingredients it
started with in the unlimited variability of infinite
BigBangs (my narrative) consequently the relations of
those different ingredients (universe-system, call it
universe consciousness etc.) may evolve different self
reflective complex conglomerates (like here: it is us
humans)  with accordingly shaped mentality (logic,
math, etc.) 
We are a quite sinple system (depicted in 3+1 D), so
our logic is also pretty simple (one-way pragmatic).
Other universes may be more sophisticated and I have
pity for those poor fellow (simpleminded) humans who
may 'teleport' or 'duplicate' into such - much  more
sophisticated worlds and may become there their stupid
bums with their memory-experience-logic luggage. 

John M

--- Lennart Nilsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> William S. Cooper says: "The absolutist outlook has
> it that if a logic is
> valid at all it is valid period. A sound logic is
> completely sound
> everywhere and for everyone, no exceptions! For
> absolutist logicians a
> logical truth is regarded as 'true in all possible
> worlds', making logical
> laws constant, timeless and universal."
>  
> Where do the laws of logic come from? he asks the
> absolutist. 
>  
> Bruno?
> 
> 





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Only logic is necessary?

[Lennart Nilsson]

William
S. Cooper says: ”The absolutist outlook has it
that if a logic is valid at all it is valid period. A sound logic is completely
sound everywhere and for everyone, no exceptions! For absolutist logicians a
logical truth is regarded as ‘true in all possible worlds’, making
logical laws constant, timeless and universal.”

 

Where
do the laws of logic come from? he asks the
absolutist. 

 

Bruno?




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SV: Do prime numbers have free will?

[Lennart Nilsson]

Nick Boström have been trying to calculate the probability that
we live in a computer simulation. His answer to how you go about
this (below) if we live in an infinite universe with infinite simulations
seems to fit how one could do probabilities in a multiverse with an
infinite number of universes as well.

Lennart Nilsson


"To deal with these infinite cases, we need to do something like thinking in
terms of densities rather than total populations. A suitable density-measure
can be finite even if the total population is infinite. It is important to
note that we to use some kind of density-measure of observation types quite
independently of the simulation argument. In a “Big World” cosmology, all
possible human observations are in fact made by somebody somewhere. (Our
world is may well be a big world, so this is not a farfetched possibility.).
To be able to derive any observational consequences from our scientific
theories in a Big World, we need to be able to say that certain types of
observations are more typical than others. (See my paper “Self-Locating
Belief in Big Worlds” for more details on this.)

The most straightforward way of making this notion precise in an infinite
universe is via the idea of limit density. Start by picking an arbitrary
spacetime point. Then consider a hypersphere centered on that point with
radius R. Let f(A) be the fraction of all observations that are of kind A
that takes place within this hypersphere. Then expand the sphere. Let the
typicality of type-A observations be the limit of f(A) as R--->infinity."



-Ursprungligt meddelande-
Från: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] För Brent Meeker
Skickat: den 6 april 2006 18:21
Till: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Ämne: Re: Do prime numbers have free will?


Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> Tom Caylor writes:
> 
> 
>>1) The reductionist definition that something is determined by the
>>sum of atomic parts and rules.
> 
> 
> So how about this: EITHER something is determined by the sum of atomic
parts 
> and rules OR it is truly random.
> 
> There are two mechanisms which make events seem random in ordinary life.
One 
> is the difficulty of actually making the required measurements, finding
the 
> appropriate rules and then doing the calculations. Classical chaos may
make 
> this practically impossible, but we still understand that the event (such
as 
> a coin toss) is fundamentally deterministic, and the randomness is only 
> apparent.
> 
> The other mechanism is quantum randomness, for example in the case of 
> radioctive decay. In a single world interpretation of QM this is, as far
as 
> I am aware, true randomness. 

Unfortunately there is no way to distinguish "true randomness" from just 
"unpredictable" randomness.  So there are theories of QM in which the
randomness 
is just unpredictable, like Bohm's - and here's a recent paper on that theme
you 
may find interesting:

quant-ph/0604008

From: Gerard Hooft 't [view email]
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 18:17:08 GMT   (23kb)

The mathematical basis for deterministic quantum mechanics
Authors: Gerard 't Hooft
Comments: 15 pages, 3 figures
Report-no: ITP-UU-06/14, SPIN-06/12

 If there exists a classical, i.e. deterministic theory underlying
quantum 
mechanics, an explanation must be found of the fact that the Hamiltonian,
which 
is defined to be the operator that generates evolution in time, is bounded
from 
below. The mechanism that can produce exactly such a constraint is
identified in 
this paper. It is the fact that not all classical data are registered in the

quantum description. Large sets of values of these data are assumed to be 
indistinguishable, forming equivalence classes. It is argued that this
should be 
attributed to information loss, such as what one might suspect to happen
during 
the formation and annihilation of virtual black holes.
 The nature of the equivalence classes is further elucidated, as it
follows 
from the positivity of the Hamiltonian. Our world is assumed to consist of a

very large number of subsystems that may be regarded as approximately 
independent, or weakly interacting with one another. As long as two (or
more) 
sectors of our world are treated as being independent, they all must be
demanded 
to be restricted to positive energy states only. What follows from these 
considerations is a unique definition of energy in the quantum system in
terms 
of the periodicity of the limit cycles of the deterministic model.


>In a no-collapse/ many worlds interpretation 
> there is no true randomness because all outcomes occur deterministically 
> according to the SWE. However, there is apparent randomness due to what 
> Bruno calls the first person indeterminacy: the observer does not know
which 
> world he will end up in from a first person viewpoint, even though he
knows 
> that fro

choice and the quantum

[Lennart Nilsson]

What on earth does the following footnote mean? Are we back to consciousness
where the "quantumbuck" stops?
/LN


Understanding Deutsch's Probability in a Deterministic Multiverse by Hilary
Greaves



Footnote 16

The following objection is sometimes raised against the decision-theoretic
approach: in an Everettian context, all outcomes of a decision are realized,
and therefore it simply does not make sense to make choices, or to reason
about how one should act. If that is correct, then while we may agree that
probability can in principle be derived from rationality, this is of no use
to the Everettian, since (it is claimed) the Everettian cannot make sense of
rationality itself.
If this was correct, it would be a pressing 'incoherence problem' for the
decision-theoretic approach. The objection, however, is simply mistaken. The
mistake arises from an assumption that decisions must be modelled as
Everettian branching, with each possible outcome of the decision realized on
some branch. This is not true, and it is not at all what is going on in the
decision scenarios Deutsch and Wallace consider.
Rather, the agent is making a genuine choice between quantum games, only one
of which will be realized (namely, the chosen game). To be sure, each game
consists of an array of branches, all of which will, if that game is chosen,
be realized. But this does not mean that all games will be realized. It is
no less coherent for an Everettian to have a preference ordering over
quantum games than it is for an agent in a state of classical uncertainty to
have a preference ordering over classical lotteries.

Memory-prediction framework

[Lennart Nilsson]

Thoughts on the ” Memory-prediction framework” in explaining
intelligence anyone?

Book: Jeff Hawkins “On Intelligence”

Has math landed?

[Lennart Nilsson]

Logician Bruno Marchal ended an email like this Sep 
2002
 
"PS I have found a way to explain with 
knot theory what "logic" is,as a branch of math, by comparing propositions 
with knots, proofs withcontinuous deformation, and semantics with knot's 
invariants. As I saidbefore one of the difficulty for writing a paper is the 
misunderstandingbetween logicians and physicist ..."
 
I recalled that when I read the 
following in the article 
"Dancing the quantum dream" from  
New Scientist 24th of January 2004:
 
"performing measurements on a braided system of quantum particles can be 
equivalent to performing the computation that a particular knot encodes."
 
Then I came to the part where the article 
says:
 

"Freedman and Kitaev (who is now also at Microsoft Research), together with 
Michael Larson and Zhenghan Wang, both at Indiana University in Bloomington, 
have now shown how to build a "topological quantum computer" using technology 
that is available today (www.arxiv.org/quant-ph/0101025). 
It seems to be the one machine that could get useful quantum computers off the 
drawing board."
 
And now I wonder: Is this the beginning of math as an empirical 
science?
 
Lennart
 
 
 

Deutsch on SSA

[Lennart Nilsson]

Dear Russel

Do you have any comment to this comment by Deutsch on another list about
these matters?

Regards
Lennart

- Original Message -
From: "David Deutsch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 3:07 PM
Subject: Re: The Turing Principle and the SSA


> On 31 Oct 2003, at 4:59 am, Brian Scurfield wrote:
>
> > First, I think we should be careful to distinguish the Self-Sampling
> > Assumption (SSA) from the Strong Self-Sampling Assumption (SSSA).
> >
> > SSA: One should reason as if one were a random sample from the set of
> > all observers in one's reference class.
> >
> > SSSA: Each observer-moment should reason as if it were randomly
> > selected from its reference class.
>
> One problem with both of these is that there is no preferred meaning to
> sampling *randomly* from an infinite set, except in certain very
> special cases.
>
> A discrete infinity of copies of me is not one of those cases, so I
> don't think it is meaningful to select randomly from the "set of all
> observers who will ever be created who are (in any sense) like me". So
> doesn't the thing fall down at the first hurdle?
>
> -- David Deutsch



- Original Message -
From: "Russell Standish" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Saibal Mitra" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, November 02, 2003 5:45 AM
Subject: Re: Quantum accident survivor


> I disagree. You can only get an effect like this if the RSSA is
> invalid. You've been on this list long enough to remember the big
> debates about RSSA vs ASSA. I believe the ASSA is actually contrary to
> experience - but never mind - in order to get the effect you want you
> would need an SSA that is neither RSSA nor ASSA, but something *much*
> weirder.
>
> Cheers
>
> Saibal Mitra wrote:
> >
> > There have been many replies to this. I would say that you wouldn't
expect
> > to survive such accidents.
> >
> > Assume that we are sampled from a probability distribution over a set of
> > possible states. E.g. in eternal inflation theories all possible quantum
> > states the observable universe can be in are all realized, so all
possible
> > situations you can be in, do occur with some finite probability. In such
> > theories you ''always'' exist.
> >
> > But this doesn't mean that if you are Mohammed Atta saying your prayer
just
> > before impact with the WTC, your next experience is that the plane has
> > tunneled through the WTC without doing any harm. This is because there
are
> > many more Mohammed Attas in the universe that do not have this
experience.
> > So, you would ''survive'', but in a different branch with memory loss
plus
> > some aditional ''false'' memories. In that branch you wouldn't have been
in
> > that plane to begin with.
> >
> > You should think of yourself at any time as if you were chosen by a
random
> > generator sampled from a fixed probability distribution over the set of
all
> > possible states you can be in. The state that corresponds to you have
> > experienced flying through the WTC is assigned an extremely small
> > probability.
> >
> > How does this square with the normal experience of continuity through
time?
> > Well, every ''observer moment'' as chosen by the random generator has a
> > memory of  past experiences. So, if you go to bed now and wake up the
next
> > morning, you have the feeling of continuity, but this is only because
the
> > person waking up has the memory of going to bed.
> >
> > You could just as well say that the person going to bed survives in any
one
> > of the possible states he can be in. The state that happens to have the
> > memory of going to bed is just one of these possible states. That
particular
> > state has the illusion of being the continuation of the first state.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >  Oorspronkelijk bericht -
> > Van: "David Kwinter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Aan: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Verzonden: Friday, October 31, 2003 02:58 AM
> > Onderwerp: Quantum accident survivor
> >
> >
> > > Another quickie:
> > >
> > > Assume I survive a car/plane crash which we assume could have many
> > > different quantum outcomes including me (dead || alive)
> > >
> > > Since I was the same person (entire life history) up until the
> > > crash/quantum 'branch' - then can't I assume that since there was at
> > > least one outcome where I survived, that TO ME I will always survive
> > > other such life/death branches?
> > >
> > > Furthermore if I witness a crash where someone dies can I assume that
> > > the victim will survive in their own "world" so far as at least one
> > > quantum branch of survivability seems possible?
> > >
> > >
> > > David Kwinter
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
--
> A/Prof Russell StandishDirector
> High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119
(mobile)
> UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax   9385 6965, 0425 253119 (")
> Australia[EM

Fw: Something for Platonists

[Lennart Nilsson]

- Original Message -
From: "Lennart Nilsson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2003 9:14 AM
Subject: Something for Platonists


> Here is something from David Deutsch for Platonists to contemplate...I
think
>
> LN
>
>
>
> "We see around us a computable universe; that is to say, of all
>
> possible mathematical objects and relationships, only an in.nitesimal
> proportion
>
> are ever instantiated in the relationships of physical objects and
physical
>
> processes. (These are essentially the computable functions.) Now it might
>
> seem that one approach to explaining that amazing fact, is to say "the
> reason
>
> why physical processes conform to this very small part of mathematics,
>
> 'computable mathematics,' is that physical processes really are
computations
>
> running on a computer external to what we think of as physical reality."
But
>
> that relies on the assumption that the set of computable functions - the
>
> Turing computable functions, or the set of quantum computable operations
>
> - is somehow inherently privileged within mathematics. So that even a
> computer
>
> implemented in unknown physics (the supposed computer that we're
>
> all simulations on) would be expected to conform to those same notions of
>
> computability, to use those same functions that mathematics designates as
>
> computable. But in fact, the only thing that privileges the set of all
> computational
>
> operations that we see in nature, is that they are instantiated by
>
> the laws of physics. It is only through our knowledge of the physical
world
>
> that we know of the di.erence between computable and not computable. So
>
> it's only through our laws of physics that the nature of computation can
be
>
> understood. It can never be vice versa."
>
>

Not allowed

[Lennart Nilsson]

I have not recieved any mail fom this list for some days. Is it because it
is not allowed by Quantum Constructor Theory? :-)

Re: Am I a token or a type?

[Lennart Nilsson]

The way I see it is that we DO have to run the UD on a VERY specialized
machinery...

:-) Lennart

- Original Message -
From: "Bruno Marchal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2002 4:01 PM
Subject: Am I a token or a type?


> At 13:50 +0200 30/07/2002, Lennart Nilsson wrote:
>
> >How can an abstraction be felt?
>
> This is not an easy question. Obviously, the more general
> question "How can anything be felt?" is not easy too.
> A related hard question is "How can an abstraction feel?".
>
> My (short) answer was that from the "many"-philosophy point of view,
> it is difficult to make a clear line between a very specialized abstract
> type and a concrete token. I think this is related to Deutsch'
"fungibility"
> notion. When you ask people why they believe in tokens (particular,
singular
> instanciations of (abstract) types), in general they gives examples by
> referring to a "concrete object" like "that chair", this house", etc.
> But we know, both from QM and/or comp that such "object" corresponds to
> an infinity of fungible incarnation of "putative object" which are really
> more like a observer relative information pattern.
>
> I would like to recommend in that setting the very interesting book
> by Derek Parfit ,"Reasons and Persons" (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1984),
which
> subject, I think, overlaps many threads in both the FOR and Everything
lists.
>
> Let me quote a rare but important passage where I *disagree* with Parfit.
> The passage comes from the section 99, "Am I a Token or a Type?", page
296.
>
>   < would be well-described as different tokens of one person-type. As
Williams
> claims, if the object of love is the person-type, this is very different
> from ordinary love. This would not be the kind of love which gives great
> importance to a shared history.
>   If I lived in such a world, and I was one of a set of replicas, I might
> regard myself as a token of a type. Might I instead regard myself as *the
> type*? This would be a radical change. In one sense of the word `type', if
> I was a person type, I could not possibly cease to exist. Even if there
are
> not now tokens of my person-type, there would still be this person type.
> A person-type would survive even the destruction of the Universe. This is
> because, in this sense, a type is an abstract entity, like a number. We
could
> not possibly regard ourselves as abstract entities.>>
>
> This passage explains, imo, why Parfit, who really pushes the duplication
> thought experiment very far, has not foreseen neither the comp
indeterminacy,
> nor the reversal. I don't think there is an absolute frontier between
tokens
> and types. A token is just a very specialized type relatively to some
> distinguishing ability from the part of an observer. Something could be
> abstract from some point of view and concrete from another. (In a category
> theoretical approach an arrow "concrete ---> abstract" would be a
forgetful
> functors ?).
>
> As you see I am searching a way to explain "why we don't need to run the
> UD" without invoking the movie-graph argument or Maudlin's Olympia
Machinery.
> (see ref in my thesis).
>
> There are plenty inspiring and intriguing thoughts in Parfit's book. I do
not
> like his use of the "reductionnist" term, but I share almost all his moral
> and identity theories, despite the important,from the "(meta)physical"
point of
> view, difference alluded above.
>
> Bruno
> --
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>

Re: Am I a token or a type?

[Lennart Nilsson]

If what you say means that what is possible for a sentient being given
sufficiently advanced technique to percieve is what can possibly exist,
including the feeling
we have what it is like being us, I'm with you. The description and the
descibed belong to
the same dimension. The border between them becomes relative, just like the
Now in
relativity theory. So what is the uppermost level for AI?

Lennart

- Original Message -
From: "Colin Hales" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2002 6:46 AM
Subject: RE: Am I a token or a type?


>
> >How can an abstraction be felt?
>
> This is a very deep question. To me, anyway.
>
> I have followed this thread with spattering distraction while doing other
> things, and I am greatly interested in the relative roles of the self,
> observer and causality. My interest is in nailing the human mind's
position
> in this regard. I have come a long way in this (I think!)
>
> What I wanted to run by you folks for comment was the notion of and
> 'instance' of 'type "mind"' as simultaneously being a member of class
> 'observer' and of class 'observed'. In particular I am concerned with us
> homo sapiens sapiens  role as observer and as observed. It is part of my
> dealing with self referentiality - the notion of self and the human mind,
if
> you can just bear with me a second.
>
> Throw an N-dimensional net around any portion of any process in any
> universe. Call it a computational entity 'X'. Entity X (described by an as
> yet undefined observer), will have within it a model of its surroundings
> commensurate with the a) sophistication of the 'computational abstraction
> capacity' within it and b) the sophistication of connectivity of the
entity
> with the rest of the universe(s).
>
> If you consider the well worn 'what it is like' question as applied to the
> netted entity you begin to approach the answer to the "How can an
> abstraction be felt?" question. There is only one unassailable fact
> (opinions please) about this: The only way that the 'what it is like to be
> entity X' question can be answered is to 'be' entity X .ie. The
> computational process itself is the description of 'what it is like'. The
> 3rd person observer simply cannot 'be' entity X and hence is forever
> excluded from the 'what it is like' descriptive milieux.
>
> This concept can be applied to entity X1 = 1 x homo sapiens or X2 = the
> complete homo sapiens population of Greenland. The defining thing is the
> boundary formed by the net. The computational capacity X2 when considered
as
> a single entity will have a dim notion of self and poor sensory feeds as
> compared to X1.
>
> Q1 Can X2 as observer describe X1 to another instance of type X2? A. Not
> very well.
> Q2 Can X1 as observer describe X2? To another instance of type X1? A. much
> better.
>
> Why? Because the computational model within X1 for describing things that
> are NOT X1 is far superior to that of X2, which is a highly watered down
> computational critter with poor sensory feeds.
>
> Is this way of thinking useful? IMO: Yes, when you turn it around an apply
> it to the observer.
>
> It tells you that when you throw a 'net' around a chunk of universe, if
you
> capture optimally you will have the complete computational
> universe-modelling contents and all sensory feeds. As such the entity can
> then become an observer in the universe commensurate with the
sophistication
> of its modelling .ie. the causality predictions produced by the models
> within the net, given all history and current sensory inputs. Put observer
> and observed together (as two 'instances' of entities of a class) and you
> have each modelling the other and themselves.
>
> Getting back to the original question "How can an abstraction be felt?".
Now
> 'be' the abstraction. Now apply it to a rock, insect, mouse, dog, dolphin,
> human. Consider throwing a net around a galaxy or an entire universe.
> Examples:
>
> Consider X1 = a whole universe.
> Does it have any sensory feeds or anything 'outside' to model? Nope.
> Being like 'a universe' is like being nothing.
>
> Consider X1 = an atom of silicon. Does it have any sensory feeds or
anything
> 'outside' to model? Maybe a tiny bit eg some sense of temperature and no
> model of self. It has a lot to model but very little to model with.
'Being'
> an atom is very like being nothing, but not quite.
>
> The trick thing that has distracted us all is that we tend to thing of the
> 'feeling' aspect as 'happening to us'. The reason for this is that we have
a
> very sophisticated model for self. It is NOT happening to us. We ARE it.
Our
> skull contains brain matter. The brain matter models internal and external
> processes and it is so sophisticated we feel like we are outside
ourselves.
> We deal with the rest of the universe at the boundary of our bodies (or
> temporary extensions we connect to it). The collective effect of a
> concentration of modelling capacity 

real and virtual

[Lennart Nilsson]

Title: Re: being inside a universe



I have been trying to comprehend the UD-Argument of 
Brunos, following the links supplied at http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3044.html, 
and I find myself accepting step 1 to 10, but not some of the conclusions. ANY 
virtual reconstitution and computational stories going thrue it necesseraly has 
a real (physical) interpretation. So when Bruno casts away the hardware and says 
that all is software this doesn´t follow with any necessity. So what is question 
11, Bruno?
 
Lennart

Re: JOINING posts

[Lennart Nilsson]

My formal education ended back in the beginnings of the seventies with a
finished MA in sociology and an invitation to get a doctors degree at the
University of Stockholm. But life got in the way.

When my wife died two years ago I decided to write a book in order to
understand better some of my thinkings during all those years. I finished
the book in seven months and have since been trying to get it published.
That has proven very hard since Swedish is a small language. Max Tegmark,
who is swedish, even though he works in USA has read my manuscript and
promised to write a forward if I could get a bookcompany to publish it. He
said he was impressed and thought that my work was a fascinating hike in the
territory between philosophy and physics and that it was full of original
ideas! Unfortunately I don´t suppose many on this list is fluent in swedish,
but to give you an idea where I´m at I can show you the bibliography from
the book:

Bibliografi

Barrow, John D.: Universums födelse, Natur och Kultur, Stockholm 1995
Blackmore, Susan: The Meme Machine, Oxford University Press, New York 1999
Casti, John L.: Searching for certainty, Scribners, London 1992
Close, Frank: Lucifer´s Legacy, Oxford University Press, New York 2000
Davies, Paul: Superforce, Unwin Paperbacks, London 1985
Davies, P.C.W.; Brown J. (eds.): Superstrings - A Theory of Everything?,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988
Dawkins, Richard: The Blind Watchmaker, Penguin Books, London 1988
Dawkins, Richard: Livets flod, Natur och Kultur, Stockholm 1996
Dennet, Daniel C.: Consciousness Explained, Penguin Books, London 1992
Dennet, Daniel C.: Darwin´s Dangerous Idea, Touchstone, New York 1996
Dennet, Daniel C.: Kinds of Minds - Toward an Understanding of
Consciousness, BasicBooks, New York 1996
Deutsch, David: The Fabric of Reality, Penguin Books, London 1997
Gell-Mann, Murray: Kvarken och Jaguaren, ICA-förlaget, Västerås 1994
Greene, Brian: The elegant universe, W.W. Norton & Company, New York 1999
Guttmann Y.M.: The concept of probability in statistical physics,  Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge 1999
Hawking, Stephen W.: Kosmos - En kort historik, Rabén Prisma, Stockholm 1992
Hawking, Stephen W.: Svarta hål och universums framtid, Rabén Prisma,
Stockholm 1994
Hoffmeyer, Jesper: Livstecken, Bonnier Alba, Stockholm 1997
Hutten, Ernest H.: The Ideas of Physics, Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh, 1967
Jaynes, Julian: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the
Bicameral Mind, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 1982
Livio, Mario: The Accelerating Universe, John Wiley & Sons, New York 2000
Monod, Jacques: Slump och nödvändighet, Aldus/Bonniers, Stockholm 1972
Smolin, Lee: Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London
2000
Wick, David: The Infamous Boundary, Springer-Verlag, New York 1995

Artiklar

David Deutsch: Comment on "'Many Minds' Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics
by Michael Lockwood", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 222-8
(1996)
David Deutsch: Proceedings of the Royal Society A455, 3129-3197 Quantum
Theory of Probability and Decisions (1999)
David Deutsch: Proceedings of the Royal Society A456, 1759-1774 Information
Flow in Entangled Quantum Systems (2000)
David Deutsch, Artur Ekert, Rossella Luppachini: Machines, Logic and Quantum
Physics, Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 3, 3 (September 2000)
David Deutsch: The Structure of the Multiverse, opublicerad artikel som blev
framsidesstoff  i  New Scientist (14 Juli 2001)
Horava & Witten: Eleven-dimensional supergravity on a manifold with
boundary, Nucl. Phys. B475 (1996)
Khoury, Ovrut, Steinhard, Turok: The Ekpyrotic Universe: Colliding Branes
and the Origin of the Hot Big Bang, arXiv:hep-th/0103239 (Mars 2001)
Tegmark & Wheeler: 100 Years of the Quantum, Scientific American (Februari
2001)
Max Tegmark: Is ``the theory of everything'' merely the ultimate ensemble
theory?, Annals of Physics 270, 1-51 (November 1998)
Michael Brooks: Enlightenment in the barrel of a gun, The Guardian (1997)
Anne Runehov: Mind, Brain, Quantum & Time: A Lockwoodian perspective,
Magisteruppsats vis Stockholms Universitet Filosofiska Institutionen (1999)
Steane & van Dam: Quantum entanglement looks like telepathy when three
physicist get together on a game show, Physics Today 35-39, (Februari 2000)

Webbpublikationer

E. T. Jaynes: Probability Theory: The Logic of Science,  fragment till ett
bokmanuskript från Juni 1994, PDF-format på webbadressen bayes.wustl.edu
(Augusti 2001)
Christoph Schiller: Motion Mountain - Hiking beyond space and time along the
concepts of modern physics, lärobok i fysik under utarbetande, PDF-format på
webbadressen dse.nl/motionmountain/welcome.html (Augusti 2001)

- Original Message -
From: "Wei Dai" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 7:47 PM
Subject: JOINING posts


> I find that I often have trouble understanding posts on this mailing list,
> given the wide range of intellectual ground that it covers. It seem

Re: Isn't this a good point

[Lennart Nilsson]

I might not be on the same side as you and Juergen
Schmidhuber on this, but I AM on the same side as David Deutsch which is
comforting.

"Recent progress in the quantum theory of computation has provided practical
> instances of this, and
> forces us to abandon the classical view that computation, and hence
> mathematical proof, are purely logical notions
> independent of that of computation as a physical process. Henceforward, a
> proof must be regarded not as an abstract object
> or process but as a physical process, a species of computation"

>From David Deutsch's paper: Machines, Logic
and Quantum Physics (http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/math.HO/9911150)



- Original Message -
From: "Bruno Marchal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Lennart Nilsson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2002 3:16 PM
Subject: Re: Isn't this a good point


> Lennart Nilsson wrote:
>
> >I was under the impression that interaction has to do with information
> >transfer and that that takes care of the fact that there cannot be an
> >information transfer without physicalness.
>
>
> OK, but then you postulate something physical exists.
>
>
> >"Distinct memory states label and 'inhabit' different branches of
Everett's
> >'Many Worlds' Universe. In this manner, the distinction between
epistemology
> >and ontology is washed away: There can be no information without physical
> >representation. Persistence of correlations is all that is needed to
recover
> >'familiar reality'."
> >arXiv: quant- ph/ 0105127 v1 24 2001
>
>
> I appreciate very much Zurek, but like almost all physicist he does
> postulate physicalness. I do not, if only because I would like an
> explanation of "physicalness" without reference to physical being.
> Also I showed that such reference cannot be used once we postulate
> the computationalist hypothesis (comp)in the cognitive science.
> Consult my URL for more explanations including discussions in this list.
>
> I am aware what I say is quite against the current paradigm, although
> this is a point where a lot agrees (in this list), including Juergen
> Schmidhuber whose work is also based on comp. The difference between
> Schmidhuber and me is that Juergen search prior for the "right"
computation
> among all computations, and I search a (relative) measure on all
computations.
> But we are both trying to explain physical appearances from the
> "every computations exists" where a computation is basically a collection
> of relatively related numbers (not an "actual running of a concrete
> machine".
>
> Bruno
>
> --
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

Re: Isn't this a good point

[Lennart Nilsson]

I was under the impression that interaction has to do with information
transfer and that that takes care of the fact that there cannot be an
information transfer without physicalness. At least according to this
source:

"Distinct memory states label and 'inhabit' different branches of Everett's
'Many Worlds' Universe. In this manner, the distinction between epistemology
and ontology is washed away: There can be no information without physical
representation. Persistence of correlations is all that is needed to recover
'familiar reality'."
arXiv: quant- ph/ 0105127 v1 24 2001

DECOHERENCE, EINSELECTION,

AND THE QUANTUM ORIGINS OF THE CLASSICAL

Wojciech Hubert Zurek


- Original Message -
From: "Bruno Marchal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Lennart Nilsson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2002 11:38 AM
Subject: Re: Isn't this a good point


> At 9:27 +0200 22/05/2002, Lennart Nilsson wrote (on the everything-list):
>
>
> >In the Motion Mountain project dse.nl/motionmountain/welcome.html
Christoph
> >Schiller defines existence such: "(physical) existence is the ability to
> >describe interactions." And furthermore explains this by saying: "It is
thus
> >pointless to discuss whether a physical concept 'exists' or whether it is
> >'only' an abstraction used as a tool for descriptions of observations.
The
> >two possibilities coincide. The point of dispute can only be whether the
> >descriptions provided by a concept is or is not precise."
>
>
> >Isn't that a good point!!!
>
>
> Sure. But I don't think my old friend Christoph really follows it :-)
>
> Also what is exactly an interaction? You should try to describe it
> without postulating implicitely physicalness if you don't want to apply
> 'exists' to physical concept.
> Perhaps "Geometry of Interaction" by the logician Jean Yves Girard
> is interesting from that point of view. In the same regard the
> work by another logician Vaughan Pratt on the mind/body problem
>   (http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#ratmech)
> is quite relevant.
>
> Bruno

Isn't this a good point

[Lennart Nilsson]

In the Motion Mountain project dse.nl/motionmountain/welcome.html Christoph
Schiller defines existence such: "(physical) existence is the ability to
describe interactions." And furthermore explains this by saying: "It is thus
pointless to discuss whether a physical concept 'exists' or whether it is
'only' an abstraction used as a tool for descriptions of observations. The
two possibilities coincide. The point of dispute can only be whether the
descriptions provided by a concept is or is not precise."

Isn't that a good point

Lennart
PS. Hello all! I'm an interested party from Sweden.