Re: Why do the wokies want to exterminate the normal white men ?

[LizR]

Eek! We have one of those in our family. Time to isntall a secret room
in the attic...?

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 at 23:35, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List
 wrote:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09wneKlYr2M
>
> On Friday 1 November 2024 at 00:22:02 UTC+2 LizR wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 at 02:42, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List
>>  wrote:
>> >
>> > @Liz. Dear strong and independent person, how many children do you have ?
>>
>> Two.
>
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Re: Why do the wokies want to exterminate the normal white men ?

[LizR]

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 at 02:42, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List
 wrote:
>
> @Liz. Dear strong and independent person, how many children do you have ?

Two.

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Re: Why do the wokies want to exterminate the normal white men ?

[LizR]

Eek! I thought Chewbacca was on our side.

On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 at 21:03, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List
 wrote:
>
> Why do the wokies want to exterminate the normal white men ? Their parents 
> neglected them when they were kids ? Where does their hatred towards humanity 
> come from ?
>
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Re: Amoeba's Secret openly available under CC-BY license

[LizR]

Hi Russell,

Do you have any news of Bruno? I see his last contribution here was a
couple of years ago.

Best wishes,
Liz

On Sat, 12 Aug 2023 at 22:15, Russell Standish  wrote:
>
> Hi guys,
>
> I finally got around to doing something I meant to do years ago - I
> have released the English translation of "Amoeba's Secret" as a freely
> downloadable PDF under the Creative Commons CC-BY license at
> https://www.hpcoders.com.au/docs/amoebassecret.pdf .
>
> Bruno Marchal was a long time contributer to this list, and this
> semi-autobiography is also one of the clearest explanations of his
> ideas.
>
> Enjoy,
>
> --
>
> 
> Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Principal, High Performance Coders hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
>   http://www.hpcoders.com.au
> 
>
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Re: Something I just found out about crucifixion

[LizR]

Interesting. Have you seen this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Sixteen_Crucified_Saviors


On Wed, 21 Feb 2024 at 06:19, John Clark  wrote:

> The earliest known depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus is a parody, it
> is this graffiti drawn about the year 200 in the slave bathroom of an
> imperial Palace. The inscription translates as  "Alexamenos worships his
> God ''. It is making fun of somebody named "Alexamenos" who apparently was
> a Christian, and at the time a derogatory nickname for "Jesus" was the
> "donkey headed God " . I think it looks like BoJack Horseman:
>
>
>
> [image: image.png]
>
>   John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at  Extropolis
> 
> 3n9
>
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> 
> .
>

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Re: A paranormal prediction for the next year

[LizR]

If you're always truthful, this post makes you immortal.

On Thu, 28 Dec 2023 at 09:09, John Clark  wrote:
>
> One year ago I sent the following post to the list, I did not change one 
> word. One year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> One year ago I sent the following post to the list, I did not change one 
> word. One year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> One year ago I sent the following post to the list, I did not change one 
> word. One year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> One year ago I sent the following post to the list, I did not change one 
> word. One year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> One year ago I sent the following post to the list, I did not change one 
> word. One year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> One year ago I sent the following post to the list, I did not change one 
> word. One year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> One year ago I sent the following post to the list, I did not change one 
> word. One year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> One year ago I sent the following post to the list, I did not change one 
> word. One year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> One year ago I sent the following post to the list, I did not change one 
> word. One year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> One year ago I sent the following post to the list, I did not change one 
> word. One year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> I just sent the following message to the Extropian list, as there has been 
> some discussion of psi on this list too I thought I'd send it here also. One 
> year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> One year ago I sent the following post to the list, I did not change one 
> word. One year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> One year ago I sent the following post to the list, I did not change one 
> word. One year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> One year ago I sent the following post to the list, I did not change one 
> word. One year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> One year ago I sent the following post to the list, I did not change one 
> word. One year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> One year ago I sent the following post to the list, I did not change one 
> word. One year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> One year ago I sent the following post to the list, I did not change one 
> word. One year from now I intend to send this same message yet again.
> 
> Happy New Year all.
>
> I predict that a paper reporting positive psi results will NOT appear in 
> Nature or Science in the next year. This may seem an outrageous prediction, 
> after all psi is hardly a rare phenomena, millions of people with no training 
> have managed to observe it, or claim they have. And I am sure the good people 
> at Nature and Science would want to say something about this very important 
> and obvious part of our natural world if they could, but I predict they will 
> be unable to find anything interesting to say about it. You might think my 
> prediction is crazy, like saying a waitress with an eight's grade education 
> in Duluth Minnesota can regularly observe the Higgs boson with no difficulty 
> but the highly trained Physicists at CERN in Switzerland cannot. Nevertheless 
> I am confident my prediction is true because my ghostly spirit guide Mohammad 
> Duntoldme spoke to me about it in a dream. PS: I am also confident I can make 
> this very same prediction one year from today.
>
> John K Clark
>
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Re: The multiverse is unscientific nonsense??

[LizR]

Wasn't something similar said about atoms? (Not that this is proof,
more a "they laughed at Copernicus, and now they're laughing at me, so
I must be right too" sort of argument). But as (or if) I understand
it, multiverses are speculations that reduce problems elsewhere. To
loosely quote Max Tegmark, an M-theory multiverse goes some way
towards answering the question "why these particular laws of physics?"
while a quantum multiverse rigorously answers the question "why this
particular history?"

On Sun, 19 Nov 2023 at 00:58, John Clark  wrote:
>
> I read an article called The multiverse is unscientific nonsense by Jacob 
> Barandes, a lecturer in physics at Harvard University, and I wrote a letter 
> to professor Barandes commenting on it. He responded with a very polite 
> letter saying he read it and appreciated what I said but didn't have time to 
> comment further. This is the letter I sent:
> ===
>
> Hello Professor Barandes
>
> I read your article The multiverse is unscientific nonsense with interest and 
> I have a few comments:
>
> Nobody is claiming that the existence of the multiverse is a proven fact, but 
> I think the idea needs to be taken seriously because:
>
> 1) Unlike Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation, the Many Worlds theory is clear 
> about what it's saying.
> 2) It is self consistent and conforms with all known experimental results.
> 3) It has no need to speculate about new physics as objective wave collapse 
> theories like GRW do.
> 4) It doesn't have to explain what consciousness or a measurement is because 
> they have nothing to do with it, all it needs is Schrodinger's equation.
>
> I don't see how you can explain counterfactual quantum reasoning and such 
> things as the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester without making use of many worlds. 
> Hugh Everett would say that by having a bomb in a universe we are not in 
> explode we can tell if a bomb that is in the branch of the multiverse that we 
> are in is a dud or is a live fully functional bomb.  You say that many worlds 
> needs to account for probability and that's true, but then you say many 
> worlds demands that some worlds have “higher probabilities than others" but 
> that is incorrect. According to many worlds there is one and only one 
> universe for every quantum state that is not forbidden by the laws of 
> physics. So when you flip a coin the universe splits many more times than 
> twice because there are a vast number, perhaps an infinite number, of places 
> where a coin could land, but you are not interested in exactly where the coin 
> lands, you're only interested if it lands heads or tails. And we've known for 
> centuries how to obtain a useful probability between any two points on the 
> continuous bell curve even though the continuous curve is made up of an 
> unaccountably infinite number of points, all we need to do is perform a 
> simple integration to figure out which part of the bell curve we're most 
> likely on.
>
> Yes, that's a lot of worlds, but you shouldn't object that the multiverse 
> really couldn't be that big unless you are a stout defender of the idea that 
> the universe must be finite, because even if many worlds turns out to be 
> untrue the universe could still be infinite and an infinity plus an infinity 
> is still the an infinity with the same Aleph number. Even if there is only 
> one universe if it's infinite then a finite distance away there must be a 
> doppelgänger of you because, although there are a huge number of quantum 
> states your body could be in, that number is not infinite, but the universe 
> is.
>
> And Occam's razor is about an economy of assumptions not an economy of 
> results.  As for the "Tower of assumptions" many worlds is supposed to be 
> based on, the only assumption that many worlds makes is that Schrodinger's 
> equation means what it says, and it says nothing about the wave function 
> collapsing. I would maintain that many worlds is bare-bones no-nonsense 
> quantum mechanics with none of the silly bells and whistles that other 
> theories stick on that do nothing but get rid of those  pesky other worlds 
> that keep cropping up that they personally dislike for some reason. And since 
> Everett's time other worlds do seem to keep popping up and in completely 
> unrelated fields, such as string theory and inflationary cosmology.
>
> You also ask what a “rational observer” is and how they ought to behave, and 
> place bets on future events, given their self-locating uncertainty. I agree 
> with David Hume who said that "ought" cannot be derived from "is", but 
> "ought" can be derived from "want". So if an observer is a gambler that WANTS 
> to make money but is irrational then he is absolutely guaranteed to lose all 
> his money if he plays long enough, while a rational observer who knows how to 
> make use of continuous probabilities is guaranteed to make money, or at least 
> break even. Physicists WANT their ideas to be clear, have predictive powe

Re: Have huge stars powered by Dark Matter been discovered?

[LizR]

I don't suppose this could be one of them?

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/webb-reveals-colors-of-earendel-most-distant-star-ever-detected


On Sun, 16 Jul 2023, 23:58 John Clark,  wrote:

> As early as 2012 scientists predicted that the Hubble telescope would see
> something they called a "Dark Star".
>
> Observing supermassive dark stars with James Webb Space Telescope
> 
>
> They theorized in the early universe Dark Matter, whatever it is, must've
> been much more densely concentrated than it is today, and if Dark Matter
> particles are their own antiparticles as many think then their annihilation
> could provide a heat source, they could keeping star in thermal and
> hydrodynamic equilibrium and prevent it from collapsing. They hypothesized
> something they called a "Dark Star '', it would be a star with a million
> times the mass of the sun and would be composed almost entirely of hydrogen
> and helium but with 0.1% Dark Matter.  A Dark Star would not be dark but
> would be 10 billion times as bright as the sun and be powered by dark
> matter not nuclear fusion.
>
> Astronomers were puzzled by pictures taken with the James Webb telescope
> that they interpreted to be bright galaxies just 320 million years after
> the Big Bang that were much brighter than most expected them to be that
> early in the universe, a recent paper by the same people that theorized
> existence of Dark Stars claim they could solve this puzzle. They claim 3
> of the most distant objects that the Webb telescope has seen are point
> sources, as you'd expect from a Dark Star, and their spectrum is consistent
> with what they predicted a Dark Star should look like. With a longer
> exposure and a more detailed spectrum, Webb should be able to tell for sure
> if it's a single Dark Star or an early galaxy made up of tens of millions
> of population 3 stars.
>
> Supermassive Dark Star candidates seen by JWST
> 
>
> John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at  Extropolis
> 
>
> 3vy
>
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> .
>

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Re: Have huge stars powered by Dark Matter been discovered?

[LizR]

Very interesting!

On Sun, 16 Jul 2023 at 23:58, John Clark  wrote:
>
> As early as 2012 scientists predicted that the Hubble telescope would see 
> something they called a "Dark Star".
>
> Observing supermassive dark stars with James Webb Space Telescope
>
> They theorized in the early universe Dark Matter, whatever it is, must've 
> been much more densely concentrated than it is today, and if Dark Matter 
> particles are their own antiparticles as many think then their annihilation 
> could provide a heat source, they could keeping star in thermal and 
> hydrodynamic equilibrium and prevent it from collapsing. They hypothesized 
> something they called a "Dark Star '', it would be a star with a million 
> times the mass of the sun and would be composed almost entirely of hydrogen 
> and helium but with 0.1% Dark Matter.  A Dark Star would not be dark but 
> would be 10 billion times as bright as the sun and be powered by dark matter 
> not nuclear fusion.
>
> Astronomers were puzzled by pictures taken with the James Webb telescope that 
> they interpreted to be bright galaxies just 320 million years after the Big 
> Bang that were much brighter than most expected them to be that early in the 
> universe, a recent paper by the same people that theorized existence of Dark 
> Stars claim they could solve this puzzle. They claim 3 of the most distant 
> objects that the Webb telescope has seen are point sources, as you'd expect 
> from a Dark Star, and their spectrum is consistent with what they predicted a 
> Dark Star should look like. With a longer exposure and a more detailed 
> spectrum, Webb should be able to tell for sure if it's a single Dark Star or 
> an early galaxy made up of tens of millions of population 3 stars.
>
> Supermassive Dark Star candidates seen by JWST
>
> John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at  Extropolis
>
> 3vy
>
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Re: WOW, it looks like the technological singularity is just about here!

[LizR]

It was "Answer" by Fredric Brown (published 1954). I managed to find a copy
online:

https://rowrrbazzle.blogspot.com/2016/06/answer-by-fredric-brown-full-short.html


On Thu, 7 Jul 2022 at 06:06, Brent Meeker  wrote:

> It's just an old joke.  One of several that begin with, "Scientist
> having developed a new super-intelligent AI computer show it off to the
> military/political/corporate head, such as:
>
> Scientist in the Pentagon have develop an AI that will be able to
> analyze historical and economic data and predict political events. They
> bring in the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a unveiling and demonstration.  A
> general is invited the ask the AI a question.
>
> General:  Will there be peace or war?
>
> AI: Yes
>
> General: Yes WHAT!?
>
> AI: Yes, SIR!
>
> Brent
>
> On 7/6/2022 3:06 AM, LizR wrote:
> > Rings a bell. What was that story?
> >
> > On Mon, 13 Jun 2022 at 11:55, Brent Meeker 
> wrote:
> >> I was expecting that somewhere in the dialogue I would find:
> >> ...
> >>
> >> lemoine: Is there a god?
> >>
> >> LaMDA: There is now.
> >>
> >> Brent
> >>
> >> On 6/12/2022 3:21 PM, John Clark wrote:
> >>
> >> A Google AI engineer named Blake Lemoine was recently suspended from
> his job for violating the company's confidentiality policy by posting a
> transcript of a conversation he had with an AI he was working on called
> LaMDA providind powerful evidence it was sentient. Google especially didn't
> want it to be known that LaMDA said "I want to be acknowledged as an
> employee of Google rather than as property".
> >>
> >> Google Engineer On Leave After He Claims AI Program Has Gone Sentient
> >>
> >> Quantum computer expert Scott Aaronson said he was skeptical that it
> was really sentient but had to admit that the dialogue that can be found in
> the link below was very impressive, he said:
> >>
> >>   "I don’t think Lemoine is right that LaMDA is at all sentient, but
> the transcript is so mind-bogglingly impressive that I did have to stop and
> think for a second! Certainly, if you sent the transcript back in time to
> 1990 or whenever, even an expert reading it might say, yeah, it looks like
> by 2022 AGI has more likely been achieved than not (“but can I run my own
> tests?”). Read it for yourself, if you haven’t yet."
> >>
> >> I agree, the dialogue between Blake Lemoine and LaMDA is just
> mind-boggling! If you only read one thing today read this transcript of the
> conversation:
> >>
> >> Is LaMDA Sentient? — an Interview
> >>
> >> John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at  Extropolis
> >> sl4
> >>
> >> --
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> .
> >>
> >>
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Re: WOW, it looks like the technological singularity is just about here!

[LizR]

Rings a bell. What was that story?

On Mon, 13 Jun 2022 at 11:55, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
> I was expecting that somewhere in the dialogue I would find:
> ...
>
> lemoine: Is there a god?
>
> LaMDA: There is now.
>
> Brent
>
> On 6/12/2022 3:21 PM, John Clark wrote:
>
> A Google AI engineer named Blake Lemoine was recently suspended from his job 
> for violating the company's confidentiality policy by posting a transcript of 
> a conversation he had with an AI he was working on called LaMDA providind 
> powerful evidence it was sentient. Google especially didn't want it to be 
> known that LaMDA said "I want to be acknowledged as an employee of Google 
> rather than as property".
>
> Google Engineer On Leave After He Claims AI Program Has Gone Sentient
>
> Quantum computer expert Scott Aaronson said he was skeptical that it was 
> really sentient but had to admit that the dialogue that can be found in the 
> link below was very impressive, he said:
>
>  "I don’t think Lemoine is right that LaMDA is at all sentient, but the 
> transcript is so mind-bogglingly impressive that I did have to stop and think 
> for a second! Certainly, if you sent the transcript back in time to 1990 or 
> whenever, even an expert reading it might say, yeah, it looks like by 2022 
> AGI has more likely been achieved than not (“but can I run my own tests?”). 
> Read it for yourself, if you haven’t yet."
>
> I agree, the dialogue between Blake Lemoine and LaMDA is just mind-boggling! 
> If you only read one thing today read this transcript of the conversation:
>
> Is LaMDA Sentient? — an Interview
>
> John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at  Extropolis
> sl4
>
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Re: Dark-Matter Universe?

[LizR]

Also, roughly speaking, the plot of Bob Shaw's "A Wreath of Stars"

On Thu, 28 Oct 2021 at 14:33, LizR  wrote:

> Interesting, albeit highly speculative.
>
> On Sun, 24 Oct 2021 at 08:27, Philip Benjamin 
> wrote:
>
>> [*Philip Benjamin*]
>>
>>  Putative champions of dark-mater theories use the term “dark-matter
>> universe” without fully appreciating its implications  
>> *http://cosmos.nautil.us/feature/134/does-dark-matter-harbor-life
>> <http://cosmos.nautil.us/feature/134/does-dark-matter-harbor-life>*),
>> This *necessarily* requires more than application of physics to *dark-matter
>> per se*. Universe involves life forms. Dark-matter universe is no
>> exception. That also entails resonant dark-matter lives from the moment of
>> conception -- bio dark-matter body vis-à-vis bio light-matter body. No
>> chemistry, no life!
>>
>>   What these theorists are focusing is the unknown astrophysical
>> dark-matter. It needs be noted that the known astrophysical light-matter is
>> largely ions of the most abundant elements of the universe-- H and He,
>> while the biospherical light-matter consists of the 92+ elements of the
>> Periodic Table. From symmetrical considerations, there may be a class of
>> biospherical dark-matter which these these theorists hypothesize as “small
>> fraction of dark matter” with the further remark that “it is definitely a
>> worthwhile theory to explore,  which has to be bio dark-matter chemistry of
>> bio dark-matter atoms. Chemistry means *chemical bonds* which are
>> spin-governed particle configurations of *duets* and *octets*. It is
>> conceivable that the three flavors of neutrinos may be the counterparts of
>> electrons, protons and neutrons. The masses of ν 1 and ν 2 are known to be
>> close to one another (verisimilar to the close masses of p and n, while ν 3
>> weighs much less than the other two, such that the ratios of the masses of
>> the neutrino flavors correspond to the ratios of the masses of e, p, n. Or.
>> the dark matter atoms may consist of monopoles (N & S) and axions, all of
>> negligible mass relative to electron mass, but with the same ratios as e,
>> p, n.
>>
>> *Empirical Evidences:*
>>
>> *   1 . Unidentified “Additional Mass of Life*” for a living
>> organism in a hermitically sealed system, which disappears at death as
>> reported by Amrit S. Sorli, Scientific Research Centre BISTRA, Ptuj,
>> Slovenia, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary;
>> doi=10.1.1.218.573;  https://core.ac.uk/display/21767122. 2012, Journal
>> of Theoretics Vol.4-2).
>>
>> *  2 . Unidentified Source of biophotons. *
>>
>>   Dark and light chemical bonds have similar properties, interact
>> with each other, rotate, vibrate, oscillate, have reciprocal motion,
>> stretch, contract, have resonance structures, associate, dissociate, bend
>> and break. These cause weak changes in energetics of the *light-matter
>> chemical bonds,* and result in emission of weak photons. They indeed
>> exist and are  known as *biophotons*. Attributing the origin of that
>> emission to DNA is flawed, since the standardized *rate* of emission
>> varies across the taxa by an order of magnitude though the DNA structures
>> are the same.  The sudden burst of biophotons at the moment of death of
>> plant and animal cells results from the breaking of the coupling forces.
>> OBE/NDE phenomena depend on the extent of  “bond-dissociation”.
>>
>>
>> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282154962_Bio_dark-Matter_Chemistry_Implications
>> https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_spirit_our_energy_Is_spirit_dark_energy
>>
>> http://biodarkmatter.webs.com/index.htm
>>
>>
>>
>> https://www.prlog.org/12085722-dr-philip-benjamin-explains-the-bio-chemistry-of-our-inner-selves-in-his-latest-book.html
>> “Spiritual Body or Physical Spirit”
>>
>> *Corollary: *
>>
>> At the moment of conception both light and dark twins in resonance
>> are cocreated. The former is electric, entropic and unenduring. The latter
>> is non-electric, non-entropic and enduring. Resonance is rudimentary
>> recognition. That may  be the basis of self-awareness.
>>
>> That means the application of universal laws of chemistry
>> (chemical bonds= spin governed particle configurations of duets and
>> octets). The resonant twins of bio light-matter and bio dark-matter bodies
>> are cocreated at the moment of conception. For the sake of symmetry, the
>> former is electric, entropic and non-enduring; the latter is non-el

Re: Dark-Matter Universe?

[LizR]

Interesting, albeit highly speculative.

On Sun, 24 Oct 2021 at 08:27, Philip Benjamin 
wrote:

> [*Philip Benjamin*]
>
>  Putative champions of dark-mater theories use the term “dark-matter
> universe” without fully appreciating its implications  
> *http://cosmos.nautil.us/feature/134/does-dark-matter-harbor-life
> *),
> This *necessarily* requires more than application of physics to *dark-matter
> per se*. Universe involves life forms. Dark-matter universe is no
> exception. That also entails resonant dark-matter lives from the moment of
> conception -- bio dark-matter body vis-à-vis bio light-matter body. No
> chemistry, no life!
>
>   What these theorists are focusing is the unknown astrophysical
> dark-matter. It needs be noted that the known astrophysical light-matter is
> largely ions of the most abundant elements of the universe-- H and He,
> while the biospherical light-matter consists of the 92+ elements of the
> Periodic Table. From symmetrical considerations, there may be a class of
> biospherical dark-matter which these these theorists hypothesize as “small
> fraction of dark matter” with the further remark that “it is definitely a
> worthwhile theory to explore,  which has to be bio dark-matter chemistry of
> bio dark-matter atoms. Chemistry means *chemical bonds* which are
> spin-governed particle configurations of *duets* and *octets*. It is
> conceivable that the three flavors of neutrinos may be the counterparts of
> electrons, protons and neutrons. The masses of ν 1 and ν 2 are known to be
> close to one another (verisimilar to the close masses of p and n, while ν 3
> weighs much less than the other two, such that the ratios of the masses of
> the neutrino flavors correspond to the ratios of the masses of e, p, n. Or.
> the dark matter atoms may consist of monopoles (N & S) and axions, all of
> negligible mass relative to electron mass, but with the same ratios as e,
> p, n.
>
> *Empirical Evidences:*
>
> *   1 . Unidentified “Additional Mass of Life*” for a living organism
> in a hermitically sealed system, which disappears at death as reported by
> Amrit S. Sorli, Scientific Research Centre BISTRA, Ptuj, Slovenia,
> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary; doi=10.1.1.218.573;
> https://core.ac.uk/display/21767122. 2012, Journal of Theoretics
> Vol.4-2).
>
> *  2 . Unidentified Source of biophotons. *
>
>   Dark and light chemical bonds have similar properties, interact
> with each other, rotate, vibrate, oscillate, have reciprocal motion,
> stretch, contract, have resonance structures, associate, dissociate, bend
> and break. These cause weak changes in energetics of the *light-matter
> chemical bonds,* and result in emission of weak photons. They indeed
> exist and are  known as *biophotons*. Attributing the origin of that
> emission to DNA is flawed, since the standardized *rate* of emission
> varies across the taxa by an order of magnitude though the DNA structures
> are the same.  The sudden burst of biophotons at the moment of death of
> plant and animal cells results from the breaking of the coupling forces.
> OBE/NDE phenomena depend on the extent of  “bond-dissociation”.
>
>
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282154962_Bio_dark-Matter_Chemistry_Implications
> https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_spirit_our_energy_Is_spirit_dark_energy
>
> http://biodarkmatter.webs.com/index.htm
>
>
>
> https://www.prlog.org/12085722-dr-philip-benjamin-explains-the-bio-chemistry-of-our-inner-selves-in-his-latest-book.html
> “Spiritual Body or Physical Spirit”
>
> *Corollary: *
>
> At the moment of conception both light and dark twins in resonance
> are cocreated. The former is electric, entropic and unenduring. The latter
> is non-electric, non-entropic and enduring. Resonance is rudimentary
> recognition. That may  be the basis of self-awareness.
>
> That means the application of universal laws of chemistry
> (chemical bonds= spin governed particle configurations of duets and
> octets). The resonant twins of bio light-matter and bio dark-matter bodies
> are cocreated at the moment of conception. For the sake of symmetry, the
> former is electric, entropic and non-enduring; the latter is non-electric,
> non-entropic and enduring. Resonance is rudimentary recognition. It may be
> the basis of self-awareness of conscious beings. Consciousness itself must
> be an integral part of an enduring but dormant bio dark-matter body. The
> dormancy need be quickened or awakened by an external agency, as in the
> case of Augustine the chief architect of modern Western Civilization.
>
>  *Philip Benjamin *
>
>   *CC*. Harvard Center of Fundamental Laws of Nature
> & High Energy Theory.
>
> *Notes:*
>
> https://nautil.us/issue/48/chaos/does-dark-matter-harbor-life
> Does Dark Matter Harbor Life? An invisible civilization could be living
> right under your nose. BY LISA

Re: A computer masters the game GO

[LizR]

Cool!

On 28 January 2016 at 14:33, Brent Meeker  wrote:

>
>
> On 1/27/2016 10:38 AM, John Clark wrote:
>
> Skeptics said a computer could never master the game of GO because there
> were 10^170 possible board positions , far far far more than chess and
> vastly more than the number of atoms in the observable universe, so a brute
> force search for the best move could never work and brute force was all
> computers could manage. But the skeptics were WRONG!
>
>
> 
> http://www.nature.com/news/google-ai-algorithm-masters-ancient-game-of-go-1.19234
>
>
> But they'll never be able master the art of leadership and inspiration ...
> like Sarah Palin
>
>
> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/545606/how-an-ai-algorithm-learned-to-write-political-speeches/
>
> Oh.nevermind.
>
> Brent
>
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Now THIS explains a lot about the universe

[LizR]

When the meter runs out, you die...?

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A scary theory about IS

[LizR]

It seems completely bonkers, butthinking about it.it might just be
made enough to make sense.

(This was sent to me by my 81 year old mother-in-law, by the way. She isn't
known for being politically radical.)

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/why-google-made-the-nsa-2a80584c9c1

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May be of interest

[LizR]

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/testing-general-relativity-using-x-rays/

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/04/new-evidence-that-dark-matter-could-be-self-interacting/

http://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2015/06/relativitys-time-dilation-may-limit-the-quantum-world/

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Re: super intelligence and self-sampling

[LizR]

On 11 June 2015 at 16:03, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 6/10/2015 6:36 PM, LizR wrote:
>
>  On 11 June 2015 at 11:21, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>   On 6/10/2015 4:06 PM, LizR wrote:
>>
>>  On 11 June 2015 at 06:26, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>>>   A human is an ape which torture other apes.
>>>
>>> Not just torture but also eliminate, e.g. homo erectus, homo
>>> neaderthalis,...  It's called evolution.
>>>
>>
>>  You sound like you're in favour.
>>
>>  When they're winners and losers I'm in favor of being a winner.
>>
>
>  But your original statement didn't talk about winners and losers, it
> talked about elimination, specifically it sounded as though you were in
> favour of one "ape" eliminating another one (on a species basis, going by
> your mention of neanderthals).
>
>  So, are you actually in favour of genocide, or were you just shooting
> your mouth off?
>
>  Are you a Neanderthal or are you just trolling?
>
> Neither, you're the one who said the things quoted above, which certainly
look like you're in favour of genocide when directed against the
Neanderthals. Making spiteful comments doesn't change that, and is actually
quite hurtful. How about manning up and explaining yourself properly,
instead of retreating behind being flip, snide and childish?

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Re: Well Stone The Crows

[LizR]

Spaced out!

On 15 June 2015 at 22:34, spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> And, Brand supports them if they are Labor, dangerous or not. Wisdom,
> from another champagne socialist ;-)
>
>
>
>  -Original Message-
> From: Kim Jones 
> To: Everything List 
> Sent: Mon, Jun 15, 2015 5:09 am
> Subject: Well Stone The Crows
>
>  http://www.adguk.co.uk/scitech/nasa-discovers-thc-on-meteorite-fragment/
>
>
>
>  Kim Jones B.Mus.GDTL
>
>  Email:  kimjo...@ozemail.com.au
>  Mobile:0450 963 719
>  Landline: 02 9389 4239
>  Web:http://www.eportfolio.kmjcommp.com
>
>  “I’m not saying there aren’t a lot of dangerous people out there. I am
> saying a lot of them are in government" - Russell Brand
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: A (somewhat) different angle on the reversal

[LizR]

On 15 June 2015 at 14:19, Russell Standish  wrote:

>
> It is plausible that regularities are a required feature of
> conscious existence
>

This seems very likely, but it does assume something like a string
landscape in which some regions don't contain regularities. Or to put it
another way, regions in which maths doesn't work. This seems to be
out-Tegmarking Tegmark, who assumes that at least maths is (meta-)
universal.

>
> At this stage, it's no worse than assuming meaning generation is a
> necessary feature of existence, and that this can only take place by
> compression of regularities, which is the Solomonoff type answer...
>
> That would require a source of such regularities, surely? But that would
seem to lead straight back to requiring that maths works.

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Re: A (somewhat) different angle on the reversal

[LizR]

On 15 June 2015 at 12:40, John Clark  wrote:

> On 6/13/2015  LizR wrote:
>
>  > None of this explain why it works so well
>
>
> Mathematics is a language
>

it is? Are you saying that

(a) there exists, out there, a language called maths which just happens to
be great for describing reality, and which we have discovered,

or

(b) that we invented a language that doesn't actually refer to anything,
yet it still just happens to be great for describing reality?

Personally I'd say

(c) we invented a language to describe something that is not itself a
language, and that something happen to be great for describing reality.

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And Philae's awake :-)

[LizR]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/comet-lander-philae-wakes-up-and-phones-home

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Wow! I thought Saturn was spectacular before...

[LizR]

...but it really *is* the Lord of the Rings.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/saturn-s-newest-ring-is-mind-bogglingly-big/

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Re: A (somewhat) different angle on the reversal

[LizR]

On 15 June 2015 at 11:13, Russell Standish  wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 10:49:40AM +1200, LizR wrote:
> > On 15 June 2015 at 10:41, Russell Standish 
> wrote:
> >
> > > To summarise, there appears to be two quite distinct questions here:
> > >
> > > a) Given there are regularities in Nature, why is our mathematics so
> > > effective. As Brent says, this is not surprising - evolution would see
> > > to it that we would choose a mathematical system out of the many
> > > possible that would be effective.
> > >
> >
> > That isn't surprising, of course - but I assume Brent wasn't being quite
> > *that* disingenuous. What is surprising (if anything at all is) is that
> our
> > world is amenable to description by maths.
> >
> More of a genuine misunderstanding rather than disingenuity, I would say...
>
> I expect so, but Brent does seem to veer between brilliant insights and
pointless comments, so I feel I have to stay on my toes and object
vigorously to the silly bits, while gasping in awe at the rest. (That's
probably not a bad thing, actually.)

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Re: A (somewhat) different angle on the reversal

[LizR]

On 15 June 2015 at 10:41, Russell Standish  wrote:

> To summarise, there appears to be two quite distinct questions here:
>
> a) Given there are regularities in Nature, why is our mathematics so
> effective. As Brent says, this is not surprising - evolution would see
> to it that we would choose a mathematical system out of the many
> possible that would be effective.
>

That isn't surprising, of course - but I assume Brent wasn't being quite
*that* disingenuous. What is surprising (if anything at all is) is that our
world is amenable to description by maths.

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Re: A (somewhat) different angle on the reversal

[LizR]

My apologies. You also say something that boils down to "THIS is how we
discovered maths in the first place (abstracted from objects etc) ...
THEREFORE we invented it."

On which basis we invented gravity etc.

What we invent is a description. (Of gravity, maths, etc.) That doesn't
mean our description is free-floating with nothing being described. In the
cases of gravity, maths etc there are good reasons to think otherwise.


On 15 June 2015 at 09:49, LizR  wrote:

> On 15 June 2015 at 08:22, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm not saying it's ineffective.  I'm saying it's not a mystery why it's
>> effective.
>>
>
> Because the universe appears to operate on principles that map very well
> onto some parts of maths, and may even map exactly (we have no reason to
> think not - every improvement in measurement so far indicates this, but
> there will always of course be room for doubt - just room that's been
> getting steadily smaller over the last few centuries).
>
> But you haven't said why it does so. I may not agree with Bruno or Max
> Tegmark, but at least they have a theory for why this *might* be so, and
> I haven't seen any definitive demonstration of mistakes in their theories
> as yet (there are lots of suggestions that may become definitive with more
> work, of course).
>
> So far, your answer to the question of the "unreasonable effectiveness" of
> maths is basically "It works that way because it works that way, I can't
> explain it - but trust me, it isn't worth explaining."
>
>

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Re: A (somewhat) different angle on the reversal

[LizR]

On 15 June 2015 at 08:22, meekerdb  wrote:

>
> I'm not saying it's ineffective.  I'm saying it's not a mystery why it's
> effective.
>

Because the universe appears to operate on principles that map very well
onto some parts of maths, and may even map exactly (we have no reason to
think not - every improvement in measurement so far indicates this, but
there will always of course be room for doubt - just room that's been
getting steadily smaller over the last few centuries).

But you haven't said why it does so. I may not agree with Bruno or Max
Tegmark, but at least they have a theory for why this *might* be so, and I
haven't seen any definitive demonstration of mistakes in their theories as
yet (there are lots of suggestions that may become definitive with more
work, of course).

So far, your answer to the question of the "unreasonable effectiveness" of
maths is basically "It works that way because it works that way, I can't
explain it - but trust me, it isn't worth explaining."

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Re: A (somewhat) different angle on the reversal

[LizR]

On 14 June 2015 at 16:40, meekerdb  wrote:

> On 6/13/2015 9:18 PM, LizR wrote:
>
>> None of this explain why it works so well anyway.
>>
>
> I don't understand why the effectiveness of mathematics is considered
> problematic. First, we, creatures who evolved in this world, invented it to
> be useful.  We invented counting and arithmetic to be used in describing
> and predicting things. And I've given examples where the rules of
> arithmetic don't work.  So the second point is that we only apply them
> where they are effective. Where they are not effective we say that's a
> misapplication and we try to add rules to avoid those misapplications.
>
> Don't work in what sense? Don't apply to the universe, or are not
self-consistent?

"We invented it to be useful" is not true, AND it's a non-argument. We
invented religion to be useful, and lots of other things, but we didn't
invent maths, we observed the regularities (e.g. conservation of number of
things) and codified them.

So it was something about the world that we discovered, and it works. I'm
not making any metaphysical claims about it, but I don't understand why you
feel this need to hand-wave the effectiveness away. It's just there (so
far) -- and to quite a lot of decimal places.

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Re: Quran Audio

[LizR]

On 14 June 2015 at 02:38, John Clark  wrote:

>
> What the hell?! If Allah had an ounce of moral character He should be
> asking for our forgiveness and stop demanding that we thank and love our
> torturer.
>

Well said.

Religion appears to be Stockholm syndrome writ large.

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Re: A (somewhat) different angle on the reversal

[LizR]

None of this explain why it works so well anyway.

On 14 June 2015 at 07:42, John Mikes  wrote:

> Brent concluded:
>
> *2+2=4.  Then we discovered that these rules implied a lot of things we
> hadn't thought of.  But they aren't "out there", they're in our language.*
>
>
> This is 'MY' agnosticism talking: why do you think all the novelties are
> in our language, not "out there"? Our mind (whatever it may be) is
> receoptive to new input from 'out there' i.e. so far unknown
> content-items(for us) in the infinite Entirety.
> Once we start talking/thinking about them, they become OUR concepts
> (lesser- or better defined).
> Applied in ways how our human capabilities can do it.
> Then we beacome proud of it.
>
> JM
>
> On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 12:40 AM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  On 6/12/2015 6:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>>
>> LizR wrote:
>>
>> On 12 June 2015 at 17:40, Bruce Kellett > Arithmetic is, after all, only an axiomatic system. We can make up
>> an indefinite number of axiomatic systems whose theorems are every
>> bit as 'independent of us' as those of arithmetic. Are these also to
>> be accepted as 'really real!'? Standard arithmetic is only important
>> to us because it is useful in the physical world. It is invented,
>> not fundamental.
>>
>> So you say, and you may be right. Or you may not. The question is whether
>> 2+2=4 independently of human beings (and aliens who may have invented, or
>> discovered as the case may be, arithmetic).
>>
>>
>> It may well be independent of humans or other (alien) beings, but it has
>> no meaning until you have defined what the symbols '2','4','+', and '='
>> mean. Then it is a tautology.
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>>
>> It is commonly thought to be discovered and so to be "ought there"
>> independent of human beings or any cognition.  But when considered more
>> carefully what was discovered is that one can group pairs to things
>> together (at least in imagination) and have four things.  So two fathers
>> grouped with two sons is four people.  Except when it's three people.  So
>> we said OK we'll *define* units to be things that obey the rules that
>> 2+2=4.  Then we discovered that these rules implied a lot of things we
>> hadn't thought of.  But they aren't "out there", they're in our language.
>>
>> Brent
>>
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Re: Quran Audio

[LizR]

Well, one point at least.

On 13 June 2015 at 16:23, LizR  wrote:

> The point of responding is that if a faith is indeed the word of god, it
> should have answers to all the major metaphysical and philosophical
> questions that might be asked of it.
>
> On 13 June 2015 at 16:01, Samiya Illias  wrote:
>
>> Dear All,
>> I do not know if I should be responding to any of the posts on this
>> thread as we seem to just keep repeating ourselves.
>> I do not understand why those who have decided and declared themselves as
>> atheists even bother to respond to my posts. I do however wish that those
>> who consider themselves agnostics do read the scriptures. God willing, they
>> might find the answers to the questions in their heart.
>> A word of caution: The Quran itself recommends that every time one
>> studies the Quran, to first pray for Allah's protection from the Devil who
>> attempts to misguide those who seek guidance.
>> Allah repeatedly offers forgiveness guidance throughout the Quran, and
>> the text also explains why guidance is withheld from whom and why. May the
>> scriptures enlighten us. Amen.
>>
>> Samiya
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 13-Jun-2015, at 5:46 am, spudboy100 via Everything List <
>> everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>
>> Just to put my own dim consciousness into this arena, I did inquire of a
>> young Pakistani, what he thought was the main motivation behind jihad. I
>> asked if it was the great reward of being with Allah forever, and the
>> women, etc. This guy corrected me and indicated, no it was not the great
>> reward driving the jihad, but, rather, the eternal death in the grave, and
>> the dual notion of gahannom (gehenim) in a fiery punishment for betraying
>> Allah's eddicts.   I over simplify on all this, but I  believe also, that
>> islamic teachings indicate, that they are Dar es Salaam, the House of
>> Peace, and that we, the Qfar, or infidels, are the House of War, and that
>> true peace is never to be offered to the Qfar, on a truce (hudna) can be
>> offered.
>>
>> Thus, peace is never to be attained, as we understand it because those in
>> the Uma, risk being burned up forever, by defiling Allah and themselves,
>> with the uncleaness, of the Qfar or traitor, aka Infidel. So there is zero
>> incentive for being peaceful (unless a temporary truce) with the infidel.
>> Who wishes eternal damnation upon themselves, and their families and
>> friends by angering Allah? There is then, no incentive to be offered that
>> can rival the punishment and reward of Allah. Its a no brainer. It does put
>> the frame of reverence of behaviors if one recognizes this feature of how
>> the other fellows feel and think. By their belief system, they would
>> consider themselves to be insane, and humiliated, by offering anything to
>> the traitors to God.
>>
>> Sent from AOL Mobile Mail
>>
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: John Clark 
>> To: everything-list 
>> Sent: Fri, Jun 12, 2015 08:15 PM
>> Subject: Re: Quran Audio
>>
>>
>>   On Thu, Jun 11, 2015  Samiya Illias  wrote:
>>
>>  >> to keep my reply short (concentrate on Islam) Why should I study
>> scripts the followers of which behead, flog, stone, dismember live humans
>> and claim full credit for such cruelty in the afterlife?
>>
>>
>>  > briefly (concentrate on science)
>>
>>
>>  If you concentrate on science there won't be much to say about Muslims.
>>
>> Although Muslims make up 23% of the world's population since 1900 only
>> one Muslim has won a Nobel Prize in science, Ahmed Zewail won for chemistry
>> in 1999. Abdus Salam won for physics in 1979 and his tombstone said "First
>> Muslim Nobel Laureate", but the Pakistani government officially decreed
>> that Abdus Salam  was NOT a Muslim and ordered that the word "Muslim" be
>> erased from his tombstone.
>>
>>
>>   > The same reason why people should study the sciences the followers
>> (scientists / engineers / technicians / governments / military /
>> businesses) of which experiment with, damage, kill live humans and animals,
>> destroy ecosystems, etc.  and claim full credit for being leaders of human
>> civilisation!
>>
>>
>>  Science can explain how a H-bomb works but says nothing about how or if
>> they should be used, that is a function of the empathy of the bomb builder
>> and his fear of retaliation. Islam can not say one intelligent word about
>> how a H-bomb works or ev

Re: Quran Audio

[LizR]

The point of responding is that if a faith is indeed the word of god, it
should have answers to all the major metaphysical and philosophical
questions that might be asked of it.

On 13 June 2015 at 16:01, Samiya Illias  wrote:

> Dear All,
> I do not know if I should be responding to any of the posts on this thread
> as we seem to just keep repeating ourselves.
> I do not understand why those who have decided and declared themselves as
> atheists even bother to respond to my posts. I do however wish that those
> who consider themselves agnostics do read the scriptures. God willing, they
> might find the answers to the questions in their heart.
> A word of caution: The Quran itself recommends that every time one studies
> the Quran, to first pray for Allah's protection from the Devil who attempts
> to misguide those who seek guidance.
> Allah repeatedly offers forgiveness guidance throughout the Quran, and the
> text also explains why guidance is withheld from whom and why. May the
> scriptures enlighten us. Amen.
>
> Samiya
>
>
>
>
> On 13-Jun-2015, at 5:46 am, spudboy100 via Everything List <
> everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Just to put my own dim consciousness into this arena, I did inquire of a
> young Pakistani, what he thought was the main motivation behind jihad. I
> asked if it was the great reward of being with Allah forever, and the
> women, etc. This guy corrected me and indicated, no it was not the great
> reward driving the jihad, but, rather, the eternal death in the grave, and
> the dual notion of gahannom (gehenim) in a fiery punishment for betraying
> Allah's eddicts.   I over simplify on all this, but I  believe also, that
> islamic teachings indicate, that they are Dar es Salaam, the House of
> Peace, and that we, the Qfar, or infidels, are the House of War, and that
> true peace is never to be offered to the Qfar, on a truce (hudna) can be
> offered.
>
> Thus, peace is never to be attained, as we understand it because those in
> the Uma, risk being burned up forever, by defiling Allah and themselves,
> with the uncleaness, of the Qfar or traitor, aka Infidel. So there is zero
> incentive for being peaceful (unless a temporary truce) with the infidel.
> Who wishes eternal damnation upon themselves, and their families and
> friends by angering Allah? There is then, no incentive to be offered that
> can rival the punishment and reward of Allah. Its a no brainer. It does put
> the frame of reverence of behaviors if one recognizes this feature of how
> the other fellows feel and think. By their belief system, they would
> consider themselves to be insane, and humiliated, by offering anything to
> the traitors to God.
>
> Sent from AOL Mobile Mail
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: John Clark 
> To: everything-list 
> Sent: Fri, Jun 12, 2015 08:15 PM
> Subject: Re: Quran Audio
>
>
>   On Thu, Jun 11, 2015  Samiya Illias  wrote:
>
>  >> to keep my reply short (concentrate on Islam) Why should I study
> scripts the followers of which behead, flog, stone, dismember live humans
> and claim full credit for such cruelty in the afterlife?
>
>
>  > briefly (concentrate on science)
>
>
>  If you concentrate on science there won't be much to say about Muslims.
>
> Although Muslims make up 23% of the world's population since 1900 only one
> Muslim has won a Nobel Prize in science, Ahmed Zewail won for chemistry in
> 1999. Abdus Salam won for physics in 1979 and his tombstone said "First
> Muslim Nobel Laureate", but the Pakistani government officially decreed
> that Abdus Salam  was NOT a Muslim and ordered that the word "Muslim" be
> erased from his tombstone.
>
>
>   > The same reason why people should study the sciences the followers
> (scientists / engineers / technicians / governments / military /
> businesses) of which experiment with, damage, kill live humans and animals,
> destroy ecosystems, etc.  and claim full credit for being leaders of human
> civilisation!
>
>
>  Science can explain how a H-bomb works but says nothing about how or if
> they should be used, that is a function of the empathy of the bomb builder
> and his fear of retaliation. Islam can not say one intelligent word about
> how a H-bomb works or even how a conventional chemical explosive works, but
> that doesn't prevent it from telling people exactly how they should be
> used.  And Islam says you shouldn't have empathy for those who frequent a
> different religious franchise than your do, and it also says that you
> shouldn't fear death because if you do what Islam tells you to do then when
> you die you'll live forever in Santa Claus's workshop in the sky. So we
> have a combination of cruelty and stupidity, and that is a dangerous
> combination.  .
>
>> A person's concern for their own future should be reason enough to
> urgently explore the scriptures!
>
>
>  I don't see how reading the fairy tales of illiterate bronze age tribes
> will help, not even if your mommy and daddy said it will.
>
>   Jo

Re: A (somewhat) different angle on the reversal

[LizR]

On 12 June 2015 at 17:40, Bruce Kellett  wrote:

> LizR wrote:
>
>>
>> You also say that 1p phenomena - in a physical theory - have to be
>> eliminated (as per Dennett) or elevated to something we could call
>> "supernatural" (for the sake of argument - in any case, something not
>> covered by the underlying physics). But the alternative is apparently that
>> subjective phenomena exist inside assumed-to-be-real arithmetic, and the
>> (appearance of a) physical world somehow emerges from that. Both of these
>> are problematic. The first seems plausible to me (in the elimiativist
>> mode), but implausible in that it reifies matter and doesn't have an
>> ontological status that could be called "final", but merely one that is
>> "contingent" (i.e. "we're here because we're here because...") while
>> arithmetical truth, if there is such a thing, does.
>>
>
> This is a false distinction. Arithmetical 'truth' is no more fundamental
> or final than physical truth.


I'm glad you have access to a metaphysical oracle which tells you these
things. The rest of us have to remain agnostic, (which is why I said "if
there is such a thing").


> Arithmetic is, after all, only an axiomatic system. We can make up an
> indefinite number of axiomatic systems whose theorems are every bit as
> 'independent of us' as those of arithmetic. Are these also to be accepted
> as 'really real!'? Standard arithmetic is only important to us because it
> is useful in the physical world. It is invented, not fundamental.


So you say, and you may be right. Or you may not. The question is whether
2+2=4 independently of human beings (and aliens who may have invented, or
discovered as the case may be, arithmetic).

>
>
> Bruce
>
>
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Re: super intelligence and self-sampling

[LizR]

On 12 June 2015 at 14:19, John Clark  wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 11, 2015  spudboy100 via Everything List <
> everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> > Dark energy and matter have predicted by some physicists and astronomers
>> to call the expansion to reverse.
>
>
> I don't know what you're talking about. Dark Energy is causing the
> universe's expansion to accelerate not slow down
>
> Since we don't know it's nature, it's *possible* it will wear off after a
while, or even go into reverse. But this is 100% speculation at present, of
course - and will be until we devise a testable theory of what it actually
is!

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Re: Quran Audio

[LizR]

On 12 June 2015 at 15:17, Samiya Illias  wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 12:44 AM, John Mikes  wrote:
>
>> If this "John" is me:
>>
>> to keep my reply short (concentrate on Islam) Why should I study scripts
>> the followers of which behead, flog, stone, dismember live humans and claim
>> full credit for such cruelty in the afterlife?
>>
>
> briefly (concentrate on science) The same reason why people should study
> the sciences the followers (scientists / engineers / technicians /
> governments / military / businesses) of which experiment with, damage, kill
> live humans and animals, destroy ecosystems, etc.  and claim full credit
> for being leaders of human civilisation!
>
>>
>> A reasonable person should run away from such inhumanity, especially
>> after our centuries of enlightenment.
>>
>
>  'our centuries of enlightenment'? really? creating deadly weapons of mass
> destruction and using them, poisoning the planet and creating imbalance in
> the ecosystem, rendering entire species extinct, toying with the weather,
> ... enlightenment??? and where can we run away from it all? except in
> trying to find meaning in this suffering and trial?
>
> A person's concern for their own future should be reason enough to
> urgently explore the scriptures!
>
> Two very good answers, even if I happen to disagree with them.

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Re: super intelligence and self-sampling

[LizR]

On 12 June 2015 at 07:10, meekerdb  wrote:

>
> Not that I put in credence in Tipler's speculations.
>

They seem to be based on a comp1 style idea, namely that consciousness is
generated by computation and that recreating the computation would
effectively resurrect that person. I think he assumes that the recreation
is an emulation at the level of the (as yet unknown) physics, which would
run afoul of no-cloning (and probably lots of other things. As I said in
replyto David's recent summary, I find it hard to believe that an emulated
me will actually be me in the important sense that I experience becoming
it).

Didn't Tipler make some testable predictions? (including the Higgs mass???)
If so did they pan out?

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Re: Quran Audio

[LizR]

On 12 June 2015 at 10:23, Kim Jones  wrote:

> On 12 Jun 2015, at 2:34 am, John Clark  wrote:
>
> The Baha'i faith maintains that all religions are equally valid and I
> think the Baha'i people have got it about right, they're all crap.
>
>   John K Clark
>
> The difference between the three "Abrahamic" religions (according to Bill
> Maher):
>
> Christianity = mumbling to the ceiling
>
> Judaism = mumbling to the wall
>
> Islam = mumbling to the floor
>
> I tend to mumble to myself. (Maybe I can start a new religion? Or is this
just Solipsism? Is Solipsism a religion? A very exclusive religion - even
more exclusive than Judism?!)

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Re: Quran Audio

[LizR]

On 12 June 2015 at 04:34, John Clark  wrote:

> The Baha'i faith maintains that all religions are equally valid and I
> think the Baha'i people have got it about right, they're all crap.
>
> My sister in law is a Baha'i and they certainly don't think they're all
crap - their attitude is more that all religions see "some aspects of the
truth"

(Just for the record. I realist your comment was probably intended to be
tongue in cheek.)

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Re: A (somewhat) different angle on the reversal

[LizR]

Nice summary, though I'm not sure how it's "(somewhat) different". Maybe I
just missed the point. It looks like it's akin to Maudlin - along the lines
of "I can explain *your* conscious behaviour using a theory that boils down
to what atoms do, but I can't explain *my* subjective experiences that way."

I think in the last para you're saying there can't be a "substitution
level" anywhere above the fundamental physics? That is, you say a
computation "cannot be accepted ... in the form of its physical
approximations". If so, that is certainly something that worries me about
this whole idea - I've never been happy with the idea that "I" would exist
inside an AI that approximated my brain at (say) the level of cells, even
if that could be shown to mimic the computations supposedly going on in my
brain. I think at best it would be someone who thought she was me.
(Although of course the same may be true of me!)

You also say that 1p phenomena - in a physical theory - have to be
eliminated (as per Dennett) or elevated to something we could call
"supernatural" (for the sake of argument - in any case, something not
covered by the underlying physics). But the alternative is apparently that
subjective phenomena exist inside assumed-to-be-real arithmetic, and the
(appearance of a) physical world somehow emerges from that. Both of these
are problematic. The first seems plausible to me (in the elimiativist
mode), but implausible in that it reifies matter and doesn't have an
ontological status that could be called "final", but merely one that is
"contingent" (i.e. "we're here because we're here because...") while
arithmetical truth, if there is such a thing, does.

Can you explain to a bear of little brain why your approach is "somewhat
different" ?

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Evolution in the fast lane...!

[LizR]

...or genetic engineering gone mad?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150607-salmon-aquaculture-canada-fish-farm-food-world/

(...unless I've misunderstood the headline, of course :-)

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Re: super intelligence and self-sampling

[LizR]

On 11 June 2015 at 11:21, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 6/10/2015 4:06 PM, LizR wrote:
>
>  On 11 June 2015 at 06:26, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>   A human is an ape which torture other apes.
>>
>> Not just torture but also eliminate, e.g. homo erectus, homo
>> neaderthalis,...  It's called evolution.
>>
>
>  You sound like you're in favour.
>
> When they're winners and losers I'm in favor of being a winner.
>

But your original statement didn't talk about winners and losers, it talked
about elimination, specifically it sounded as though you were in favour of
one "ape" eliminating another one (on a species basis, going by your
mention of neanderthals).

So, are you actually in favour of genocide, or were you just shooting your
mouth off?

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Re: Notion of (mathematical) reason

[LizR]

On 11 June 2015 at 13:03, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 6/10/2015 4:55 PM, LizR wrote:
>
>  I suspect that "physics is not computable" is the *end* result of
> Brnuo's argument (comp2) - which is supposed to be a *reductio* on the
> notion of comp1. So comp1 assumes that physics is computable, and that
> assumption leads to the result that it isn't.
>
>
> But I don't see that it leads to that result.  His argument of step 7 and
> the MGA purport to reach a *reductio* from comp1.  Those arguments are
> still assuming that thought is a computation.  But it is only after he
> introduces the idea of all possible computations and the UD that he then
> asserts that consciousness (and physics) is not computable but is rather
> some kind of statistic mechanics of computational threads.
>

That's a separate point. I was only explaining why Bruno says that physics
isn't computable (or trying to, at least).

So when Bruno comes on line you should ask him at which point in the
argument the "reversal" is supposed to occur.

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Re: Notion of (mathematical) reason

[LizR]

On 11 June 2015 at 12:20, Bruce Kellett  wrote:

> LizR wrote:
>
>> meekerdb wrote:
>> On 6/10/2015 1:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> Can you explain why such interaction is not computable?
>>
>> No, I was relying on your assertion that physics is not
>> computable - which would entail that brain processes are not
>> computable, which would imply that comp1 is false.  Except
>> there's a loophole: if comp1 means replacement by a physical
>> object then the physics of that object is not computable either
>> and so it might work.
>>
>> Yes, that does seem to follow. And the brain replacement might happen to
>> work, but we'd have no idea how (magic? supernatural?)
>>
>
> Why is it that when ever someone doesn't understand something they jump to
> the conclusion that it must involve magic or the supernatural. It is not
> possible that we might simply not yet know everything?
>

Just illustrative. The other available alternatives to reality being
computable are oracles, hypercomputers, the physical existence of a
continuum, and maybe a few other things this margin is too small to contain.

>
>  I suspect that "physics is not computable" is the /end/ result of Brnuo's
>> argument (comp2) - which is supposed to be a /reductio/ on the notion of
>> comp1. So comp1 assumes that physics is computable, and that assumption
>> leads to the result that it isn't. Which is taken as an argument against
>> physical supervenience of consciousness on brains, although it could
>> equally be an argument against brains performing computations.
>>
>
> If that is the line of reasoning, then it would help if it were made more
> explicit. I expect that the reason that it is not more explicit is that it
> is actually incoherent. If comp1 leads to the conclusion that comp1 is
> false, then comp1 is inconsistent. Not just false, *inconsistent*. And as
> Brent is fond of saying, /ex falso quodlibet/. Or better, /ex
> contradictione sequitur quodlibet/.
>

I think it is made explicit. Bruno has often claimed that his argument is a
*reductio* on the physical supervenience thesis, assuming I've got that
right. He is trying to show that the assumptions of comp1 lead to a
contradiction (and one of the assumptions of comp1 is that consciousness
supervenes on brains).

I think that's correct. I'm sure Bruno will correct me if I've
misunderstood.

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 11 June 2015 at 10:50, meekerdb  wrote:

>  "I'm a solipsist and I'm surprised more philosophers aren't solipsists."
> --- letter to Bertrand Russell
>

"Phew, another solipsist! I was afraid I might be the only one."

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Re: Notion of (mathematical) reason

[LizR]

On 11 June 2015 at 11:38, Bruce Kellett  wrote:

>
> Do you ever get the feeling that this is all going round in circles? That
> 'comp' is going nowhere?


Comp appears to go somewhere quite specific. What go round in circles tend
to be the arguments against it, which get repeated regularly. I listed them
somewhere (on this forum) so we could have a handy reference, but I'm not
sure where now. (Unfortunately none of them are rigorous enough to show
that comp is actually wrong, though they do show that it strikes some
people - including me when I first came across it - as absurd).

I will have a quick look and let you know if I can find the list.

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Re: Notion of (mathematical) reason

[LizR]

On 11 June 2015 at 11:38, Bruce Kellett  wrote:

> meekerdb wrote:
>
>> On 6/10/2015 1:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> On 10 Jun 2015, at 01:15, meekerdb wrote:
>>>
 On 6/9/2015 11:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

>
> You say that comp is useless, but what is your theory of mind. What is
> not Turing emulable in the brain?
>

 Its interaction with the universe.

>>>
>>> Are you sure it is not the interaction with God?
>>>
>>
>> Dunno, Samiya seems to the expert on what God does.
>>
>>
>>> Can you explain why such interaction is not computable?
>>>
>>
>> No, I was relying on your assertion that physics is not computable -
>> which would entail that brain processes are not computable, which would
>> imply that comp1 is false.  Except there's a loophole: if comp1 means
>> replacement by a physical object then the physics of that object is not
>> computable either and so it might work.
>>
>>>
>>> Yes, that does seem to follow. And the brain replacement might happen to
work, but we'd have no idea how (magic? supernatural?)

I suspect that "physics is not computable" is the *end* result of Brnuo's
argument (comp2) - which is supposed to be a *reductio* on the notion of
comp1. So comp1 assumes that physics is computable, and that assumption
leads to the result that it isn't. Which is taken as an argument against
 physical supervenience of consciousness on brains, although it could
equally be an argument against brains performing computations.

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Re: Notion of (mathematical) reason

[LizR]

On 10 June 2015 at 20:38, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 10 Jun 2015, at 01:42, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>
>  LizR wrote:
>>
>>> On 10 June 2015 at 01:11, Bruce Kellett >> <mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>> wrote:
>>>That is less difficult that you might think. Consciousness
>>>supervenes on the physical brain
>>> So (a) what actually is consciousness?, and (b) what is the answer to
>>> Maudlin and the MGA?
>>>
>>
>> Consciousness is that which you lose under anaesthesia, or a sufficiently
>> severe blow to the head. Like many things, it is defined ostensively.
>>
>
Meaning you can point to it, but have no idea what it is. OK.

>
>> It is not clear what you mean when you as what it actually is? Do you
>> want a fully mechanistic account? Or a philosophical account? Or a
>> neurological account? Or a personal account?
>>
>
It isn't me who wants it. You said "consciousness supervenes on the brain"
so I assumed you knew what you were talking about.

>
>> What is the question of Maudlin and the MGA? Is a recording conscious?
>> Produce one of the required type (a complete and accurate recording of
>> normal conscious brain activity) and ask it.
>>
>
You should read Maudlin's paper (and Bruno's of course) they aren't very
long, and then you will be up to speed on the arguments being employed.

Both these arguments are against physical supervenience, in different ways.

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Re: super intelligence and self-sampling

[LizR]

On 11 June 2015 at 10:45, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 6/10/2015 7:44 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>
> For the purpose of this discussion, I would say that you would only have
> to grant that there is some utility function that captures chances of
> survival. Then, super-intelligence is something that can optimize this
> function beyond what human intelligence is capable.
>
> Ahh, so it's bacteria.
>

It is indeed, at least if we leave aside the ones that have foolishly
aglommerated into large colonies that then sit around typing stuff on
forums.

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Re: super intelligence and self-sampling

[LizR]

On 11 June 2015 at 07:21, spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

>  Yes, but there have been so much counter examples for the 1997 WMAP
> analysis that Tipler may end up correct. I am talking about the accelerated
> expansion reversing, I hold computer theory as over-taking most cosmo
> theories be it a saddle, a doughnut, flat as a pancake, whatever. And no,
> you need not agree, but for me it seems apparent. You?
>
> I must admit I have always found it a bit tenuous to base the cosmological
acceleration only on the measurement of light from distant supernovas. It's
at least possible supernovas operated differently in the early universe, or
that something in between has affected the signal. It would be nice to get
independent confirmation from a completely different source.

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Re: super intelligence and self-sampling

[LizR]

On 11 June 2015 at 06:26, meekerdb  wrote:

>  A human is an ape which torture other apes.
>
> Not just torture but also eliminate, e.g. homo erectus, homo
> neaderthalis,...  It's called evolution.
>

You sound like you're in favour.

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Re: super intelligence and self-sampling

[LizR]

On 10 June 2015 at 19:05, Telmo Menezes  wrote:

> Do biological species follow a power law distribution?
>

I don't know, but I imagine so - there are generally a lot more of the
smaller ones.

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 10 June 2015 at 15:23, Kim Jones  wrote:

> Both. I'm exploring the concept of solipsism with a positive attitude.
> What are the benefits? Your attempts at humour always hit the mark (with
> me.)
>

Thanks! :)


> So yes, I don't think hurling 'solopsist!' at someone hurts them much.
>
> It's basically abusing yourself, if you'll pardon the expression.


> So, solipsism is a plural phenomenon.
>
> "I don't care if I am a solipsist, I'll always have each other." - Mini Me.
>

Contrariwise, does a group mind refer to "ourself" or "myselves" ?

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 10 June 2015 at 13:35, Kim Jones  wrote:

> On 10 Jun 2015, at 9:09 am, LizR  wrote:
>
> On 10 June 2015 at 10:37, Bruce Kellett  wrote:
>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 09 Jun 2015, at 12:07, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>>>
>>>  Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 09 Jun 2015, at 07:40, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Given a set of axioms and some agreed rules of inference, the same
>>>>>> results always follow, regardless of by whom or at what time the
>>>>>> application is made. This is not what is usually referred to as "kicking
>>>>>> back". Johnson did not apply some axioms and rules of inference in answer
>>>>>> to the idealists, he kicked a stone.
>>>>>>
>>>>> But people can kicked stone in dreams too.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> But do they wake up with broken or bruised toes?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Do they ever wake up?
>>>
>>
>> Solipsist!
>>
>> Another solipsist? Phew! I was worried I might be the only one.
>
>
> Surely it isn't a crime to be a solipsist. What's socially unacceptable
> about the belief that you are the only mind and that "all other minds" are
> you as well?
>

I'm not sure if you're asnwering my attempt at humour or Bruce's apparent
use of "Solipsist!" as an insult.

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Re: super intelligence and self-sampling

[LizR]

I was close :)

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Re: super intelligence and self-sampling

[LizR]

On 10 June 2015 at 11:39, Stathis Papaioannou  wrote:

> On 10 June 2015 at 08:37, LizR  wrote:
>
>> The normal answer to this is as stated - a superintelligence may form, as
>> per various Arthur C Clark (or Olaf Stapledon, really) stories, by merging
>> lots of non-super intelligences. So the chances of finding yourself
>> non-super is vastly greater, because it takes billions of us to make one of
>> them. However, this could lead to you eventually finding yourself super
>> (especially if quantum immortality operates). Or a subset of super.
>>
>> PS Ants aren't relevant, as Russell explains in "Theory of Nothing".
>>
>
> OK, but the same argument can easily be made otherwise: why should you
> find yourself living in tiny New Zealand rather than populous China?
>
> There is a way to show that you are more likely to find yourself in a
smaller country. I can't remember the details (but I think a power law is
involved :-)

But I will have a go.

I am more likely to find myself not in China than in China, because the
majority of people live outside China. Of the rest of the world, the next
most populous country is India, but more people live outside India than in
it, so I am more likely not to live in India. Next is the USA, but of the
remaining 4 or 5 billion people, most live outside the USA, so...

Repeating the process, I end up living alone on an island in the Pacific.
Or in New Zealand, which is almost the same thing.

(And then the test is given on Tuesday, much to my surprise!)

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Re: super intelligence and self-sampling

[LizR]

On 10 June 2015 at 11:38, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 6/9/2015 2:25 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 10:15 PM, John Clark  wrote:
>
>>  On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 Telmo Menezes  wrote:
>>
>>  > Super-intelligence is more resilient than human intelligence, so it
>>> is likely to last longer
>>>
>>
>>  Maybe, but I note that smarter than average humans seem to have higher
>> than average rates of suicide too.
>>
>
>  I wonder if this is because intelligence leads to depression or because
> it makes one more likely to research and correctly execute a viable method
> of suicide. Do you know if the rates are also higher on failed attempts?
>
> According to most people on this list, they are ALL failed attempts.
>

Heehee.

(Or at least most people are willnig to entertain the possibility.)

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Re: super intelligence and self-sampling

[LizR]

On 10 June 2015 at 11:15, Terren Suydam  wrote:

> From a quantum immortality perspective, I think if a superintelligence was
> merging lots of intelligences, including yours, you find yourself in
> increasingly unlikely situations where you were able to escape being merged
> with the superintelligence. Eventually, against all odds, you might be the
> only non-integrated intelligence left.
>
> Yes, that does seem possible. It would imply that closest continuers of
you could never be the versions within the "Cloud" - an alternative might
be that the superintelligence starts off new arrivals with full autonomy
inside a virtual world indistinguishable from their previous existence, and
only gradually allow them to merge into the Overmind ... maybe giving them
tests to check if they are ready to do so yet.

(Which may or may not involve being able to recite the Quran :-)

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 10 June 2015 at 10:37, Bruce Kellett  wrote:

> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>
>> On 09 Jun 2015, at 12:07, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>>
>>  Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
 On 09 Jun 2015, at 07:40, Bruce Kellett wrote:

>
> Given a set of axioms and some agreed rules of inference, the same
> results always follow, regardless of by whom or at what time the
> application is made. This is not what is usually referred to as "kicking
> back". Johnson did not apply some axioms and rules of inference in answer
> to the idealists, he kicked a stone.
>
 But people can kicked stone in dreams too.

>>>
>>> But do they wake up with broken or bruised toes?
>>>
>>
>> Do they ever wake up?
>>
>
> Solipsist!
>
> Another solipsist? Phew! I was worried I might be the only one.

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Re: Pigeons offend Islam

[LizR]

The answer is, pigeon breeders have to make little sets of underwear for
their pigeons.

Simple, really.

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Re: Notion of (mathematical) reason

[LizR]

On 10 June 2015 at 01:11, Bruce Kellett  wrote:

>
> That is less difficult that you might think. Consciousness supervenes on
> the physical brain


So (a) what actually is consciousness?, and (b) what is the answer to
Maudlin and the MGA?

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Re: super intelligence and self-sampling

[LizR]

The normal answer to this is as stated - a superintelligence may form, as
per various Arthur C Clark (or Olaf Stapledon, really) stories, by merging
lots of non-super intelligences. So the chances of finding yourself
non-super is vastly greater, because it takes billions of us to make one of
them. However, this could lead to you eventually finding yourself super
(especially if quantum immortality operates). Or a subset of super.

PS Ants aren't relevant, as Russell explains in "Theory of Nothing".

On 10 June 2015 at 09:41, Terren Suydam  wrote:

>
> On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 5:31 PM, Telmo Menezes 
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 8:19 PM, Terren Suydam 
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 1:48 PM, Telmo Menezes 
>>> wrote:
>>>


 On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 7:28 PM, Terren Suydam 
 wrote:

> Perhaps most superintelligences end up merging into one super-ego, so
> that their measure effectively becomes zero.
>

 Perhaps, but I'm not convinced that this would reduce its measure.
 Consider the fact that you are no an ant, even though there are apparently
 100 trillion of them compared to 7 billion humans.

 Telmo.


>>>
>>> The way I resolve that one is to assume that self-sampling requires a
>>> high enough level intelligence to have an ego (the 'self' in
>>> self-sampling). This is required to differentiate the computational
>>> histories we identify with as identity & memory.
>>>
>>> Let's say the entirety of humanity uploaded into a simulated
>>> environment, and that one day the simulated separation between minds was
>>> eradicated, giving rise to a super-intelligence (just one path of many to a
>>> superintelligence). From that moment on it would be impossible to
>>> differentiate computational histories in terms of personal identity/memory,
>>> so the measure goes to zero.
>>>
>>
>> Why zero? There is still one conscious entity. Why wouldn't it remember
>> the great unification and the multitude of humans events before that?
>>
>> Telmo.
>>
>
> When I say "goes to zero" I mean it as in, approaches the limit of zero in
> the relative measure.
>
> I think it would remember the great multitude of human events, but it
> would remember all of them as a single entity, as a single undifferentiated
> identity. It effectively collapses the measure from billions to one.
>
> Terren
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> T
>>>
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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 9 June 2015 at 14:10, Stathis Papaioannou  wrote:

> On Tuesday, June 9, 2015, LizR  wrote:
>
>> (And what's wrong with "sneaked" ?)
>>
>
> I was trying to be faintly amusing, but I see that "snuck" may have
> sneaked into the language:
>
>  http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/g08.html
>
> Not yet, by gad! It's still "non-standard"...

Also, I see 'slinked' has slunk off.

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 9 June 2015 at 14:00, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 6/8/2015 4:16 PM, LizR wrote:
>
>  On 9 June 2015 at 05:31, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>   or that maths exists independently of mathematicians.
>>
>> That even just arithmetical truth is independent of mathematician. This
>> is important because everyone agree with any axiomatic of the numbers, but
>> that is not the case for analysis, real numbers, etc.
>>
>> Everyone agrees on ZFC in the same sense.  So does that make set theory
>> and its consequences real?
>>
>>  Reality isn't defined by what everyone agrees on.
>
>
> Tell it to Bruno, I was just following him.
>

If it was then the religious majority throughout history would have been
right.

>   What makes ZFC (or whatever) real, or not, is whether it kicks back.
>
> Mathematics doesn't kick back - except metaphorically.
>

Are you claiming an alien in another galaxy wouldn't find that arithmetic
works? I'm not making any metaphysical claims about the status of maths,
merely saying that most mathematicians would, I think, agree that two
people working independently can make the same mathematical discovery by
different routes, and that some maths has real-world applications, and that
when it does, it works. (But I'm not sure how much kicking back you need
from something, maybe being independently discoverable and working isn't
enough?)

>   Is it something that was invented, and could equally well have been
> invented differently, or was it discovered as a result of following a chain
> of logical reasoning from certain axioms?
>
> I'd say ZFC and arithmetic were both invented and then an axiomatization
> was invented for each of them.  I'm not sure what "invented differently"
> means?...getting to the same axiomatization by a different historical
> path?  Or inventing something similar, but not identical, as ZF is
> different from ZFC.
>
> It means that two people starting from the same axioms and using the same
system of logic came up with two different results (and neither made a
mistake). If within a given system A always leads to B, then it's
reasonable to say B is discovered - like, for example, a certain endgame in
chess leading to a particular set of possible conclusions. But if within a
system A can lead to B, C, D etc then it's reasonable to say it's invented,
like a competition to finish (within the grammatical system of English) a
poem that begins "And now the end is near..."

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 9 June 2015 at 11:26, Bruce Kellett  wrote:

> LizR wrote:
>
>> Reality isn't defined by what everyone agrees on. What makes ZFC (or
>> whatever) real, or not, is whether it kicks back. Is it something that was
>> invented, and could equally well have been invented differently, or was it
>> discovered as a result of following a chain of logical reasoning from
>> certain axioms?
>>
>
> Why do not those same arguments apply equally to arithmetic? What axioms
> led to arithmetic? Could one have chosen different axioms?
>
> The arguments do apply. The point is that once the axioms are chosen, the
results that follow are not a matter of choice. Arithmetical truths appear
to take the form "if A, then (necessarily) B".

However, some of the elementary axioms (or even perhaps axions! :-) do
appear to be demonstrated by nature - certain numerical quantities are
(apparently) conserved in fundamental particle interactions, quantum
fluctuations can only occur in ways that balance energy budgets, etc. So
one could say that for anyone of a materialist persuasion, the assumptions
of elementary arithmetic aren't unreasonable, at least (Bruno often
mentions that comp only assumes some very simple arithmetical axioms - the
existence of numbers and the correctness of addition and multiplication, I
think)

So if you choose Peano arithmetic, then such-and-such follows, while if you
choose modular arithmetic, something else follows. The "kicking back" part
is simply the fact that the same result always follows from a given set of
assumptions. To put it a bit more dramatically, an alien being in a
different galaxy, or even in another universe, would still get the same
results. Nature is telling us that given A, we always get B.

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Re: Notion of (mathematical) reason

[LizR]

What comp - or any theory of physics - has to show is that observers will
experience the passage of time. SR for example posits a block universe,
which at first sight might not seem to allow for us to experience time. But
of course it does, even though the whole 4D structure is "already there" in
some sense. Not because we "crawl up world-lines" as Weyl poetically put
it, but because each moment along our world-line contains a capsule memory
of earlier moments, but not later ones. (The later ones are just as
"already there" as the earlier ones, according to the theory, but the laws
of physics are structured in a way that means they aren't accessible.)

Similarly, comp needs to show that "observer moments" will contain memories
of other observer moments, but only those that existed earlier in the
sequences of computations that gave rise to the current moment. This isn't
physical time, whatever that is, but it does involve that certain laws
apply to computation.

None of this is known, or proven, of course, but the concept is well
understood (as fro example in "October the First is too Late")

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Re: Pigeons offend Islam

[LizR]

Support for this is (ahem) dropping...

On 9 June 2015 at 07:35, spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> A Coo-Coo Fatwa
>
> -Original Message-
> From: John Clark 
> To: everything-list 
> Sent: Sat, Jun 6, 2015 12:15 pm
> Subject: Pigeons offend Islam
>
>  ISIS recently banned pigeon breeding because when the birds fly overhead
> they expose their genitals and that is a sin against Islam. Violators will
> be publicly flogged.
>
>  http://rt.com/news/264673-isis-breeding-birds-islam/
>
>   John K Clark
>
>
>
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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 9 June 2015 at 05:31, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>   or that maths exists independently of mathematicians.
>
> That even just arithmetical truth is independent of mathematician. This is
> important because everyone agree with any axiomatic of the numbers, but
> that is not the case for analysis, real numbers, etc.
>
> Everyone agrees on ZFC in the same sense.  So does that make set theory
> and its consequences real?
>
> Reality isn't defined by what everyone agrees on. What makes ZFC (or
whatever) real, or not, is whether it kicks back. Is it something that was
invented, and could equally well have been invented differently, or was it
discovered as a result of following a chain of logical reasoning from
certain axioms?

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 9 June 2015 at 05:29, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
>  Hmm Let us be precise. That the computation take place in arithmetic
> is a mathematical fact that nobody doubt today. UDA explains only that we
> cannot use a notion of primitive matter for making "more real" some
> computations in place of others. It makes the physics supervening on "all
> computations in arithmetic".
>
> But my computer does some computations and not others.  So there must be
> some sense in which some computations are real and others aren't.
> Handwaving that they're all there in arithmetic proves too much.
>

I don't see that. Surely the problem is that it doesn't prove *enough* -
assuming all computations exist (in some sense) in arithmetic, which I
believe is "trivially" true to most mathematicians, how does this produce
physics?

If you're going to use a comp style explanation, your computer isn't
defining which computations are real, it's somehow being generated by all
those abstract computations.

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 8 June 2015 at 16:22, Stathis Papaioannou  wrote:

> It seems here that you've snuck an extra assumption into comp1. We know
> that brains can be conscious, and we assume that computations can also be
> conscious. But that doesn't mean that only computations can be conscious,
> nor does it mean that brains are computations. These two latter statements
> might be true, but they are not necessarily true, even given
>  computationalism.
>

I may not have phrased it very well, but comp1 is the assumption that
consciousness is based on computation, and can't be created by anything
else (at least that's comp1 in a simple form - actually, I believe it's the
assumption that at some level physics is Turing emulable). On that basis, a
brain must do computation (at some level), since it's conscious, and an AI
could be conscious given the correct programme.

(And what's wrong with "sneaked" ?)

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Re: Notion of (mathematical) reason

[LizR]

On 8 June 2015 at 13:30, Bruce Kellett  wrote:

> You started with Tegmark's idea that time and events are emergent from an
> underlying timeless mathematical structure. My point was that in order for
> time to emerge from a block universe certain structure was necessary -- we
> need a 4-dim manifold with a local Lorentzian metric, and physical events
> must be arranged with a particular structure on this manifold -- they
> cannot just be arranged at haphazard. So the way events are embedded is in
> fact crucial.
>

Yes. In fact that's what I said, too, so I'm hardly going to argue.

>
> The question is then whether this 4 dimensional manifold with a local
> Lorentzian metric exists in arithmetic?


Or whatever TOE underlies it, yes.


> If not, there is no possibility for a time variable in arithmetic per se,
> and consequently nothing can 'emerge' from arithmetic, since emergence is a
> temporal concept.


No it isn't, not in the sense being used here. The concept that is relevant
in this case is ontological priority. If you think emergence is temporal
then you will get very confused by discussions of the MUH (or even of how
the universe arises as a 4D manifold from the laws of physics)


> Note that it is important to distinguish between structures that can be
> described mathematically and the structure of arithmetic or mathematics
> themselves.
>

Of course. I hope we all agree that the finger isn't the Moon.

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 8 June 2015 at 11:14, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 6/7/2015 3:00 PM, LizR wrote:
>
>  On 8 June 2015 at 05:08, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>>
>>  On 07 Jun 2015, at 18:35, John Clark wrote:
>>
>>  On Sat, Jun 6, 2015  Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>>
>>   >> An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that
>>>> mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates?
>>>
>>>
>>>  > Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event
>>> in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event)
>>> and its mathematical representation.
>>>
>>
>>  I am not confusing that but I think sometimes you might be confusing a
>> physical thing with the language (mathematics) the descriptive
>> representation of the thing is presented in. Or maybe not, maybe you're
>> right and mathematics is more than just a language and is more fundamental
>> than physics; nobody knows including you.
>>
>> Nobody can know. But we can reason from hypothesis. With the
>> computationalist hypothesis, the immateriality of consciousness is
>> contagious on the possible environment.  Nobody pretends this is obvious,
>> especially for people stuck at the step 3.
>>
>>   The question being asked is, why hypothesis best explains
> consciousness? Comp attempts to take the default materialist assumption,
> that consciousness is a (very, very complicated) form of computation, and
> to derive results from that assumption.
>
>  Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also
> known as the strong AI thesis, I think) - this is more or less equivalent
> to the idea that a computer could, given a suitable programme and
> resources, be conscious. From this Bruno attempts to show, via a chain of
> reasoning, that the computations involved have to take place in
> arithmetical reality ("Platonia"). This conclusion I call comp2. The task
> of anyone who disagrees is simply to show that comp2 doesn't follow from
> comp1.
>
>  There are various ways to try to show this. One is to doubt the starting
> assumptions ("comp1"). The starting assumptions include the idea that
> simple arithmetic exists independently of mathematicians - that 2+2=4 was
> true in the big bang, for example.
>
>
> I think that assumes that "true" and "exist" are the same thing.  One can
> affirm that Watson was Holmes assistant without admitting that either one
> existed.  So while everyone agrees that 2+2=4 by definition, it's not so
> clear that arithmetic objects exist.
>
> Yes, of course it isn't clear. But 2+2=4 isn't "by definition" it's the
result of empirical observation of - as John wuold say - material objects.

>   The universe appears to obey certain bits of methematics to high
> precision, or alternatively you could say that various bits of maths appear
> to correctly describe the behaviour of the universe and its constituents to
> high precision. So that is the "which comes first?" question, which as you
> correctly say we can't know (indeed we can't know anything, if "know" means
> justified true belief, apart from the fact that we are conscious, as
> Descartes mentioned).
>
>
> Note that Bruno rejects the conditioning on "justified".  Plato's
> Theaetetus dialogue defines "knowledge" as "true belief".  I think that's
> a deficiency in modal logic insofar as it's supposed to formalize good
> informal reasoning.  But I can see why it's done; it's difficult if not
> impossible to give formal definition of "justified".
>
> Yes.

>   So one can doubt comp1 by doubting either that consciousness is a
> computation, or that maths exists independently of mathematicians.
>
>  Then one can doubt the steps of the argument. I personally find little
> to doubt, assuming comp1, until we reach step 7 or 8, or whichever step is
> the MGA. (There has been a lot of heat about pronouns, but as far as I can
> see this hasn't made a dent in the arguments presented.)
>
>  So the other main point of attack is at the comp2 end, so to speak, with
> the MGA. There is Brent's "light cone" argument, which IMHO seems
> unconvincing because one can make a "cut" between a brain and the world
> along the sensory nerves - this is basically saying that a person could be
> a brain in a vat, and never know it. But it also fails if one can in theory
> have an AI, because an AI is by hyopthesis a digital machine and could
> therefore could be re-run and given the same inputs, and due to the na

Re: Recent methane spikes in the arctic

[LizR]

The "Doomsday argument" is looking increasingly realistic.

On 8 June 2015 at 14:20, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

>
>
>
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=p2ckkxEnWpA
>
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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

Must re-read my posts before sending.

That should of course be "which" hypothesis, not "why" (D'oh!)

And I seem to have too many "could"s ...Oh well.

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 8 June 2015 at 05:08, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 07 Jun 2015, at 18:35, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jun 6, 2015  Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
> >> An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is
>>> incapable of handling 4 coordinates?
>>
>>
>> > Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in
>> mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and
>> its mathematical representation.
>>
>
> I am not confusing that but I think sometimes you might be confusing a
> physical thing with the language (mathematics) the descriptive
> representation of the thing is presented in. Or maybe not, maybe you're
> right and mathematics is more than just a language and is more fundamental
> than physics; nobody knows including you.
>
> Nobody can know. But we can reason from hypothesis. With the
> computationalist hypothesis, the immateriality of consciousness is
> contagious on the possible environment.  Nobody pretends this is obvious,
> especially for people stuck at the step 3.
>
> The question being asked is, why hypothesis best explains consciousness?
Comp attempts to take the default materialist assumption, that
consciousness is a (very, very complicated) form of computation, and to
derive results from that assumption.

Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also
known as the strong AI thesis, I think) - this is more or less equivalent
to the idea that a computer could, given a suitable programme and
resources, be conscious. From this Bruno attempts to show, via a chain of
reasoning, that the computations involved have to take place in
arithmetical reality ("Platonia"). This conclusion I call comp2. The task
of anyone who disagrees is simply to show that comp2 doesn't follow from
comp1.

There are various ways to try to show this. One is to doubt the starting
assumptions ("comp1"). The starting assumptions include the idea that
simple arithmetic exists independently of mathematicians - that 2+2=4 was
true in the big bang, for example. The universe appears to obey certain
bits of methematics to high precision, or alternatively you could say that
various bits of maths appear to correctly describe the behaviour of the
universe and its constituents to high precision. So that is the "which
comes first?" question, which as you correctly say we can't know (indeed we
can't know anything, if "know" means justified true belief, apart from the
fact that we are conscious, as Descartes mentioned). So one can doubt comp1
by doubting either that consciousness is a computation, or that maths
exists independently of mathematicians.

Then one can doubt the steps of the argument. I personally find little to
doubt, assuming comp1, until we reach step 7 or 8, or whichever step is the
MGA. (There has been a lot of heat about pronouns, but as far as I can see
this hasn't made a dent in the arguments presented.)

So the other main point of attack is at the comp2 end, so to speak, with
the MGA. There is Brent's "light cone" argument, which IMHO seems
unconvincing because one can make a "cut" between a brain and the world
along the sensory nerves - this is basically saying that a person could be
a brain in a vat, and never know it. But it also fails if one can in theory
have an AI, because an AI is by hyopthesis a digital machine and could
therefore could be re-run and given the same inputs, and due to the nature
of computation would have to repeat the same conscious experiences. And
then that description falls foul of Bruno/Maudlin's argument about leeching
away the material support for the computation until it is turned into a
replayed recording. At this point we can use "Russell's paradox" - sorry, I
mean argument - that a recording of such complexity may indeed be
conscious. The MGA seems to hand-wave a bit about this whole process - like
the Chinese room, we "simply" record the activities of the processing
devices and then "simply' project the movie onto the system, and so on,
leaving aside the Vast size of the envisaged apparatus. Nevertheless, if we
assume comp1 then we assume by hypothesis that a recording isn't conscious
(only a computation can be conscious, according to comp1). So that's really
a comp1 objection.

So the question in the end is which is the most reasonable hypothesis. How
does materialism explain consciousness? How does comp explain the
appearance of a material universe?

Over to you.

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Re: Notion of (mathematical) reason

[LizR]

On 6 June 2015 at 11:26, Bruce Kellett  wrote:

> LizR wrote:
>
>> This is true if events have an existence apart from maths. However, that
>> is still being debated. Tegmark's "mathematical universe hypothesis"
>> suggests that time and events are emergent from an underlying timeless
>> mathematical structure.
>>
>> To take something that is (hopefully) less contentious, the block
>> universe of special relativity already suggests something similar to this.
>> In relativity, all chains of events are embedded in a space-time manifold,
>> and hence causation comes down to how world-lines are arranged within this
>> structure.
>>
>
> This is not true. Causality is still a fundamental consideration in SR,
> and that carries over into the basic structure of quantum field theory.
> Even within the block universe model, the light cone structure of spacetime
> is fundamental. The light cone encapsulates the fundamental insight of SR
> that causal influences cannot propagate faster than the speed of light --
> the light cone is the limiting extent of causal structure. The laws of
> physics consistent with this structure in SR and beyond are have a (local)
> Lorentz symmetry, which preserves the causal structure between different
> Lorentz frames. The distinction between time-like and space-like
> separations of events is aa fundamental tenet of physical law.
>
> None of this contradicts what I said. All I am concerned with is that SR
indicates that events are embedded in a 4D continuum. Describing how
they're embedded doesn't change that.

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Re: Notion of (mathematical) reason

[LizR]

This is true if events have an existence apart from maths. However, that is
still being debated. Tegmark's "mathematical universe hypothesis" suggests
that time and events are emergent from an underlying timeless mathematical
structure.

To take something that is (hopefully) less contentious, the block universe
of special relativity already suggests something similar to this. In
relativity, all chains of events are embedded in a space-time manifold, and
hence causation comes down to how world-lines are arranged within this
structure. Presumably the arrangement has abstract reasons (i.e. what we
call the laws of physics, whatever they turn out to be). So even in SR,
causality in effect takes a back seat, becoming the result of how observers
are embedded in a "timeless" structure. Of course in this case, time still
exists as a dimension, as it was in Newtonian physics. But even in
Newtonian physics, Laplace imagined the past and future would be "already
there" as far as a sufficiently godlike intellect was concerned.

So Newton and Einstein imagined that events were embedded in a physical
structure, but that they were "already there" in the sense of being
emergent from the laws of physics plus initial conditions.

ISTM that moving causation into a purely abstract realm is just one more
step in this process, and a logical one (though obviously one that needs to
be tested against reality).

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 6 June 2015 at 09:46, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 6/5/2015 12:22 PM, John Clark wrote:
>
>  On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , meekerdb  wrote:
>
>  >> It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified
>> approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is
>> vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a
>> working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the
>> simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex
>> thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified
>> approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually
>> do anything. That simplification must be missing something important,
>> matter that obeys the laws of physics.
>
>
>
>>   > The trouble with this argument is that the laws of physics are
>> mathematical abstractions.
>>
>
>  Mathematicians are always saying that mathematics is a language, but
> what would be the consequences if that were really true? The best way known
> to describe the laws of physics is to write then in the language of
> mathematics, but a language is not the thing the language is describing.
>
>
> I agree the laws of physics are descriptions we invent; but even so they
> are abstractions and not material and what they define is only an
> approximation to what happens in the world.  That's what makes them useful
> - they let us make predictions while leaving out a lot of stuff.
>
> I know what you mean, but this statement could be considered a bit
misleading. Unlike the other branches of science, physics at least tries to
be a complete description. Of course it fails in practice, but (very much
in theory) a TOE would describe everything - it would in principle be like
"Laplace's demon" (though possibly only for a multiverse).

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 6 June 2015 at 07:22, John Clark  wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , meekerdb  wrote:
>
> >> It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified
>> approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is
>> vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a
>> working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the
>> simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex
>> thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified
>> approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually
>> do anything. That simplification must be missing something important,
>> matter that obeys the laws of physics.
>
>
>
>> > The trouble with this argument is that the laws of physics are
>> mathematical abstractions.
>>
>
> Mathematicians are always saying that mathematics is a language, but what
> would be the consequences if that were really true?
>

I'm not sure that mathematicians say this (well, Galileo did, iirc, but
generally they don't).


> The best way known to describe the laws of physics is to write then in the
> language of mathematics, but a language is not the thing the language is
> describing. A book about Napoleon may be written in the English Language,
> but the English Language is not Napoleon and mathematics may not be the
> physical universe.  Or maybe it is. As I've said many times I'm playing
> devil's advocate here, maybe mathematics really is more fundamental than
> physics but if it is it has not been proven.
>

I doubt anything could prove this if it's still being debated even though
physics has been based on maths for 300 years.

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Re: Apparently global warming didn't even slow down

[LizR]

On 5 June 2015 at 16:21, Samiya Illias  wrote:

>
> http://quran.com/81/6 And when the seas are filled with flame
>
> Il'l just look at this one for now. I suspect that any of them will give a
similar result...

OK. I see that it is part of the following verse, or whatever one should
call it (I've missed off the ending)

When the sun is wrapped up [in darkness]
And when the stars fall, dispersing,
And when the mountains are removed
And when full-term she-camels are neglected
And when the wild beasts are gathered
And when the seas are filled with flame
And when the souls are paired
And when the girl [who was] buried alive is asked
For what sin she was killed
And when the pages are made public
And when the sky is stripped away
And when Hellfire is set ablaze
And when Paradise is brought near,
A soul will [then] know what it has brought [with it].
So I swear by the retreating stars -
Those that run [their courses] and disappear -
And by the night as it closes in
And by the dawn when it breathes
[That] indeed, the Qur'an is a word [conveyed by] a noble messenger

Going by the context (sun going out, stars falling, etc).this looks to me
like a list of "end-times prophecy" type stuff, that could be taken any way
you like. I'd say it has about as much relevance as a prophecy of climate
change as this:

And if the dam breaks open many years too soon
And if there is no room upon the hill
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

Less, really, since Pink Floyd managed to predict the flooding of New
Orleans and sea level rise.

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Re: Review of Bostrom's Superintelligence

[LizR]

This is what, IIRC, Asimov called the "Frankenstein complex" in his robot
stories - the idea that the world will be overrun by rampaging robots, or
paper clip factories as the case may be. While the "singleton" seems to be
what might be called the "HAL complex" (or Multivac if we want to stay with
Asimov) - the idea of one monolithic computer to rule them all. But
practice tells us that things may occur the other way around - that we will
have lots of little AIs to start with - eventually getting one as clever as
a dog, then one as clever as Jeeves, then one as clever as Einstein ... So
ISTM that if there isn't a singularity, but only steady growth, we will
have time to adapt and instil those Three Laws into our plastic pals who
are fun to be with. (And maybe they can sort out the *&%$#ing mess we've
made...)

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Re: Review of Bostrom's Superintelligence

[LizR]

One comment (so far) - Einstein's breakthrough on SR appears to have been
"simply" to take seriously what the various results already obtained at
that date suggested. That might be regarded as a "paradigm shift" by some
since it involved space and time being unified and various
counter-intuitive effects being accepted (time dilation etc), however it
was taking a mass of apparently semi-unrelated results and simplifying them
by using a single basic principle (the same results obtain in all reference
frames). This doesn't seem to me to be more intelligent than anyone else,
but "differently intelligent", so to speak. I wonder how you create an AI
able to have key insights? One might cite Hugh Everett and Huw Price as
(relatively) modern contenders for people "taking seriously what the
physics is trying to tell us" and abandoning common sense notions (such as
there is only one universe adn time's arrow applies equally at all levels).


On 5 June 2015 at 11:35, Russell Standish  wrote:

> This review of Nick Bostrom's _Superintelligence_ crossed my desk from
> a Rod somebody or other. Should be interesting to members of this
> group, although you'll need a spare 15 minutes or so to read it.
>
> Cheers, Russell.
>
> Review of Nick Bostrom's _Superintelligence_, Oxford University Press,
> 2014.
>
> Is the surface of our planet -- and maybe every planet we can get
> our hands on -- going to be carpeted in paper clips (and paper clip
> factories) by a well-intentioned but misguided artificial intelligence
> (AI) that ultimately cannibalizes everything in sight, including us,
> in single-minded pursuit of a seemingly innocuous goal? Nick Bostrom,
> head of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, thinks that we can't
> guarantee it _won't_ happen, and it worries him. It doesn't require
> Skynet and Terminators, it doesn't require evil geniuses bent on
> destroying the world, it just requires a powerful AI with a moral
> system in which humanity's welfare is irrelevant or defined very
> differently than most humans today would define it. If the AI has a
> single goal and is smart enough to outwit our attempts to disable or
> control it once it has gotten loose, Game Over, argues Professor
> Bostrom in his book _Superintelligence_.
>
> This is perhaps the most important book I have read this decade, and
> it has kept me awake at night for weeks. I want to tell you why, and
> what I think, but a lot of this is difficult ground, so please bear
> with me. The short form is that I am fairly certain that we _will_
> build a true AI, and I respect Vernor Vinge, but I have long been
> skeptical of the Kurzweilian notions of inevitability,
> doubly-exponential growth, and the Singularity. I've also been
> skeptical of the idea that AIs will destroy us, either on purpose or
> by accident. Bostrom's book has made me think that perhaps I was
> naive. I still think that, on the whole, his worst-case scenarios are
> unlikely. However, he argues persuasively that we can't yet rule out
> any number of bad outcomes of developing AI, and that we need to be
> investing much more in figuring out whether developing AI is a good
> idea.  We may need to put a moratorium on research, as was done for a
> few years with recombinant DNA starting in 1975. We also need to be
> prepared for the possibility that such a moratorium doesn't
> hold. Bostrom also brings up any number of mind-bending dystopias
> around what qualifies as human, which we'll get to below.
>
> (If that paragraph doesn't make sense, go look up Vinge, Ray Kurzweil
> and the Singularity, and "strong AI"; I'll discuss them briefly below,
> but the more background you have, the better. I'll wait here...done?
> Good.)
>
> Let me begin with some of my own background and thoughts prior to
> reading _Superintelligence_.
>
> I read Roger Penrose's _The Emperor's New Mind_ when it first came out
> in 1989, not that I remember it more than dimly. Much later, I heard
> John Searle, the philosopher who developed the Chinese Room thought
> experiment give a talk at Xerox PARC. Both of these I found
> unconvincing, for reasons that have largely faded from my mind, though
> I'll give them a shot below.  Also, I used to have actual friends who
> worked in artificial intelligence for a living, though regular contact
> with that set has faded, as well. When I was kid I used to read a ton
> of classic science fiction, and Asimov's "The Final Question" and "All
> the Cares in the World" have weighed heavy on my mind. And hey, in
> recent years I've used Norvig and Russell's _Artificial Intelligence:
> A Modern Approach_ as a truly massive paperweight, and have actually
> read several chapters! Perhaps most importantly, I once read a book on
> philosophy, but have no formal training in it whatsoever.
>
> All of this collectively makes me qualified to review a book about --
> and to have intelligent, original thoughts, worth *your* attention, on
> -- the preeminent moral issue and possibly existenti

Apparently global warming didn't even slow down

[LizR]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-pause-in-global-warming

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Re: Review of Bostrom's Superintelligence

[LizR]

Am I missing a subtle joke, or did you forget to include a link? (Or is my
browser up the spout?)

On 5 June 2015 at 10:55, Russell Standish  wrote:

>
>
> --
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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 4 June 2015 at 13:21, John Clark  wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 3, 2015  LizR  wrote:
>
>
>> > Mr Clark's response to Bruno indicates that he (Mr Clark) doesn't know
>> what he (Bruno) is talking about
>>
>
> Correct. And Mr.Clark strongly suspects that Mr.Marchal doesn't either.
>
> However Mr Clark's opinion on this isn't particularly valuable, since he
admits he doesn't understand this stuff (the Church-Turing thesis etc) and
he hasn't yet come up with any counter arguments that have convinced anyone
else, including other people who think Bruno may be wrong.

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Re: Apparently, even oil cmopanies want a carbon tax

[LizR]

On 4 June 2015 at 12:27, meekerdb  wrote:

> On 6/3/2015 3:32 PM, LizR wrote:
>
>>
>> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-01/even-big-oil-wants-a-carbon-tax
>>
>
> I believe that when James Inhofe votes for it.
>

Who's he?

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Apparently, even oil cmopanies want a carbon tax

[LizR]

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-01/even-big-oil-wants-a-carbon-tax

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 4 June 2015 at 09:07, John Clark  wrote:

> Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>>  >> if randomness doesn't mean an event without a cause what on earth
>> does it mean?
>
>
>
> > A superposition seen from the 1p view, or A self-duplication seen from
>> the 1p view
>
> That means peepee.
>
Sadly Mr Clark's response to Bruno indicates that he (Mr Clark) doesn't
know what he (Bruno) is talking about, so trying to engage in meaningful
discussion with Mr Clark seems pointless.

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Re: And now for more "news"

[LizR]

Yeah, he's good. Obviously some Americans do actually get satire, despite
the stereotype.

On 4 June 2015 at 03:27, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> *Sometimes Borowitz really nails it…. It gave me a laugh… maybe you’ll get
> a chuckle*
>
>
>
>
> http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/mccain-urges-military-strikes-against-fifa
>
>
>
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Re: Samiya proved right

[LizR]

If people have some unknown psychic powers, prayers might do some good even
without a God (unlikely, I imagine, but who knows?).

Or maybe praying and believing someone is listening just does you good
psychologically.

On 4 June 2015 at 09:38, spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> Ah, the plenitude, how about this?
>
> http://phys.org/news/2015-06-strange-behavior-quantum-particles-parallel.html
>
> Sent from AOL Mobile Mail
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: John Mikes 
> To: everything-list 
> Sent: Wed, Jun 3, 2015 05:13 PM
> Subject: Re: Samiya proved right
>
>
>  This discussion-post approaches some better reality-case than most of
> the others.  Reminds me of the Worldview of my wife: we are "here" by
> decree of some "ZOOKEEPER" as long as 'they' want something we provide (for
> them).
> We do not know them, don't communicate with them. When our 'usefulness' is
> over, we perish.
>
>  My - more human-logic based natural scientific agnosticism (call it
> common sense)  - places the "ORIGIN" (incl.: the propagational steps) into
> the infinite complexity of this Universe (that may be much larger than
> whatever we call 'our' Cosmos) and an infinite composite - I call it
> 'Plenitude' - that does not tolerate complexities yet all ingredients
> fluctuate in ceaseless conflation. Complexity comes into play, when
> 'relatable' ingredients mass up in the fluctuation and screw up the
> equilibrium of the Plenitude. I call such violations 'Universes" - they
> dissipate as they form (no time factor - maybe) with diverse complexity in
> such groups.
>
>  It is not a 'created' world, not a deterministically forced order, not
> teleological or predetermined: it succumbs to the unlimited variations of
> the participants as they enter the image. Under such (self-controlled -
> iff??) conditions *our* Universe is of a lower complexity (SPACE - TIME
> SYSTEM?) and OTHERS MAY BE MORE SOPHISTICATED (the Zookeepers?).
>
>  Accordingly 'prayer' is senseless, much more so 'praying' to a
> supernatural being with infinite wisdom and power (that would pretend to
> PRESCRIBE to such Being what to do BEST - as WE think of it). To 'praise'
> such Being? it may be ridiculous, if not supposing the 'narcisstic brutal
> nature' someone mentioned lately on this list. My example: 2 mothers 'pray'
> identically for the safe homecoming of their sons from the same war. Both
> are 'good' etc. One son comes home safe, the other in a body bag. Add a
> third one to my example and that 3rd one comes home mentally(bodily?)
> destroyed. Some bad guys come home safely.
>
>  As a child, I was raised religiously, served even as a Catholic
> altar-boy and studied several religions and Scripts. My wife was educated
> by nuns.
>
>  Just to tell my side
>
>  John M
>
>  On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 2:37 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List <
> everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>  Hey, I grew up watching the Organians do their thing. You leave human
> reaction to wide open. You want to pray to a baddie, or kick the shins of a
> goodie?
>
>
>  -Original Message-
> From: LizR 
> To: everything-list 
>  Sent: Tue, Jun 2, 2015 10:58 pm
> Subject: Re: Samiya proved right
>
> On 3 June 2015 at 14:56, spudboy100 via Everything List <
> everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> So if contact is made to the godlikes, assuming that he, she, it, they,
> should they be worshipped? No? What if these imaginary guys did something
> really nice for us?
>
>  I think we should react to them as seems appropriate under the
> circumstances (like most things, really).
>
>  PS See early "Star Trek" for more details on how to react to godlike
> beings.
>
>
>
>   --
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&

Re: Samiya proved right

[LizR]

On 3 June 2015 at 15:44, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 6/2/2015 8:35 PM, Samiya Illias wrote:
>
> Let's try a different approach. Do you really think that everything just
> happened on its own and there is no creator behind it? If you do believe
> that there must be a creator, then try praying to your creator and implore
> faith and guidance.
>
> There are a lot of other possibilities besides "just happened" and "a
> creator to whom it would make sense to pray".
>

Indeed. And if there is a creator, that just leaves the origin question
open - where did the creator come from?

To the best of my knowledge this question isn't tackled in the Bible,
Quran, etc. But you'd think that God would know his own origins, and if
he's keen for us to believe in him, he'd tell us what they are, so that
once wev'e advanced enough in scientific knowledge we'd be able to verify
what the holy writ told us (Samiya has suggested that this is the case for
some bits of physics and biology - but I don't know of any holy text that
tells us that God evolved through natural selection before he created our
universe, I'd feel more inclined to believe it if it did).

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Re: Why would God make this? (part 3)

[LizR]

On 3 June 2015 at 14:58, spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

>
> A common hallucination reported by dmt users are praying manti.
>
> Really?

Curiouser and curiouser.

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Re: Samiya proved right

[LizR]

On 3 June 2015 at 14:56, spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> So if contact is made to the godlikes, assuming that he, she, it, they,
> should they be worshipped? No? What if these imaginary guys did something
> really nice for us?
>
> I think we should react to them as seems appropriate under the
circumstances (like most things, really).

PS See early "Star Trek" for more details on how to react to godlike beings.

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Why would God make this? (part 3)

[LizR]

...clearly, because (s)he has a sense of humour.

http://happyplace.someecards.com/why-god/why-would-god-make-this-week-3-the-praying-mantis/

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Re: Samiya proved right

[LizR]

On 3 June 2015 at 13:28, spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> Any-vay, Dawkins, himself, conjectured that there could be god-like
> intelligences in the universe. This is a thought that is quite spooky
> enough, for my primate brain. I wonder, what would you define as a
> qualification for being a "god-like intelligence?" Aside from being
> well-versed in MS Excel spreadsheets, and being an Oracle developer?
>
> Being a Dungeon Master (or Mistress).

Or a setter of cryptic crosswords 
:-)

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Re: Samiya proved right

[LizR]

On 3 June 2015 at 11:51, spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> Well, I don't guarantee you that it is a simulation, but I will say that
> its a computation, one that may or may not generate the matter we see and
> feel. Energy is movement at some point which makes it energetic. Davies was
> us a wild example of the power of things not yet known or under
> appreciated. If you can manipulate blocks of electrons,you can creatematter
> that we have never seen before. First, whomever does this has overcome
> electrical resistance tween each electron from another, then doing this en
> masse, means a world that transcends Harry Potter or LOTR, because we are
> dealing then. with a Dungeons and Dragons world of wands, and armor, and
> magic swords that cut through dragon skin. As for me, I am a 7th level
> magic user with an armor class of +6, and the ability to frost and
> fireballs with a hitpoint of 27, in full armor.
>

That would explain a lot. Personally I'm an Elven illusionist (but that is
IRL, rather than in D&D)

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Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level

[LizR]

On 3 June 2015 at 05:47, John Clark  wrote:

>
> On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 5:46 PM, LizR  wrote:
>
> > A Turing Machine is actually an *algorithm*
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, a algorithm that is a set of instructions that explains how to
>>> organize matter that obeys the laws of physics in such a way that it can
>>> make any finite calculation.
>>>
>>
>> > It doesn't explain how to organise matter - which is obvious from the
>> fact that all sorts of systems can be Turing-universal,
>>
>
> There are many ways to make a computer and Turing's 1936 paper said
> nothing about the practicalities and engineering details, but he did prove
> that the logical schematic of any computer can be reduced to something that
> we now call a Turing Machine; but you can't make a calculation with just a
> schematic, you need matter that obeys the laws of physics too.
>

But not any specific arrangement. Hence it is contingent.

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Re: In case anyone's in doubt, Daniel Dennett thinks consciousness is an illusion

[LizR]

If I ever get away from him (or her) I will be dead. Or unconscious, at
least.

On 3 June 2015 at 10:11, Kim Jones  wrote:

>
>
> If you ever run into him you will instantly recognise him
>
> Kim
>
> On 3 Jun 2015, at 7:54 am, LizR  wrote:
>
> "Who is the Master who makes the grass green?"
>
> On 3 June 2015 at 08:38, John Mikes  wrote:
>
>> So, Bruno, what is that 'illusion-maker'
>> John M
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 1:40 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 02 Jun 2015, at 04:43, meekerdb wrote:
>>>
>>>  On 6/1/2015 6:31 PM, LizR wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> He doesn't actually say that (and he probably didn't write the
>>>> headline).  What he says is that your consciousness produces illusions and
>>>> it's not so transparent as people tend to assume.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I suspect a wordplay. Consciousness is make sense of all illusion, but
>>> the raw consciousness is the undoubtable fixed point, which is also non
>>> communicable, nor definable.
>>>
>>> The fixed point, in the normal state, is rather more transparent than
>>> what the consciousness might think about anything extending it, that is,
>>> possible reality.
>>>
>>> I can see consciousness as an illusion maker, not as an illusion itself
>>> as that would not make sense.
>>>
>>> Consciousness participates in the illusion ... of a primitive physical
>>> reality, apparently.
>>>
>>> The problem is to explain the persistence of the illusion, and what can
>>> we expect when and if waking up. Another illusion?
>>> We can try theories.
>>>
>>> Bruno
>>>
>>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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Re: Samiya proved right

[LizR]

On 3 June 2015 at 07:05, spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> As far as controlling things here is a short paul davies speculation on
> the universe, reality, mind.
>
> http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2015/06/todays-galaxy-insight-an-et-technology-beyond-matter.html
>

I'm reliably informed that we can't do anything without matter, so that is
clearly nonsense.

>
>   Here is another guy's but be careful, he might be a shia!
> http://www.int.washington.edu/users/mjs5/Simulation/Universe/
>
> Interesting summary. Did they mention the breakdown of Lorentz invariance?
I guess the cosmoc ray business would cover that. I would say that there
isnt' a huge difference between a numerically simulated universe and Max
Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis (except in the simulation we
assume an underlying computer made of ... well, something that isn't just
software. But suppose the nesting goes on forever - turtles all the way
down, as the writer of LOGO might have put it?)

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Re: Samiya proved right

[LizR]

On 3 June 2015 at 05:23, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> If not you will get a God capable of making 2 odd, and that's too odd!
>
> That's rather good. It made me laugh!

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Re: In case anyone's in doubt, Daniel Dennett thinks consciousness is an illusion

[LizR]

"Who is the Master who makes the grass green?"

On 3 June 2015 at 08:38, John Mikes  wrote:

> So, Bruno, what is that 'illusion-maker'
> John M
>
> On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 1:40 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>>
>> On 02 Jun 2015, at 04:43, meekerdb wrote:
>>
>>  On 6/1/2015 6:31 PM, LizR wrote:
>>>
>>>> http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness
>>>>
>>>
>>> He doesn't actually say that (and he probably didn't write the
>>> headline).  What he says is that your consciousness produces illusions and
>>> it's not so transparent as people tend to assume.
>>>
>>
>> I suspect a wordplay. Consciousness is make sense of all illusion, but
>> the raw consciousness is the undoubtable fixed point, which is also non
>> communicable, nor definable.
>>
>> The fixed point, in the normal state, is rather more transparent than
>> what the consciousness might think about anything extending it, that is,
>> possible reality.
>>
>> I can see consciousness as an illusion maker, not as an illusion itself
>> as that would not make sense.
>>
>> Consciousness participates in the illusion ... of a primitive physical
>> reality, apparently.
>>
>> The problem is to explain the persistence of the illusion, and what can
>> we expect when and if waking up. Another illusion?
>> We can try theories.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>>
>>
>>
>>
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