Re: COMP, MGA and Time

[Bruno Marchal]

On 13 Feb 2012, at 18:47, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 2/13/2012 12:11 PM, Joseph Knight wrote:


I think you should probably read Maudlin's paper for specifics. I  
don't think thermodynamics will have much to do with the  
conclusions, whatever they may be (and I don't think it's obvious  
what exactly Maudlin showed).


Hi Joseph,

Thank you for the new link to Maudlin''s paper. I was having a  
hard time finding my copy... As to your comment: Would you consider  
exactly what a "computational structure" means in a universe that  
allows for perpetual motion? (We are going to run a reductio  
argument...)


One thing that I see is that in such a universe we would have a  
huge White Rabbit problem because all brains in it would only be  
those of the Boltzmann type. There could not be any invariant form  
of sequencing that we could run a UD on. How so? Becasue in a  
universe without thermodynamics there is no such a thing as a  
sequence of events thatis invariant with respect to transitions  
from one observer to another, i.e. there would be no such thing as  
time definable in a 'dimensional' sense. All sequences would be at  
best Markov. With such a restriction to Markov processes, how to you  
define a UD? Without a UD, how do we get COMP to work?


The UD can be emulated by a Markov process (all programs can).

The UD, and its many implementations works by virtue of the the laws  
of addition and multiplication.
You seem to forget that the notion of implementation can be defined  
precisely in arithmetic.
To define a notion of primary physical implementation, you need to  
postulate primitive matter, and explains why it is Turing universal,  
and use the already defined notion of arithmetical implementation to  
justify that the physical activity is indeed a (local) implementation  
of a universal number. But then you will run into the UDA/MGA  
difficulties.


Bruno







Onward!

Stephen




On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 7:21 AM, Stephen P. King > wrote:

Hi Folks,

I have been mulling over my conversations with Bruno, Joseph  
and ACW in the EVERYTHING list and have a question. In SANE04 we  
read the following:


"For any given precise  running computation associated  to some   
inner experience, you
can  modify  the  device  in  such  a  way  that the  amount  of   
physical  activity  involved  is
arbitrarily  low, and even null  for dreaming experience which has  
no  inputs and no outputs.
Now, having  suppressed  that  physical  activity present in  the   
running  computation,  the
machine will only be accidentally correct. It will be correct only  
for that precise computation,
with unchanged environment.   If  it is changed a  little bit,  it  
will make  the machine  running
computation no  more  relatively  correct.  But then,  Maudlin   
ingenuously  showed  that
counterfactual  correctness  can be  recovered, by  adding  non  
active devices  which  will  be
triggered only  if  some  (counterfactual)  change would  appear   
in  the environment. Now  this
shows that any inner experience can be associated with an arbitrary  
low (even null) physical
activity,  and  this  in  keeping  counterfactual  correctness.   
And  that  is  absurd  with  the

conjunction of both comp and materialism."

Setting aside the problem of concurrency for now, how is it  
that we are jumping over the difference between infinitely slow or  
even "adiabatic" physical process and "null" physical process?


I may be not even wrong here, but in math isn't it true that there  
is a big difference between a quantity being arbitrarily small and  
a quantity being zero? I suspect that the folks in FOAR List that  
have been discussing information and entropy might have a thought  
on this.



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Re: COMP, MGA and Time

[Bruno Marchal]

On 13 Feb 2012, at 14:21, Stephen P. King wrote:


Hi Folks,

I have been mulling over my conversations with Bruno, Joseph and  
ACW in the EVERYTHING list and have a question. In SANE04 we read  
the following:


"For any given precise  running computation associated  to some   
inner experience, you
can  modify  the  device  in  such  a  way  that the  amount  of   
physical  activity  involved  is
arbitrarily  low, and even null  for dreaming experience which has  
no  inputs and no outputs.
Now, having  suppressed  that  physical  activity present in  the   
running  computation,  the
machine will only be accidentally correct. It will be correct only  
for that precise computation,
with unchanged environment.   If  it is changed a  little bit,  it  
will make  the machine  running
computation no  more  relatively  correct.  But then,  Maudlin   
ingenuously  showed  that
counterfactual  correctness  can be  recovered, by  adding  non  
active devices  which  will  be
triggered only  if  some  (counterfactual)  change would  appear   
in  the environment. Now  this
shows that any inner experience can be associated with an arbitrary  
low (even null) physical
activity,  and  this  in  keeping  counterfactual  correctness.   
And  that  is  absurd  with  the

conjunction of both comp and materialism."

Setting aside the problem of concurrency for now, how is it that  
we are jumping over the difference between infinitely slow or even  
"adiabatic" physical process and "null" physical process?


I may be not even wrong here, but in math isn't it true that there  
is a big difference between a quantity being arbitrarily small and a  
quantity being zero?


Yes, that's true. But it is not relevant for the MGA reductio ad  
absurdum, which needs just to show that the physical activity of the  
locally implemented computation is not relevant. If the amount of  
physical activity can be made arbitrarily small, it cannot be related  
to the physical *computation*, whose complexity remains unchanged for  
some fixed amount of conscious experience. At that stage we just show  
the falsity of the physical supervenience thesis. (Note also that some  
version of MGA makes that primary physical activity null).


Bruno



I suspect that the folks in FOAR List that have been discussing  
information and entropy might have a thought on this.




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



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Re: COMP, MGA and Time

[Stephen P. King]

On 2/13/2012 3:43 PM, Joseph Knight wrote:



On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 11:47 AM, Stephen P. King 
mailto:stephe...@charter.net>> wrote:


On 2/13/2012 12:11 PM, Joseph Knight wrote:

I think you should probably read Maudlin's paper
 for specifics. I don't
think thermodynamics will have much to do with the conclusions,
whatever they may be (and I don't think it's obvious what
/exactly /Maudlin showed).


Hi Joseph,

Thank you for the new link to Maudlin''s paper. I was having a
hard time finding my copy... As to your comment: Would you
consider exactly what a "computational structure" means in a
universe that allows for perpetual motion
?


You should be aware that our universe allows for perpetual motion.

(We are going to run a reductio argument
...)

One thing that I see is that in such a universe we would have
a huge White Rabbit problem because all brains in it would only be
those of the Boltzmann type
. There could not be
any invariant form of sequencing that we could run a UD on. How
so? Becasue in a universe without thermodynamics


A Big universe "with thermodynamics" will still admit perpetual motion 
machines (in fact, our Universe is such a universe). Are you aware 
that, in the 19th century, classical thermodynamics was transformed 
into a statistical theory? You made a huge (and incorrect) leap from 
"admits a perpetual motion machine" to "no thermodynamics".


Hi Joseph,

Yes, you are correct, but notice that we can have perpetual motion 
in the sense of closed-time-like loops in GR but we can never extract 
more energy from them than it takes to construct the mechanism to 
interface with the devious little bastards!


If you can have Boltzmann Brains you can have Universal Dovetailers 
run for arbitrary (even infinite) amounts of time.


No, that would violate the definition of Boltzmann brains as they 
can only be connected and chained up into a UD after the fact of their 
actualization. Otherwise we are in a situation where noise is 
indistinguishable from a signal as the minds implemented by such 
Boltzmann brains. Think about it, Boltzmann brains are stochastic and to 
define a continuation of them we have to simultaneously embed at least 
two into a preorder to get a sequence for a UD.  One cannot claim to 
operate on an entity before it even exists.




At any rate, the notion of a "sufficiently robust universe" is a 
provisional premise that is dropped later in the UDA, so it's not 
important.


That is a red Herring. One can always set the bar of what a 
measurement is so that it is too high to overcome by current means. This 
is a fallacy that is prevalent all over the place in physics, sadly. :-(


Onward!

Stephen


there is no such a thing as a sequence of events that is invariant
with respect to transitions from one observer to another, i.e.
there would be no such thing as time definable in a 'dimensional'
sense. All sequences would be at best Markov
. With such a
restriction to Markov processes, how to you define a UD? Without a
UD, how do we get COMP to work?




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Re: COMP, MGA and Time

[Joseph Knight]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 11:47 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

>  On 2/13/2012 12:11 PM, Joseph Knight wrote:
>
> I think you should probably read Maudlin's 
> paperfor specifics. I don't think 
> thermodynamics will have much to do with the
> conclusions, whatever they may be (and I don't think it's obvious what 
> *exactly
> *Maudlin showed).
>
>
> Hi Joseph,
>
> Thank you for the new link to Maudlin''s paper. I was having a hard
> time finding my copy... As to your comment: Would you consider exactly what
> a "computational structure" means in a universe that allows for perpetual
> motion ?
>

You should be aware that our universe allows for perpetual motion.


>
>
 (We are going to run a reductio
argument
> ...)
>
> One thing that I see is that in such a universe we would have a huge
> White Rabbit problem because all brains in it would only be those of the 
> Boltzmann
> type . There could not be
> any invariant form of sequencing that we could run a UD on. How so? Becasue
> in a universe without thermodynamics
>

A Big universe "with thermodynamics" will still admit perpetual motion
machines (in fact, our Universe is such a universe). Are you aware that, in
the 19th century, classical thermodynamics was transformed into a
statistical theory? You made a huge (and incorrect) leap from "admits a
perpetual motion machine" to "no thermodynamics". If you can have Boltzmann
Brains you can have Universal Dovetailers run for arbitrary (even infinite)
amounts of time.

At any rate, the notion of a "sufficiently robust universe" is a
provisional premise that is dropped later in the UDA, so it's not
important.


> there is no such a thing as a sequence of events that is invariant with
> respect to transitions from one observer to another, i.e. there would be no
> such thing as time definable in a 'dimensional' sense. All sequences would
> be at best Markov . With
> such a restriction to Markov processes, how to you define a UD? Without a
> UD, how do we get COMP to work?
>
>
>
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 7:21 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:
>
>>  Hi Folks,
>>
>> I have been mulling over my conversations with Bruno, Joseph and ACW
>> in the EVERYTHING list and have a question. In SANE04 we read the following:
>>
>> "For any given precise  running computation associated  to some  inner
>> experience, you
>> can  modify  the  device  in  such  a  way  that the  amount  of
>> physical  activity  involved  is
>> arbitrarily  low, and even null  for dreaming experience which has no
>> inputs and no outputs.
>> Now, having  suppressed  that  physical  activity present in  the
>> running  computation,  the
>> machine will only be accidentally correct. It will be correct only for
>> that precise computation,
>> with unchanged environment.   If  it is changed a  little bit,  it will
>> make  the machine  running
>> computation no  more  relatively  correct.  But then,  Maudlin
>> ingenuously  showed  that
>> counterfactual  correctness  can be  recovered, by  adding  non active
>> devices  which  will  be
>> triggered only  if  some  (counterfactual)  change would  appear  in  the
>> environment. Now  this
>> shows that any inner experience can be associated with an arbitrary low
>> (even null) physical
>> activity,  and  this  in  keeping  counterfactual  correctness.  And
>> that  is  absurd  with  the
>> conjunction of both comp and materialism."
>>
>> Setting aside the problem of concurrency for now, how is it that we
>> are jumping over the difference between infinitely slow or even "
>> adiabatic " physical
>> process and "null" physical process?
>>
>> I may be not even wrong here, but in math isn't it true that there is a
>> big difference between a quantity being arbitrarily small and a quantity
>> being zero? I suspect that the folks in FOAR List that have been discussing
>> information and entropy might have a thought on this.
>>
>
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-- 
Joseph Knight

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Re: COMP, MGA and Time

[Stephen P. King]

On 2/13/2012 12:11 PM, Joseph Knight wrote:
I think you should probably read Maudlin's paper 
 for specifics. I don't 
think thermodynamics will have much to do with the conclusions, 
whatever they may be (and I don't think it's obvious what /exactly 
/Maudlin showed).


Hi Joseph,

Thank you for the new link to Maudlin''s paper. I was having a hard 
time finding my copy... As to your comment: Would you consider exactly 
what a "computational structure" means in a universe that allows for 
perpetual motion ? (We 
are going to run a reductio argument 
...)


One thing that I see is that in such a universe we would have a 
huge White Rabbit problem because all brains in it would only be those 
of the Boltzmann type . 
There could not be any invariant form of sequencing that we could run a 
UD on. How so? Becasue in a universe without thermodynamics there is no 
such a thing as a sequence of events that is invariant with respect to 
transitions from one observer to another, i.e. there would be no such 
thing as time definable in a 'dimensional' sense. All sequences would be 
at best Markov . With such 
a restriction to Markov processes, how to you define a UD? Without a UD, 
how do we get COMP to work?



Onward!

Stephen




On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 7:21 AM, Stephen P. King 
mailto:stephe...@charter.net>> wrote:


Hi Folks,

I have been mulling over my conversations with Bruno, Joseph
and ACW in the EVERYTHING list and have a question. In SANE04 we
read the following:

"For any given precise  running computation associated  to some 
inner experience, you
can  modify  the  device  in  such  a  way  that the  amount  of 
physical  activity  involved  is

arbitrarily  low, and even null  for dreaming experience which has
no  inputs and no outputs.
Now, having  suppressed  that  physical  activity present in  the 
running  computation,  the

machine will only be accidentally correct. It will be correct only
for that precise computation,
with unchanged environment.   If  it is changed a  little bit,  it
will make  the machine  running
computation no  more  relatively  correct.  But then,  Maudlin 
ingenuously  showed  that

counterfactual  correctness  can be  recovered, by  adding  non
active devices  which  will  be
triggered only  if  some  (counterfactual)  change would  appear 
in  the environment. Now  this

shows that any inner experience can be associated with an
arbitrary low (even null) physical
activity,  and  this  in  keeping  counterfactual  correctness. 
And  that  is  absurd  with  the

conjunction of both comp and materialism."

Setting aside the problem of concurrency for now, how is it
that we are jumping over the difference between infinitely slow or
even "adiabatic "
physical process and "null" physical process?

I may be not even wrong here, but in math isn't it true that there
is a big difference between a quantity being arbitrarily small and
a quantity being zero? I suspect that the folks in FOAR List that
have been discussing information and entropy might have a thought
on this.



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Re: COMP, MGA and Time

[Joseph Knight]

I think you should probably read Maudlin's
paperfor specifics. I don't
think thermodynamics will have much to do with the
conclusions, whatever they may be (and I don't think it's obvious what *exactly
*Maudlin showed).

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 7:21 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

>  Hi Folks,
>
> I have been mulling over my conversations with Bruno, Joseph and ACW
> in the EVERYTHING list and have a question. In SANE04 we read the following:
>
> "For any given precise  running computation associated  to some  inner
> experience, you
> can  modify  the  device  in  such  a  way  that the  amount  of
> physical  activity  involved  is
> arbitrarily  low, and even null  for dreaming experience which has no
> inputs and no outputs.
> Now, having  suppressed  that  physical  activity present in  the
> running  computation,  the
> machine will only be accidentally correct. It will be correct only for
> that precise computation,
> with unchanged environment.   If  it is changed a  little bit,  it will
> make  the machine  running
> computation no  more  relatively  correct.  But then,  Maudlin
> ingenuously  showed  that
> counterfactual  correctness  can be  recovered, by  adding  non active
> devices  which  will  be
> triggered only  if  some  (counterfactual)  change would  appear  in  the
> environment. Now  this
> shows that any inner experience can be associated with an arbitrary low
> (even null) physical
> activity,  and  this  in  keeping  counterfactual  correctness.  And
> that  is  absurd  with  the
> conjunction of both comp and materialism."
>
> Setting aside the problem of concurrency for now, how is it that we
> are jumping over the difference between infinitely slow or even 
> "adiabatic"
> physical process and "null" physical process?
>
> I may be not even wrong here, but in math isn't it true that there is a
> big difference between a quantity being arbitrarily small and a quantity
> being zero? I suspect that the folks in FOAR List that have been discussing
> information and entropy might have a thought on this.
>
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
>
> --
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COMP, MGA and Time

[Stephen P. King]

Hi Folks,

I have been mulling over my conversations with Bruno, Joseph and 
ACW in the EVERYTHING list and have a question. In SANE04 we read the 
following:


"For any given precise  running computation associated  to some  inner 
experience, you
can  modify  the  device  in  such  a  way  that the  amount  of  
physical  activity  involved  is
arbitrarily  low, and even null  for dreaming experience which has no  
inputs and no outputs.
Now, having  suppressed  that  physical  activity present in  the  
running  computation,  the
machine will only be accidentally correct. It will be correct only for 
that precise computation,
with unchanged environment.   If  it is changed a  little bit,  it will 
make  the machine  running
computation no  more  relatively  correct.  But then,  Maudlin  
ingenuously  showed  that
counterfactual  correctness  can be  recovered, by  adding  non active 
devices  which  will  be
triggered only  if  some  (counterfactual)  change would  appear  in  
the environment. Now  this
shows that any inner experience can be associated with an arbitrary low 
(even null) physical
activity,  and  this  in  keeping  counterfactual  correctness.  And  
that  is  absurd  with  the

conjunction of both comp and materialism."

Setting aside the problem of concurrency for now, how is it that we 
are jumping over the difference between infinitely slow or even 
"adiabatic " physical 
process and "null" physical process?


I may be not even wrong here, but in math isn't it true that there is a 
big difference between a quantity being arbitrarily small and a quantity 
being zero? I suspect that the folks in FOAR List that have been 
discussing information and entropy might have a thought on this.


Onward!

Stephen

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