Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Bruno Marchal]

On 08 Sep 2012, at 12:45, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/8/2012 4:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 07 Sep 2012, at 13:39, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/7/2012 3:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



But you claim that too, as matter is not primitive. or you lost  
me again.
I need matter to communicate with you, but that matter is  
explained in comp as a a persistent relational entity, so I don't  
see the problem. It is necessary in the sense that it is implied  
by the comp hypothesis, even constructively (making comp  
testable). It is even more stable and "solid" than anything we  
might extrapolate from observation, as we might be dreaming.  
Indeed it comes from the atemporal ultra-stable relations between  
numbers, that you recently mention as not created by man (I am  
very glad :).


Bruno

Dear Bruno,

Matter is not primitive as it is not irreducible. My claim is  
that matter is, explained very crudely, patterns of invariances  
for some collection of inter-communicating observers (where an  
observer can be merely a photon detector that records its states).


OK, except that we have no photon at the start.



This is not contradictory to your explanation of it as "persistent  
relational entity", but my definition is very explicit about the  
requirements that give rise to the "persistent relations".  I  
believe that these might be second order relations between  
computational streams. and can be defined in terms of bisimulation  
relations between streams.


You might try to relate this with the UDA consequences.



I question the very idea of "atemporal ultra-stable relations  
between numbers" since numbers cannot be considered consistently  
as just entities that correspond to 0, 1, 2, 3, ... We have to  
consider all possible denotations of the signified.


I think this is deeply flawed. Notion of denotations and set of  
denotations, are more complex that the notion of numbers.






See http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02.html#signified  
for an explanation. Additionally, there are not just a single type  
of number as there is a dependence on the model of arithmetic that  
one is using.


Outside arithmetic. This use the intuitive notion of numbers, even  
second order arithmetic. This is explained, through comp, as  
construct of numbers.




For example Robinson Arithmetic and Peano Arithmetic do not define  
the same numbers.


Of course they do. RA has more model than PA, but we use the theory  
with the intended model in mind, relying on our intuition of  
numbers, not on any theory. No one ever interpret a number in the  
sense of a non standard numbers.  That would make comp quite fuzzy.  
Nobody would say "yes" to a doctor if he believe that he is a non  
standard machine/number. You can't code them in any finite (in the  
standard sense!) ways.





So we have multiple signified and multiple signifiers and  
cannot assume a single mapping scheme between them. I suppose that  
a canonical map exists in terms of the Tennebaum theorem, but I  
need to discuss this more with you to resolve my understanding of  
this question.


You do at the absic level what I suspect you to do in many post.  
Escaping forward in the complexity. But to get the technical  
results all you need is assessing your intuition of finite, and  
things like the sequence 0, s(0), s(s(0)), etc.
Then if you agree with the definition of addition and  
multiplication, everything will be OK. If not you would be like a  
neuroscientist trying to define a neuron by the activity of a brain  
thinking about a neuron, and you will get a complexity catastrophe.


This remark is very important. Your critics here apply to all  
papers you cite. We have to agree on simple things at the start,  
independently of the fact that we can't define them by simpler  
notion. For the numbers, or programs, finite strings, hereditarily  
finite objects,  the miracle is that we do share the standard  
notion of it, unlike for any other notions like set, real number,  
etc.


Bruno

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



Dear Bruno,

I wish I could motivate you to study a bit about Semiotics and  
how it approaches the relation between a representation and its  
referent. You seem to think them as identical for numbers.


?

I do not. I don't see why you think so. A number is not his  
representation, nor more than a brain is a person.


What I did here is just to accept the notion of natural numbers as a  
technical base, as we can agree on simple statements on them, and that  
is all we need.


In the development, I use model theory instead of semiotics as it is  
more clear for me, and more known by scientists.





We seem to just talk past each other.


It is normal because you do philosophy, and I do not. No problem if  
you keep that in mind.


Bruno

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



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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/8/2012 4:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 07 Sep 2012, at 13:39, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/7/2012 3:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



But you claim that too, as matter is not primitive. or you lost me 
again.
I need matter to communicate with you, but that matter is explained 
in comp as a a persistent relational entity, so I don't see the 
problem. It is necessary in the sense that it is implied by the comp 
hypothesis, even constructively (making comp testable). It is even 
more stable and "solid" than anything we might extrapolate from 
observation, as we might be dreaming. Indeed it comes from the 
atemporal ultra-stable relations between numbers, that you recently 
mention as not created by man (I am very glad :).


Bruno

Dear Bruno,

Matter is not primitive as it is not irreducible. My claim is 
that matter is, explained very crudely, patterns of invariances for 
some collection of inter-communicating observers (where an observer 
can be merely a photon detector that records its states).


OK, except that we have no photon at the start.



This is not contradictory to your explanation of it as "persistent 
relational entity", but my definition is very explicit about the 
requirements that give rise to the "persistent relations".  I believe 
that these might be second order relations between computational 
streams. and can be defined in terms of bisimulation relations 
between streams.


You might try to relate this with the UDA consequences.



I question the very idea of "atemporal ultra-stable relations 
between numbers" since numbers cannot be considered consistently as 
just entities that correspond to 0, 1, 2, 3, ... We have to consider 
all possible denotations of the signified.


I think this is deeply flawed. Notion of denotations and set of 
denotations, are more complex that the notion of numbers.






See http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02.html#signified 
for an explanation. Additionally, there are not just a single type of 
number as there is a dependence on the model of arithmetic that one 
is using.


Outside arithmetic. This use the intuitive notion of numbers, even 
second order arithmetic. This is explained, through comp, as construct 
of numbers.




For example Robinson Arithmetic and Peano Arithmetic do not define 
the same numbers.


Of course they do. RA has more model than PA, but we use the theory 
with the intended model in mind, relying on our intuition of numbers, 
not on any theory. No one ever interpret a number in the sense of a 
non standard numbers.  That would make comp quite fuzzy. Nobody would 
say "yes" to a doctor if he believe that he is a non standard 
machine/number. You can't code them in any finite (in the standard 
sense!) ways.





So we have multiple signified and multiple signifiers and cannot 
assume a single mapping scheme between them. I suppose that a 
canonical map exists in terms of the Tennebaum theorem, but I need to 
discuss this more with you to resolve my understanding of this question.


You do at the absic level what I suspect you to do in many post. 
Escaping forward in the complexity. But to get the technical results 
all you need is assessing your intuition of finite, and things like 
the sequence 0, s(0), s(s(0)), etc.
Then if you agree with the definition of addition and multiplication, 
everything will be OK. If not you would be like a neuroscientist 
trying to define a neuron by the activity of a brain thinking about a 
neuron, and you will get a complexity catastrophe.


This remark is very important. Your critics here apply to all papers 
you cite. We have to agree on simple things at the start, 
independently of the fact that we can't define them by simpler notion. 
For the numbers, or programs, finite strings, hereditarily finite 
objects,  the miracle is that we do share the standard notion of it, 
unlike for any other notions like set, real number, etc.


Bruno

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



Dear Bruno,

I wish I could motivate you to study a bit about Semiotics and how 
it approaches the relation between a representation and its referent. 
You seem to think them as identical for numbers. We seem to just talk 
past each other.


--
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 Sep 2012, at 17:11, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/7/2012 3:09 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 Sep 2012, at 21:25, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Thursday, September 6, 2012 2:02:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal  
wrote:



If you exclude space and time, what kind of locality do you refer  
to?


The computational locality used in the local universal system.


Dear Bruno,

Could you elaborate a bit more on this remark? How do you define  
a " local universal system"? What is "local" for you?


All universal system are local. Here I meant a universal system that I  
can handle in my neighborhood, like my brain or my laptop. Local means  
that action exerts influence on their most probable universal  
neighborhood.











In my example, a quintillion people call each other on the phone  
and write down numbers that they get from each other and perform  
arithmetic functions on them (which in turn may inform them on how  
to process subsequent arithmetic instructions, etc). Ok. So where  
does the interpretation of these trillion events per second come  
in? What knows what all of the computations add up to be? At what  
point does the 'local content' begin to itch and turn blue? Even  
if it could, why should it do such a thing?


Because it concerns a machine looking at herself and its probable  
environment.


As I think of it, a machine cannot literally "look at herself";  
it can only "look at an image of herself" and that image could be  
subject to errors. This allows me to relate an image that a machine  
might have of itself with the image the machine might have of  
another machine and thus I found the concept of bisimulation.  
Additionally, we can define cases where the image and the machine  
itself are identical in every possible way and thus are one and the  
same thing (via principle of identity of indiscernibles).
It seems to me that most of our disagreements flow from your  
assumption that the image of a machine and the machine are strictly  
isomorphic, while I assume such only in certain special cases.


To get physics, you can (and should) restrict yourself to ideally  
correct machine.






Then the logic shows that it is unavoidable that the machine get  
non justifiable truth.


I agree. But "what is Truth"?


Arithmetical truth. You can define it in second order logic, or in set  
theory, but of course this does not really define it. You can  
represent it by the set of Gödel number of the true arithmetical  
sentences. It is a highly complex set not even nameable or describable  
by the machine.






I see truth to be a parameter of the degree of matching between an  
object and its image. It is not confined to some single spectrum for  
all things. Different types of objects require different kinds of  
spectra for their truth valuations and thus are not always  
commensurable.


In everyday life, but we reason in a theory.





You can see that informally with thought experiment, like in UDA,  
or formally in the logics of self-reference.


I have problems with the technical aspects of the UDA in almost  
every step.


Then you have to make that precise.



My problem is that I do not have your set of definitions and  
intuitions in my mind as I read your material.


UDA is simpler to 14 years old, than graduates. UDA is rather easy,  
and I think that is what people misses. It is simple. Of course the  
MGA (step 8) is a bit harder, but you can have all the gist of it by  
UDA1-7, already.


Some people, like Jason today, can even pass the step 8, by just  
rejecting the notion of virtual or arithmetical zombie. Step 8 just  
address the Ptere Jones (and sometimes Brent) critics that we need a  
real computer for having a real consciousness, but this introduce non  
Turing emulability in the mind (by step 8).






I see holes and blind spots and tacit assumptions everywhere,


Without specific remarks, I can't help.



but this holds true of the material of most people that I read and  
so I an not upset with you for this appearance. It could be the beam  
in my eye that i see as a mote in your eye... Thus I ask you many  
many questions, to lern to see what you see the way that you see it.  
SO far I cannot understand how it is that you do not see the  
necessity of physical implementation of computations.


They are necessary only locally, and this is provided in arithmetic.  
Then step 8 explains why reifying matter cannot relate consciousness  
to it, making primitive matter epinomenal.





I am studying the work of C.S. Peirce and others int eh area of  
semiotics to learn if it might help me explain the problem that I see.
















Step one talks about annihilation as well, but it is not clear  
what role this actually plays in the process, except to make it  
seem more like teleportation and less like what it actually  
would be, which is duplication. If I scan an original document  
and email the scan, I have sent a duplicate, not te

Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 Sep 2012, at 13:39, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/7/2012 3:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



But you claim that too, as matter is not primitive. or you lost me  
again.
I need matter to communicate with you, but that matter is explained  
in comp as a a persistent relational entity, so I don't see the  
problem. It is necessary in the sense that it is implied by the  
comp hypothesis, even constructively (making comp testable). It is  
even more stable and "solid" than anything we might extrapolate  
from observation, as we might be dreaming. Indeed it comes from the  
atemporal ultra-stable relations between numbers, that you recently  
mention as not created by man (I am very glad :).


Bruno

Dear Bruno,

Matter is not primitive as it is not irreducible. My claim is  
that matter is, explained very crudely, patterns of invariances for  
some collection of inter-communicating observers (where an observer  
can be merely a photon detector that records its states).


OK, except that we have no photon at the start.



This is not contradictory to your explanation of it as "persistent  
relational entity", but my definition is very explicit about the  
requirements that give rise to the "persistent relations".  I  
believe that these might be second order relations between  
computational streams. and can be defined in terms of bisimulation  
relations between streams.


You might try to relate this with the UDA consequences.



I question the very idea of "atemporal ultra-stable relations  
between numbers" since numbers cannot be considered consistently as  
just entities that correspond to 0, 1, 2, 3, ... We have to consider  
all possible denotations of the signified.


I think this is deeply flawed. Notion of denotations and set of  
denotations, are more complex that the notion of numbers.






See http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02.html#signified  
for an explanation. Additionally, there are not just a single type  
of number as there is a dependence on the model of arithmetic that  
one is using.


Outside arithmetic. This use the intuitive notion of numbers, even  
second order arithmetic. This is explained, through comp, as construct  
of numbers.




For example Robinson Arithmetic and Peano Arithmetic do not define  
the same numbers.


Of course they do. RA has more model than PA, but we use the theory  
with the intended model in mind, relying on our intuition of numbers,  
not on any theory. No one ever interpret a number in the sense of a  
non standard numbers.  That would make comp quite fuzzy. Nobody would  
say "yes" to a doctor if he believe that he is a non standard machine/ 
number. You can't code them in any finite (in the standard sense!) ways.





So we have multiple signified and multiple signifiers and cannot  
assume a single mapping scheme between them. I suppose that a  
canonical map exists in terms of the Tennebaum theorem, but I need  
to discuss this more with you to resolve my understanding of this  
question.


You do at the absic level what I suspect you to do in many post.  
Escaping forward in the complexity. But to get the technical results  
all you need is assessing your intuition of finite, and things like  
the sequence 0, s(0), s(s(0)), etc.
Then if you agree with the definition of addition and multiplication,  
everything will be OK. If not you would be like a neuroscientist  
trying to define a neuron by the activity of a brain thinking about a  
neuron, and you will get a complexity catastrophe.


This remark is very important. Your critics here apply to all papers  
you cite. We have to agree on simple things at the start,  
independently of the fact that we can't define them by simpler notion.  
For the numbers, or programs, finite strings, hereditarily finite  
objects,  the miracle is that we do share the standard notion of it,  
unlike for any other notions like set, real number, etc.


Bruno

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



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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/7/2012 2:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 Sep 2012, at 20:44, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/6/2012 11:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Consciousness does not arise. It is not in space, nor in time. Its 
local content, obtained by differentiation, internally can refer to 
time and space,


Even if it is not *in* spacetime, my consciousness seems to depend on 
some particular localized matter in spacetime.


Seeming can be wrong. Only the content of consciousness depends on the 
particular matter localized in space-time.


Dear Bruno,

"Only the content of consciousness depends on the particular matter 
localized in space-time. " AMAZING! Could you consider that this 
statement is exactly what I have been trying to get you to discuss with 
me all this time?



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Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/7/2012 3:09 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 Sep 2012, at 21:25, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Thursday, September 6, 2012 2:02:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 05 Sep 2012, at 17:27, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 10:50:02 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal
wrote:


On 05 Sep 2012, at 03:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:


Taking another look at Sane2004. This isn't so much as a
challenge to Bruno, just sharing my notes of why I
disagree. Not sure how far I will get this time, but here
are my objections to the first step and the stipulated
assumptions of comp. I understand that the point is to
accept the given definition of comp, and in that respect, I
have no reason to doubt that Bruno has accomplished what he
sets out to as far as making a good theory within comp, and
if he has not, I wouldn't be qualified to comment on it
anyhow. From my perspective however, this is all beside the
point, since the only point that matters is the actual
truth of what consciousness actually is, and what is it's
actual relation to physics and information. Given the
fragile and precious nature of our own survival, I think
that implications for teleportation and AI
simulation/personhood which are derived from pure theory
rather than thorough consideration of realism would be
reckless to say the least.

*Step one* talks about teleportation in terms of being
reconstructed with ambient organic materials. If comp were
true though, no organic materials or reconstructions would
be necessary. The scanning into a universal machine would
be sufficient.


That is step 6.


I haven't even gotten to step 2 yet. I'm reading "In the figure
the teleported individual is represented by a black box. Its
annihilation is
represented by a white box appearing at the left of the arrow"
from 1.




Taking this to the China Brain level, the universal machine
could be a trillion people with notebooks, pencils, paper,
and erasers, talking to each other over cell phones. This
activity would have to collectively result in the
teleported person now being conjured as if by incantation
as a consequence of...what? The writing and erasing on
paper? The calling and speaking on cell phones? Where does
the experience of the now disembodied person come in?


As you illustrate here, plausibly not on the physical means
used by the brain. Step 8 shows that indeed the physical has
nothing to do with consciousness, except as a content of
consciousness. Keeping comp here, we associate consciousness
with the logical abstract computations.



So the person's consciousness arises spontaneously through the
overall effort-ness behind the writing, erasing, and calling, or
does it gradually constellate from lesser fragments of
disconnected effort-ness?


Consciousness does not arise. It is not in space, nor in time.
Its local content, obtained by differentiation, internally can
refer to time and space, but that's particular content of an
atemporal consciousness. I would say (no need of this in UDA).


If you exclude space and time, what kind of locality do you refer to?


The computational locality used in the local universal system.


Dear Bruno,

Could you elaborate a bit more on this remark? How do you define a 
" local universal system"? What is "local" for you?






In my example, a quintillion people call each other on the phone and 
write down numbers that they get from each other and perform 
arithmetic functions on them (which in turn may inform them on how to 
process subsequent arithmetic instructions, etc). Ok. So where does 
the interpretation of these trillion events per second come in? What 
knows what all of the computations add up to be? At what point does 
the 'local content' begin to itch and turn blue? Even if it could, 
why should it do such a thing?


Because it concerns a machine looking at herself and its probable 
environment.


As I think of it, a machine cannot literally "look at herself"; it 
can only "look at an image of herself" and that image could be subject 
to errors. This allows me to relate an image that a machine might have 
of itself with the image the machine might have of another machine and 
thus I found the concept of bisimulation. Additionally, we can define 
cases where the image and the machine itself are identical in every 
possible way and thus are one and the same thing (via principle of 
identity of indiscernibles).
It seems to me that most of our disagreements flow from your 
assumption that the image of a machine and the machine are strictly 
isomorphic, while I assume such only in certain special cases.


Then the logic shows that 

Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/7/2012 3:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 07 Sep 2012, at 04:20, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/6/2012 1:44 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 05 Sep 2012, at 08:38, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/5/2012 2:03 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 10:07 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 9/5/2012 12:38 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 8:59 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

snip




What is most interesting is that the QC can run an arbitrary 
number of classical computations, all at the same time. The CC 
can only barely compute the emulation of a single QC. 


You are talking about QC and CC as though they were material 
computers with finite resources. Once you've assumed material 
resources you've lost any non-circular possibility of explaining them.


No, I am pointing out that real computations require real 
resources. Only when we ignore this fact we can get away with 
floating castles in midair.


Brent just point out that arithmetic contains infinite resource.
What do you mean by "real computations"? Do you mean "physical 
computations"? Why would they lack resources?


Bruno


Dear Bruno,

I am talking about physical systems that have the capacity of 
carrying out in their dynamics the functions that implement the 
abstract computations that you are considering. The very thing that 
you claim is unnecessary.



But you claim that too, as matter is not primitive. or you lost me again.
I need matter to communicate with you, but that matter is explained in 
comp as a a persistent relational entity, so I don't see the problem. 
It is necessary in the sense that it is implied by the comp 
hypothesis, even constructively (making comp testable). It is even 
more stable and "solid" than anything we might extrapolate from 
observation, as we might be dreaming. Indeed it comes from the 
atemporal ultra-stable relations between numbers, that you recently 
mention as not created by man (I am very glad :).


Bruno

Dear Bruno,

Matter is not primitive as it is not irreducible. My claim is that 
matter is, explained very crudely, patterns of invariances for some 
collection of inter-communicating observers (where an observer can be 
merely a photon detector that records its states). This is not 
contradictory to your explanation of it as "persistent relational 
entity", but my definition is very explicit about the requirements that 
give rise to the "persistent relations".  I believe that these might be 
second order relations between computational streams. and can be defined 
in terms of bisimulation relations between streams.
I question the very idea of "atemporal ultra-stable relations 
between numbers" since numbers cannot be considered consistently as just 
entities that correspond to 0, 1, 2, 3, ... We have to consider all 
possible denotations of the signified. See 
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02.html#signified for an 
explanation. Additionally, there are not just a single type of number as 
there is a dependence on the model of arithmetic that one is using. For 
example Robinson Arithmetic and Peano Arithmetic do not define the same 
numbers.
So we have multiple signified and multiple signifiers and cannot 
assume a single mapping scheme between them. I suppose that a canonical 
map exists in terms of the Tennebaum theorem, but I need to discuss this 
more with you to resolve my understanding of this question.


--
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 Sep 2012, at 04:20, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/6/2012 1:44 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 05 Sep 2012, at 08:38, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/5/2012 2:03 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 10:07 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/5/2012 12:38 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 8:59 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

snip




What is most interesting is that the QC can run an arbitrary  
number of classical computations, all at the same time. The CC  
can only barely compute the emulation of a single QC.


You are talking about QC and CC as though they were material  
computers with finite resources.  Once you've assumed material  
resources you've lost any non-circular possibility of explaining  
them.


No, I am pointing out that real computations require real  
resources. Only when we ignore this fact we can get away with  
floating castles in midair.


Brent just point out that arithmetic contains infinite resource.
What do you mean by "real computations"? Do you mean "physical  
computations"? Why would they lack resources?


Bruno


Dear Bruno,

I am talking about physical systems that have the capacity of  
carrying out in their dynamics the functions that implement the  
abstract computations that you are considering. The very thing that  
you claim is unnecessary.



But you claim that too, as matter is not primitive. or you lost me  
again.
I need matter to communicate with you, but that matter is explained in  
comp as a a persistent relational entity, so I don't see the problem.  
It is necessary in the sense that it is implied by the comp  
hypothesis, even constructively (making comp testable). It is even  
more stable and "solid" than anything we might extrapolate from  
observation, as we might be dreaming. Indeed it comes from the  
atemporal ultra-stable relations between numbers, that you recently  
mention as not created by man (I am very glad :).


Bruno




--
Onward!

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 Sep 2012, at 21:25, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Thursday, September 6, 2012 2:02:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 05 Sep 2012, at 17:27, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 10:50:02 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal  
wrote:


On 05 Sep 2012, at 03:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Taking another look at Sane2004. This isn't so much as a challenge  
to Bruno, just sharing my notes of why I disagree. Not sure how  
far I will get this time, but here are my objections to the first  
step and the stipulated assumptions of comp. I understand that the  
point is to accept the given definition of comp, and in that  
respect, I have no reason to doubt that Bruno has accomplished  
what he sets out to as far as making a good theory within comp,  
and if he has not, I wouldn't be qualified to comment on it  
anyhow. From my perspective however, this is all beside the point,  
since the only point that matters is the actual truth of what  
consciousness actually is, and what is it's actual relation to  
physics and information. Given the fragile and precious nature of  
our own survival, I think that implications for teleportation and  
AI simulation/personhood which are derived from pure theory rather  
than thorough consideration of realism would be reckless to say  
the least.


Step one talks about teleportation in terms of being reconstructed  
with ambient organic materials. If comp were true though, no  
organic materials or reconstructions would be necessary. The  
scanning into a universal machine would be sufficient.



That is step 6.

I haven't even gotten to step 2 yet. I'm reading "In the figure the  
teleported individual is represented by a black box. Its  
annihilation is
represented by a white box appearing at the left of the arrow" from  
1.




Taking this to the China Brain level, the universal machine could  
be a trillion people with notebooks, pencils, paper, and erasers,  
talking to each other over cell phones. This activity would have  
to collectively result in the teleported person now being conjured  
as if by incantation as a consequence of...what? The writing and  
erasing on paper? The calling and speaking on cell phones? Where  
does the experience of the now disembodied person come in?


As you illustrate here, plausibly not on the physical means used by  
the brain. Step 8 shows that indeed the physical has nothing to do  
with consciousness, except as a content of consciousness. Keeping  
comp here, we associate consciousness with the logical abstract  
computations.




So the person's consciousness arises spontaneously through the  
overall effort-ness behind the writing, erasing, and calling, or  
does it gradually constellate from lesser fragments of disconnected  
effort-ness?


Consciousness does not arise. It is not in space, nor in time. Its  
local content, obtained by differentiation, internally can refer to  
time and space, but that's particular content of an atemporal  
consciousness. I would say (no need of this in UDA).


If you exclude space and time, what kind of locality do you refer to?


The computational locality used in the local universal system.



In my example, a quintillion people call each other on the phone and  
write down numbers that they get from each other and perform  
arithmetic functions on them (which in turn may inform them on how  
to process subsequent arithmetic instructions, etc). Ok. So where  
does the interpretation of these trillion events per second come in?  
What knows what all of the computations add up to be? At what point  
does the 'local content' begin to itch and turn blue? Even if it  
could, why should it do such a thing?


Because it concerns a machine looking at herself and its probable  
environment. Then the logic shows that it is unavoidable that the  
machine get non justifiable truth. You can see that informally with  
thought experiment, like in UDA, or formally in the logics of self- 
reference.














Step one talks about annihilation as well, but it is not clear  
what role this actually plays in the process, except to make it  
seem more like teleportation and less like what it actually would  
be, which is duplication. If I scan an original document and email  
the scan, I have sent a duplicate, not teleported the original.


Right. Classical teleportation = duplication + annihilation of the  
original. That's step 5, precisely.


You understand the reasoning very well, but we know that the  
problem for you is in the assumption.


Yes, the assumption seems to presume physicality to disprove  
physicality


At some place, yes. In a reductio ad absurdum.




and presume consciousness to explain consciousness.


Yes. Like we presume (at some metalevel) anything we want to explain  
(from some other realm). It is not a lott, but science works that  
way. We don't know the public truth. We can only make clear our  
hypothesis and reason, and propose tests.


Why not just recognize it form

Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 Sep 2012, at 20:44, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/6/2012 11:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Consciousness does not arise. It is not in space, nor in time. Its  
local content, obtained by differentiation, internally can refer to  
time and space,


Even if it is not *in* spacetime, my consciousness seems to depend  
on some particular localized matter in spacetime.


Seeming can be wrong. Only the content of consciousness depends on the  
particular matter localized in space-time.








but that's particular content of an atemporal consciousness.


An atemporal consciousness sounds like a contradiction in terms.


I agree. I don't use that in the reasoning. It is a recent suggestion,  
corroborated by the salvia reports and experiences.  I was used to  
agree with Brouwer that consciousness and subjective time are not  
separable, like the 1p logic examplifies (S4Grz is both a temporal  
logic, and the machine's 1p logic), but I am open to change my mind on  
this. We can hallucinate being conscious in a completely atemporal  
mode. I would not have believed this without living it, as it seems  
indeed to be a contradiction from the usual mundane state of  
consciousness.
 But it makes sense in arithmetic, or for the consciousness of the  
universal non Löbian machine. Apparently, subjective time might be a  
result of self-consciousness, and not just consciousness. This makes  
consciousness a bit more "primitive" than I thought indeed.




 If we rely on our intuitive introspection to know what  
consciousness is (as you often say) we can't then just throw away  
that insight and say consciousness is something else.


Yes. That is why such an insight requires "altered state of  
consciousness". I agree it is weird, but it makes sense if we agree to  
declare non Löbian machine already conscious.


I have no certainty at all in this matter. The experiences have just  
added one more doubt, on the link between subjective time and  
consciousness. I would have thought that by losing Löbianity, you  
loose consciousness, but it seems that is not the case. We need more  
data and reports to better figure out what happens.


Bruno

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



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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/6/2012 1:44 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 05 Sep 2012, at 08:38, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/5/2012 2:03 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 10:07 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 9/5/2012 12:38 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 8:59 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

snip




What is most interesting is that the QC can run an arbitrary number 
of classical computations, all at the same time. The CC can only 
barely compute the emulation of a single QC. 


You are talking about QC and CC as though they were material 
computers with finite resources.  Once you've assumed material 
resources you've lost any non-circular possibility of explaining them.


No, I am pointing out that real computations require real 
resources. Only when we ignore this fact we can get away with 
floating castles in midair.


Brent just point out that arithmetic contains infinite resource.
What do you mean by "real computations"? Do you mean "physical 
computations"? Why would they lack resources?


Bruno


Dear Bruno,

I am talking about physical systems that have the capacity of 
carrying out in their dynamics the functions that implement the abstract 
computations that you are considering. The very thing that you claim is 
unnecessary.


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Craig Weinberg]

On Thursday, September 6, 2012 2:02:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 05 Sep 2012, at 17:27, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 10:50:02 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 05 Sep 2012, at 03:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>
>> Taking another look at Sane2004. This isn't so much as a challenge to 
>> Bruno, just sharing my notes of why I disagree. Not sure how far I will get 
>> this time, but here are my objections to the first step and the stipulated 
>> assumptions of comp. I understand that the point is to accept the given 
>> definition of comp, and in that respect, I have no reason to doubt that 
>> Bruno has accomplished what he sets out to as far as making a good theory 
>> within comp, and if he has not, I wouldn't be qualified to comment on it 
>> anyhow. From my perspective however, this is all beside the point, since 
>> the only point that matters is the actual truth of what consciousness 
>> actually is, and what is it's actual relation to physics and information. 
>> Given the fragile and precious nature of our own survival, I think that 
>> implications for teleportation and AI simulation/personhood which are 
>> derived from pure theory rather than thorough consideration of realism 
>> would be reckless to say the least.
>>
>> *Step one* talks about teleportation in terms of being reconstructed 
>> with ambient organic materials. If comp were true though, no organic 
>> materials or reconstructions would be necessary. The scanning into a 
>> universal machine would be sufficient.
>>
>> That is step 6.
>>
>
> I haven't even gotten to step 2 yet. I'm reading "In the figure the 
> teleported individual is represented by a black box. Its annihilation is
> represented by a white box appearing at the left of the arrow" from 1.
>  
>
>>
>>
>> Taking this to the China Brain level, the universal machine could be a 
>> trillion people with notebooks, pencils, paper, and erasers, talking to 
>> each other over cell phones. This activity would have to collectively 
>> result in the teleported person now being conjured as if by incantation as 
>> a consequence of...what? The writing and erasing on paper? The calling and 
>> speaking on cell phones? Where does the experience of the now disembodied 
>> person come in?
>>
>> As you illustrate here, plausibly not on the physical means used by the 
>> brain. Step 8 shows that indeed the physical has nothing to do with 
>> consciousness, except as a content of consciousness. Keeping comp here, we 
>> associate consciousness with the logical abstract computations.
>>
>>
>>
> So the person's consciousness arises spontaneously through the overall 
> effort-ness behind the writing, erasing, and calling, or does it gradually 
> constellate from lesser fragments of disconnected effort-ness?
>
>
> Consciousness does not arise. It is not in space, nor in time. Its local 
> content, obtained by differentiation, internally can refer to time and 
> space, but that's particular content of an atemporal consciousness. I would 
> say (no need of this in UDA).
>

If you exclude space and time, what kind of locality do you refer to? In my 
example, a quintillion people call each other on the phone and write down 
numbers that they get from each other and perform arithmetic functions on 
them (which in turn may inform them on how to process subsequent arithmetic 
instructions, etc). Ok. So where does the interpretation of these trillion 
events per second come in? What knows what all of the computations add up 
to be? At what point does the 'local content' begin to itch and turn blue? 
Even if it could, why should it do such a thing?

 

>
>
>
>
>
>> Step one talks about annihilation as well, but it is not clear what role 
>> this actually plays in the process, except to make it seem more like 
>> teleportation and less like what it actually would be, which is 
>> duplication. If I scan an original document and email the scan, I have sent 
>> a duplicate, not teleported the original.
>>
>> Right. Classical teleportation = duplication + annihilation of the 
>> original. That's step 5, precisely.
>>
>> You understand the reasoning very well, but we know that the problem for 
>> you is in the assumption.
>>
>
> Yes, the assumption seems to presume physicality to disprove physicality 
>
>
> At some place, yes. In a reductio ad absurdum. 
>
>
>
> and presume consciousness to explain consciousness. 
>
>
> Yes. Like we presume (at some metalevel) anything we want to explain (from 
> some other realm). It is not a lott, but science works that way. We don't 
> know the public truth. We can only make clear our hypothesis and reason, 
> and propose tests.
>

Why not just recognize it formally and say that consciousness doesn't need 
any explanation other than the experience of "this" and "that".
. 

>
>
> Computation seems to have nothing to do with either one of them in comp 
> other than the fact of the plasticity and aloofness of comp can be s

Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Bruno Marchal]

On 05 Sep 2012, at 22:24, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/5/2012 11:37 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 05 Sep 2012, at 14:01, Russell Standish wrote:



For certain choices of "this or that", the ultimate reality is
actually unknowable. For instance, the choice of a Turing complete
basis means that the hardware running the computations is completely
unknowable to the denizens of that computation.


Not really. With comp we know that the *physical* "bottom" is the  
result of the competition among all universal machines, (by UD-7 or  
8) and this leads to (re)define physics by such a competition/ 
measure on all computations. The initial base ontology is really  
irrelevant, and it makes no sense to choose one or another, except  
for technical commodities.


 Dear Bruno,

I am trying hard to be sure that I understand your ideas here.  
Could you specify the cardinality of "all universal machines"?


Aleph_0





How many of them possibly exist?


Aleph_0, like the primes.







Put in another way: there is no ontological hardware. The hardware  
and wetware are emergent on the digital basic ontology (which can  
be described by numbers or combinators as they describe the same  
computations and the same object: you can prove the existence of  
combinators in arithmetic, and you can prove the existence of  
numbers from the combinator S and K. So the basic ontology is  
really the same and we can "know" it (betting on comp). It is  
really like the choice of a base in a linear space.


So is there or is there not something that corresponds to  
"resources" (such as memory) for the Universal machines in your  
thought?


Yes, Stephen, most digital beings have memories, and things like that.  
All universal machine defines their own way to memorize, and interact.
And none, a priori, use any physical resource, only when they are  
implemented in a special universal one which we bet support us too,  
but that is a relative situation.
Please ask if not clear, or read some good book on computer science.  
All the (mathematical) machine have memories or equivalent. Keep in  
mind that they can all emulate each other. So arithmetic (above) can  
emulate a UNIVAC with transistors and tube, like it can emulate a  
quantum topological modular functor à-la Kitaev-Friedman.


Bruno


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



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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Bruno Marchal]

On 05 Sep 2012, at 21:36, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/5/2012 8:37 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Put in another way: there is no ontological hardware. The hardware  
and wetware are emergent on the digital basic ontology (which can  
be described by numbers or combinators as they describe the same  
computations and the same object: you can prove the existence of  
combinators in arithmetic,


I don't think I understand that remark.  Doesn't arithmetic *assume*  
combinators, i.e.  + and * ?


Combinators are defined by

K is a combinator
S is a combinator
if x and y are combinator, then (x, y) are combinators.

So they are K, S, (K K), (S S), (K S), (S K), (K (K K)), ((K K) K), etc.
The left parenthesis are often not written, for reason of readability.

The axioms are

Kxy = x
Sxyz = xz(yz).

This is Turing universal, and you can define numbers, + and * in that  
system. See the lovely book by Smullyan "To mock a mocking bird" for  
more, or my little course on them on this list.


Likewise, you can define them, and emulate them, using only 0,  
s(0), ... and the laws:


x+0 = x
x+s(y) = s(x+y)

x*0=0
x*s(y)=(x*y)+x

Which is also Turing universal.

Bruno




Brent

and you can prove the existence of numbers from the combinator S  
and K. So the basic ontology is really the same and we can "know"  
it (betting on comp). It is really like the choice of a base in a  
linear space.


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[meekerdb]

On 9/6/2012 11:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Consciousness does not arise. It is not in space, nor in time. Its local content, 
obtained by differentiation, internally can refer to time and space, 


Even if it is not *in* spacetime, my consciousness seems to depend on some particular 
localized matter in spacetime.


but that's particular content of an atemporal consciousness. 


An atemporal consciousness sounds like a contradiction in terms.  If we rely on our 
intuitive introspection to know what consciousness is (as you often say) we can't then 
just throw away that insight and say consciousness is something else.


Brent


I would say (no need of this in UDA).


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Bruno Marchal]

On 05 Sep 2012, at 18:12, Roger Clough wrote:



I don't think that life or mind or intelligence
can be teleported. Especially since nobody knows what
they are.

I also don't believe that you can download
the contents of somebody's brain.



This is just restating that you don't believe in comp.

OK, develop your theory, and predict something testable, and we will  
better understand what you mean.

If not it looks just  like a form of racism based on magic.

Bruno





Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/5/2012
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him
so that everything could function."
- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-05, 11:04:53
Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One

On 05 Sep 2012, at 06:14, meekerdb wrote:

> On 9/4/2012 7:19 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 06:48:58PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>> I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions:
>>>
>>> *yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up
>>> the entire
>>> thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your  
brain

>>> function and that your brain function can be replaced by the
>>> functioning of
>>> non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human
>>> individuality is
>>> a universal commodity.
>> Calling it a sleight of hand is a bit rough. It is the meat of the
>> comp assumption, and spelling it out this way makes it very
>> explicit. Either you agree you can be copied (without feeling a
>> thing), or you don't. If you do, you must face up to the  
consequences

>> of the argument, if you don't, then you do not accept
>> computationalism, and the consequences of the UDA do not apply to
>> your
>> worldview.
>
> I suppose I can be copied. But does it follow that I am just the
> computations in my brain. It seems likely that I also require an
> outside environment/world with which I interact in order to remain
> conscious. Bruno passes this off by saying it's just a matter of
> the level of substitution, perhaps your local environment or even
> the whole galaxy must be replaced by a digital representation in
> order to maintain your consciousness unchanged. But this bothers
> me. Suppose it is the whole galaxy, or the whole observed
> universe. Does it really mean anything then to say your brain has
> been replaced ALONG WITH EVERYTHING ELSE? It's just the assertion
> that everything is computable.

That's a good argument for saying that the level of substitution is
not that low. But the reasoning would still go through, and we would
lead to a unique computable universe. That is the only way to make a
digital physics consistent (as I forget to say sometimes). Then you
get a more complex "other mind problem", and something like David
Nyman- Hoyle beam would be needed, and would need to be separate from
the physical reality, making the big physical whole incomplete, etc.
yes this bothers me too. Needless to say, I tend to believe that if
comp is true, the level is much higher.



>
>>
>>> *Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of
>>> resources,
>>> supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a
>>> theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from
>>> realism from
>>> the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does
>>> data enter
>>> or exit a computation?
>> It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two
>> questions simply are relevant.
>>
>>> *Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self
>>> justifying
>>> independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in
>>> the dark.
>>> Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the
>>> beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic
>>> constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of
>>> that.
>> AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an
>> ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever  
primitive
>> reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the  
natural

>> numbers.
>
> ISTM that Bruno rejects any reality behind the natural numbers (or
> other system of computation). If often argues that the natural
> numbers exist, because they satisfy true propositions: There exists
> a prime number between 1 and 3, therefore 2 exists. This assumes a
> Platonist view of mathematical objects, which Peter D. Jones has
> argued against.

? I would say that the cont

Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Bruno Marchal]

On 05 Sep 2012, at 17:27, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 10:50:02 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal  
wrote:


On 05 Sep 2012, at 03:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Taking another look at Sane2004. This isn't so much as a challenge  
to Bruno, just sharing my notes of why I disagree. Not sure how far  
I will get this time, but here are my objections to the first step  
and the stipulated assumptions of comp. I understand that the point  
is to accept the given definition of comp, and in that respect, I  
have no reason to doubt that Bruno has accomplished what he sets  
out to as far as making a good theory within comp, and if he has  
not, I wouldn't be qualified to comment on it anyhow. From my  
perspective however, this is all beside the point, since the only  
point that matters is the actual truth of what consciousness  
actually is, and what is it's actual relation to physics and  
information. Given the fragile and precious nature of our own  
survival, I think that implications for teleportation and AI  
simulation/personhood which are derived from pure theory rather  
than thorough consideration of realism would be reckless to say the  
least.


Step one talks about teleportation in terms of being reconstructed  
with ambient organic materials. If comp were true though, no  
organic materials or reconstructions would be necessary. The  
scanning into a universal machine would be sufficient.



That is step 6.

I haven't even gotten to step 2 yet. I'm reading "In the figure the  
teleported individual is represented by a black box. Its  
annihilation is

represented by a white box appearing at the left of the arrow" from 1.



Taking this to the China Brain level, the universal machine could  
be a trillion people with notebooks, pencils, paper, and erasers,  
talking to each other over cell phones. This activity would have to  
collectively result in the teleported person now being conjured as  
if by incantation as a consequence of...what? The writing and  
erasing on paper? The calling and speaking on cell phones? Where  
does the experience of the now disembodied person come in?


As you illustrate here, plausibly not on the physical means used by  
the brain. Step 8 shows that indeed the physical has nothing to do  
with consciousness, except as a content of consciousness. Keeping  
comp here, we associate consciousness with the logical abstract  
computations.




So the person's consciousness arises spontaneously through the  
overall effort-ness behind the writing, erasing, and calling, or  
does it gradually constellate from lesser fragments of disconnected  
effort-ness?


Consciousness does not arise. It is not in space, nor in time. Its  
local content, obtained by differentiation, internally can refer to  
time and space, but that's particular content of an atemporal  
consciousness. I would say (no need of this in UDA).







Step one talks about annihilation as well, but it is not clear what  
role this actually plays in the process, except to make it seem  
more like teleportation and less like what it actually would be,  
which is duplication. If I scan an original document and email the  
scan, I have sent a duplicate, not teleported the original.


Right. Classical teleportation = duplication + annihilation of the  
original. That's step 5, precisely.


You understand the reasoning very well, but we know that the problem  
for you is in the assumption.


Yes, the assumption seems to presume physicality to disprove  
physicality


At some place, yes. In a reductio ad absurdum.




and presume consciousness to explain consciousness.


Yes. Like we presume (at some metalevel) anything we want to explain  
(from some other realm). It is not a lott, but science works that way.  
We don't know the public truth. We can only make clear our hypothesis  
and reason, and propose tests.



Computation seems to have nothing to do with either one of them in  
comp other than the fact of the plasticity and aloofness of comp can  
be seen as a sign that it is neither mind nor matter. It still  
doesn't answer the question of why have appearances of mind or  
matter at all?


Comp is used to formulate the problem in math. Then we can see the  
general shape of the solution, which is a reduction of physics into  
arithmetic, with the advantage that we get a clear explanation of the  
difference of qualia and quanta. And we can test the quanta.




If there is a reason, then that reason is the nature of the cosmos,  
not the filing and organizing system that indexes it's activities.





I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions:

yes, doctor: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the  
entire thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but  
your brain function and that your brain function can be replaced by  
the functioning of non-brain devices, then you have already agreed  
that human individuality is a universal commodity.


Why? A program or

Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Bruno Marchal]

On 05 Sep 2012, at 08:38, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/5/2012 2:03 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 10:07 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/5/2012 12:38 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 8:59 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:


Notice that both the duplication and the teleportation, as  
discussed, assume that the information content is exactly  
copyable.


Not exactly. Only sufficiently accurately to maintain your  
consciousness.


If the copy is not exact then functional equivalence is not  
exact either and this is fatal for the model.


Then you should mourn the Stephen P. King of and hour ago.  He's  
been fatally changed.


Never, I am not the impermanent image on the world stage. I am  
the fire that casts the images.








This is not qubits that are involved... The point here is that  
this comp model assume that Reality is, at is ground level,  
classical.


It doesn't assume that.  A fully quantum computation can be  
performed on a classical, i.e. Turing, computer.  Bruno would  
just say it just takes a lower level of substitution.


Yes, a classical computer can emulate a finite quantum  
computation given sufficient resources. This is not the same thing  
as the EPR effect that I am considering. The idea that I am  
considering is more like this:


Consider the visible physical universe. We know from observation  
that not only is it open on one end and that it's expansion is  
accelerating. People want to put this off on some "Dark Energy". I  
think that it is something else, driving it. Consider a classical  
computer that needs to emulate a quantum computation. It has to  
have even increasing resources to keep up with the QC if the QC is  
modeling an expanding universe. It we take Bruno's AR literally,  
where are these resources coming from?


They are computations.  They exist in Platonia. He's trying to  
explain matter, so he can't very well assume material resources.   
The world is made out of arithmetic, an infinite resource.


Sure, but the explanation of the idea requires matter to be  
communicated. A slight oversight perhaps.


But there is matter, in the comp theory. That is all what UDA  
explains, and what the Z and X logics axiomatizes.








Let's turn the tables and make Reality Quantum in its essence.  
The classical computation may just be something that the QC is  
running.


There's not difference as computations.


You are correct but only in the absence of considerations of  
inputs and outputs and their concurrency. Abstract theory leaves out  
the obvious, but when it pretends to toss out the obvious, that is  
going to far.


Matter is not obvious.








What is most interesting is that the QC can run an arbitrary  
number of classical computations, all at the same time. The CC can  
only barely compute the emulation of a single QC.


You are talking about QC and CC as though they were material  
computers with finite resources.  Once you've assumed material  
resources you've lost any non-circular possibility of explaining  
them.


No, I am pointing out that real computations require real  
resources. Only when we ignore this fact we can get away with  
floating castles in midair.


Brent just point out that arithmetic contains infinite resource.
What do you mean by "real computations"? Do you mean "physical  
computations"? Why would they lack resources?


Bruno





What if we have an infinite and eternal QC running infinitely many  
finite CCs and each of these CC's is trying to emulate a single  
QC. Map this idea out and look at the nice self-referential loop  
that this defines!


You're confused.


Maybe. I can handle being wrong. I learn from mistakes.



Brent
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Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[meekerdb]

On 9/5/2012 11:18 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
Intention is not magic and doesn't need hypothetical permission to exist. If your words 
are random ricochets of quantum radioactive decay or thermodynamic anomalies, then they 
are meaningless noise. You can't account for them because any accounting you can produce 
with your fingertips is only the random twitchings of your nervous system. Your view 
that denies the very reality of intention that you employ to state your denial. The fact 
that you deny that it does shows me that you are only capable of framing the question in 
the one way that it can never be answered. Your view is to say, I choose to deny my 
ability to choose.


No, that is a misconception.  Simply because there is some randomness at a molecular level 
doesn't make the whole process noise.  Or looked at another way the structure of you brain 
amplifies and shapes the noise and combines it with perception to produce your actions in 
a way that we recognize as constituting your consistent character.


Brent

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Re: Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 9:15 PM, Roger Clough  wrote:
> I must have missed something. What does the
> thinking of men have to do with evolution ?
>
> The evolution of plantlife ,at least, occurred before men were here.

The question is whether philosophical zombies are possible or not. If
they are possible, then why are we not zombies?


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Re: Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Roger Clough]

Hi Stathis Papaioannou 

IMHO Intelligence, as I see it, is the ability to make choices autonomously 
(one's own choices).
One could, if so desired, lie about something. Or create something 
nonscientific (a watercolor)

Robot choices made by software or hardware are not autonomous because somebody 
outside constructed them.

Only living entities seem to have that mental freedom, freedom to make choices 
independently
of hardware/software. Or at least mostly independent.

So robots can be neither alive nor have any intelligence.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/6/2012 
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function."
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Stathis Papaioannou 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-05, 21:21:03
Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One


On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 11:12 AM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>
>
> On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 3:13:05 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>>
>> On 9/5/2012 5:17 AM, Craig wrote:
>>
>> The test that I would use would be, as I have mentioned, to have someone
>> be
>> > walked off of their brain one hemisphere at a time, and then walked back
>> > on.
>> > Ideally this process would be repeated several times for different
>> > durations. That is the only test that could possibly work as far as I
>> > can
>> > tell - of course it wouldn't prove success or failure beyond any
>> > theoretical
>> > doubt, but it would be a pretty good indicator.
>>
>>
>> How would that work? The person would always respond to questions, like,
>> "Do you feel any different?" in exactly the same way. How would you tell
>> whether they really felt the same or just said they did?
>
>
> It would work because the person responding to the questions would be you.
> You would know what the experience of surviving the brain transfer was like.
> That is how you can tell whether you really felt the same is by actually
> feeling the same.

But you couldn't realise you felt different if the part of your brain
responsible for realising were receiving exactly the same inputs from
the rest of the brain. So you could feel different, or feel nothing,
but maintain the delusional belief that nothing had changed.


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Re: Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Roger Clough]

I must have missed something. What does the
thinking of men have to do with evolution ?

The evolution of plantlife ,at least, occurred before men were here.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/6/2012 
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function."
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Craig Weinberg 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 02:18:06
Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One




On Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:49:37 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
On 9/5/2012 10:39 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 


On Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:25:02 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: 
On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 2:34 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote: 

>> But you couldn't realise you felt different if the part of your brain 
>> responsible for realising were receiving exactly the same inputs from 
>> the rest of the brain. So you could feel different, or feel nothing, 
>> but maintain the delusional belief that nothing had changed. 
>> 
>> 
> 
> That's begging the question. You are assuming that the brain is a machine 
> which produces consciousness. I think that the brain is the three 
> dimensional shadow of many levels of experience and it produces nothing but 
> neurochemistry and alterations in our ability to access an individual set of 
> human experiences. The brain does not produce consciousness, it defines the 
> form of many conscious relations. 

But you believe that the neurochemicals do things contrary to what 
chemists would predict, for example an ion channel opening or closing 
without any cause such as a change in transmembrane potential or 
ligand concentration.

No, I only say that a thought can be generated from the top down, and that 
event is manifested in the brain as whatever changes in transmembrane 
potentials, ligand concentrations or ion channel status are appropriate. I can 
notice that I am breathing, or I can take a deep breath. Either way, there are 
similar neural pathways and mechanisms involved. Without knowing about free 
will, we could never tell the difference between the neurology of the voluntary 
act and the involuntary or semi-voluntary act. They would all appear not to 
contradict what chemists would predict, because their predictions don't specify 
when or where spontaneous brain activity will occur.



We've talked about this before and it just isn't 
consistent with any scientific evidence.

Your existence isn't consistent with any scientific evidence either. Science 
looks at objects. Consciousness is a subject. As long as science defines itself 
in that way, it is not possible for it to explain consciousness in any 
meaningful way.
 

You interpret the existence 
"spontaneous neural activity" as meaning that something magical like 
this happens, but it doesn't mean that at all. 


Spontaneous is just that, spontaneous. It isn't magical. It is quite ordinary. 
I could do the usual things I do, or I could spontaneously decide to invent 
something new to do or think about. This is what living organisms do but 
computers don't.


Your theory is like the denial of evolution because those genetic variations 
might have been spontaneous (intentional) instead of random.  But the point is 
that there is no need to hypothesize non-random, non-caused events in the 
brain.  The randomness of thermodynamics, quantum radioactive decay, and 
external influences are plenty to account for the unpredictability you call 
spontaneous.  There is no need hypothesize any extra 'magic'.


Intention is not magic and doesn't need hypothetical permission to exist. If 
your words are random ricochets of quantum radioactive decay or thermodynamic 
anomalies, then they are meaningless noise. You can't account for them because 
any accounting you can produce with your fingertips is only the random 
twitchings of your nervous system. Your view that denies the very reality of 
intention that you employ to state your denial. The fact that you deny that it 
does shows me that you are only capable of framing the question in the one way 
that it can never be answered. Your view is to say, I choose to deny my ability 
to choose.

Craig


Brent

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Re: Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Roger Clough]

Hi Craig Weinberg 


I don't think you can separate a man's brain from his mind or vice versa,
since the mind is the brain's monad and monads cannot be created or destroyed.
At least according to Leibniz.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/6/2012 
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function."
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Craig Weinberg 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-05, 21:12:22
Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One




On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 3:13:05 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
On 9/5/2012 5:17 AM, Craig wrote: 
The test that I would use would be, as I have mentioned, to have someone be
> walked off of their brain one hemisphere at a time, and then walked back on.
> Ideally this process would be repeated several times for different
> durations. That is the only test that could possibly work as far as I can
> tell - of course it wouldn't prove success or failure beyond any theoretical
> doubt, but it would be a pretty good indicator.

How would that work?  The person would always respond to questions, like, "Do 
you feel any different?" in exactly the same way.  How would you tell whether 
they really felt the same or just said they did?  


It would work because the person responding to the questions would be you. You 
would know what the experience of surviving the brain transfer was like. That 
is how you can tell whether you really felt the same is by actually feeling the 
same.

Craig
 


Brent

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Re: Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Roger Clough]

Hi Stathis Papaioannou 

All mental activity is out of the blue,
meaning inextended, outside of spacetime.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/6/2012 
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function."
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Stathis Papaioannou 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 03:06:20
Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One


On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 3:39 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>> You interpret the existence
>> "spontaneous neural activity" as meaning that something magical like
>> this happens, but it doesn't mean that at all.
>
>
> Spontaneous is just that, spontaneous. It isn't magical. It is quite
> ordinary. I could do the usual things I do, or I could spontaneously decide
> to invent something new to do or think about. This is what living organisms
> do but computers don't.

That's the large scale effect of neural activity, but the neural
activity itself is deterministic. Putting it crudely, every component
in the brain moves because it is jostled by another component. This
movement may coincide with mental activity that is apparently
out-of-the-blue. For example, the brain states may progress S1, S2, S3
at times T1, T2, T3 and corresponding with mental states M1, M2 and
M3. M2 may appear as a sudden idea with no apparent antecedent, but
that does *not* mean that S1, S2 or S3 arise without antecedent. S1
leads to S2 and S2 leads to S3 in a deterministic way, entirely
explainable in terms of chemical reactions. If it were otherwise then
scientists would observe miracles at the microscopic level, and
nothing like this has ever been observed.


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>> No, it doesn't mean that at all. If the billion people interact so as
>> to mimic the behaviour of the neurons in a brain, resulting in the
>> ability to (for example) converse in natural language, then the idea
>> is that the billion-person brain would have consciousness. This
>> consciousness would have nothing to do with the consciousness of the
>> billion people producing it; I don't know what my neurons are doing
>> and my neurons individually certainly don't know what I am doing.
>
>
> You are confirming what I have said. You are saying that a billion people
> doing the appropriate computations on paper with pencils and erasers and
> telephones to talk to each other would create a magical personality that
> nobody would know about but nonetheless would be born into the universe as a
> thinking, feeling, eating, crapping being. This being is literally made out
> of nothing at all except the fact of these computations taking place
> somewhere...but where? You say not in the consciousness of the brains of the
> people, so where? In the lead of the pencils on paper? In the signals of the
> telephone calls? Why is this new being local to this process? How is it
> attached to the computation-ness?

If neurons can give rise to thinking beings then why can't billions of
people? What essential quality do the neurons have that people lack?


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 3:39 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>> You interpret the existence
>> "spontaneous neural activity" as meaning that something magical like
>> this happens, but it doesn't mean that at all.
>
>
> Spontaneous is just that, spontaneous. It isn't magical. It is quite
> ordinary. I could do the usual things I do, or I could spontaneously decide
> to invent something new to do or think about. This is what living organisms
> do but computers don't.

That's the large scale effect of neural activity, but the neural
activity itself is deterministic. Putting it crudely, every component
in the brain moves because it is jostled by another component. This
movement may coincide with mental activity that is apparently
out-of-the-blue. For example, the brain states may progress S1, S2, S3
at times T1, T2, T3 and corresponding with mental states M1, M2 and
M3. M2 may appear as a sudden idea with no apparent antecedent, but
that does *not* mean that S1, S2 or S3 arise without antecedent. S1
leads to S2 and S2 leads to S3 in a deterministic way, entirely
explainable in terms of chemical reactions. If it were otherwise then
scientists would observe miracles at the microscopic level, and
nothing like this has ever been observed.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Craig Weinberg]

On Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:52:11 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 9/5/2012 10:44 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
>
>
>
> On Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:32:21 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: 
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Craig Weinberg  
>> wrote: 
>>
>> > I find that the least plausible explanation. It means that if a billion 
>> > people talk to each other and give each other information, that some 
>> kind of 
>> > consciousness must necessarily arise as a side-effect. You could say 
>> that it 
>> > might arise, but the idea that such a side effect is somehow necessary 
>> as to 
>> > accomplish certain kinds of information processing is laughably 
>> romantic to 
>> > my mind. If I recruit people to recruit people to all do math together, 
>> then 
>> > a magical genie will appear. Necessarily. Because of behavior 
>> modification. 
>> > Mm. Yeah. No ghost in the machine, but machine that runs on ghost 
>> > power...because...why? 
>>
>> No, it doesn't mean that at all. If the billion people interact so as 
>> to mimic the behaviour of the neurons in a brain, resulting in the 
>> ability to (for example) converse in natural language, then the idea 
>> is that the billion-person brain would have consciousness. This 
>> consciousness would have nothing to do with the consciousness of the 
>> billion people producing it; I don't know what my neurons are doing 
>> and my neurons individually certainly don't know what I am doing. 
>>
>
> You are confirming what I have said. You are saying that a billion people 
> doing the appropriate computations on paper with pencils and erasers and 
> telephones to talk to each other would create a magical personality that 
> nobody would know about but nonetheless would be born into the universe as 
> a thinking, feeling, eating, crapping being. 
>
>
> That's where the hypothetical breaks down. The BPB would not have a body 
> to control or a world to interact with.  Could it have dream?  Maybe - but 
> it would need a simulated world to interact with in order to have 
> human-like consciousness.
>

So you have a Quintillion Person Brain+World instead. That just makes the 
absurdity even more apparent. Now you have an invisible world conjured into 
the ethers out of nothing but synchronized incantations. Maybe those 
virtual people could form a Trillion Virtual Person Brain + WalMart and go 
shopping in the meta-ethers?

Craig 


> Brent
>  

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Craig Weinberg]

On Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:49:37 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 9/5/2012 10:39 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
>
>
>
> On Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:25:02 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: 
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 2:34 PM, Craig Weinberg  
>> wrote: 
>>
>> >> But you couldn't realise you felt different if the part of your brain 
>> >> responsible for realising were receiving exactly the same inputs from 
>> >> the rest of the brain. So you could feel different, or feel nothing, 
>> >> but maintain the delusional belief that nothing had changed. 
>> >> 
>> >> 
>> > 
>> > That's begging the question. You are assuming that the brain is a 
>> machine 
>> > which produces consciousness. I think that the brain is the three 
>> > dimensional shadow of many levels of experience and it produces nothing 
>> but 
>> > neurochemistry and alterations in our ability to access an individual 
>> set of 
>> > human experiences. The brain does not produce consciousness, it defines 
>> the 
>> > form of many conscious relations. 
>>
>> But you believe that the neurochemicals do things contrary to what 
>> chemists would predict, for example an ion channel opening or closing 
>> without any cause such as a change in transmembrane potential or 
>> ligand concentration.
>
>
> No, I only say that a thought can be generated from the top down, and that 
> event is manifested in the brain as whatever changes in transmembrane 
> potentials, ligand concentrations or ion channel status are appropriate. I 
> can notice that I am breathing, or I can take a deep breath. Either way, 
> there are similar neural pathways and mechanisms involved. Without knowing 
> about free will, we could never tell the difference between the neurology 
> of the voluntary act and the involuntary or semi-voluntary act. They would 
> all appear not to contradict what chemists would predict, because their 
> predictions don't specify when or where spontaneous brain activity will 
> occur.
>
>
>  We've talked about this before and it just isn't 
>> consistent with any scientific evidence.
>
>
> Your existence isn't consistent with any scientific evidence either. 
> Science looks at objects. Consciousness is a subject. As long as science 
> defines itself in that way, it is not possible for it to explain 
> consciousness in any meaningful way.
>  
>  
>> You interpret the existence 
>> "spontaneous neural activity" as meaning that something magical like 
>> this happens, but it doesn't mean that at all. 
>>
>
> Spontaneous is just that, spontaneous. It isn't magical. It is quite 
> ordinary. I could do the usual things I do, or I could spontaneously decide 
> to invent something new to do or think about. This is what living organisms 
> do but computers don't.
>  
>
> Your theory is like the denial of evolution because those genetic 
> variations might have been spontaneous (intentional) instead of random.  
> But the point is that there is no need to hypothesize non-random, 
> non-caused events in the brain.  The randomness of thermodynamics, quantum 
> radioactive decay, and external influences are plenty to account for the 
> unpredictability you call spontaneous.  There is no need hypothesize any 
> extra 'magic'.
>

Intention is not magic and doesn't need hypothetical permission to exist. 
If your words are random ricochets of quantum radioactive decay or 
thermodynamic anomalies, then they are meaningless noise. You can't account 
for them because any accounting you can produce with your fingertips is 
only the random twitchings of your nervous system. Your view that denies 
the very reality of intention that you employ to state your denial. The 
fact that you deny that it does shows me that you are only capable of 
framing the question in the one way that it can never be answered. Your 
view is to say, I choose to deny my ability to choose.

Craig

>
> Brent
>  

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[meekerdb]

On 9/5/2012 10:44 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:32:21 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Craig Weinberg >
wrote:

> I find that the least plausible explanation. It means that if a billion
> people talk to each other and give each other information, that some kind 
of
> consciousness must necessarily arise as a side-effect. You could say that 
it
> might arise, but the idea that such a side effect is somehow necessary as 
to
> accomplish certain kinds of information processing is laughably romantic 
to
> my mind. If I recruit people to recruit people to all do math together, 
then
> a magical genie will appear. Necessarily. Because of behavior 
modification.
> Mm. Yeah. No ghost in the machine, but machine that runs on ghost
> power...because...why?

No, it doesn't mean that at all. If the billion people interact so as
to mimic the behaviour of the neurons in a brain, resulting in the
ability to (for example) converse in natural language, then the idea
is that the billion-person brain would have consciousness. This
consciousness would have nothing to do with the consciousness of the
billion people producing it; I don't know what my neurons are doing
and my neurons individually certainly don't know what I am doing.


You are confirming what I have said. You are saying that a billion people doing the 
appropriate computations on paper with pencils and erasers and telephones to talk to 
each other would create a magical personality that nobody would know about but 
nonetheless would be born into the universe as a thinking, feeling, eating, crapping being.


That's where the hypothetical breaks down. The BPB would not have a body to control or a 
world to interact with.  Could it have dream?  Maybe - but it would need a simulated world 
to interact with in order to have human-like consciousness.


Brent

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[meekerdb]

On 9/5/2012 10:39 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:25:02 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 2:34 PM, Craig Weinberg >
wrote:

>> But you couldn't realise you felt different if the part of your brain
>> responsible for realising were receiving exactly the same inputs from
>> the rest of the brain. So you could feel different, or feel nothing,
>> but maintain the delusional belief that nothing had changed.
>>
>>
>
> That's begging the question. You are assuming that the brain is a machine
> which produces consciousness. I think that the brain is the three
> dimensional shadow of many levels of experience and it produces nothing 
but
> neurochemistry and alterations in our ability to access an individual set 
of
> human experiences. The brain does not produce consciousness, it defines 
the
> form of many conscious relations.

But you believe that the neurochemicals do things contrary to what
chemists would predict, for example an ion channel opening or closing
without any cause such as a change in transmembrane potential or
ligand concentration.


No, I only say that a thought can be generated from the top down, and that event is 
manifested in the brain as whatever changes in transmembrane potentials, ligand 
concentrations or ion channel status are appropriate. I can notice that I am breathing, 
or I can take a deep breath. Either way, there are similar neural pathways and 
mechanisms involved. Without knowing about free will, we could never tell the difference 
between the neurology of the voluntary act and the involuntary or semi-voluntary act. 
They would all appear not to contradict what chemists would predict, because their 
predictions don't specify when or where spontaneous brain activity will occur.



We've talked about this before and it just isn't
consistent with any scientific evidence.


Your existence isn't consistent with any scientific evidence either. Science looks at 
objects. Consciousness is a subject. As long as science defines itself in that way, it 
is not possible for it to explain consciousness in any meaningful way.


You interpret the existence
"spontaneous neural activity" as meaning that something magical like
this happens, but it doesn't mean that at all.


Spontaneous is just that, spontaneous. It isn't magical. It is quite ordinary. I could 
do the usual things I do, or I could spontaneously decide to invent something new to do 
or think about. This is what living organisms do but computers don't.


Your theory is like the denial of evolution because those genetic variations might have 
been spontaneous (intentional) instead of random.  But the point is that there is no need 
to hypothesize non-random, non-caused events in the brain.  The randomness of 
thermodynamics, quantum radioactive decay, and external influences are plenty to account 
for the unpredictability you call spontaneous.  There is no need hypothesize any extra 
'magic'.


Brent

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Craig Weinberg]

On Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:32:21 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> > 
> wrote: 
>
> > I find that the least plausible explanation. It means that if a billion 
> > people talk to each other and give each other information, that some 
> kind of 
> > consciousness must necessarily arise as a side-effect. You could say 
> that it 
> > might arise, but the idea that such a side effect is somehow necessary 
> as to 
> > accomplish certain kinds of information processing is laughably romantic 
> to 
> > my mind. If I recruit people to recruit people to all do math together, 
> then 
> > a magical genie will appear. Necessarily. Because of behavior 
> modification. 
> > Mm. Yeah. No ghost in the machine, but machine that runs on ghost 
> > power...because...why? 
>
> No, it doesn't mean that at all. If the billion people interact so as 
> to mimic the behaviour of the neurons in a brain, resulting in the 
> ability to (for example) converse in natural language, then the idea 
> is that the billion-person brain would have consciousness. This 
> consciousness would have nothing to do with the consciousness of the 
> billion people producing it; I don't know what my neurons are doing 
> and my neurons individually certainly don't know what I am doing. 
>

You are confirming what I have said. You are saying that a billion people 
doing the appropriate computations on paper with pencils and erasers and 
telephones to talk to each other would create a magical personality that 
nobody would know about but nonetheless would be born into the universe as 
a thinking, feeling, eating, crapping being. This being is literally made 
out of nothing at all except the fact of these computations taking place 
somewhere...but where? You say not in the consciousness of the brains of 
the people, so where? In the lead of the pencils on paper? In the signals 
of the telephone calls? Why is this new being local to this process? How is 
it attached to the computation-ness?

Craig
 

>
>
> -- 
> Stathis Papaioannou 
>

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Craig Weinberg]

On Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:25:02 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 2:34 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> > 
> wrote: 
>
> >> But you couldn't realise you felt different if the part of your brain 
> >> responsible for realising were receiving exactly the same inputs from 
> >> the rest of the brain. So you could feel different, or feel nothing, 
> >> but maintain the delusional belief that nothing had changed. 
> >> 
> >> 
> > 
> > That's begging the question. You are assuming that the brain is a 
> machine 
> > which produces consciousness. I think that the brain is the three 
> > dimensional shadow of many levels of experience and it produces nothing 
> but 
> > neurochemistry and alterations in our ability to access an individual 
> set of 
> > human experiences. The brain does not produce consciousness, it defines 
> the 
> > form of many conscious relations. 
>
> But you believe that the neurochemicals do things contrary to what 
> chemists would predict, for example an ion channel opening or closing 
> without any cause such as a change in transmembrane potential or 
> ligand concentration.


No, I only say that a thought can be generated from the top down, and that 
event is manifested in the brain as whatever changes in transmembrane 
potentials, ligand concentrations or ion channel status are appropriate. I 
can notice that I am breathing, or I can take a deep breath. Either way, 
there are similar neural pathways and mechanisms involved. Without knowing 
about free will, we could never tell the difference between the neurology 
of the voluntary act and the involuntary or semi-voluntary act. They would 
all appear not to contradict what chemists would predict, because their 
predictions don't specify when or where spontaneous brain activity will 
occur.


We've talked about this before and it just isn't 
> consistent with any scientific evidence.


Your existence isn't consistent with any scientific evidence either. 
Science looks at objects. Consciousness is a subject. As long as science 
defines itself in that way, it is not possible for it to explain 
consciousness in any meaningful way.
 

> You interpret the existence 
> "spontaneous neural activity" as meaning that something magical like 
> this happens, but it doesn't mean that at all. 
>

Spontaneous is just that, spontaneous. It isn't magical. It is quite 
ordinary. I could do the usual things I do, or I could spontaneously decide 
to invent something new to do or think about. This is what living organisms 
do but computers don't.

Craig
 

>
>
> -- 
> Stathis Papaioannou 
>

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> I find that the least plausible explanation. It means that if a billion
> people talk to each other and give each other information, that some kind of
> consciousness must necessarily arise as a side-effect. You could say that it
> might arise, but the idea that such a side effect is somehow necessary as to
> accomplish certain kinds of information processing is laughably romantic to
> my mind. If I recruit people to recruit people to all do math together, then
> a magical genie will appear. Necessarily. Because of behavior modification.
> Mm. Yeah. No ghost in the machine, but machine that runs on ghost
> power...because...why?

No, it doesn't mean that at all. If the billion people interact so as
to mimic the behaviour of the neurons in a brain, resulting in the
ability to (for example) converse in natural language, then the idea
is that the billion-person brain would have consciousness. This
consciousness would have nothing to do with the consciousness of the
billion people producing it; I don't know what my neurons are doing
and my neurons individually certainly don't know what I am doing.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 2:34 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>> But you couldn't realise you felt different if the part of your brain
>> responsible for realising were receiving exactly the same inputs from
>> the rest of the brain. So you could feel different, or feel nothing,
>> but maintain the delusional belief that nothing had changed.
>>
>>
>
> That's begging the question. You are assuming that the brain is a machine
> which produces consciousness. I think that the brain is the three
> dimensional shadow of many levels of experience and it produces nothing but
> neurochemistry and alterations in our ability to access an individual set of
> human experiences. The brain does not produce consciousness, it defines the
> form of many conscious relations.

But you believe that the neurochemicals do things contrary to what
chemists would predict, for example an ion channel opening or closing
without any cause such as a change in transmembrane potential or
ligand concentration. We've talked about this before and it just isn't
consistent with any scientific evidence. You interpret the existence
"spontaneous neural activity" as meaning that something magical like
this happens, but it doesn't mean that at all.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 11:26:43 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 10:32 AM, meekerdb > 
> wrote: 
>
> > I agree with all you say, except the implication of the last sentence: 
> that 
> > evolution would never produce results with some inessential side effect. 
> > First, evolution has to produce things by evolving - not starting from a 
> > clean sheet.  In the case of consciousness I think it quite likely that 
> this 
> > happened.  Conscious thinking is similar to talking-to-yourself because 
> > evolution happened to take advantage of auditory processing of language 
> to 
> > internalize symbolic cogitation.  Second, even though the same result 
> might 
> > be obtained in some other way, it might be less efficient in some sense 
> to 
> > do so.  We might conceivably make a human-acting robot that cogitated 
> using 
> > a computer separate from the one used for processing language and while 
> I 
> > think it would be conscious, it would be conscious in a different way. 
>
> The most plausible explanation is that consciousness is a necessary 
> side-effect of the type of information processing that goes at its 
> simplest stimulus->response->behaviour modification. 
>

I find that the least plausible explanation. It means that if a billion 
people talk to each other and give each other information, that some kind 
of consciousness must necessarily arise as a side-effect. You could say 
that it might arise, but the idea that such a side effect is somehow 
necessary as to accomplish certain kinds of information processing is 
laughably romantic to my mind. If I recruit people to recruit people to all 
do math together, then a magical genie will appear. Necessarily. Because of 
behavior modification. Mm. Yeah. No ghost in the machine, but machine that 
runs on ghost power...because...why?

Craig
 

>
>
> -- 
> Stathis Papaioannou 
>

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 9:21:34 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 11:12 AM, Craig Weinberg 
> > 
> wrote: 
> > 
> > 
> > On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 3:13:05 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 
> >> 
> >> On 9/5/2012 5:17 AM, Craig wrote: 
> >> 
> >> The test that I would use would be, as I have mentioned, to have 
> someone 
> >> be 
> >> > walked off of their brain one hemisphere at a time, and then walked 
> back 
> >> > on. 
> >> > Ideally this process would be repeated several times for different 
> >> > durations. That is the only test that could possibly work as far as I 
> >> > can 
> >> > tell - of course it wouldn't prove success or failure beyond any 
> >> > theoretical 
> >> > doubt, but it would be a pretty good indicator. 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> How would that work?  The person would always respond to questions, 
> like, 
> >> "Do you feel any different?" in exactly the same way.  How would you 
> tell 
> >> whether they really felt the same or just said they did? 
> > 
> > 
> > It would work because the person responding to the questions would be 
> you. 
> > You would know what the experience of surviving the brain transfer was 
> like. 
> > That is how you can tell whether you really felt the same is by actually 
> > feeling the same. 
>
> But you couldn't realise you felt different if the part of your brain 
> responsible for realising were receiving exactly the same inputs from 
> the rest of the brain. So you could feel different, or feel nothing, 
> but maintain the delusional belief that nothing had changed. 
>
>
>
That's begging the question. You are assuming that the brain is a machine 
which produces consciousness. I think that the brain is the three 
dimensional shadow of many levels of experience and it produces nothing but 
neurochemistry and alterations in our ability to access an individual set 
of human experiences. The brain does not produce consciousness, it defines 
the form of many conscious relations.

If you have one hemisphere of your brain downloaded into a computer, and 
then live in the computer for a while and then upload it back into your 
brain - if that were feasible then you would theoretically retain some of 
the memory of your experience. You could then judge whether you remember it 
as being unpleasant or different in some way, or if it was like Spock's 
brain and you suddenly became a large facility without it really being an 
issue.

Craig
 

> -- 
> Stathis Papaioannou 
>

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 10:32 AM, meekerdb  wrote:

> I agree with all you say, except the implication of the last sentence: that
> evolution would never produce results with some inessential side effect.
> First, evolution has to produce things by evolving - not starting from a
> clean sheet.  In the case of consciousness I think it quite likely that this
> happened.  Conscious thinking is similar to talking-to-yourself because
> evolution happened to take advantage of auditory processing of language to
> internalize symbolic cogitation.  Second, even though the same result might
> be obtained in some other way, it might be less efficient in some sense to
> do so.  We might conceivably make a human-acting robot that cogitated using
> a computer separate from the one used for processing language and while I
> think it would be conscious, it would be conscious in a different way.

The most plausible explanation is that consciousness is a necessary
side-effect of the type of information processing that goes at its
simplest stimulus->response->behaviour modification.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 11:12 AM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>
>
> On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 3:13:05 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>>
>> On 9/5/2012 5:17 AM, Craig wrote:
>>
>> The test that I would use would be, as I have mentioned, to have someone
>> be
>> > walked off of their brain one hemisphere at a time, and then walked back
>> > on.
>> > Ideally this process would be repeated several times for different
>> > durations. That is the only test that could possibly work as far as I
>> > can
>> > tell - of course it wouldn't prove success or failure beyond any
>> > theoretical
>> > doubt, but it would be a pretty good indicator.
>>
>>
>> How would that work?  The person would always respond to questions, like,
>> "Do you feel any different?" in exactly the same way.  How would you tell
>> whether they really felt the same or just said they did?
>
>
> It would work because the person responding to the questions would be you.
> You would know what the experience of surviving the brain transfer was like.
> That is how you can tell whether you really felt the same is by actually
> feeling the same.

But you couldn't realise you felt different if the part of your brain
responsible for realising were receiving exactly the same inputs from
the rest of the brain. So you could feel different, or feel nothing,
but maintain the delusional belief that nothing had changed.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 3:13:05 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 9/5/2012 5:17 AM, Craig wrote: 
>
> The test that I would use would be, as I have mentioned, to have someone be> 
> walked off of their brain one hemisphere at a time, and then walked back on.> 
> Ideally this process would be repeated several times for different> 
> durations. That is the only test that could possibly work as far as I can> 
> tell - of course it wouldn't prove success or failure beyond any theoretical> 
> doubt, but it would be a pretty good indicator.
>
>  
> How would that work?  The person would always respond to questions, like, 
> "Do you feel any different?" in exactly the same way.  How would you tell 
> whether they really felt the same or just said they did?  
>

It would work because the person responding to the questions would be you. 
You would know what the experience of surviving the brain transfer was 
like. That is how you can tell whether you really felt the same is by 
actually feeling the same.

Craig
 

>
> Brent
>  

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Russell Standish]

On Wed, Sep 05, 2012 at 05:37:18PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
> On 05 Sep 2012, at 14:01, Russell Standish wrote:
> >
> >For certain choices of "this or that", the ultimate reality is
> >actually unknowable. For instance, the choice of a Turing complete
> >basis means that the hardware running the computations is completely
> >unknowable to the denizens of that computation.
> 
> Not really. With comp we know that the *physical* "bottom" is the
> result of the competition among all universal machines, (by UD-7 or
> 8) and this leads to (re)define physics by such a
> competition/measure on all computations. The initial base ontology
> is really irrelevant, and it makes no sense to choose one or
> another, except for technical commodities.
> 
> Put in another way: there is no ontological hardware. The hardware
> and wetware are emergent on the digital basic ontology (which can be
> described by numbers or combinators as they describe the same
> computations and the same object: you can prove the existence of
> combinators in arithmetic, and you can prove the existence of
> numbers from the combinator S and K. So the basic ontology is really
> the same and we can "know" it (betting on comp). It is really like
> the choice of a base in a linear space.
> 
> Bruno

We're in perfect agreement here, actually, just expressing it differently!

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[meekerdb]

On 9/5/2012 5:14 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 1:04 AM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:


The ability to test depends entirely on my familiarity with the human and
how good the technology is. Can I touch them, smell them? If so, then I
would be surprised if I could be fooled by an inorganic body. Has there ever
been one synthetic imitation of a natural biological product that can
withstand even moderate examination?

If you limit the channel of my interaction with the robot however, I stand
much less of a chance of being able to tell the difference. A video
conference with the robot only requires that they look convincing on camera.
We can't tell the difference between a live performance and a taped
performance unless there is some clue in the content. That is because we
aren't literally present so we are only dealing with a narrow channel of
sense experience to begin with.

In any case, what does being able to tell from the outside have to do with
whether or not the thing feels? If it is designed by experts to fool other
people into thinking that it is alive, then so what if it succeeds at
fooling everyone? Something can't fool itself into thinking that it is
alive.

A film is nor a good example because you can't interact with it. The
point is that if it is possible to make a robot that fools everyone
then this is ipso facto a philosophical zombie. It doesn't feel but it
pretends to feel. A corollary of this is that a philosophical zombie
could display all the behaviour of a living being. So how can you be
sure that living beings other than you are not zombies? Also, what is
the evolutionary utility of consciousness if the same results could
have in principle been obtained without it?


I agree with all you say, except the implication of the last sentence: that evolution 
would never produce results with some inessential side effect.  First, evolution has to 
produce things by evolving - not starting from a clean sheet.  In the case of 
consciousness I think it quite likely that this happened.  Conscious thinking is similar 
to talking-to-yourself because evolution happened to take advantage of auditory processing 
of language to internalize symbolic cogitation.  Second, even though the same result might 
be obtained in some other way, it might be less efficient in some sense to do so.  We 
might conceivably make a human-acting robot that cogitated using a computer separate from 
the one used for processing language and while I think it would be conscious, it would be 
conscious in a different way.


Brent

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 1:04 AM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> The ability to test depends entirely on my familiarity with the human and
> how good the technology is. Can I touch them, smell them? If so, then I
> would be surprised if I could be fooled by an inorganic body. Has there ever
> been one synthetic imitation of a natural biological product that can
> withstand even moderate examination?
>
> If you limit the channel of my interaction with the robot however, I stand
> much less of a chance of being able to tell the difference. A video
> conference with the robot only requires that they look convincing on camera.
> We can't tell the difference between a live performance and a taped
> performance unless there is some clue in the content. That is because we
> aren't literally present so we are only dealing with a narrow channel of
> sense experience to begin with.
>
> In any case, what does being able to tell from the outside have to do with
> whether or not the thing feels? If it is designed by experts to fool other
> people into thinking that it is alive, then so what if it succeeds at
> fooling everyone? Something can't fool itself into thinking that it is
> alive.

A film is nor a good example because you can't interact with it. The
point is that if it is possible to make a robot that fools everyone
then this is ipso facto a philosophical zombie. It doesn't feel but it
pretends to feel. A corollary of this is that a philosophical zombie
could display all the behaviour of a living being. So how can you be
sure that living beings other than you are not zombies? Also, what is
the evolutionary utility of consciousness if the same results could
have in principle been obtained without it?


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/5/2012 11:37 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 05 Sep 2012, at 14:01, Russell Standish wrote:



For certain choices of "this or that", the ultimate reality is
actually unknowable. For instance, the choice of a Turing complete
basis means that the hardware running the computations is completely
unknowable to the denizens of that computation.


Not really. With comp we know that the *physical* "bottom" is the 
result of the competition among all universal machines, (by UD-7 or 8) 
and this leads to (re)define physics by such a competition/measure on 
all computations. The initial base ontology is really irrelevant, and 
it makes no sense to choose one or another, except for technical 
commodities.


 Dear Bruno,

I am trying hard to be sure that I understand your ideas here. 
Could you specify the cardinality of "all universal machines"? How many 
of them possibly exist?




Put in another way: there is no ontological hardware. The hardware and 
wetware are emergent on the digital basic ontology (which can be 
described by numbers or combinators as they describe the same 
computations and the same object: you can prove the existence of 
combinators in arithmetic, and you can prove the existence of numbers 
from the combinator S and K. So the basic ontology is really the same 
and we can "know" it (betting on comp). It is really like the choice 
of a base in a linear space. 


So is there or is there not something that corresponds to 
"resources" (such as memory) for the Universal machines in your thought?


--
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[meekerdb]

On 9/5/2012 8:37 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Put in another way: there is no ontological hardware. The hardware and wetware are 
emergent on the digital basic ontology (which can be described by numbers or combinators 
as they describe the same computations and the same object: you can prove the existence 
of combinators in arithmetic, 


I don't think I understand that remark.  Doesn't arithmetic *assume* combinators, i.e.  + 
and * ?


Brent

and you can prove the existence of numbers from the combinator S and K. So the basic 
ontology is really the same and we can "know" it (betting on comp). It is really like 
the choice of a base in a linear space. 


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[meekerdb]

On 9/5/2012 5:17 AM, Craig wrote:

The test that I would use would be, as I have mentioned, to have someone be
>  walked off of their brain one hemisphere at a time, and then walked back on.
>  Ideally this process would be repeated several times for different
>  durations. That is the only test that could possibly work as far as I can
>  tell - of course it wouldn't prove success or failure beyond any theoretical
>  doubt, but it would be a pretty good indicator.


How would that work?  The person would always respond to questions, like, "Do you feel any 
different?" in exactly the same way.  How would you tell whether they really felt the same 
or just said they did?


Brent

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/5/2012 11:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 05 Sep 2012, at 06:48, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/5/2012 12:14 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 7:19 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 06:48:58PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote:

I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions:

*yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up 
the entire

thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain
function and that your brain function can be replaced by the 
functioning of
non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human 
individuality is

a universal commodity.

Calling it a sleight of hand is a bit rough. It is the meat of the
comp assumption, and spelling it out this way makes it very
explicit. Either you agree you can be copied (without feeling a
thing), or you don't. If you do, you must face up to the consequences
of the argument, if you don't, then you do not accept
computationalism, and the consequences of the UDA do not apply to your
worldview.


I suppose I can be copied.  But does it follow that I am just the 
computations in my brain.  It seems likely that I also require an 
outside environment/world with which I interact in order to remain 
conscious.  Bruno passes this off by saying it's just a matter of 
the level of substitution, perhaps your local environment or even 
the whole galaxy must be replaced by a digital representation in 
order to maintain your consciousness unchanged.  But this bothers 
me.  Suppose it is the whole galaxy, or the whole observed 
universe.  Does it really mean anything then to say your brain has 
been replaced ALONG WITH EVERYTHING ELSE?  It's just the assertion 
that everything is computable.


   Hear Hear! And if it is computable then it is nothing but 
countable and recursively enumerable functions. But can functions 
generate I/O from themselves?


You lost me. Functions are set of I/O.


Input/Output is interfacing, it is at least a second-order 
function. More on this soon.






We see nice examples of entire computable universes in MMORP games 
that have many people addicted to them. One thing about them, we 
require resources to be run. Nothing happens if you don't pay the fee.






*Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of 
resources,

supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a
theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from 
realism from
the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does 
data enter

or exit a computation?

It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two
questions simply are relevant.

*Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self 
justifying
independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in 
the dark.

Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the
beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic
constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of
that.

AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an
ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive
reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural
numbers.


ISTM that Bruno rejects any reality behind the natural numbers (or 
other system of computation).  If often argues that the natural 
numbers exist, because they satisfy true propositions: There exists 
a prime number between 1 and 3, therefore 2 exists.  This assumes a 
Platonist view of mathematical objects, which Peter D. Jones has 
argued against.


   Platonism fails because it cannot explain how many minds interact. 
It is a wonderful ontology theory of a single mind, but not of many 
differing minds.


I don't see this at all. many minds comes from the fact that universal 
machine can interact.


With what? Itself?

That the easy thing to explain, seen also by Schmidhuber and Tegmark, 
but as Deustch argued, this explains to much.
Yet Deustch critics either assumes non comp, or is inconsistent, as 
comp implies the realities used by Schmidhuber and Tegmark. What the 
three of them ignores is that this entails also the first person 
indeterminacy, and this makes the idea of interaction or physics 
entirely and necessarily retrievable from self-reference, and this 
works well until now. Then we have the "Solovay" gift, the splitting 
between provable and true-but-non-provable, whose intensional variants 
explains completely the quanta/qualia divergence.


Deutsch. Tegmark and Schmidhuber do not explicitly consider the 
interaction question and so miss the point. They seem to just assume the 
equivalent to 1p indeterminacy via local individuation.




You keep saying that interaction is not explained by comp, but this 
makes no sense, as a computation, even in arithmetic, is only a matter 
of local interactions.


How is "locality" explained by COMP? Locality induces the ability 
to distinguish what is otherwise indistinguishable. If

Re: Re: Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Roger Clough]

Hi Craig Weinberg 

Insist.  Interesting idea.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/5/2012 
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function."
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Craig Weinberg 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-05, 11:07:00
Subject: Re: Re: Sane2004 Step One


On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 8:43:35 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote:
Hi Craig Weinberg 


I don't like the word "existence" as it carries
so much baggage with it. What you describe
below is physical existence. That is a property
of extended entities.

I agree, existence means different things in different contexts.
 


Inextended entities such as mind and 1p and
thouights and feelings would be mentally
existent.


I try to avoid that confusion by using the word 'insist' and 'insistence' 
instead of exist when I am talking about the private half of the cosmos. 

Craig

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Re: Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Roger Clough]

I don't think that life or mind or intelligence
can be teleported. Especially since nobody knows what
they are.

I also don't believe that you can download
the contents of somebody's brain.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/5/2012 
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function."
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Bruno Marchal 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-05, 11:04:53
Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One


On 05 Sep 2012, at 06:14, meekerdb wrote:

> On 9/4/2012 7:19 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 06:48:58PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>> I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions:
>>>
>>> *yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up 
>>> the entire
>>> thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain
>>> function and that your brain function can be replaced by the 
>>> functioning of
>>> non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human 
>>> individuality is
>>> a universal commodity.
>> Calling it a sleight of hand is a bit rough. It is the meat of the
>> comp assumption, and spelling it out this way makes it very
>> explicit. Either you agree you can be copied (without feeling a
>> thing), or you don't. If you do, you must face up to the consequences
>> of the argument, if you don't, then you do not accept
>> computationalism, and the consequences of the UDA do not apply to 
>> your
>> worldview.
>
> I suppose I can be copied. But does it follow that I am just the 
> computations in my brain. It seems likely that I also require an 
> outside environment/world with which I interact in order to remain 
> conscious. Bruno passes this off by saying it's just a matter of 
> the level of substitution, perhaps your local environment or even 
> the whole galaxy must be replaced by a digital representation in 
> order to maintain your consciousness unchanged. But this bothers 
> me. Suppose it is the whole galaxy, or the whole observed 
> universe. Does it really mean anything then to say your brain has 
> been replaced ALONG WITH EVERYTHING ELSE? It's just the assertion 
> that everything is computable.

That's a good argument for saying that the level of substitution is 
not that low. But the reasoning would still go through, and we would 
lead to a unique computable universe. That is the only way to make a 
digital physics consistent (as I forget to say sometimes). Then you 
get a more complex "other mind problem", and something like David 
Nyman- Hoyle beam would be needed, and would need to be separate from 
the physical reality, making the big physical whole incomplete, etc. 
yes this bothers me too. Needless to say, I tend to believe that if 
comp is true, the level is much higher.



>
>>
>>> *Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of 
>>> resources,
>>> supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a
>>> theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from 
>>> realism from
>>> the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does 
>>> data enter
>>> or exit a computation?
>> It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two
>> questions simply are relevant.
>>
>>> *Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self 
>>> justifying
>>> independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in 
>>> the dark.
>>> Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the
>>> beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic
>>> constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of
>>> that.
>> AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an
>> ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive
>> reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural
>> numbers.
>
> ISTM that Bruno rejects any reality behind the natural numbers (or 
> other system of computation). If often argues that the natural 
> numbers exist, because they satisfy true propositions: There exists 
> a prime number between 1 and 3, therefore 2 exists. This assumes a 
> Platonist view of mathematical objects, which Peter D. Jones has 
> argued against.

? I would say that the contrary is true. It is because natural numbers 
exists, and seems to obeys laws like addition and multiplication that 
true propositions can be made on them. 2 exists, and only 1 and 2 
divides 2, so 2 is prime, and thus prime numbers exists. 2 itself 
exists just because 

Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Bruno Marchal]

On 05 Sep 2012, at 14:01, Russell Standish wrote:


On Wed, Sep 05, 2012 at 12:37:22AM -0400, Stephen P. King wrote:


Hi Russel,

   In Craig's defense. When did ontological considerations become a
matter of contingency? You cannot "Choose" what is Real! That is the
entire point of Reality. It is not up to the choice of any one. It
is that which is incontrovertible for All of us. The Moon does not
vanish when you stop looking at it, simply because you're not its
only onlooker!


I don't think I ever suggested that reality was an arbitrary
choice. But whilst that reality is unknown, it seems quite reasonable
to suppose it is this or that, and to see whether the consequences of
that assumption match up with observations. It is how science is done,
after all.

For certain choices of "this or that", the ultimate reality is
actually unknowable. For instance, the choice of a Turing complete
basis means that the hardware running the computations is completely
unknowable to the denizens of that computation.


Not really. With comp we know that the *physical* "bottom" is the  
result of the competition among all universal machines, (by UD-7 or 8)  
and this leads to (re)define physics by such a competition/measure on  
all computations. The initial base ontology is really irrelevant, and  
it makes no sense to choose one or another, except for technical  
commodities.


Put in another way: there is no ontological hardware. The hardware and  
wetware are emergent on the digital basic ontology (which can be  
described by numbers or combinators as they describe the same  
computations and the same object: you can prove the existence of  
combinators in arithmetic, and you can prove the existence of numbers  
from the combinator S and K. So the basic ontology is really the same  
and we can "know" it (betting on comp). It is really like the choice  
of a base in a linear space.


Bruno




This is a consequence
of the Church thesis.





*Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of  
resources,

supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a
theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from  
realism from
the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does  
data enter

or exit a computation?

It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two
questions simply are relevant.


   The issue of I/O is not irrelevant.



How?



*Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self  
justifying
independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in  
the dark.

Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the
beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic
constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of
that.

AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an
ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive
reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural
numbers.


   Note quite. AR is the stipulation that primitive reality = the
natural numbers. The idea has been around for a long time. We silly


I assume by your comment you mean "nothing buttery". If everything
about the observed universe can be explained by the properties of the
natural numbers, then it matters not whether the primitive reality
_is_ the natural numbers (nothing but), or simply models it (has all
the properties of the natural numbers, but may have other, unspecified
and unobservered, properties).


humans simply cannot wrap our minds around the possibility that more
exists than we can count! We must be able to count what we can
communicate about in the context of any one message, but this does
not place an upper finite bound on the host of possible messages.



Countability is not normally considered to be a finite property,
unless you're an ultrafinitist.



In fact, for COMP, and the UDA, Turing completeness of primitive  
reality is

sufficient, but Bruno chose the natural numbers as his base reality
because it is more familiar to his correspondents.


   Sure, but this results in a consistent solipsism of a single
mind. It is a prison of reflections of itself, over and over, a
Ground Hog Day  where
there is no possible escape. I am interested in a non-prison version
of comp.



I don't really buy this statement. I get the impression that the
debates flowing around on this topic on this list are being conducted
by people who don't know what they're talking about (whether pro or
con). Or at least, I don't know what is being talked about, which is
why I usually prefer to remain silent...





Wouldn't computers tend to be self-correcting by virtue of the  
pull toward
arithmetic truth within each logic circuit? Where do errors come  
from?



Again, these two questions seem irrelevant.


   No, you just don't understand him.



I'm sure that is true too. Unfortunately, he has a habit of stating
something compl

Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 10:50:02 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 05 Sep 2012, at 03:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> Taking another look at Sane2004. This isn't so much as a challenge to 
> Bruno, just sharing my notes of why I disagree. Not sure how far I will get 
> this time, but here are my objections to the first step and the stipulated 
> assumptions of comp. I understand that the point is to accept the given 
> definition of comp, and in that respect, I have no reason to doubt that 
> Bruno has accomplished what he sets out to as far as making a good theory 
> within comp, and if he has not, I wouldn't be qualified to comment on it 
> anyhow. From my perspective however, this is all beside the point, since 
> the only point that matters is the actual truth of what consciousness 
> actually is, and what is it's actual relation to physics and information. 
> Given the fragile and precious nature of our own survival, I think that 
> implications for teleportation and AI simulation/personhood which are 
> derived from pure theory rather than thorough consideration of realism 
> would be reckless to say the least.
>
> *Step one* talks about teleportation in terms of being reconstructed with 
> ambient organic materials. If comp were true though, no organic materials 
> or reconstructions would be necessary. The scanning into a universal 
> machine would be sufficient.
>
> That is step 6.
>

I haven't even gotten to step 2 yet. I'm reading "In the figure the 
teleported individual is represented by a black box. Its annihilation is
represented by a white box appearing at the left of the arrow" from 1.
 

>
>
> Taking this to the China Brain level, the universal machine could be a 
> trillion people with notebooks, pencils, paper, and erasers, talking to 
> each other over cell phones. This activity would have to collectively 
> result in the teleported person now being conjured as if by incantation as 
> a consequence of...what? The writing and erasing on paper? The calling and 
> speaking on cell phones? Where does the experience of the now disembodied 
> person come in?
>
> As you illustrate here, plausibly not on the physical means used by the 
> brain. Step 8 shows that indeed the physical has nothing to do with 
> consciousness, except as a content of consciousness. Keeping comp here, we 
> associate consciousness with the logical abstract computations.
>
>
>
So the person's consciousness arises spontaneously through the overall 
effort-ness behind the writing, erasing, and calling, or does it gradually 
constellate from lesser fragments of disconnected effort-ness?


> Step one talks about annihilation as well, but it is not clear what role 
> this actually plays in the process, except to make it seem more like 
> teleportation and less like what it actually would be, which is 
> duplication. If I scan an original document and email the scan, I have sent 
> a duplicate, not teleported the original.
>
> Right. Classical teleportation = duplication + annihilation of the 
> original. That's step 5, precisely.
>
> You understand the reasoning very well, but we know that the problem for 
> you is in the assumption.
>

Yes, the assumption seems to presume physicality to disprove physicality 
and presume consciousness to explain consciousness. Computation seems to 
have nothing to do with either one of them in comp other than the fact of 
the plasticity and aloofness of comp can be seen as a sign that it is 
neither mind nor matter. It still doesn't answer the question of why have 
appearances of mind or matter at all? If there is a reason, then that 
reason is the nature of the cosmos, not the filing and organizing system 
that indexes it's activities.
 

>
>
> I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions:
>
> *yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the 
> entire thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain 
> function and that your brain function can be replaced by the functioning of 
> non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human individuality is 
> a universal commodity.
>
> Why? A program or piece of information is not nothing. It asks works, can 
> be paid for, can be precious and rare, etc.
>

It can't ask for anything by itself though. We are the ones to whom the 
significance relates. Information is nothing but an experience that can be 
remembered and transmitted to other experiencers through formation.
 

>
>
>
> *Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of 
> resources, supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is 
> a theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from realism from 
> the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does data enter 
> or exit a computation?
>
> It is a discovery by mathematicians. 
>

And it is a valid discovery in the context of mathematical theory, but it 
doesn't translate to the realism of subjectivity and physics. 

Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Bruno Marchal]

On 05 Sep 2012, at 06:48, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/5/2012 12:14 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 7:19 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 06:48:58PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote:

I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions:

*yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up  
the entire
thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your  
brain
function and that your brain function can be replaced by the  
functioning of
non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human  
individuality is

a universal commodity.

Calling it a sleight of hand is a bit rough. It is the meat of the
comp assumption, and spelling it out this way makes it very
explicit. Either you agree you can be copied (without feeling a
thing), or you don't. If you do, you must face up to the  
consequences

of the argument, if you don't, then you do not accept
computationalism, and the consequences of the UDA do not apply to  
your

worldview.


I suppose I can be copied.  But does it follow that I am just the  
computations in my brain.  It seems likely that I also require an  
outside environment/world with which I interact in order to remain  
conscious.  Bruno passes this off by saying it's just a matter of  
the level of substitution, perhaps your local environment or even  
the whole galaxy must be replaced by a digital representation in  
order to maintain your consciousness unchanged.  But this bothers  
me.  Suppose it is the whole galaxy, or the whole observed  
universe.  Does it really mean anything then to say your brain has  
been replaced ALONG WITH EVERYTHING ELSE?  It's just the assertion  
that everything is computable.


   Hear Hear! And if it is computable then it is nothing but  
countable and recursively enumerable functions. But can functions  
generate I/O from themselves?


You lost me. Functions are set of I/O.



We see nice examples of entire computable universes in MMORP games  
that have many people addicted to them. One thing about them, we  
require resources to be run. Nothing happens if you don't pay the fee.






*Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of  
resources,

supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a
theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from  
realism from
the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does  
data enter

or exit a computation?

It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two
questions simply are relevant.

*Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self  
justifying
independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in  
the dark.

Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the
beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic
constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of
that.

AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an
ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive
reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural
numbers.


ISTM that Bruno rejects any reality behind the natural numbers (or  
other system of computation).  If often argues that the natural  
numbers exist, because they satisfy true propositions: There exists  
a prime number between 1 and 3, therefore 2 exists.  This assumes a  
Platonist view of mathematical objects, which Peter D. Jones has  
argued against.


   Platonism fails because it cannot explain how many minds  
interact. It is a wonderful ontology theory of a single mind, but  
not of many differing minds.


I don't see this at all. many minds comes from the fact that universal  
machine can interact. That the easy thing to explain, seen also by  
Schmidhuber and Tegmark, but as Deustch argued, this explains to much.
Yet Deustch critics either assumes non comp, or is inconsistent, as  
comp implies the realities used by Schmidhuber and Tegmark. What the  
three of them ignores is that this entails also the first person  
indeterminacy, and this makes the idea of interaction or physics  
entirely and necessarily retrievable from self-reference, and this  
works well until now. Then we have the "Solovay" gift, the splitting  
between provable and true-but-non-provable, whose intensional variants  
explains completely the quanta/qualia divergence.


You keep saying that interaction is not explained by comp, but this  
makes no sense, as a computation, even in arithmetic, is only a matter  
of local interactions. It is the essence of computability to reduce  
activity into local tiny elementary interactions. Then physical-like  
interaction must be recovered at the more holistic level of the  
machine's epistemological person views.


Bruno



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



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Re: Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 8:43:35 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote:
>
>  Hi Craig Weinberg 
>  
>  
> I don't like the word "existence" as it carries
> so much baggage with it. What you describe
> below is physical existence. That is a property
> of extended entities.
>

I agree, existence means different things in different contexts.
 

>  
> Inextended entities such as mind and 1p and
> thouights and feelings would be mentally
> existent.
>  
>

I try to avoid that confusion by using the word 'insist' and 'insistence' 
instead of exist when I am talking about the private half of the cosmos. 

Craig

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Bruno Marchal]

On 05 Sep 2012, at 06:14, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/4/2012 7:19 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 06:48:58PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote:

I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions:

*yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up  
the entire

thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain
function and that your brain function can be replaced by the  
functioning of
non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human  
individuality is

a universal commodity.

Calling it a sleight of hand is a bit rough. It is the meat of the
comp assumption, and spelling it out this way makes it very
explicit. Either you agree you can be copied (without feeling a
thing), or you don't. If you do, you must face up to the consequences
of the argument, if you don't, then you do not accept
computationalism, and the consequences of the UDA do not apply to  
your

worldview.


I suppose I can be copied.  But does it follow that I am just the  
computations in my brain.  It seems likely that I also require an  
outside environment/world with which I interact in order to remain  
conscious.  Bruno passes this off by saying it's just a matter of  
the level of substitution, perhaps your local environment or even  
the whole galaxy must be replaced by a digital representation in  
order to maintain your consciousness unchanged.  But this bothers  
me.  Suppose it is the whole galaxy, or the whole observed  
universe.  Does it really mean anything then to say your brain has  
been replaced ALONG WITH EVERYTHING ELSE?  It's just the assertion  
that everything is computable.


That's a good argument for saying that the level of substitution is  
not that low. But the reasoning would still go through, and we would  
lead to a unique computable universe. That is the only way to make a  
digital physics consistent (as I forget to say sometimes). Then you  
get a more complex "other mind problem", and something like David  
Nyman- Hoyle beam would be needed, and would need to be separate from  
the physical reality, making the big physical whole incomplete, etc.  
yes this bothers me too. Needless to say, I tend to believe that if  
comp is true, the level is much higher.








*Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of  
resources,

supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a
theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from  
realism from
the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does  
data enter

or exit a computation?

It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two
questions simply are relevant.

*Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self  
justifying
independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in  
the dark.

Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the
beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic
constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of
that.

AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an
ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive
reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural
numbers.


ISTM that Bruno rejects any reality behind the natural numbers (or  
other system of computation).  If often argues that the natural  
numbers exist, because they satisfy true propositions: There exists  
a prime number between 1 and 3, therefore 2 exists.  This assumes a  
Platonist view of mathematical objects, which Peter D. Jones has  
argued against.


? I would say that the contrary is true. It is because natural numbers  
exists, and seems to obeys laws like addition and multiplication that  
true propositions can be made on them. 2 exists, and only 1 and 2  
divides 2, so 2 is prime, and thus prime numbers exists. 2 itself  
exists just because Ex(x = s(s(0))) is true. Indeed take x = s(s(0)),  
and the proposition follows from  s(s(0)) = s(s(0)).


Bruno





Brent



In fact, for COMP, and the UDA, Turing completeness of primitive  
reality is

sufficient, but Bruno chose the natural numbers as his base reality
because it is more familiar to his correspondents.

Wouldn't computers tend to be self-correcting by virtue of the  
pull toward
arithmetic truth within each logic circuit? Where do errors come  
from?



Again, these two questions seem irrelevant.


Craig

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 8:18:07 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 4:27 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> > 
> wrote: 
>
> >> We knew you didn't accept this, so the rest of the argument is 
> irrelevant 
> >> to you. However, I'm still not sure despite multiple posts what your 
> >> position is on how much of your brain function could be replaced by an 
> >> appropriate machine. Presumably you agree that some of it can. For 
> example, 
> >> if your job is to repeatedly push a button then a computer could easily 
> >> control a robot to perform this function. And this behaviour could be 
> made 
> >> incrementally more complicated, so that for example the robot would 
> press 
> >> the button faster if it heard the command "faster", if that were also 
> part 
> >> of your job. With a good enough computer, good enough I/O devices and 
> good 
> >> enough programming the robot could perform very complex tasks. You 
> would say 
> >> it still does only what it's programmed to do, but how far do you think 
> >> given the most advanced technology it could get slotting into human 
> society 
> >> and fooling everyone into believing that it is human? What test would 
> you 
> >> devise in order to prove that it was not? 
> > 
> > 
> > I think it would progress just like dementia or brain cancer as far as 
> the 
> > subject is concerned. They would experience increasing alienation from 
> their 
> > mind and body as more of their brain was converted to an automated 
> > processing and control system. The extent to which that would translate 
> into 
> > behavior that doctors, family, and friends would notice depends entirely 
> on 
> > the quality of the technology used to destroy and replace the person. 
> > 
> > The test that I would use would be, as I have mentioned, to have someone 
> be 
> > walked off of their brain one hemisphere at a time, and then walked back 
> on. 
> > Ideally this process would be repeated several times for different 
> > durations. That is the only test that could possibly work as far as I 
> can 
> > tell - of course it wouldn't prove success or failure beyond any 
> theoretical 
> > doubt, but it would be a pretty good indicator. 
>
> I'm not talking about gradual brain replacement specifically but 
> replacement of the whole person with an AI controlling a robot. We 
> assume the machine is very technologically advanced. Progress in AI 
> may have been slow over the past few decades but extrapolate that slow 
> pace of change a thousand years into the future. Do you think you 
> would still be able to distinguish the robot from the human, and if so 
> what test would you use? 
>
>
The ability to test depends entirely on my familiarity with the human and 
how good the technology is. Can I touch them, smell them? If so, then I 
would be surprised if I could be fooled by an inorganic body. Has there 
ever been one synthetic imitation of a natural biological product that can 
withstand even moderate examination?

If you limit the channel of my interaction with the robot however, I stand 
much less of a chance of being able to tell the difference. A video 
conference with the robot only requires that they look convincing on 
camera. We can't tell the difference between a live performance and a taped 
performance unless there is some clue in the content. That is because we 
aren't literally present so we are only dealing with a narrow channel of 
sense experience to begin with.

In any case, what does being able to tell from the outside have to do with 
whether or not the thing feels? If it is designed by experts to fool other 
people into thinking that it is alive, then so what if it succeeds at 
fooling everyone? Something can't fool itself into thinking that it is 
alive.

Craig

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Bruno Marchal]

On 05 Sep 2012, at 03:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Taking another look at Sane2004. This isn't so much as a challenge  
to Bruno, just sharing my notes of why I disagree. Not sure how far  
I will get this time, but here are my objections to the first step  
and the stipulated assumptions of comp. I understand that the point  
is to accept the given definition of comp, and in that respect, I  
have no reason to doubt that Bruno has accomplished what he sets out  
to as far as making a good theory within comp, and if he has not, I  
wouldn't be qualified to comment on it anyhow. From my perspective  
however, this is all beside the point, since the only point that  
matters is the actual truth of what consciousness actually is, and  
what is it's actual relation to physics and information. Given the  
fragile and precious nature of our own survival, I think that  
implications for teleportation and AI simulation/personhood which  
are derived from pure theory rather than thorough consideration of  
realism would be reckless to say the least.


Step one talks about teleportation in terms of being reconstructed  
with ambient organic materials. If comp were true though, no organic  
materials or reconstructions would be necessary. The scanning into a  
universal machine would be sufficient.



That is step 6.


Taking this to the China Brain level, the universal machine could be  
a trillion people with notebooks, pencils, paper, and erasers,  
talking to each other over cell phones. This activity would have to  
collectively result in the teleported person now being conjured as  
if by incantation as a consequence of...what? The writing and  
erasing on paper? The calling and speaking on cell phones? Where  
does the experience of the now disembodied person come in?


As you illustrate here, plausibly not on the physical means used by  
the brain. Step 8 shows that indeed the physical has nothing to do  
with consciousness, except as a content of consciousness. Keeping comp  
here, we associate consciousness with the logical abstract computations.




Step one talks about annihilation as well, but it is not clear what  
role this actually plays in the process, except to make it seem more  
like teleportation and less like what it actually would be, which is  
duplication. If I scan an original document and email the scan, I  
have sent a duplicate, not teleported the original.


Right. Classical teleportation = duplication + annihilation of the  
original. That's step 5, precisely.


You understand the reasoning very well, but we know that the problem  
for you is in the assumption.




I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions:

yes, doctor: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the  
entire thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but  
your brain function and that your brain function can be replaced by  
the functioning of non-brain devices, then you have already agreed  
that human individuality is a universal commodity.


Why? A program or piece of information is not nothing. It asks works,  
can be paid for, can be precious and rare, etc.




Church thesis: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of  
resources, supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc.  
This is a theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced  
from realism from the start. What is it that does the computing? How  
and why does data enter or exit a computation?



It is a discovery by mathematicians.


Arithmetical Realism: The idea that truth values are self justifying  
independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in the  
dark. Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from  
the beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic  
constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of that.  
Wouldn't computers tend to be self-correcting by virtue of the pull  
toward arithmetic truth within each logic circuit? Where do errors  
come from?


They come from the inadequacy between belief and truth. Incompleteness  
makes this unavoidable at the root, and that is why the logic of Bp &  
p is different from the logic of Bp, despite G* proves Bp -> p. G does  
not prove it, so correct machine already knows that they might be  
incorrect "soon enough".


Your last paragraph confirms you are still thinking of machines and  
numbers in a pre-Godelian or pre-Löbian way, I think.


Bruno


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



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Re: Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Roger Clough]

Hi Craig Weinberg 


I don't like the word "existence" as it carries
so much baggage with it. What you describe
below is physical existence. That is a property
of extended entities.

Inextended entities such as mind and 1p and
thouights and feelings would be mentally
existent.



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/5/2012 
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function."
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Craig Weinberg 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-05, 02:35:23
Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One




On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 12:48:09 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:


So you think somebody has to be looking at the Moon for it to exist? 




What is existence other than the capacity to be detected in some way by some 
thing (itself if nothing else)?

What would be the difference between a moon that has no possibility of being 
detected in any way by any thing and nothingness?

Craig 

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 4:27 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>> We knew you didn't accept this, so the rest of the argument is irrelevant
>> to you. However, I'm still not sure despite multiple posts what your
>> position is on how much of your brain function could be replaced by an
>> appropriate machine. Presumably you agree that some of it can. For example,
>> if your job is to repeatedly push a button then a computer could easily
>> control a robot to perform this function. And this behaviour could be made
>> incrementally more complicated, so that for example the robot would press
>> the button faster if it heard the command "faster", if that were also part
>> of your job. With a good enough computer, good enough I/O devices and good
>> enough programming the robot could perform very complex tasks. You would say
>> it still does only what it's programmed to do, but how far do you think
>> given the most advanced technology it could get slotting into human society
>> and fooling everyone into believing that it is human? What test would you
>> devise in order to prove that it was not?
>
>
> I think it would progress just like dementia or brain cancer as far as the
> subject is concerned. They would experience increasing alienation from their
> mind and body as more of their brain was converted to an automated
> processing and control system. The extent to which that would translate into
> behavior that doctors, family, and friends would notice depends entirely on
> the quality of the technology used to destroy and replace the person.
>
> The test that I would use would be, as I have mentioned, to have someone be
> walked off of their brain one hemisphere at a time, and then walked back on.
> Ideally this process would be repeated several times for different
> durations. That is the only test that could possibly work as far as I can
> tell - of course it wouldn't prove success or failure beyond any theoretical
> doubt, but it would be a pretty good indicator.

I'm not talking about gradual brain replacement specifically but
replacement of the whole person with an AI controlling a robot. We
assume the machine is very technologically advanced. Progress in AI
may have been slow over the past few decades but extrapolate that slow
pace of change a thousand years into the future. Do you think you
would still be able to distinguish the robot from the human, and if so
what test would you use?


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Russell Standish]

On Wed, Sep 05, 2012 at 12:37:22AM -0400, Stephen P. King wrote:
> 
> Hi Russel,
> 
> In Craig's defense. When did ontological considerations become a
> matter of contingency? You cannot "Choose" what is Real! That is the
> entire point of Reality. It is not up to the choice of any one. It
> is that which is incontrovertible for All of us. The Moon does not
> vanish when you stop looking at it, simply because you're not its
> only onlooker!

I don't think I ever suggested that reality was an arbitrary
choice. But whilst that reality is unknown, it seems quite reasonable
to suppose it is this or that, and to see whether the consequences of
that assumption match up with observations. It is how science is done,
after all.

For certain choices of "this or that", the ultimate reality is
actually unknowable. For instance, the choice of a Turing complete
basis means that the hardware running the computations is completely
unknowable to the denizens of that computation. This is a consequence
of the Church thesis.

> 
> >
> >>*Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of resources,
> >>supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a
> >>theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from realism from
> >>the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does data enter
> >>or exit a computation?
> >It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two
> >questions simply are relevant.
> 
> The issue of I/O is not irrelevant.
> 

How?

> >
> >>*Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self justifying
> >>independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in the dark.
> >>Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the
> >>beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic
> >>constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of
> >>that.
> >AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an
> >ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive
> >reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural
> >numbers.
> 
> Note quite. AR is the stipulation that primitive reality = the
> natural numbers. The idea has been around for a long time. We silly

I assume by your comment you mean "nothing buttery". If everything
about the observed universe can be explained by the properties of the
natural numbers, then it matters not whether the primitive reality
_is_ the natural numbers (nothing but), or simply models it (has all
the properties of the natural numbers, but may have other, unspecified
and unobservered, properties).

> humans simply cannot wrap our minds around the possibility that more
> exists than we can count! We must be able to count what we can
> communicate about in the context of any one message, but this does
> not place an upper finite bound on the host of possible messages.
> 

Countability is not normally considered to be a finite property,
unless you're an ultrafinitist.

> >
> >In fact, for COMP, and the UDA, Turing completeness of primitive reality is
> >sufficient, but Bruno chose the natural numbers as his base reality
> >because it is more familiar to his correspondents.
> 
> Sure, but this results in a consistent solipsism of a single
> mind. It is a prison of reflections of itself, over and over, a
> Ground Hog Day  where
> there is no possible escape. I am interested in a non-prison version
> of comp.
> 

I don't really buy this statement. I get the impression that the
debates flowing around on this topic on this list are being conducted
by people who don't know what they're talking about (whether pro or
con). Or at least, I don't know what is being talked about, which is
why I usually prefer to remain silent...

> 
> >
> >>Wouldn't computers tend to be self-correcting by virtue of the pull toward
> >>arithmetic truth within each logic circuit? Where do errors come from?
> >>
> >Again, these two questions seem irrelevant.
> 
> No, you just don't understand him.
> 

I'm sure that is true too. Unfortunately, he has a habit of stating
something completely distant from the topic being responded to, which
doesn't help that understanding.

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Russell Standish]

On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 07:26:53PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 10:09:45 PM UTC-4, Russell Standish wrote:
> > It is the meat of the 
> > comp assumption, and spelling it out this way makes it very 
> > explicit. Either you agree you can be copied (without feeling a 
> > thing), or you don't. If you do, you must face up to the consequences 
> > of the argument, if you don't, then you do not accept 
> > computationalism, and the consequences of the UDA do not apply to your 
> > worldview. 
> >
> 
> If they do not apply to my worldview, then they compete with my worldview, 
> so I am entitled to debunk the premises, if not the consequences of the 
> argument.

Good luck with that! Seriously, though, what you need to do is derive some
consequences of the premises that contradict observations. Or show the
premises to be self-contradictory. It is not enough to show that the
premises contradict some other totally random premise, as not everyone
is likely to agree that the other premise is self-evident.

>  
> 
> >
> > > 
> > > *Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of 
> > resources, 
> > > supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a 
> > > theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from realism from 
> > > the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does data 
> > enter 
> > > or exit a computation? 
> >
> > It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two 
> > questions simply are relevant. 
> >
> 
> That's begging the question. Why are mathematical theses necessarily 
> abstract? 

Surely that is the point of mathematics!

> My point is that if we assume abstraction is possible from the 
> start, then physics and subjective realism become irrelevant and redundant 
> appendages.
> 

Why?

> 
> > > 
> > > *Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self justifying 
> > > independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in the 
> > dark. 
> > > Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the 
> > > beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic 
> > > constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of 
> > > that. 
> >
> > AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an 
> > ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive 
> > reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural 
> > numbers. 
> >
> 
> What is that implication or commitment based on? Naive preference for logic 
> over sensation?
>  

Does it need to be based on anything?

> 
> >
> > In fact, for COMP, and the UDA, Turing completeness of primitive reality 
> > is 
> > sufficient, but Bruno chose the natural numbers as his base reality 
> > because it is more familiar to his correspondents. 
> >
> > > Wouldn't computers tend to be self-correcting by virtue of the pull 
> > toward 
> > > arithmetic truth within each logic circuit? Where do errors come from? 
> > > 
> >
> > Again, these two questions seem irrelevant. 
> >
>  
> Why? They are counterfactuals for comp. If primitive realism is modeled on 
> natural numbers, why does physically originated noise and entropy distort 
> the execution of arithmetic processes but arithmetic processes do not, by 
> themselves, counter things like signal attenuation? Good programs should 
> heal bad wiring.
> 

Erroneous computations are still computations. Are you trying to
suggest that the presence of randomness is a counterfactual for COMP perhaps?

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Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/5/2012 2:35 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 12:48:09 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:



So you think somebody has to be looking at the Moon for it to exist?



What is existence other than the capacity to be detected in some way 
by some thing (itself if nothing else)?


"Necessary Possibility", its exactly that.



What would be the difference between a moon that has no possibility of 
being detected in any way by any thing and nothingness?


Nada.



Craig


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/5/2012 2:20 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


That's the right question to be asking!  Errors are sentences that
are false in some code. Exactly how does this happen if one's
beliefs are predicated on Bp & p(is true)?


Yeah, it seems to me like we should have to be spraying cybercide all 
over the place to prevent supercomputers from springing up in the 
vacuum flux or the sewer systems of large cities.
It is the I/O that makes the difference. We do actually spay cybercide 
when we spray for mosquitoes. What is it that bacteria and virii are, 
from the logical side of the duality after all?


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/5/2012 2:20 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
Yeah, I don't know, any kind of universe-as-machine cosmology seems no 
better than a theological cosmology. What machine does the machine run 
on? What meta-arithmetic truths make arithmetic truths true?
Maybe it is the act of us being aware of them that collectively makes 
them true. Jaakko Hintikka has some ideas on that: 
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=K7yJLmZCbFUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA415&ots=IXTvX1iloM&sig=OD5xNX3OZBcCWgiVjkVGPCX_11I#v=onepage&q&f=false


We just need to widely expand what the "we" is! Poor humans think 
that they are "it". What Hubris!


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/5/2012 2:20 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
Why? If everything is a singular totality on one level, then 
synchronization is the precondition of time. Time is nothing but 
perspective-orchestrated de-synchronization.
No. Time is an order of sequentially givens. DO not assume per-orderings 
because those have to be accounted for by something else. Think of 
Rubber Ducks swimming in a long row. Did they just get to be in that 
order by random chance, really?


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/5/2012 2:20 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


All that matters is that it can "exactly" carry our the necessary
functions. Individual minds are just different "versions" of one
and the same mind! To steal an idea from Deutsch, Other histories
are just different universes are just different minds... The hard
question is: How the hell do they get synchronized with each other?


I think they are synchronization itself to begin with. The question to 
me is, how do they get de-synchronized, and I think it's by 
introducing latency on a borrowed-as-space basis.

Hi Craig,

I am low on brain juice but here goes. What is synchronization at 
one level is non-synchronization at some other. The idea is to start off 
thinking that what is fundamental is change, shit is constantly 
happening; it never sits still, really. Existence is an eternal process?


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/5/2012 2:20 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
To me it only makes sense that we are our whole life, not just the 
brain cells or functions. The body is a public structural shadow of 
the private qualitative experience, which is an irreducible (but not 
incorruptible) gestalt.


Bingo!

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/5/2012 2:20 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
Something about microelectronics and neurology though that blinds us 
to the chasm between the map and the territory. This kind of example 
with pencil and paper helps me see how really bizarre it is to expect 
a conscious experience to arise out of mechanism. I guess it's just 
Leibniz millhouse but really...say we have the code for the experience 
of the memory of the smell of pancakes. We have a trillion people 
furiously scribbling on notepads, talking to other scribblers on the 
phone, passing information, calculating stuff. We introduce this 
pancake code by calling 350,000 of them on the phone and issuing this 
code, and they all write it down, add it to the other numbers and 
addresses and whatnot, make thousands of phonecalls to other people 
who are also writing this stuff down and adding numbers with their 
special decoder rings, etc. So why and how does this pancake smell 
come into play?

Hi Craig,

You are up awful late! So am I, GULP! The smell is at a different 
level. We can't account for things in a flat logical structure.


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/5/2012 2:03 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 10:07 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 9/5/2012 12:38 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 8:59 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
Notice that both the duplication and the teleportation, as 
discussed, assume that the information content is exactly copyable. 


Not exactly. Only sufficiently accurately to maintain your 
consciousness.


If the copy is not exact then functional equivalence is not exact 
either and this is fatal for the model.


Then you should mourn the Stephen P. King of and hour ago.  He's been 
fatally changed.


Never, I am not the impermanent image on the world stage. I am the 
fire that casts the images.








This is not qubits that are involved... The point here is that this 
comp model assume that Reality is, at is ground level, classical. 


It doesn't assume that.  A fully quantum computation can be 
performed on a classical, i.e. Turing, computer.  Bruno would just 
say it just takes a lower level of substitution.


Yes, a classical computer can emulate a finite quantum 
computation given sufficient resources. This is not the same thing as 
the EPR effect that I am considering. The idea that I am considering 
is more like this:


Consider the visible physical universe. We know from observation that 
not only is it open on one end and that it's expansion is 
accelerating. People want to put this off on some "Dark Energy". I 
think that it is something else, driving it. Consider a classical 
computer that needs to emulate a quantum computation. It has to have 
even increasing resources to keep up with the QC if the QC is 
modeling an expanding universe. It we take Bruno's AR literally, 
where are these resources coming from?


They are computations.  They exist in Platonia. He's trying to explain 
matter, so he can't very well assume material resources. The world is 
made out of arithmetic, an infinite resource.


Sure, but the explanation of the idea requires matter to be 
communicated. A slight oversight perhaps.




Let's turn the tables and make Reality Quantum in its essence. 
The classical computation may just be something that the QC is running. 


There's not difference as computations.


You are correct but only in the absence of considerations of inputs 
and outputs and their concurrency. Abstract theory leaves out the 
obvious, but when it pretends to toss out the obvious, that is going to far.





What is most interesting is that the QC can run an arbitrary number 
of classical computations, all at the same time. The CC can only 
barely compute the emulation of a single QC. 


You are talking about QC and CC as though they were material computers 
with finite resources.  Once you've assumed material resources you've 
lost any non-circular possibility of explaining them.


No, I am pointing out that real computations require real 
resources. Only when we ignore this fact we can get away with floating 
castles in midair.




What if we have an infinite and eternal QC running infinitely many 
finite CCs and each of these CC's is trying to emulate a single QC. 
Map this idea out and look at the nice self-referential loop that 
this defines!


You're confused.


Maybe. I can handle being wrong. I learn from mistakes.



Brent
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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 12:48:09 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> So you think somebody has to be looking at the Moon for it to exist? 
>
>
>
What is existence other than the capacity to be detected in some way by 
some thing (itself if nothing else)?

What would be the difference between a moon that has no possibility of 
being detected in any way by any thing and nothingness?

Craig 

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/5/2012 12:47 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 9:37 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

Hi Russel,

In Craig's defense. When did ontological considerations become a 
matter of contingency? You cannot "Choose" what is Real! 


But you choose what is real in your theory of the world.  Then you see 
how well your theory measures up. The Standard Model is a theory of 
energy and matter that has passed thousands of empirical tests to very 
high accuracy.  Its ontology is elementary particles.  It replaced a 
lot of other theories that had different ontologies.


Hi Brent,

Sure, we do chose our theories, but we don't get to chose the 
facts. I am just looking at what may be down the road. ;-)




That is the entire point of Reality. It is not up to the choice of 
any one. It is that which is incontrovertible for All of us. The Moon 
does not vanish when you stop looking at it, simply because you're 
not its only onlooker! 


So you think somebody has to be looking at the Moon for it to exist?


No. Existence is necessary possibility. It is not contingent. The 
specifics of observed properties, that is another story. Existence is 
not dependent on us; what we measure, is.



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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 12:06:18 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Craig Weinberg 
> > 
> wrote: 
>
> > yes, doctor: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the entire 
> > thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain 
> > function and that your brain function can be replaced by the functioning 
> of 
> > non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human individuality 
> is 
> > a universal commodity. 
>
> We knew you didn't accept this, so the rest of the argument is irrelevant 
> to you. However, I'm still not sure despite multiple posts what your 
> position is on how much of your brain function could be replaced by an 
> appropriate machine. Presumably you agree that some of it can. For example, 
> if your job is to repeatedly push a button then a computer could easily 
> control a robot to perform this function. And this behaviour could be made 
> incrementally more complicated, so that for example the robot would press 
> the button faster if it heard the command "faster", if that were also part 
> of your job. With a good enough computer, good enough I/O devices and good 
> enough programming the robot could perform very complex tasks. You would 
> say it still does only what it's programmed to do, but how far do you think 
> given the most advanced technology it could get slotting into human society 
> and fooling everyone into believing that it is human? What test would you 
> devise in order to prove that it was not? 
>

I think it would progress just like dementia or brain cancer as far as the 
subject is concerned. They would experience increasing alienation from 
their mind and body as more of their brain was converted to an automated 
processing and control system. The extent to which that would translate 
into behavior that doctors, family, and friends would notice depends 
entirely on the quality of the technology used to destroy and replace the 
person. 

The test that I would use would be, as I have mentioned, to have someone be 
walked off of their brain one hemisphere at a time, and then walked back 
on. Ideally this process would be repeated several times for different 
durations. That is the only test that could possibly work as far as I can 
tell - of course it wouldn't prove success or failure beyond any 
theoretical doubt, but it would be a pretty good indicator. 

Craig

>
>
> Stathis Papaioannou 
>

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Craig Weinberg]

On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 11:59:55 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
>  On 9/4/2012 9:48 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>  
> Taking another look at Sane2004. This isn't so much as a challenge to 
> Bruno, just sharing my notes of why I disagree. Not sure how far I will get 
> this time, but here are my objections to the first step and the stipulated 
> assumptions of comp. I understand that the point is to accept the given 
> definition of comp, and in that respect, I have no reason to doubt that 
> Bruno has accomplished what he sets out to as far as making a good theory 
> within comp, and if he has not, I wouldn't be qualified to comment on it 
> anyhow. From my perspective however, this is all beside the point, since 
> the only point that matters is the actual truth of what consciousness 
> actually is, and what is it's actual relation to physics and information. 
> Given the fragile and precious nature of our own survival, I think that 
> implications for teleportation and AI simulation/personhood which are 
> derived from pure theory rather than thorough consideration of realism 
> would be reckless to say the least.
>
>
> Hi Craig,
>
> Excellent post!
>


Thanks Stephen!
 

>
>
> *Step one* talks about teleportation in terms of being reconstructed with 
> ambient organic materials. If comp were true though, no organic materials 
> or reconstructions would be necessary. The scanning into a universal 
> machine would be sufficient.
>
> Yep, the assumption is that the function that gives rise to Sense is 
> exactly representable as countable and recursively enumerable functions. 
> The trick is finding the machine configuration that matches each of these. 
> That's where the engineers come in and the theorists go out the door.
>

That seems to be the hypocrisy of comp - it assumes that function is 
enough, that all-but-computation is epiphenomena, but then wants to bring 
it back home to the material universe to claim the prize. It makes me think 
of the self-help guru who preaches that money doesn't make you happy in a 
best-selling book.
 

>
>  Taking this to the China Brain level, the universal machine could be a 
> trillion people with notebooks, pencils, paper, and erasers, talking to 
> each other over cell phones. This activity would have to collectively 
> result in the teleported person now being conjured as if by incantation as 
> a consequence of...what? The writing and erasing on paper? The calling and 
> speaking on cell phones? Where does the experience of the now disembodied 
> person come in?
>
>
> The "person" rides the computation, it is not "located" any particular 
> place. But all this is predicated on the condition that consciousness is, 
> at its more rubimentary level, nothing but countable and recursively 
> enumerable functions. THe real question that we need to ask is: Might there 
> be a point where we no longer are dealing with countable and recursively 
> enumerable functions? What about countable and recursively enumerable 
> functions that are coding for other countable and recursively enumerable 
> functions? Are those still "computable"? So far the answer seems to be: 
> Yes, they are. But what about the "truth" of the statements that those 
> countable and recursively enumerable functions encode? Are they countable 
> and recursively enumerable functions? Nope! Those are something else 
> entirely!
>

Right. Something about microelectronics and neurology though that blinds us 
to the chasm between the map and the territory. This kind of example with 
pencil and paper helps me see how really bizarre it is to expect a 
conscious experience to arise out of mechanism. I guess it's just Leibniz 
millhouse but really...say we have the code for the experience of the 
memory of the smell of pancakes. We have a trillion people furiously 
scribbling on notepads, talking to other scribblers on the phone, passing 
information, calculating stuff. We introduce this pancake code by calling 
350,000 of them on the phone and issuing this code, and they all write it 
down, add it to the other numbers and addresses and whatnot, make thousands 
of phonecalls to other people who are also writing this stuff down and 
adding numbers with their special decoder rings, etc. So why and how does 
this pancake smell come into play?

If we assume that this is possible that the pancake smell is actually 
conjured in some way for some reason we can't imagine, then doesn't it open 
the doorway to disembodied spirits everywhere? We wouldn't need a whole 
Boltzmann brain to conjure a ghost or a demon, just some Boltzmann bits and 
seeds.

To me it only makes sense that we are our whole life, not just the brain 
cells or functions. The body is a public structural shadow of the private 
qualitative experience, which is an irreducible (but not incorruptible) 
gestalt.
 

>
>  Step one talks about annihilation as well, but it is not clear what role 
> this actually plays in the process, 

Re: Sane2004 Step One

[meekerdb]

On 9/4/2012 10:07 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 9/5/2012 12:38 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 8:59 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
Notice that both the duplication and the teleportation, as discussed, assume that 
the information content is exactly copyable. 


Not exactly. Only sufficiently accurately to maintain your consciousness.


If the copy is not exact then functional equivalence is not exact either and this is 
fatal for the model.


Then you should mourn the Stephen P. King of and hour ago.  He's been fatally 
changed.





This is not qubits that are involved... The point here is that this comp model assume 
that Reality is, at is ground level, classical. 


It doesn't assume that.  A fully quantum computation can be performed on a classical, 
i.e. Turing, computer.  Bruno would just say it just takes a lower level of substitution.


Yes, a classical computer can emulate a finite quantum computation given sufficient 
resources. This is not the same thing as the EPR effect that I am considering. The idea 
that I am considering is more like this:


Consider the visible physical universe. We know from observation that not only is it 
open on one end and that it's expansion is accelerating. People want to put this off on 
some "Dark Energy". I think that it is something else, driving it. Consider a classical 
computer that needs to emulate a quantum computation. It has to have even increasing 
resources to keep up with the QC if the QC is modeling an expanding universe. It we take 
Bruno's AR literally, where are these resources coming from?


They are computations.  They exist in Platonia. He's trying to explain matter, so he can't 
very well assume material resources.  The world is made out of arithmetic, an infinite 
resource.


Let's turn the tables and make Reality Quantum in its essence. The classical 
computation may just be something that the QC is running. 


There's not difference as computations.

What is most interesting is that the QC can run an arbitrary number of classical 
computations, all at the same time. The CC can only barely compute the emulation of a 
single QC. 


You are talking about QC and CC as though they were material computers with finite 
resources.  Once you've assumed material resources you've lost any non-circular 
possibility of explaining them.


What if we have an infinite and eternal QC running infinitely many finite CCs and each 
of these CC's is trying to emulate a single QC. Map this idea out and look at the nice 
self-referential loop that this defines!


You're confused.

Brent

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/5/2012 12:38 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 8:59 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
Notice that both the duplication and the teleportation, as discussed, 
assume that the information content is exactly copyable. 


Not exactly. Only sufficiently accurately to maintain your consciousness.


If the copy is not exact then functional equivalence is not exact 
either and this is fatal for the model.




This is not qubits that are involved... The point here is that this 
comp model assume that Reality is, at is ground level, classical. 


It doesn't assume that.  A fully quantum computation can be performed 
on a classical, i.e. Turing, computer.  Bruno would just say it just 
takes a lower level of substitution.


Yes, a classical computer can emulate a finite quantum computation 
given sufficient resources. This is not the same thing as the EPR effect 
that I am considering. The idea that I am considering is more like this:


Consider the visible physical universe. We know from observation that 
not only is it open on one end and that it's expansion is accelerating. 
People want to put this off on some "Dark Energy". I think that it is 
something else, driving it. Consider a classical computer that needs to 
emulate a quantum computation. It has to have even increasing resources 
to keep up with the QC if the QC is modeling an expanding universe. It 
we take Bruno's AR literally, where are these resources coming from?
Let's turn the tables and make Reality Quantum in its essence. The 
classical computation may just be something that the QC is running. What 
is most interesting is that the QC can run an arbitrary number of 
classical computations, all at the same time. The CC can only barely 
compute the emulation of a single QC. What if we have an infinite and 
eternal QC running infinitely many finite CCs and each of these CC's is 
trying to emulate a single QC. Map this idea out and look at the nice 
self-referential loop that this defines!
Could the brain be a CC that is running on a QC. It would make the 
many drafts model  
work! Dennett would be so proud. (Not really!)




Brent


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/5/2012 12:14 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 7:19 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 06:48:58PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote:

I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions:

*yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the 
entire

thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain
function and that your brain function can be replaced by the 
functioning of
non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human 
individuality is

a universal commodity.

Calling it a sleight of hand is a bit rough. It is the meat of the
comp assumption, and spelling it out this way makes it very
explicit. Either you agree you can be copied (without feeling a
thing), or you don't. If you do, you must face up to the consequences
of the argument, if you don't, then you do not accept
computationalism, and the consequences of the UDA do not apply to your
worldview.


I suppose I can be copied.  But does it follow that I am just the 
computations in my brain.  It seems likely that I also require an 
outside environment/world with which I interact in order to remain 
conscious.  Bruno passes this off by saying it's just a matter of the 
level of substitution, perhaps your local environment or even the 
whole galaxy must be replaced by a digital representation in order to 
maintain your consciousness unchanged.  But this bothers me.  Suppose 
it is the whole galaxy, or the whole observed universe.  Does it 
really mean anything then to say your brain has been replaced ALONG 
WITH EVERYTHING ELSE?  It's just the assertion that everything is 
computable.


Hear Hear! And if it is computable then it is nothing but countable 
and recursively enumerable functions. But can functions generate I/O 
from themselves? We see nice examples of entire computable universes in 
MMORP games that have many people addicted to them. One thing about 
them, we require resources to be run. Nothing happens if you don't pay 
the fee.






*Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of 
resources,

supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a
theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from realism 
from
the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does data 
enter

or exit a computation?

It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two
questions simply are relevant.


*Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self justifying
independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in the 
dark.

Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the
beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic
constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of
that.

AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an
ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive
reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural
numbers.


ISTM that Bruno rejects any reality behind the natural numbers (or 
other system of computation).  If often argues that the natural 
numbers exist, because they satisfy true propositions: There exists a 
prime number between 1 and 3, therefore 2 exists.  This assumes a 
Platonist view of mathematical objects, which Peter D. Jones has 
argued against.


Platonism fails because it cannot explain how many minds interact. 
It is a wonderful ontology theory of a single mind, but not of many 
differing minds.




Brent


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[meekerdb]

On 9/4/2012 9:37 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

Hi Russel,

In Craig's defense. When did ontological considerations become a matter of 
contingency? You cannot "Choose" what is Real! 


But you choose what is real in your theory of the world.  Then you see how well your 
theory measures up. The Standard Model is a theory of energy and matter that has passed 
thousands of empirical tests to very high accuracy.  Its ontology is elementary 
particles.  It replaced a lot of other theories that had different ontologies.


That is the entire point of Reality. It is not up to the choice of any one. It is that 
which is incontrovertible for All of us. The Moon does not vanish when you stop looking 
at it, simply because you're not its only onlooker! 


So you think somebody has to be looking at the Moon for it to exist?

Brent

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[meekerdb]

On 9/4/2012 8:59 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
Notice that both the duplication and the teleportation, as discussed, assume that 
the information content is exactly copyable. 


Not exactly. Only sufficiently accurately to maintain your consciousness.

This is not qubits that are involved... The point here is that this comp model assume 
that Reality is, at is ground level, classical. 


It doesn't assume that.  A fully quantum computation can be performed on a classical, i.e. 
Turing, computer.  Bruno would just say it just takes a lower level of substitution.


Brent

This is where my head starts spinning  with 
Bruno's ideas..


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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/4/2012 10:19 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 06:48:58PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote:

I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions:

*yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the entire
thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain
function and that your brain function can be replaced by the functioning of
non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human individuality is
a universal commodity.

Calling it a sleight of hand is a bit rough. It is the meat of the
comp assumption, and spelling it out this way makes it very
explicit. Either you agree you can be copied (without feeling a
thing), or you don't. If you do, you must face up to the consequences
of the argument, if you don't, then you do not accept
computationalism, and the consequences of the UDA do not apply to your
worldview.


Hi Russel,

In Craig's defense. When did ontological considerations become a 
matter of contingency? You cannot "Choose" what is Real! That is the 
entire point of Reality. It is not up to the choice of any one. It is 
that which is incontrovertible for All of us. The Moon does not vanish 
when you stop looking at it, simply because you're not its only onlooker!





*Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of resources,
supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a
theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from realism from
the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does data enter
or exit a computation?

It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two
questions simply are relevant.


The issue of I/O is not irrelevant.




*Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self justifying
independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in the dark.
Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the
beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic
constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of
that.

AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an
ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive
reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural
numbers.


Note quite. AR is the stipulation that primitive reality = the 
natural numbers. The idea has been around for a long time. We silly 
humans simply cannot wrap our minds around the possibility that more 
exists than we can count! We must be able to count what we can 
communicate about in the context of any one message, but this does not 
place an upper finite bound on the host of possible messages.




In fact, for COMP, and the UDA, Turing completeness of primitive reality is
sufficient, but Bruno chose the natural numbers as his base reality
because it is more familiar to his correspondents.


Sure, but this results in a consistent solipsism of a single mind. 
It is a prison of reflections of itself, over and over, a Ground Hog Day 
 where there is no possible 
escape. I am interested in a non-prison version of comp.






Wouldn't computers tend to be self-correcting by virtue of the pull toward
arithmetic truth within each logic circuit? Where do errors come from?


Again, these two questions seem irrelevant.


No, you just don't understand him.




Craig




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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[meekerdb]

On 9/4/2012 7:19 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 06:48:58PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote:

I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions:

*yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the entire
thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain
function and that your brain function can be replaced by the functioning of
non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human individuality is
a universal commodity.

Calling it a sleight of hand is a bit rough. It is the meat of the
comp assumption, and spelling it out this way makes it very
explicit. Either you agree you can be copied (without feeling a
thing), or you don't. If you do, you must face up to the consequences
of the argument, if you don't, then you do not accept
computationalism, and the consequences of the UDA do not apply to your
worldview.


I suppose I can be copied.  But does it follow that I am just the computations in my 
brain.  It seems likely that I also require an outside environment/world with which I 
interact in order to remain conscious.  Bruno passes this off by saying it's just a matter 
of the level of substitution, perhaps your local environment or even the whole galaxy must 
be replaced by a digital representation in order to maintain your consciousness 
unchanged.  But this bothers me.  Suppose it is the whole galaxy, or the whole observed 
universe.  Does it really mean anything then to say your brain has been replaced ALONG 
WITH EVERYTHING ELSE?  It's just the assertion that everything is computable.





*Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of resources,
supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a
theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from realism from
the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does data enter
or exit a computation?

It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two
questions simply are relevant.


*Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self justifying
independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in the dark.
Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the
beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic
constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of
that.

AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an
ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive
reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural
numbers.


ISTM that Bruno rejects any reality behind the natural numbers (or other system of 
computation).  If often argues that the natural numbers exist, because they satisfy true 
propositions: There exists a prime number between 1 and 3, therefore 2 exists.  This 
assumes a Platonist view of mathematical objects, which Peter D. Jones has argued against.


Brent



In fact, for COMP, and the UDA, Turing completeness of primitive reality is
sufficient, but Bruno chose the natural numbers as his base reality
because it is more familiar to his correspondents.


Wouldn't computers tend to be self-correcting by virtue of the pull toward
arithmetic truth within each logic circuit? Where do errors come from?


Again, these two questions seem irrelevant.


Craig

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> yes, doctor: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the entire
> thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain
> function and that your brain function can be replaced by the functioning of
> non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human individuality is
> a universal commodity.

We knew you didn't accept this, so the rest of the argument is irrelevant to 
you. However, I'm still not sure despite multiple posts what your position is 
on how much of your brain function could be replaced by an appropriate machine. 
Presumably you agree that some of it can. For example, if your job is to 
repeatedly push a button then a computer could easily control a robot to 
perform this function. And this behaviour could be made incrementally more 
complicated, so that for example the robot would press the button faster if it 
heard the command "faster", if that were also part of your job. With a good 
enough computer, good enough I/O devices and good enough programming the robot 
could perform very complex tasks. You would say it still does only what it's 
programmed to do, but how far do you think given the most advanced technology 
it could get slotting into human society and fooling everyone into believing 
that it is human? What test would you devise in order to prove that it was not?


Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/4/2012 9:48 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
Taking another look at Sane2004. This isn't so much as a challenge to 
Bruno, just sharing my notes of why I disagree. Not sure how far I 
will get this time, but here are my objections to the first step and 
the stipulated assumptions of comp. I understand that the point is to 
accept the given definition of comp, and in that respect, I have no 
reason to doubt that Bruno has accomplished what he sets out to as far 
as making a good theory within comp, and if he has not, I wouldn't be 
qualified to comment on it anyhow. From my perspective however, this 
is all beside the point, since the only point that matters is the 
actual truth of what consciousness actually is, and what is it's 
actual relation to physics and information. Given the fragile and 
precious nature of our own survival, I think that implications for 
teleportation and AI simulation/personhood which are derived from pure 
theory rather than thorough consideration of realism would be reckless 
to say the least.


Hi Craig,

Excellent post!



*Step one* talks about teleportation in terms of being reconstructed 
with ambient organic materials. If comp were true though, no organic 
materials or reconstructions would be necessary. The scanning into a 
universal machine would be sufficient.


Yep, the assumption is that the function that gives rise to Sense 
is exactly representable as countable and recursively enumerable 
functions. The trick is finding the machine configuration that matches 
each of these. That's where the engineers come in and the theorists go 
out the door.


Taking this to the China Brain level, the universal machine could be a 
trillion people with notebooks, pencils, paper, and erasers, talking 
to each other over cell phones. This activity would have to 
collectively result in the teleported person now being conjured as if 
by incantation as a consequence of...what? The writing and erasing on 
paper? The calling and speaking on cell phones? Where does the 
experience of the now disembodied person come in?




The "person" rides the computation, it is not "located" any 
particular place. But all this is predicated on the condition that 
consciousness is, at its more rubimentary level, nothing but countable 
and recursively enumerable functions. THe real question that we need to 
ask is: Might there be a point where we no longer are dealing with 
countable and recursively enumerable functions? What about countable and 
recursively enumerable functions that are coding for other countable and 
recursively enumerable functions? Are those still "computable"? So far 
the answer seems to be: Yes, they are. But what about the "truth" of the 
statements that those countable and recursively enumerable functions 
encode? Are they countable and recursively enumerable functions? Nope! 
Those are something else entirely!


Step one talks about annihilation as well, but it is not clear what 
role this actually plays in the process, except to make it seem more 
like teleportation and less like what it actually would be, which is 
duplication. If I scan an original document and email the scan, I have 
sent a duplicate, not teleported the original.




Notice that both the duplication and the teleportation, as 
discussed, assume that the information content is exactly copyable. This 
is not qubits that are involved... The point here is that this comp 
model assume that Reality is, at is ground level, classical. This is 
where my head starts spinning 
 with Bruno's ideas




I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions:

*yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the 
entire thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your 
brain function and that your brain function can be replaced by the 
functioning of non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that 
human individuality is a universal commodity.




Ummhummm, but it is! Why is that is so amazing?! Out notion of 
individuality is tied to the "autonomously moving and detecting and 
feeding and reproducing" machine that our minds inhabit! Why does its 
precise constitution matter? All that matters is that it can "exactly" 
carry our the necessary functions. Individual minds are just different 
"versions" of one and the same mind! To steal an idea from Deutsch, 
Other histories are just different universes are just different minds... 
The hard question is: How the hell do they get synchronized with each other?
We know that the synchronization cannot exist "ahead of time", 
simply because that is a massive contradiction! What if the 
synchronization is just "accidental" (like Bruno proposes)? Well, not 
sure about how that would solve the problem! Why? Because the chances of 
an "accidental" synchronization of an arbitrarily long sequence of 
matchings between arbitrarily many minds (each defined in terms of 
infinitely many com

Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Craig Weinberg]

On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 10:09:45 PM UTC-4, Russell Standish wrote:
>
> On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 06:48:58PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
> > 
> > I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions: 
> > 
> > *yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the 
> entire 
> > thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain 
> > function and that your brain function can be replaced by the functioning 
> of 
> > non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human individuality 
> is 
> > a universal commodity. 
>
> Calling it a sleight of hand is a bit rough. 


Maybe. In the sense that sleight of hand implies intentional deception. 
More of a de facto sleight of hand.
 

> It is the meat of the 
> comp assumption, and spelling it out this way makes it very 
> explicit. Either you agree you can be copied (without feeling a 
> thing), or you don't. If you do, you must face up to the consequences 
> of the argument, if you don't, then you do not accept 
> computationalism, and the consequences of the UDA do not apply to your 
> worldview. 
>

If they do not apply to my worldview, then they compete with my worldview, 
so I am entitled to debunk the premises, if not the consequences of the 
argument.
 

>
> > 
> > *Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of 
> resources, 
> > supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a 
> > theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from realism from 
> > the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does data 
> enter 
> > or exit a computation? 
>
> It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two 
> questions simply are relevant. 
>

That's begging the question. Why are mathematical theses necessarily 
abstract? My point is that if we assume abstraction is possible from the 
start, then physics and subjective realism become irrelevant and redundant 
appendages.


> > 
> > *Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self justifying 
> > independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in the 
> dark. 
> > Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the 
> > beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic 
> > constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of 
> > that. 
>
> AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an 
> ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive 
> reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural 
> numbers. 
>

What is that implication or commitment based on? Naive preference for logic 
over sensation?
 

>
> In fact, for COMP, and the UDA, Turing completeness of primitive reality 
> is 
> sufficient, but Bruno chose the natural numbers as his base reality 
> because it is more familiar to his correspondents. 
>
> > Wouldn't computers tend to be self-correcting by virtue of the pull 
> toward 
> > arithmetic truth within each logic circuit? Where do errors come from? 
> > 
>
> Again, these two questions seem irrelevant. 
>
 
Why? They are counterfactuals for comp. If primitive realism is modeled on 
natural numbers, why does physically originated noise and entropy distort 
the execution of arithmetic processes but arithmetic processes do not, by 
themselves, counter things like signal attenuation? Good programs should 
heal bad wiring.

Craig

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

[Russell Standish]

On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 06:48:58PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote:
> 
> I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions:
> 
> *yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up the entire 
> thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain 
> function and that your brain function can be replaced by the functioning of 
> non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human individuality is 
> a universal commodity.

Calling it a sleight of hand is a bit rough. It is the meat of the
comp assumption, and spelling it out this way makes it very
explicit. Either you agree you can be copied (without feeling a
thing), or you don't. If you do, you must face up to the consequences
of the argument, if you don't, then you do not accept
computationalism, and the consequences of the UDA do not apply to your
worldview. 

> 
> *Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of resources, 
> supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a 
> theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from realism from 
> the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does data enter 
> or exit a computation?

It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two
questions simply are relevant.

> 
> *Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self justifying 
> independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in the dark. 
> Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the 
> beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic 
> constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of
> that. 

AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an
ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive
reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural
numbers.

In fact, for COMP, and the UDA, Turing completeness of primitive reality is
sufficient, but Bruno chose the natural numbers as his base reality
because it is more familiar to his correspondents.

> Wouldn't computers tend to be self-correcting by virtue of the pull toward 
> arithmetic truth within each logic circuit? Where do errors come from?
> 

Again, these two questions seem irrelevant.

> Craig
> 
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