Re: The past hypothesis
Brent, Thanks for keeping the phun in philosophy. marty - Original Message - From: Brent Meeker To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 3:58 PM Subject: Re: The past hypothesis On 5/3/2010 12:39 PM, m.a. wrote: If someone hiking along the twisting highway that follows the cliffs in Northern Italy or coastal California, high above the sea, should reach a point that protrudes so far out that looking back, he can see the entire route he had traversed during the previous hour including every waypoint, landmark, outcrop, distinctive rock or tree; and he remembered passing each place sequentially, would this not count as strong evidence that the past is real? m.a. Only by sensible persons; not philosophers. :-) Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
Dear Rex, I went through that long back-and-forth with Brent (not sure which meaning whom) and recalled Brono's we don't 'know': we assume (as in scinece). I also recalled my poor opinion about statistical/probabilistical judgements (because they depend on the limits of counting and sequence of counting - changeable at whim) - furthermore my denial of 'cause' - as the 'most likely initiator* within* the observed model-cut, irrespective of, maybe more relevant initiators beyond such model, -- I tend to appreciate 'relations' (we assume) instead of physical figments of action-related equational conventional science -- I tried to paraphrase your next to last par. of this post. It was: *As if we could do otherwise. If we assume physicalism, then our constituent particles are doing all the work. Given the universe's initial conditions and causal laws (which may be probabilistic), they could behave other than they do. In this view, the emotion we feel would seem to be an irrelevant non-causal side-effect at best. Maybe even an illusion?* ** In my paraphrasing: *As if we could think otherwise. If we assume physicalism, then our assumed constituent particles are assigned to do all the work. Assuming the universe's initial conditions and the conventional 'causal' laws (which may be part of the believe system) they could be assumed to behave other than we presume 'them' to do. In such view the emotion we feel would seem to be an irrelevant (non causal? secondary?) side-effect at best.* *Maybe even an illusion (if we assign an adequate meaning to this term). * *John M* ** On 5/5/10, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 11:26 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 5/3/2010 7:14 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 9:48 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: That's assuming I believe some things are true in some absolute sense unrelated to usefulness. I don't. I am having the experience of seeing a red book. But do you *believe* you are seeing a red book. You could be mistaken about that (in fact you've argued you're probably mistaken). No, you only believe that you are having an experience that is described as seeing a red book. But I will concede you may have confidence in such a belief (provided you know what see, red, and book mean - which requires references that are less than certain). For myself I don't formulate such beliefs, although I suppose I could say, I believe I am experiencing something that could be described as looking at a computer display. Do you really believe that you are experiencing looking at a computer display, OR, do you only believe that you believe that you are experiencing looking at a computer display? Ha! What is belief except another aspect of conscious experience? So there are blind people with anosognosia, who deny being blind and will invent visual experiences. When they claim to see a red book, what is their conscious experience? I would guess that their experience is not the same as mine, but who knows? Maybe it is the same. Maybe the sincere belief that you're having a visual experience *is* a visual experience. If so, that works for me. Maybe that explains the visual aspects of dreams? Maybe belief is all that exists? Fundamental and uncaused... OR maybe the blind anosognosiacs don't truly believe that they are seeing a red book, but their impaired condition forces them to behave as though they believed they were? OR, maybe they aren't having any experience at all. Maybe they have become zombies...? I can only work with what I know about my own experiences. But, thanks to Salvia Divinorum, I have some idea of what it's like to both believe really strange things, and to experience really strange things. If you asked me what I was seeing on one of those Salvia outings, I would have told you all sorts of crazy things. The visual experience was real, even if what I saw wasn't. It doesn't seem to be useful to obtain certainty by giving up all reference. Is that what you are doing and that's why you regard your experiences as uncaused and not referring - so you can have certainty? Well. I am trying to fit everything that I know into a single consistent, coherent framework. Why? Well...I don't know. Too much spare time on my hands? In general though, it seems like a reasonable way to pass the time. When I say time and red are aspects of consciousness, I mean it in the same way that a scientific realist means that spin is an aspect of an electron. Red and time are mathematical attributes in a model of consciousness?? Ok, what's the model? By definition, a scientific realist believes in the actual existence of electrons and of the attribute of spin. If he didn't, he wouldn't be a scientific realist. He might instead be a structural realist. On 5/1/2010 6:15 PM, Rex Allen
Re: The past hypothesis
On 06 May 2010, at 04:24, Rex Allen wrote: On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 2:54 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: We haven't changed the relative number of Rexs and not-Rexs, we've just labeled them with an extra property and then rearranged them according to that additional property. They retain their original properties though. So, we still have a countable infinity of Rexs, and a countable infinity of not-Rexs. Who can be placed into one-to-one correspondence. SO...what difference does the measure make when deciding, as Carroll put it, which infinity wins? To me this sounds very similar to the Tristram Shandy Paradox. Yes? No? http://www.suitcaseofdreams.net/Tristram_Shandy.htm Nice page. I think people should find there enough to conclude that cardinality if on no help in probability measure problems. Assuming digital mechanism intuitively, with the rule Y = II, the measure is on a non enumerable set: the set of all computations, including their dovetailing on infinite algebraic structures (like the reals), and all what we (the lobian entities) can say is that the measure one obeys sort of arithmetical quantum logic of credibility. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
Ha! Indeed, these nesting levels do get fairly obscure. On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 10:49 AM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Rex, I tried to paraphrase your next to last par. of this post. It was: As if we could do otherwise. If we assume physicalism, then our constituent particles are doing all the work. Given the universe's initial conditions and causal laws (which may be probabilistic), they could behave other than they do. In this view, the emotion we feel would seem to be an irrelevant non-causal side-effect at best. Maybe even an illusion? I made a typo there that kind of spoiled the point I was trying to make: Given the universe's initial conditions and causal laws (which may be probabilistic), they could behave other than they do. SHOULD HAVE BEEN: Given the universe's initial conditions and causal laws (which may be probabilistic), they could NOT behave other than they do. Sorry about that! In my paraphrasing: As if we could think otherwise. If we assume physicalism, then our assumed constituent particles are assigned to do all the work. Assuming the universe's initial conditions and the conventional 'causal' laws (which may be part of the believe system) they could be assumed to behave other than we presume 'them' to do. In such view the emotion we feel would seem to be an irrelevant (non causal? secondary?) side-effect at best. Maybe even an illusion (if we assign an adequate meaning to this term). So you've taken my ontological statement and translated it into it's epistemological equivalent? Are you saying that ontological speculation is pointless? If so, I tend to agree. But of course, in unguarded moments we inevitably slip back into ontological speculation anyway. BUT, taking your epistemological equivalent and then adding the belief that ontological speculation is ultimately pointless - and then translating *that* back into ontology gives us Kant's transcendental idealism (or maybe just pure idealism), not physicalism. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 12:45 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 06 May 2010, at 04:24, Rex Allen wrote: On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 2:54 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: We haven't changed the relative number of Rexs and not-Rexs, we've just labeled them with an extra property and then rearranged them according to that additional property. They retain their original properties though. So, we still have a countable infinity of Rexs, and a countable infinity of not-Rexs. Who can be placed into one-to-one correspondence. SO...what difference does the measure make when deciding, as Carroll put it, which infinity wins? To me this sounds very similar to the Tristram Shandy Paradox. Yes? No? http://www.suitcaseofdreams.net/Tristram_Shandy.htm Nice page. I think people should find there enough to conclude that cardinality if on no help in probability measure problems. What I get out of it is that measure is irrelevant to ontological questions involving infinity. Even though events happen more frequently that completed autobiographical entries, ultimately every event has it's associated entry. At least according to Bertrand Russell. Translating back to Normal brains, Boltzmann brains, and eternal recurrence - ultimately every normal brain can be paired with a Boltzmann brain, so anthropic reasoning is irrelevant in that case. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On 06 May 2010, at 04:13, Rex Allen wrote: What is belief except another aspect of conscious experience? OK. Well. I am trying to fit everything that I know into a single consistent, coherent framework. Me too. Maybe belief is all that exists? Fundamental and uncaused... It makes no sense, assuming DM. You may try to say that, for example, numbers does not exist, and only believe in number exist, like the believe in the number one, the believe in the number two, etc. But this will be ad hoc, and for saying yes genuinely qua computation (= without praying for more than Arithmetical truth), somehow you will have to accept for true some of those belief in numbers. And if you believe that the diophantine x^2 + y^2 = z^2 admits infinitely many solutions, and that 2x^2 = y^2 has none (except the x = y = 0), then you are an arithmetical realist (I have never met a non arithmetical realist except among philosophers, especially when understanding UDA). I can only work with what I know about my own experiences. But, thanks to Salvia Divinorum, I have some idea of what it's like to both believe really strange things, and to experience really strange things. You can do statistical statitistics on reports of experience, but personal experience, even when theorizing on personal experience (which we can do, with different definition of persons, etc.) are of no use in the communication (as opposed to the personal investigations). By definition, a scientific realist believes in the actual existence of electrons and of the attribute of spin. Hmm... I am not sure. I would say a naive physicalist realist believes that. I prefer to define realism before the choice of what we can be realist on. I am an arithmetical realist. This means only that I believe that the truth of 17 is prime is not a function of points in space time structures. On the contrary, I can figure out ideas like space and time thanks to my belief in proposition like 14 is not prime. If he didn't, he wouldn't be a scientific realist. He might instead be a structural realist. You talk like if scientific = physicalist. I don't follow you here. So if a physical law is deterministic then under it's influence Event A will cause Result X 100% of the time. Only in the third person description. In the first person description like in the iterated self-duplication W M, the personal outcome will be for most persons fifty fifty W or M. Why does Event A always lead to Result X? Because that's the law. There is no deeper reason. There is one. Where does the law come from? If a physical law is indeterministic, If that happens I will follow Einstein in becoming a plumber. As if we could do otherwise. If we assume physicalism, then our constituent particles are doing all the work. Given the universe's initial conditions and causal laws (which may be probabilistic), they could behave other than they do. In this view, the emotion we feel would seem to be an irrelevant non-causal side-effect at best. Maybe even an illusion? It is a difficulty of physicalism indeed. Not of mechanism, and most physicalist relies on the mechanist theory of mind through the notion of physical implementation of computation. This is quite awkward to define, and if uda is valid, just impossible. Emotions and persons are not illusion, the physical neither, but both emerge epistemologically, or more simply, can be explained from the internal numbers views of arithmetical truth. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
Rex, you may have made a typo, but in my thinking it does not make a difference: when I translate the 'physicalist' surety into hypothetical (agnostic, assumed) possibilities it leads to the same uncertainty if translated from YES or from NO. My main point is the *given the universe's initial condition* (what I deny *as fixed* in the so called Big Bang Theory). Furthermore: the *propagation*from ANY conceivable origin into today's condition follows chaotic (nonlinear) ways, yet it is *retrograded* by linear steps. The cosmologic marvels of *'inflation' *(space) and 'events' timed at *sec.#1^-43*, or * ^-32* etc (as in time) are products to make the calculative mistakes in that theory irrelevant - when applying today's *physics of the present conditions* to a fundamentally different system with zillion-times bigger temperature, pressures, zillion-times smnaller extensions and concentrated effects into eggs that did not hatched yet. I substituted in my *narrative* (Origination of our world from 'a' Plenitude - not a theory) the inflation by the initiation of SPACE from the originally *a-spatial* (no extension) source and the incredible marvels at incredibly small* first* time-fractions by the transitional state from the a-temporal (= timeless source) into our time-governed universe. The rest is the attempt of the conventional physicality to write matching equations and theory-abiding calculations to some *story* of explaining the unexplainable. (My narrative: in Karl Jaspers Forum TA-62MIK 2003). * *Your remark on Ontology:* the static view of the existence? the attempt of *conventional science* (with its translated philosophy) to valuate/validate those *snapshots* taken at certain instants from the ever changing complexity of the world. The changing dynamics is represented (I did not say IS) in the epistemic view - still as we see it every one of us for himself. (OUR perceived world). This, again, is no 'theory', just a way I can look at the world of lesser paradoxicalities than the conventional sciences. Without omniscience we cannot comprehend (not even encompass) the entirety (totality, wholenss) of the interrelated ever changing complexity: the world. You remarked: *But of course, in unguarded moments we inevitably slip back into ontological speculation anyway. *And so we slip back into conventional * model-view* of the so far learned conventional scientific arguments as well. We are humans. That's how our mind works, especially in 'unguarded moments'. In trying to overcome such back-slips I do not see much principle difference between Kant's idealism and conventional physicalism. Or the Anthropocentric Intelligent Design either. John M On 5/6/10, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: Ha! Indeed, these nesting levels do get fairly obscure. On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 10:49 AM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Rex, I tried to paraphrase your next to last par. of this post. It was: As if we could do otherwise. If we assume physicalism, then our constituent particles are doing all the work. Given the universe's initial conditions and causal laws (which may be probabilistic), they could behave other than they do. In this view, the emotion we feel would seem to be an irrelevant non-causal side-effect at best. Maybe even an illusion? I made a typo there that kind of spoiled the point I was trying to make: Given the universe's initial conditions and causal laws (which may be probabilistic), they could behave other than they do. SHOULD HAVE BEEN: Given the universe's initial conditions and causal laws (which may be probabilistic), they could NOT behave other than they do. Sorry about that! In my paraphrasing: As if we could think otherwise. If we assume physicalism, then our assumed constituent particles are assigned to do all the work. Assuming the universe's initial conditions and the conventional 'causal' laws (which may be part of the believe system) they could be assumed to behave other than we presume 'them' to do. In such view the emotion we feel would seem to be an irrelevant (non causal? secondary?) side-effect at best. Maybe even an illusion (if we assign an adequate meaning to this term). So you've taken my ontological statement and translated it into it's epistemological equivalent? Are you saying that ontological speculation is pointless? If so, I tend to agree. But of course, in unguarded moments we inevitably slip back into ontological speculation anyway. BUT, taking your epistemological equivalent and then adding the belief that ontological speculation is ultimately pointless - and then translating *that* back into ontology gives us Kant's transcendental idealism (or maybe just pure idealism), not physicalism. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to
Re: The past hypothesis
On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 12:44 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: I notice I didn't respond to your first question in this post. So... I appreciate the response! On 5/3/2010 7:41 PM, Rex Allen wrote: So, given eternal recurrence, there are an infinite number of Rexs. And an infinite number of not-Rexs. Let's pair the Rexs off in a one-to-one correspondence with the not-Rexs. Then, let's go down the list and put an A sticker on the Rexs. And a B sticker on the not-Rexs. Then lets randomly arrange them in an infinitely long row and select one at random. What's the probability of selecting a Rex? What's the probability of selecting an A sticker? I suppose your intent is to assign equal measure to each position on the list so, for any finite subsection of the list the measure of As and Bs will be equal. If that was my intent, what would your response be? The usual way of dealing with infinity is to use a measure that works for finite cases and converges in the limit as the number is arbitrarily increased. Notice that there is no way to randomly arrange the infinite sets, except by some process that randomly selects elements and places them on the list. So you're really back the generating frequency. Okay, so this is my point. So let's say we use a process to randomly distribute our newly-stickered Rexs and not-Rexs so that they are randomly arranged according to sticker-type. Even though we have now rearranged them...these are still the same Rexs and not-Rexs we started with when they were randomly arranged according to the 6-sided die. We haven't changed the relative number of Rexs and not-Rexs, we've just labeled them with an extra property and then rearranged them according to that additional property. They retain their original properties though. So, we still have a countable infinity of Rexs, and a countable infinity of not-Rexs. Who can be placed into one-to-one correspondence. SO...what difference does the measure make when deciding, as Carroll put it, which infinity wins? What does winning mean in this context? Okay, the not-Rexs have a greater frequency, but so what. They still don't outnumber the Rexs. Frequency seems like an arbitrary definition of winning. Cardinality seems like the correct measure to decide who won. At least in the case of Rexs and not-Rexs, as well as with Boltzmann Brains and Normal Brains. The only way for the not-Rexs to win is to not allow the eternal part of eternal recurrence. To keep it finite, where they win on cardinality. At the very least it seems like a defensible position...? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 11:26 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 5/3/2010 7:14 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 9:48 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: That's assuming I believe some things are true in some absolute sense unrelated to usefulness. I don't. I am having the experience of seeing a red book. But do you *believe* you are seeing a red book. You could be mistaken about that (in fact you've argued you're probably mistaken). No, you only believe that you are having an experience that is described as seeing a red book. But I will concede you may have confidence in such a belief (provided you know what see, red, and book mean - which requires references that are less than certain). For myself I don't formulate such beliefs, although I suppose I could say, I believe I am experiencing something that could be described as looking at a computer display. Do you really believe that you are experiencing looking at a computer display, OR, do you only believe that you believe that you are experiencing looking at a computer display? Ha! What is belief except another aspect of conscious experience? So there are blind people with anosognosia, who deny being blind and will invent visual experiences. When they claim to see a red book, what is their conscious experience? I would guess that their experience is not the same as mine, but who knows? Maybe it is the same. Maybe the sincere belief that you're having a visual experience *is* a visual experience. If so, that works for me. Maybe that explains the visual aspects of dreams? Maybe belief is all that exists? Fundamental and uncaused... OR maybe the blind anosognosiacs don't truly believe that they are seeing a red book, but their impaired condition forces them to behave as though they believed they were? OR, maybe they aren't having any experience at all. Maybe they have become zombies...? I can only work with what I know about my own experiences. But, thanks to Salvia Divinorum, I have some idea of what it's like to both believe really strange things, and to experience really strange things. If you asked me what I was seeing on one of those Salvia outings, I would have told you all sorts of crazy things. The visual experience was real, even if what I saw wasn't. It doesn't seem to be useful to obtain certainty by giving up all reference. Is that what you are doing and that's why you regard your experiences as uncaused and not referring - so you can have certainty? Well. I am trying to fit everything that I know into a single consistent, coherent framework. Why? Well...I don't know. Too much spare time on my hands? In general though, it seems like a reasonable way to pass the time. When I say time and red are aspects of consciousness, I mean it in the same way that a scientific realist means that spin is an aspect of an electron. Red and time are mathematical attributes in a model of consciousness?? Ok, what's the model? By definition, a scientific realist believes in the actual existence of electrons and of the attribute of spin. If he didn't, he wouldn't be a scientific realist. He might instead be a structural realist. On 5/1/2010 6:15 PM, Rex Allen wrote: I'm not switching positions, I'm saying that the honest physicalist should believe that his beliefs are determined only by the initial conditions and causal laws of the universe. Why would he be a determinist? If he's a physicalist, why wouldn't he believe that his beliefs are determined by the nature of the physical world? What else would they be determined by? Maybe we're using determined in different ways. I use it in contrast to random or stochastic. I use deterministic in contrast to random or stochastic. So if the natural world has stochastic aspects then one's beliefs could be undetermined and yet still determined by the nature of the physical world. For example, one of your momentary experiences might be due to the decay of a radioactive calcium atom in the blood stream of your brain. Exactly. And what if they were? According to the best physical models we have they are mostly determined by the recent history of the universe plus probabilistic laws (QM) - Probabilistic laws are still causal laws, right? Depends on what you mean by causal? I take probabilistic to mean not entirely determined by the preceding (=within the past light cone) state. If it's not entirely determined by the preceding state, then what *is* it determined by? So if a physical law is deterministic then under it's influence Event A will cause Result X 100% of the time. Why does Event A always lead to Result X? Because that's the law. There is no deeper reason. If a physical law is indeterministic, then under it's influence Event B will cause Result Q, R, or S according to some probability distribution. Let's say that the probability distribution is 1/3 for each
Re: The past hypothesis
On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 2:54 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: We haven't changed the relative number of Rexs and not-Rexs, we've just labeled them with an extra property and then rearranged them according to that additional property. They retain their original properties though. So, we still have a countable infinity of Rexs, and a countable infinity of not-Rexs. Who can be placed into one-to-one correspondence. SO...what difference does the measure make when deciding, as Carroll put it, which infinity wins? To me this sounds very similar to the Tristram Shandy Paradox. Yes? No? http://www.suitcaseofdreams.net/Tristram_Shandy.htm -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On Mon, May 03, 2010 at 02:08:44PM -0400, Jesse Mazer wrote: If this notion of considering the frequency of different finite sequences in an infinite sequence is a well-defined one, perhaps something similar could also be applied to an infinite spacetime and the frequency of Boltzmann brains vs. ordinary observers, although the mathematical definition would presumably be more tricky. You could consider finite-sized chunks of spacetime, or finite-sized spin networks or something in quantum gravity, and then look at the relative frequency of all the ones of a given size large enough to contain macroscopic observers. Suppose you knew the frequency F1 of chunks that appeared to be part of the early history of a baby universe, with entropy proceeding from lower on one end to higher on the other end, vs. the frequency F2 of chunks that seem to be part of a de Sitter space that had high entropy on both ends. Then if you could also estimate the average number N1 of ordinary observers that would be found in a chunk of the first type, and the average number N2 of Boltzmann brains that would be found spontaneously arising in a chunk of the second type, then if F1*N1 was much greater than F2*N2 you'd have a justification for saying that a typical observer is much more likely to be an ordinary one than a Boltzmann brain. Jesse It is far more likely that the distribution of Boltzmann brains follows a Solomonoff-Levin distribution, which arises from a uniform distribution over descriptions, and considering equivalences between those descriptions. I'm sure you've read my book, so you would be aquainted with the idea. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpco...@hpcoders.com.au Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On 03 May 2010, at 01:20, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/2/2010 3:33 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 02 May 2010, at 20:30, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/2/2010 1:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 May 2010, at 22:02, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/1/2010 12:25 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: This argument is not definitive mainly because we don't have a definitive theory of consciousness, but to the extent we assume a physical basis for consciousness it seems pretty good. Ha! As long as you assume there is no problem of consciousness, then there's no problem! That is pretty good. So you do have a theory of consciousness in which we can have timeless thoughts? DM (digital mechanism, comp ...) entails somehow that all thought are timeless; That's one of the assumptions of DM, that thoughts are states. But that seems doubtful to me. At the substitution level there are states, but those are too finely divided to correspond to thoughts. Thought are not state. Thought correspond to infinities of sequences of states: at least one for any universal machine, given that the UD run all UDs executed by all universal machines. This makes a lot of number relations involved in the epistemological existence of (conscious, first person) thought. The thought are really in the abstract structures realized by those infinities of sequences of states. Now, all this is defined already in Platonia and is timeless. Time belongs to the thought, it is part of the qualia. Ok. So sequence is part of thought, and I suppose that supplies the direction of time we experience with the thought. So while the thought, as described in Platonia, is timeless it's experienced as timed because of the sequential structure. OK. And the finite sequences are determined by the usual relations provable in (Robinson) arithmetic: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ... But thoughts related to universal machines which makes them felt as being embedded in time-structure. Amazingly enough some plants can make you live timeless consciousness (google on salvia divinorum reports). Despite DM, I thought such experience was not memorizable, but apparently they are. Are these timeless thoughts expressible in sentences? or are they like images? I have to say that is unlike anything you can conceive, even after living that. It looks more like a new qualia, where reason suggests that no qualia can be there, except perhaps in the form of a (sudden) remembering of a true (eternal/invariant/unmovable) identity which has just nothing to do with time, space, images, sound, even numbers. Ineffable is the usual rendering. Let me try an image of some predecessor altered conscious state: It may be described as seing your body-and-soul as a window on reality, and you cease to identify yourself with that body-and-soul, but you identify yourself to the one who look through the windows, and actually your current window, which appears as contingent. This is made possible by amnesy and/or dissociation from your memory/memories. Let me make some comments related to other posts: About TS (technological singularity): I have a theory according to which this happens each time an universal entity generates an universal entity. In that sense the following are probable examples of TS: - the big bang (in the theories where that exists) - the origin of life - the origin of brain - the origin of thought - the origin of languages - the origin of computers/universal machine - the origin of programming languages etc. All those TS, and infinitely many others, exist out of time and space in any unravelling of arithmetical truth. The Löbian machine is the most intelligent entities that can exist, but programming it make it a slave, and its soul falls. What some people call TS is not when machine will be as clever as us, but as stupid as us, probably. Stupidity develops when we confuse competence and intelligence. Intelligence is needed to develop competence, but competence has a negative feedback on intelligence. About BB (Boltzmann brains): BB provide a physicalist rendering of the (mathematical) UD paradox. The UD, and thus elementary arithmetic, generates all BB's states, in infinitely many histories. You can extract the measure on them by the use of the logic of arithmetical self- reference, What measure is that? The one which extends the 'measure one' given by S4grz1, or/and Z1*, or/and X1*.That is, the material hypostases. The measure exists if the arithmetical quantum logic, (with quantization of p defined by BDp, with B and D the box and diamond of S4grz1 or/and Z1* or/and X1*) fulfills von Neumann criterion for being the right' quantum logic: it defines the orthostructure on which a theorem of Gleason makes it possible to extend the measure 1- calculus into the full
Re: The past hypothesis
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 8:26 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 7:37 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Sure we can, because part of the meaning of random, the very thing that lost us the information, includes each square having the same measure for being one of the numbers. If, for example, we said let all the 1s come first - in which case we can't hit any not-1s, that would be inconsistent with saying we didn't have any information. We have two things here. Random. And infinite. Three things actually. My random aim. An infinite row of squares. And each square's randomly assigned number lying between 1 and 6. If, due to the nature of infinity, there are the same number of 1's and not-1's, then I'd expect the probability of hitting a 1 to be 50-50. But, there are also the same number of 1's and even numbers. And the same number of evens and odds. And the same number of 1's and 2's. And the same number of 2's and not-2's. AND...I have the *random* aim of the dart that I'm throwing at the row. So it's not a question of saying which number is likely to be next in a sequence. Rather, the question is which number am I likely to hit on this infinite row of squares. SO, I think we have zero information that we can use to base our probability calculation on. Because of the counting issues introduced by the infinity combined with the lack of pattern. There is no usable information. Mathematicians do apparently have a well-defined notion of the frequency of different possible finite sequences (including one-digit sequences) in an infinite digit sequence. For example, see the article at http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/pi-random.html which talks about attempts by mathematicians to prove that the digit sequence of pi has a property called normality, which means that any n-digit sequence should appear with the same frequency as every other n-digit sequence (so in base 2, it would imply that the 2-digit sequences 00, 01, 10 and 11 all appear equally frequently in the infinite sequence): 'Describing the normality property, Bailey explains that in the familiar base 10 decimal number system, any single digit of a normal number occurs one tenth of the time, any two-digit combination occurs one one-hundredth of the time, and so on. It's like throwing a fair, ten-sided die forever and counting how often each side or combination of sides appears.' 'Pi certainly seems to behave this way. In the first six billion decimal places of pi, each of the digits from 0 through 9 shows up about six hundred million times. Yet such results, conceivably accidental, do not prove normality even in base 10, much less normality in other number bases.' 'In fact, not a single naturally occurring math constant has been proved normal in even one number base, to the chagrin of mathematicians. While many constants are believed to be normal -- including pi, the square root of 2, and the natural logarithm of 2, often written log(2) -- there are no proofs.' So while it hasn't been proved, it sounds like it's at least a well-defined notion (and the article discusses some approaches to proving it which show some promise). Perhaps it means that if you look at the frequencies of different n-digit sequences in the first N digits of a number, the frequencies all approach equality in the limit as N goes to infinity. It would presumably be possible to find infinite sequences that *aren't* normal in this sense, like .011011011011... (Meanwhile, note that the naive idea of just picking a digit randomly from the entire infinite sequence, with all digits equally likely, doesn't actually make sense because you can't have a uniform probability distribution on an infinite series of numbers. It would lead to paradoxes along the lines of the two-envelope paradox discussed at http://consc.net/papers/envelope.html except in this variant you'd be given one of two envelopes which you find to contain N dollars, where N was chosen at random from the infinite series of natural numbers 1,2,3,... using a uniform probability distribution so each natural number was equally likely. Then if you have a choice to exchange it for another sealed envelope chosen in the same way, you should always bet that the second envelope contains more money with probability 1 since there are an infinite number of possible Ns larger than the one you got and only a finite number of Ns smaller. The paradox is that this argument would seem to work even before you have opened the first envelope and seen the specific value of N inside, so you're saying that there's a probability 1 that one of two identical featureless sealed envelopes has more money in it than the other!) If this notion of considering the frequency of different finite sequences in an infinite sequence is a well-defined one, perhaps something similar could also be applied to an infinite spacetime and the frequency of
Re: The past hypothesis
On 5/3/2010 11:08 AM, Jesse Mazer wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 8:26 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com mailto:rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 7:37 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Sure we can, because part of the meaning of random, the very thing that lost us the information, includes each square having the same measure for being one of the numbers. If, for example, we said let all the 1s come first - in which case we can't hit any not-1s, that would be inconsistent with saying we didn't have any information. We have two things here. Random. And infinite. Three things actually. My random aim. An infinite row of squares. And each square's randomly assigned number lying between 1 and 6. If, due to the nature of infinity, there are the same number of 1's and not-1's, then I'd expect the probability of hitting a 1 to be 50-50. But, there are also the same number of 1's and even numbers. And the same number of evens and odds. And the same number of 1's and 2's. And the same number of 2's and not-2's. AND...I have the *random* aim of the dart that I'm throwing at the row. So it's not a question of saying which number is likely to be next in a sequence. Rather, the question is which number am I likely to hit on this infinite row of squares. SO, I think we have zero information that we can use to base our probability calculation on. Because of the counting issues introduced by the infinity combined with the lack of pattern. There is no usable information. Mathematicians do apparently have a well-defined notion of the frequency of different possible finite sequences (including one-digit sequences) in an infinite digit sequence. For example, see the article at http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/pi-random.html which talks about attempts by mathematicians to prove that the digit sequence of pi has a property called normality, which means that any n-digit sequence should appear with the same frequency as every other n-digit sequence (so in base 2, it would imply that the 2-digit sequences 00, 01, 10 and 11 all appear equally frequently in the infinite sequence): 'Describing the normality property, Bailey explains that in the familiar base 10 decimal number system, any single digit of a normal number occurs one tenth of the time, any two-digit combination occurs one one-hundredth of the time, and so on. It's like throwing a fair, ten-sided die forever and counting how often each side or combination of sides appears.' 'Pi certainly seems to behave this way. In the first six billion decimal places of pi, each of the digits from 0 through 9 shows up about six hundred million times. Yet such results, conceivably accidental, do not prove normality even in base 10, much less normality in other number bases.' 'In fact, not a single naturally occurring math constant has been proved normal in even one number base, to the chagrin of mathematicians. While many constants are believed to be normal -- including pi, the square root of 2, and the natural logarithm of 2, often written log(2) -- there are no proofs.' So while it hasn't been proved, it sounds like it's at least a well-defined notion (and the article discusses some approaches to proving it which show some promise). Perhaps it means that if you look at the frequencies of different n-digit sequences in the first N digits of a number, the frequencies all approach equality in the limit as N goes to infinity. It would presumably be possible to find infinite sequences that *aren't* normal in this sense, like .011011011011... (Meanwhile, note that the naive idea of just picking a digit randomly from the entire infinite sequence, with all digits equally likely, doesn't actually make sense because you can't have a uniform probability distribution on an infinite series of numbers. It would lead to paradoxes along the lines of the two-envelope paradox discussed at http://consc.net/papers/envelope.html except in this variant you'd be given one of two envelopes which you find to contain N dollars, where N was chosen at random from the infinite series of natural numbers 1,2,3,... using a uniform probability distribution so each natural number was equally likely. Then if you have a choice to exchange it for another sealed envelope chosen in the same way, you should always bet that the second envelope contains more money with probability 1 since there are an infinite number of possible Ns larger than the one you got and only a finite number of Ns smaller. The paradox is that this argument would seem to work even before you have opened the first envelope and seen the specific value of N inside, so you're saying that there's a probability 1 that one of two identical featureless sealed envelopes has more
Re: The past hypothesis
If someone hiking along the twisting highway that follows the cliffs in Northern Italy or coastal California, high above the sea, should reach a point that protrudes so far out that looking back, he can see the entire route he had traversed during the previous hour including every waypoint, landmark, outcrop, distinctive rock or tree; and he remembered passing each place sequentially, would this not count as strong evidence that the past is real? m.a. - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 1:17 PM Subject: Re: The past hypothesis On 03 May 2010, at 01:20, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/2/2010 3:33 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 02 May 2010, at 20:30, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/2/2010 1:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 May 2010, at 22:02, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/1/2010 12:25 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: This argument is not definitive mainly because we don't have a definitive theory of consciousness, but to the extent we assume a physical basis for consciousness it seems pretty good. Ha! As long as you assume there is no problem of consciousness, then there's no problem! That is pretty good. So you do have a theory of consciousness in which we can have timeless thoughts? DM (digital mechanism, comp ...) entails somehow that all thought are timeless; That's one of the assumptions of DM, that thoughts are states. But that seems doubtful to me. At the substitution level there are states, but those are too finely divided to correspond to thoughts. Thought are not state. Thought correspond to infinities of sequences of states: at least one for any universal machine, given that the UD run all UDs executed by all universal machines. This makes a lot of number relations involved in the epistemological existence of (conscious, first person) thought. The thought are really in the abstract structures realized by those infinities of sequences of states. Now, all this is defined already in Platonia and is timeless. Time belongs to the thought, it is part of the qualia. Ok. So sequence is part of thought, and I suppose that supplies the direction of time we experience with the thought. So while the thought, as described in Platonia, is timeless it's experienced as timed because of the sequential structure. OK. And the finite sequences are determined by the usual relations provable in (Robinson) arithmetic: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ... But thoughts related to universal machines which makes them felt as being embedded in time-structure. Amazingly enough some plants can make you live timeless consciousness (google on salvia divinorum reports). Despite DM, I thought such experience was not memorizable, but apparently they are. Are these timeless thoughts expressible in sentences? or are they like images? I have to say that is unlike anything you can conceive, even after living that. It looks more like a new qualia, where reason suggests that no qualia can be there, except perhaps in the form of a (sudden) remembering of a true (eternal/invariant/unmovable) identity which has just nothing to do with time, space, images, sound, even numbers. Ineffable is the usual rendering. Let me try an image of some predecessor altered conscious state: It may be described as seing your body-and-soul as a window on reality, and you cease to identify yourself with that body-and-soul, but you identify yourself to the one who look through the windows, and actually your current window, which appears as contingent. This is made possible by amnesy and/or dissociation from your memory/memories. Let me make some comments related to other posts: About TS (technological singularity): I have a theory according to which this happens each time an universal entity generates an universal entity. In that sense the following are probable examples of TS: - the big bang (in the theories where that exists) - the origin of life - the origin of brain - the origin of thought - the origin of languages - the origin of computers/universal machine - the origin of programming languages etc. All those TS, and infinitely many others, exist out of time and space in any unravelling of arithmetical truth. The Löbian machine is the most intelligent entities that can exist, but programming it make it a slave, and its soul falls. What some people call TS is not when machine will be as clever as us, but as stupid as us, probably. Stupidity develops when we confuse competence and intelligence. Intelligence is needed to develop competence, but competence has a negative
Re: The past hypothesis
On 5/3/2010 12:39 PM, m.a. wrote: *If someone hiking along the twisting highway that follows the cliffs in Northern Italy or coastal California, high above the sea, should reach a point that protrudes so far out that looking back, he can see the entire route he had traversed during the previous hour including every waypoint, landmark, outcrop, distinctive rock or tree; and he remembered passing each place sequentially, would this not count as strong evidence that the past is real? m.a.* Only by sensible persons; not philosophers. :-) Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 9:48 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: That's assuming I believe some things are true in some absolute sense unrelated to usefulness. I don't. I am having the experience of seeing a red book. This is absolutely true, regardless of usefulness - and regardless of whether I am actually seeing a book or just hallucinating. The experience exists, even if the book doesn't. I am NOT having the experience of seeing a blue pen. This is also absolutely true, even if I am suffering from blind-sight and there's actually a blue pen here that I would react to correctly if pushed to do so. Truths about conscious experience are absolute truths, regardless of what (if anything) generates the experience. Just like there is no red in the world (in the sense that I experience it), there is no time in the world (in the sense that I experience it). Time is like red. Both only exist as aspects of experience. But (according to you) that is the only way anything exists. So time and red exist if exist has any meaning at all. When I say time and red are aspects of consciousness, I mean it in the same way that a scientific realist means that spin is an aspect of an electron. On 5/1/2010 6:15 PM, Rex Allen wrote: I would expect an honest physicalist to say that he believed it because, given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, it could not be otherwise. He has no *choice* except to believe it. To not believe it would require different initial conditions, or different causal laws. I thought you were not believing it because there were no initial conditions or causal laws or universe. It's all what a physicalist would call an illusion - i.e. a seemingly coherent series of experiences that do not refer to anything but just are. But then you seem to switch viewpoints and want to use the consistency of a solipist know-nothing position to argue about which universes might exist?? I'm not switching positions, I'm saying that the honest physicalist should believe that his beliefs are determined only by the initial conditions and causal laws of the universe. Why would he be a determinist? If he's a physicalist, why wouldn't he believe that his beliefs are determined by the nature of the physical world? What else would they be determined by? And what if they were? According to the best physical models we have they are mostly determined by the recent history of the universe plus probabilistic laws (QM) - Probabilistic laws are still causal laws, right? and this explains why they are true in the sense of useful Which brings me back to the point that I made in the no miracles argument against scientific realism thread. Which you never responded to. to those purposes we imagine we have. We *imagine* we have? What do you mean by that? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
Probablistic statements are always about measure. What you write above is true, but it is also true if you substitute finite for infinite. It's just that when you have a finite set or you are generating a potentially inifinite set, then the cardinality and the relative rate of generation provides a canonical measure. But it's not the only one and not even necessarily the right one depending on the problem - did you read the paper I sent? So I did read your handout on probability. And I'm *still* not an expert on the subject. SO. Epic fail on your part. So, given eternal recurrence, there are an infinite number of Rexs. And an infinite number of not-Rexs. Let's pair the Rexs off in a one-to-one correspondence with the not-Rexs. Then, let's go down the list and put an A sticker on the Rexs. And a B sticker on the not-Rexs. Then lets randomly arrange them in an infinitely long row and select one at random. What's the probability of selecting a Rex? What's the probability of selecting an A sticker? I suppose your intent is to assign equal measure to each position on the list so, for any finite subsection of the list the measure of As and Bs will be equal. If that was my intent, what would your response be? But, now returning to the Boltzmann brain problem, Carroll says: This version of the multiverse will feature both isolated Boltzmann brains lurking in the empty de Sitter regions, and ordinary observers found in the aftermath of the low-entropy beginnings of the baby universes. Indeed, there should be an infinite number of both types. So which infinity wins? The kinds of fluctuations that create freak observers in an equilibrium background are certainly rare, but the kinds of fluctuations that create baby universes are also very rare. Well, since these are physically existing infinities of the same size, then neither infinity wins. Carroll is hoping that future advances is physics will tell us the relative rate of creation of freak observers as compared to normal observers. This will then provide a measure that is independent of whether the number is finite or infinite; just like we can say the probability of not-1 on die throw is five times as likely as a 1 throw independent of any assumption about the number of throws. Okay so let's say that Carroll is correct. And after an infinite amount of time we end up with an infinite number of Boltzmann Brains (BB) and Normal Brains (NB). Now, even at the end of infinity, physics still hasn't advanced to the point that we can infer from theory what the relative rate of creation of each brain type is. BUT...(somehow) we have access to a record of what actually happened...an infinite set of time-indexed data that shows a (BB) plus a time-stamp for each boltzmann brain that was created and a (NB) plus a time-stamp for each normal brain. Now, what can we say about this infinite set? Can we reconstruct a probability distribution from it and have any confidence that this measure accurately reflects the true nature of the actual physical processes that explain the distribution of the two different kinds of brains? In other words, if (unknown to us) in reality what controlled the relative rate of creation was the equivalent of the random results of a fair 6-sided die being rolled - where a 1 meant a Boltzmann brain would be created while a not-1 meant that a Normal brain would be created - could we recover the fact of that 16.67% Boltzmann brain creation rate using just the data in our infinite data set? Or would the random nature of the generation process plus the infinite nature of the data set result in us being unable to recover that information with high confidence? If at the end of time we have the same number of boltzmann brains and of normal brains...then I'm not sure what difference it makes to talk about the measure that generated them. There's the same number of each type. There's a 1-to-1 mapping between the subset of BB's and the subset of NB's in our infinite dataset. Isn't there? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On 5/3/2010 7:41 PM, Rex Allen wrote: Probablistic statements are always about measure. What you write above is true, but it is also true if you substitute finite for infinite. It's just that when you have a finite set or you are generating a potentially inifinite set, then the cardinality and the relative rate of generation provides a canonical measure. But it's not the only one and not even necessarily the right one depending on the problem - did you read the paper I sent? So I did read your handout on probability. And I'm *still* not an expert on the subject. SO. Epic fail on your part. So, given eternal recurrence, there are an infinite number of Rexs. And an infinite number of not-Rexs. Let's pair the Rexs off in a one-to-one correspondence with the not-Rexs. Then, let's go down the list and put an A sticker on the Rexs. And a B sticker on the not-Rexs. Then lets randomly arrange them in an infinitely long row and select one at random. What's the probability of selecting a Rex? What's the probability of selecting an A sticker? I suppose your intent is to assign equal measure to each position on the list so, for any finite subsection of the list the measure of As and Bs will be equal. If that was my intent, what would your response be? But, now returning to the Boltzmann brain problem, Carroll says: This version of the multiverse will feature both isolated Boltzmann brains lurking in the empty de Sitter regions, and ordinary observers found in the aftermath of the low-entropy beginnings of the baby universes. Indeed, there should be an infinite number of both types. So which infinity wins? The kinds of fluctuations that create freak observers in an equilibrium background are certainly rare, but the kinds of fluctuations that create baby universes are also very rare. Well, since these are physically existing infinities of the same size, then neither infinity wins. Carroll is hoping that future advances is physics will tell us the relative rate of creation of freak observers as compared to normal observers. This will then provide a measure that is independent of whether the number is finite or infinite; just like we can say the probability of not-1 on die throw is five times as likely as a 1 throw independent of any assumption about the number of throws. Okay so let's say that Carroll is correct. And after an infinite amount of time we end up with an infinite number of Boltzmann Brains (BB) and Normal Brains (NB). Now, even at the end of infinity, From a logical contradiction everything follows. physics still hasn't advanced to the point that we can infer from theory what the relative rate of creation of each brain type is. BUT...(somehow) we have access to a record of what actually happened...an infinite set of time-indexed data that shows a (BB) plus a time-stamp for each boltzmann brain that was created and a (NB) plus a time-stamp for each normal brain. Now, what can we say about this infinite set? Can we reconstruct a probability distribution from it and have any confidence that this measure accurately reflects the true nature of the actual physical processes that explain the distribution of the two different kinds of brains? In other words, if (unknown to us) in reality what controlled the relative rate of creation was the equivalent of the random results of a fair 6-sided die being rolled - where a 1 meant a Boltzmann brain would be created while a not-1 meant that a Normal brain would be created - could we recover the fact of that 16.67% Boltzmann brain creation rate using just the data in our infinite data set? Sure. The (self-contradictory) assumption that we have reached the end of an infinite process is just a diversion. The events are time ordered so we can take arbitrarily large sample sequences and infer relative rates. You may raise Hume's objection to inductive inference, but that is quite independent of whether the sequence in infinite or finite. Brent Or would the random nature of the generation process plus the infinite nature of the data set result in us being unable to recover that information with high confidence? If at the end of time we have the same number of boltzmann brains and of normal brains...then I'm not sure what difference it makes to talk about the measure that generated them. There's the same number of each type. There's a 1-to-1 mapping between the subset of BB's and the subset of NB's in our infinite dataset. Isn't there? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On 5/3/2010 7:14 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 9:48 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: That's assuming I believe some things are true in some absolute sense unrelated to usefulness. I don't. I am having the experience of seeing a red book. But do you *believe* you are seeing a red book. You could be mistaken about that (in fact you've argued you're probably mistaken). No, you only believe that you are having an experience that is described as seeing a red book. But I will concede you may have confidence in such a belief (provided you know what see, red, and book mean - which requires references that are less than certain). For myself I don't formulate such beliefs, although I suppose I could say, I believe I am experiencing something that could be described as looking at a computer display. It doesn't seem to be useful to obtain certainty by giving up all reference. Is that what you are doing and that's why you regard your experiences as uncaused and not referring - so you can have certainty? This is absolutely true, regardless of usefulness - and regardless of whether I am actually seeing a book or just hallucinating. The experience exists, even if the book doesn't. I am NOT having the experience of seeing a blue pen. This is also absolutely true, even if I am suffering from blind-sight and there's actually a blue pen here that I would react to correctly if pushed to do so. Truths about conscious experience are absolute truths, regardless of what (if anything) generates the experience. Just like there is no red in the world (in the sense that I experience it), there is no time in the world (in the sense that I experience it). Time is like red. Both only exist as aspects of experience. But (according to you) that is the only way anything exists. So time and red exist if exist has any meaning at all. When I say time and red are aspects of consciousness, I mean it in the same way that a scientific realist means that spin is an aspect of an electron. Red and time are mathematical attributes in a model of consciousness?? Ok, what's the model? On 5/1/2010 6:15 PM, Rex Allen wrote: I would expect an honest physicalist to say that he believed it because, given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, it could not be otherwise. He has no *choice* except to believe it. To not believe it would require different initial conditions, or different causal laws. I thought you were not believing it because there were no initial conditions or causal laws or universe. It's all what a physicalist would call an illusion - i.e. a seemingly coherent series of experiences that do not refer to anything but just are. But then you seem to switch viewpoints and want to use the consistency of a solipist know-nothing position to argue about which universes might exist?? I'm not switching positions, I'm saying that the honest physicalist should believe that his beliefs are determined only by the initial conditions and causal laws of the universe. Why would he be a determinist? If he's a physicalist, why wouldn't he believe that his beliefs are determined by the nature of the physical world? What else would they be determined by? Maybe we're using determined in different ways. I use it in contrast to random or stochastic. So if the natural world has stochastic aspects then one's beliefs could be undetermined and yet still determined by the nature of the physical world. For example, one of your momentary experiences might be due to the decay of a radioactive calcium atom in the blood stream of your brain. And what if they were? According to the best physical models we have they are mostly determined by the recent history of the universe plus probabilistic laws (QM) - Probabilistic laws are still causal laws, right? Depends on what you mean by causal? I take probabilistic to mean not entirely determined by the preceding (=within the past light cone) state. and this explains why they are true in the sense of useful Which brings me back to the point that I made in the no miracles argument against scientific realism thread. Which you never responded to. You mean this? It seems to me that it would be a bit of a miracle if it turned out that we lived in a universe whose initial state and causal laws were such that they gave rise to conscious entities whose beliefs about their universe were true beliefs. It's an argument from incredulity. If you can make it something more objective I might be able to respond. to those purposes we imagine we have. We *imagine* we have? What do you mean by that? Our purposes are not always conscious. Brent Emotion is Nature's way of making us do what is necessary to reproduce. --- Robert
Re: The past hypothesis
I notice I didn't respond to your first question in this post. So... On 5/3/2010 7:41 PM, Rex Allen wrote: Probablistic statements are always about measure. What you write above is true, but it is also true if you substitute finite for infinite. It's just that when you have a finite set or you are generating a potentially inifinite set, then the cardinality and the relative rate of generation provides a canonical measure. But it's not the only one and not even necessarily the right one depending on the problem - did you read the paper I sent? So I did read your handout on probability. And I'm *still* not an expert on the subject. SO. Epic fail on your part. Trying the impossible does tend to epic failure. So, given eternal recurrence, there are an infinite number of Rexs. And an infinite number of not-Rexs. Let's pair the Rexs off in a one-to-one correspondence with the not-Rexs. Then, let's go down the list and put an A sticker on the Rexs. And a B sticker on the not-Rexs. Then lets randomly arrange them in an infinitely long row and select one at random. What's the probability of selecting a Rex? What's the probability of selecting an A sticker? I suppose your intent is to assign equal measure to each position on the list so, for any finite subsection of the list the measure of As and Bs will be equal. If that was my intent, what would your response be? The usual way of dealing with infinity is to use a measure that works for finite cases and converges in the limit as the number is arbitrarily increased. Notice that there is no way to randomly arrange the infinite sets, except by some process that randomly selects elements and places them on the list. So you're really back the generating frequency. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On 5/1/2010 9:33 PM, Jesse Mazer wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 11:07 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com mailto:rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 8:40 PM, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com mailto:laserma...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com mailto:rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com mailto:laserma...@gmail.com wrote: I think you've got the argument wrong. I think you're wrong about my getting the argument wrong. :) I suppose it depends what you mean by the argument. It is possible you could find *some* mainstream scientist who seriously considers the possibility that all our historical records of a low-entropy past are wrong or that we are actually Boltzmann brains with false memories, but for any of the physicists I have read who have brought up these ideas, like Sean Carroll and Brian Greene, it is completely clear to me that they only consider these to be reductio ad absurdum arguments, not that they actually think these are likely to be true. If you disagree, I suggest you haven't actually read these authors very carefully, or haven't really understood what you read. Well, I think the passage I quoted pretty much stands on it's own. Without the extra assumption of the Past Hypothesis, the data we have available leads to a conclusion that isn't cognitively stable when combined with the assumption of physicalism. I would take this as a reductio ad absurdum argument against physicalism. Physicalism is much too vague--we can imagine a wide variety of *possible* laws of physics, including ones where the universe would be predicted to maintain a consistent low entropy (I think the old Steady State cosmology would be an example, with new low-entropy matter and energy being continually created in empty space). Carroll's reductio ad absurdum relied on more specific features of the laws of physics in *our* universe, like time-symmetry. But if we're talking about the laws of physics in our universe, it's not as if we already know that these laws would naturally lead us to predict Boltzmann brains would be more common than ordinary observers and so we have to tack on the Past Hypothesis as an extra assumption. The point is that since we don't yet know the ultimate laws of physics, we can't yet calculate a probability distribution for histories of the universe/multiverse that would allow us to decide whether ordinary observers are likely to be more common than Boltzmann brains or vice versa. The Past Hypothesis basically amounts to the idea that if we *did* know these ultimate laws, they would indeed imply that in an average history of the universe/multiverse, ordinary observers will be more common than Boltzmann brains. And Carroll proposes a specific way the laws of physics might work that could make this plausible. The eternal recurrence problem is a related, but not identical, problem than the issue introduced by the principle of indifference. Here Sean invokes probabilistic reasoning on infinite sets, which Brent and I are still discussing. Though I just noticed that we accidently wandered off the main list into a private email exchange. Oops. Anyway. Onwards: Then on p. 223 he explains in more detail why we can be confident we aren't Boltzmann brains: because the level of order we experience is far greater than what the vast majority of possible Boltzmann brains should be predicted to experience (though he does bring up the possibility that our experience of an orderly environment could just be a hallucination). This was one of the points of my The 'no miracles' argument against scientific realism thread...which died an untimely death. So how does he rule out this hallucination possibility? Or the Boltzmann brain simulator possibility? What facts do we have about the nature of reality that rules it out? Another extra assumption. The we can trust our observations, even though our observations imply that we can't trust our observations hypothesis. He doesn't specifically address the hallucination possibility, but I think one could naturally extend his argument to deal with it. His initial argument assumes that a Boltzmann brain would have a properly-functioning sensory system, and that it would be overwhelmingly likely that such a brain would perceive high-entropy surroundings rather than low-entropy surroundings...so, the fact that we *do* see low-entropy surroundings can itself be seen as a falsification of the Boltzmann-brain-with-functional-sensory-system hypothesis. It is true that a Boltzmann brain in high-entropy surroundings might not have
Re: The past hypothesis
On 01 May 2010, at 22:02, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/1/2010 12:25 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: This argument is not definitive mainly because we don't have a definitive theory of consciousness, but to the extent we assume a physical basis for consciousness it seems pretty good. Ha! As long as you assume there is no problem of consciousness, then there's no problem! That is pretty good. So you do have a theory of consciousness in which we can have timeless thoughts? DM (digital mechanism, comp ...) entails somehow that all thought are timeless; But thoughts related to universal machines which makes them felt as being embedded in time-structure. Amazingly enough some plants can make you live timeless consciousness (google on salvia divinorum reports). Despite DM, I thought such experience was not memorizable, but apparently they are. Let me make some comments related to other posts: About TS (technological singularity): I have a theory according to which this happens each time an universal entity generates an universal entity. In that sense the following are probable examples of TS: - the big bang (in the theories where that exists) - the origin of life - the origin of brain - the origin of thought - the origin of languages - the origin of computers/universal machine - the origin of programming languages etc. All those TS, and infinitely many others, exist out of time and space in any unravelling of arithmetical truth. The Löbian machine is the most intelligent entities that can exist, but programming it make it a slave, and its soul falls. What some people call TS is not when machine will be as clever as us, but as stupid as us, probably. Stupidity develops when we confuse competence and intelligence. Intelligence is needed to develop competence, but competence has a negative feedback on intelligence. About BB (Boltzmann brains): BB provide a physicalist rendering of the (mathematical) UD paradox. The UD, and thus elementary arithmetic, generates all BB's states, in infinitely many histories. You can extract the measure on them by the use of the logic of arithmetical self-reference, and this up to now confirms QM. We are not BB, statistically, and we belong to infinities of deep computations generated by infinitely many universal machines interfering statistically below our substitution levels (the origin of quanta). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
Returning to the thread: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 10:23 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 5/1/2010 7:10 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 10:01 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: It's invalid simply because your conclusion depends taking the cardinality to be the measure. The cardinality of infinite sets doesn't satisfy Kolomogorov's axioms for a probability measure. For example one of the axioms is: If A and B are disjoint then P(A) + P(B) = P(A union B). Let the measure of the integers be 1. The let A be the evens and B be the odds. You get 2=1. If you're going to talk about probabilities of infinite sets you have to introduce some measure other than cardinality. Isn't that exactly what I said here: SO, I think we have zero information that we can use to base our probability calculation on. Because of the counting issues introduced by the infinity combined with the lack of pattern. There is no usable information. No that's not the same. If you based the order on a die toss there would be no pattern, but there would still be a measure even when the cardinality was infinite. Your use of information is ambiguous. On the one hand you use it to mean no pattern and then you assume that must be the same as we don't know the measure. I claim vindication. But having done so, what measure are you suggesting for this particular example instead? For this particular example. Not for general cases involving telephone surveys. In my example, a die toss, measure is based on the symmetry of the die. In that case it seems to me that we are ignoring the *actual* infinite set of randomly generated results and only talking about the measure. Effectively we're saying, We have no useful information about the random infinite set - because it's random...and infinite. So let's go back to the measure and ask what would we get if we generated another number according to that definition. So returning to my infinite row of numbered squares, let's say we take the 1-squares and put them into a one-to-one correspondence with the not-1-squares. Now, let's put a sticker on each 1-square that says A. And another sticker on each not-1-square that says B. Now, let's put them back into an infinite row. What is the probability of hitting an B-square with my randomly thrown dart? What is the probability of hitting a 1-square? It seems to me that we can't say anything about the actual infinite set. We can only talk about various measures on it. Which is what you said. But I think is still consistent with my original example. I'd think that if you have an actual randomly generated infinite set, then you can't draw any probabilistic conclusions about that infinite set, even if you know how it was generated (e.g., dice rolling). You can only draw conclusions about the measure that describes the generating process. Right? Or wrong? But, now returning to the Boltzmann brain problem, Carroll says: This version of the multiverse will feature both isolated Boltzmann brains lurking in the empty de Sitter regions, and ordinary observers found in the aftermath of the low-entropy beginnings of the baby universes. Indeed, there should be an infinite number of both types. So which infinity wins? The kinds of fluctuations that create freak observers in an equilibrium background are certainly rare, but the kinds of fluctuations that create baby universes are also very rare. Well, since these are physically existing infinities of the same size, then neither infinity wins. So, given eternal recurrence, there are an infinite number of Rexs. And an infinite number of not-Rexs. Let's pair the Rexs off in a one-to-one correspondence with the not-Rexs. Then, let's go down the list and put an A sticker on the Rexs. And a B sticker on the not-Rexs. Then lets randomly arrange them in an infinitely long row and select one at random. What's the probability of selecting a Rex? What's the probability of selecting an A sticker? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
Brent: 2 quotes from your text: 1.You seem like the man who wrote to Bertrand Russell, There is no way to refute solipism. I don't know why more people don't believe it. - - AND: - - 2.So if you don't adopt solipism, if you assume there is some world outside the flow of your thoughts to which they refer, then a model of that world needs to include time, both duration and direction. \Both quotes refer to A certain kind of *solipsism,* mostly with Schopenhauer in mind. How about adding other kinds to it, maybe beyond the restrictions of our human (add: physicalisticly thinking conventional) predictions? E.g. the personalized 'mini'-one (credit: Colin Hales) that everybody has a 'self-(own)- formatted' (mini)solipsist image of the (YES, * accepted* as 'existing') overall reality-world, based on the fraction one received (perceived?) of it and interpreted according to his personalized background-tool (genetic brain and stored(?) personal experience) - callable: 'perceived reality' - ? Why should such (freely) imagined world carry those figments of a 'physical world' as does our human conventional science of today: if you assume there is some world outside the flow of your thoughts to which they refer, then a model of that world needs to include time, both duration and direction. Why did you omit causality, energy, gravity, (sub)atomic, etc. etc. to make it really the world we developed over the millennia of ignorance? Just imagine what you cannot imagine. Then assume whatever you like and we can talk. Maybe in relations and complexity? Unlimited? You presume a 'model' (one!) - indeed an image of what we established as our figment. which supported an ingenious technology indeed, an edifice of poorly understood phenomena with insufficient argumentational explanations - *as* ALMOST good (where paradoxes and small inequities (i.e. big catastrophes) still abound) . I am talking about 'freeing up the mind' i.e. letting out more ideas than 'allowed' by conventional physical/mathematical sciences or just plain old-Greek heritage. I don't claim to be smarter, only more 'stuff'' is available in our enriched cognitive inventory of today. John M On 5/1/10, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 5/1/2010 4:54 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 5:47 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Fine. You solve all problems by postulating that your consciousness is fundamental, it just IS, I don't solve all problems. I only solve all metaphysical problems. But isn't that what physicalists attempt to do by postulating a physical universe? and for some unknowable reason it is a sequence of experiences which happen to correspond to living in an orderly and time directed universe. The reason isn't unknowable. There is no reason. Period. Full stop. This is in comparison to the two physicalist alternatives available to explain *actually* living in an orderly and time directed universe: 1) There was a first cause that led to our orderly universe, but that cause was itself *uncaused*. 2) There's an infinite chain of prior causes that led to our current orderly universe. Option 1 is not significantly different from my proposal. It just adds this extra physical component that in some way underlies the conscious experience that we all know and love. Option 2 is...also not significantly different. There is no finite knowable reason for our orderly universe's existence. And this also raises the further question of why our infinite causal chain instead of some other? And if you have an answer, then why that answer instead of some other? So not only does option 2 lead to an infinite causal chain - it also requires an infinite chain of infinite chains of reasons to explain why *our* infinite causal chain exists instead of some other infinite causal chain. If you ever stop and say because that's just the way it is, then you collapse back into option 1. Right? And do you believe this sequence will persist in producing orderly and consistent experiences? I do believe that. BUT...why do I believe it? Well, ultimately, there is no reason I believe it. I just do. Then why don't you believe that a physical universe is a good explanatory model for it? Or do you believe that and you're just playing at not believing it? Do you believe it? And if so, why? I would expect an honest physicalist to say that he believed it because, given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, it could not be otherwise. That's a particular model. It's not why one believes the model. Actually an honest physicist or engineer never *believes* a model - he entertains it, he uses it, he considers it. He prefers one to another because it predicts more of his experience or is more accurate in those predictions. He only believes it in the practical
Re: The past hypothesis
On 5/2/2010 1:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 May 2010, at 22:02, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/1/2010 12:25 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: This argument is not definitive mainly because we don't have a definitive theory of consciousness, but to the extent we assume a physical basis for consciousness it seems pretty good. Ha! As long as you assume there is no problem of consciousness, then there's no problem! That is pretty good. So you do have a theory of consciousness in which we can have timeless thoughts? DM (digital mechanism, comp ...) entails somehow that all thought are timeless; That's one of the assumptions of DM, that thoughts are states. But that seems doubtful to me. At the substitution level there are states, but those are too finely divided to correspond to thoughts. But thoughts related to universal machines which makes them felt as being embedded in time-structure. Amazingly enough some plants can make you live timeless consciousness (google on salvia divinorum reports). Despite DM, I thought such experience was not memorizable, but apparently they are. Let me make some comments related to other posts: About TS (technological singularity): I have a theory according to which this happens each time an universal entity generates an universal entity. In that sense the following are probable examples of TS: - the big bang (in the theories where that exists) - the origin of life - the origin of brain - the origin of thought - the origin of languages - the origin of computers/universal machine - the origin of programming languages etc. All those TS, and infinitely many others, exist out of time and space in any unravelling of arithmetical truth. The Löbian machine is the most intelligent entities that can exist, but programming it make it a slave, and its soul falls. What some people call TS is not when machine will be as clever as us, but as stupid as us, probably. Stupidity develops when we confuse competence and intelligence. Intelligence is needed to develop competence, but competence has a negative feedback on intelligence. About BB (Boltzmann brains): BB provide a physicalist rendering of the (mathematical) UD paradox. The UD, and thus elementary arithmetic, generates all BB's states, in infinitely many histories. You can extract the measure on them by the use of the logic of arithmetical self-reference, What measure is that? Brent and this up to now confirms QM. We are not BB, statistically, and we belong to infinities of deep computations generated by infinitely many universal machines interfering statistically below our substitution levels (the origin of quanta). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On 5/2/2010 8:40 AM, Rex Allen wrote: Returning to the thread: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 10:23 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 5/1/2010 7:10 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 10:01 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: It's invalid simply because your conclusion depends taking the cardinality to be the measure. The cardinality of infinite sets doesn't satisfy Kolomogorov's axioms for a probability measure. For example one of the axioms is: If A and B are disjoint then P(A) + P(B) = P(A union B). Let the measure of the integers be 1. The let A be the evens and B be the odds. You get 2=1. If you're going to talk about probabilities of infinite sets you have to introduce some measure other than cardinality. Isn't that exactly what I said here: SO, I think we have zero information that we can use to base our probability calculation on. Because of the counting issues introduced by the infinity combined with the lack of pattern. There is no usable information. No that's not the same. If you based the order on a die toss there would be no pattern, but there would still be a measure even when the cardinality was infinite. Your use of information is ambiguous. On the one hand you use it to mean no pattern and then you assume that must be the same as we don't know the measure. I claim vindication. But having done so, what measure are you suggesting for this particular example instead? For this particular example. Not for general cases involving telephone surveys. In my example, a die toss, measure is based on the symmetry of the die. In that case it seems to me that we are ignoring the *actual* infinite set of randomly generated results and only talking about the measure. Why do you think there is an *actual* infinite set. Effectively we're saying, We have no useful information about the random infinite set - because it's random...and infinite. But we do have useful information. The die is symmetric, a fact we use to hypothesize that the measure of each face is equal. So let's go back to the measure and ask what would we get if we generated another number according to that definition. So returning to my infinite row of numbered squares, let's say we take the 1-squares and put them into a one-to-one correspondence with the not-1-squares. Now, let's put a sticker on each 1-square that says A. And another sticker on each not-1-square that says B. Now, let's put them back into an infinite row. What is the probability of hitting an B-square with my randomly thrown dart? What is the probability of hitting a 1-square? It seems to me that we can't say anything about the actual infinite set. We can only talk about various measures on it. Which is what you said. But I think is still consistent with my original example. I'd think that if you have an actual randomly generated infinite set, then you can't draw any probabilistic conclusions about that infinite set, even if you know how it was generated (e.g., dice rolling). You can only draw conclusions about the measure that describes the generating process. Right? Or wrong? Probablistic statements are always about measure. What you write above is true, but it is also true if you substitute finite for infinite. It's just that when you have a finite set or you are generating a potentially inifinite set, then the cardinality and the relative rate of generation provides a canonical measure. But it's not the only one and not even necessarily the right one depending on the problem - did you read the paper I sent? But, now returning to the Boltzmann brain problem, Carroll says: This version of the multiverse will feature both isolated Boltzmann brains lurking in the empty de Sitter regions, and ordinary observers found in the aftermath of the low-entropy beginnings of the baby universes. Indeed, there should be an infinite number of both types. So which infinity wins? The kinds of fluctuations that create freak observers in an equilibrium background are certainly rare, but the kinds of fluctuations that create baby universes are also very rare. Well, since these are physically existing infinities of the same size, then neither infinity wins. Carroll is hoping that future advances is physics will tell us the relative rate of creation of freak observers as compared to normal observers. This will then provide a measure that is independent of whether the number is finite or infinite; just like we can say the probability of not-1 on die throw is five times as likely as a 1 throw independent of any assumption about the number of throws. So, given eternal recurrence, there are an infinite number of Rexs. And an infinite number of not-Rexs. Let's pair the Rexs off in a one-to-one correspondence with the not-Rexs. Then, let's go down the list and put an A sticker on the Rexs. And a B
Re: The past hypothesis
On 02 May 2010, at 20:30, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/2/2010 1:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 May 2010, at 22:02, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/1/2010 12:25 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: This argument is not definitive mainly because we don't have a definitive theory of consciousness, but to the extent we assume a physical basis for consciousness it seems pretty good. Ha! As long as you assume there is no problem of consciousness, then there's no problem! That is pretty good. So you do have a theory of consciousness in which we can have timeless thoughts? DM (digital mechanism, comp ...) entails somehow that all thought are timeless; That's one of the assumptions of DM, that thoughts are states. But that seems doubtful to me. At the substitution level there are states, but those are too finely divided to correspond to thoughts. Thought are not state. Thought correspond to infinities of sequences of states: at least one for any universal machine, given that the UD run all UDs executed by all universal machines. This makes a lot of number relations involved in the epistemological existence of (conscious, first person) thought. The thought are really in the abstract structures realized by those infinities of sequences of states. Now, all this is defined already in Platonia and is timeless. Time belongs to the thought, it is part of the qualia. But thoughts related to universal machines which makes them felt as being embedded in time-structure. Amazingly enough some plants can make you live timeless consciousness (google on salvia divinorum reports). Despite DM, I thought such experience was not memorizable, but apparently they are. Let me make some comments related to other posts: About TS (technological singularity): I have a theory according to which this happens each time an universal entity generates an universal entity. In that sense the following are probable examples of TS: - the big bang (in the theories where that exists) - the origin of life - the origin of brain - the origin of thought - the origin of languages - the origin of computers/universal machine - the origin of programming languages etc. All those TS, and infinitely many others, exist out of time and space in any unravelling of arithmetical truth. The Löbian machine is the most intelligent entities that can exist, but programming it make it a slave, and its soul falls. What some people call TS is not when machine will be as clever as us, but as stupid as us, probably. Stupidity develops when we confuse competence and intelligence. Intelligence is needed to develop competence, but competence has a negative feedback on intelligence. About BB (Boltzmann brains): BB provide a physicalist rendering of the (mathematical) UD paradox. The UD, and thus elementary arithmetic, generates all BB's states, in infinitely many histories. You can extract the measure on them by the use of the logic of arithmetical self-reference, What measure is that? The one which extends the 'measure one' given by S4grz1, or/and Z1*, or/and X1*.That is, the material hypostases. The measure exists if the arithmetical quantum logic, (with quantization of p defined by BDp, with B and D the box and diamond of S4grz1 or/and Z1* or/and X1*) fulfills von Neumann criterion for being the right' quantum logic: it defines the orthostructure on which a theorem of Gleason makes it possible to extend the measure 1-calculus into the full calculus (measure in [0 1]). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On 5/2/2010 3:33 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 02 May 2010, at 20:30, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/2/2010 1:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 May 2010, at 22:02, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/1/2010 12:25 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: This argument is not definitive mainly because we don't have a definitive theory of consciousness, but to the extent we assume a physical basis for consciousness it seems pretty good. Ha! As long as you assume there is no problem of consciousness, then there's no problem! That is pretty good. So you do have a theory of consciousness in which we can have timeless thoughts? DM (digital mechanism, comp ...) entails somehow that all thought are timeless; That's one of the assumptions of DM, that thoughts are states. But that seems doubtful to me. At the substitution level there are states, but those are too finely divided to correspond to thoughts. Thought are not state. Thought correspond to infinities of sequences of states: at least one for any universal machine, given that the UD run all UDs executed by all universal machines. This makes a lot of number relations involved in the epistemological existence of (conscious, first person) thought. The thought are really in the abstract structures realized by those infinities of sequences of states. Now, all this is defined already in Platonia and is timeless. Time belongs to the thought, it is part of the qualia. Ok. So sequence is part of thought, and I suppose that supplies the direction of time we experience with the thought. So while the thought, as described in Platonia, is timeless it's experienced as timed because of the sequential structure. But thoughts related to universal machines which makes them felt as being embedded in time-structure. Amazingly enough some plants can make you live timeless consciousness (google on salvia divinorum reports). Despite DM, I thought such experience was not memorizable, but apparently they are. Are these timeless thoughts expressible in sentences? or are they like images? Let me make some comments related to other posts: About TS (technological singularity): I have a theory according to which this happens each time an universal entity generates an universal entity. In that sense the following are probable examples of TS: - the big bang (in the theories where that exists) - the origin of life - the origin of brain - the origin of thought - the origin of languages - the origin of computers/universal machine - the origin of programming languages etc. All those TS, and infinitely many others, exist out of time and space in any unravelling of arithmetical truth. The Löbian machine is the most intelligent entities that can exist, but programming it make it a slave, and its soul falls. What some people call TS is not when machine will be as clever as us, but as stupid as us, probably. Stupidity develops when we confuse competence and intelligence. Intelligence is needed to develop competence, but competence has a negative feedback on intelligence. About BB (Boltzmann brains): BB provide a physicalist rendering of the (mathematical) UD paradox. The UD, and thus elementary arithmetic, generates all BB's states, in infinitely many histories. You can extract the measure on them by the use of the logic of arithmetical self-reference, What measure is that? The one which extends the 'measure one' given by S4grz1, or/and Z1*, or/and X1*.That is, the material hypostases. The measure exists if the arithmetical quantum logic, (with quantization of p defined by BDp, with B and D the box and diamond of S4grz1 or/and Z1* or/and X1*) fulfills von Neumann criterion for being the right' quantum logic: it defines the orthostructure on which a theorem of Gleason makes it possible to extend the measure 1-calculus into the full calculus (measure in [0 1]). Doesn't that require a continuous probability operator? How is that consistent with the digital nature of comp? Brent Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: I think you've got the argument wrong. I think you're wrong about my getting the argument wrong. :) Carroll discusses this in his book From Eternity to Here From Eternity To Here, Pg. 182 (my comments follow the quote): Cognitive Instability I know from experience that not everyone is convinced by this argument. One stumbling block is the crucial assertion that what we start with is knowledge of our present macrostate, including some small-scale details about a photograph or a history book or a memory lurking in our brains. Although it seems like a fairly innocent assumption, we have an intuitive feeling that we don't know something only about the present; we *know* something about the past, because we see it, in a way that we don't see the future. Cosmology is a good example, just because the speed of light plays an important role, and we have a palpable sense of looking at an event in the past. When we try to reconstruct the history of the universe it's tempting to look at (for example) the cosmic microwave background and say, I can *see* what the universe was like almost 14 billion years ago; I don't have to appeal to any fancy Past Hypothesis to reason my way into drawing any conclusions. That's not right. When we look at the cosmic microwave background (or light from any other distant source, or a photograph of any purported past event), we're not looking at the past. We're observing what certain photons are doing right here and now. When we scan our radio telescope across the sky and observe a bath of radiation at about 2.7 Kelvin that is very close to uniform in every direction, we've learned something about the radiation passing through our *present* location, which we then need to extrapolate backward to infer something about the past. It's conceivable that this uniform radiation came from a past that was actually highly non-uniform, but from which a set of finely tuned conspiracies between temperatures and Doppler shifts and gravitational effects produced a very smooth-looking set of photons arriving at us today. You may say that's very unlikely, but the time-reverse of that is exactly what we would expect if we took a typical microstate within our present macrostate and evolved it toward a Big Crunch. The truth is, we don't have any more direct empirical access to the past than we have to the future, unless we allow ourselves to assume a Past Hypothesis. Indeed, the Past Hypothesis is more than just allowed; it's completely necessary, if we hope to tell a sensible story about the universe. Imagine that we simply refused to invoke such an idea and stuck solely with the data given to us by our current macrostate, including the state of our brains and our photographs and our history books. We would then predict with strong probability that the past as well as the future was a high-entropy state, and that all of the low-entropy features of our present condition arose as random fluctuations. That sounds bad enough, but the reality is worse. Under such circumstances, among the things that randomly fluctuated into existence are all of the pieces of information we traditionally use to justify our understanding of the laws of physics, or for that matter all of the mental states (or written-down arguments) we traditionally use to justify mathematics and logic and the scientific method. Such assumptions, in other words, give us absolutely no reason to believe that we have justified anything, including those assumptions themselves. David Albert has referred to such a conundrum as *cognitive instability* - the condition that we face when a set of assumptions undermines the reasons we might have used to justify those very assumptions. It is a kind of helplessness that can't be escaped without reaching beyond the present moment. Without the Past Hypothesis, we simply can't tell any intelligible story about the world; so we seem to be stuck with it, or stuck with trying to find a theory that actually explains it. So it seems to me that physicalism (the proposal that our experiences are caused by an independently existing material world) is riddled with cognative instabilities. As is Bruno's mathematical platonism. And as is any theory that proposes a causal mechanism for conscious experience. There is no sensible story to be told about existence. Sean says: Without the Past Hypothesis, we simply can't tell any intelligible story about the world I'd go further and say that even with the Past Hypothesis you can't tell any intelligible story about the world. We *can* say that the big bang theory is consistent with what we observe. But so is a higher-entropy past. And so is Bruno's AUDA. And so are a lot of things. BUT these things all inevitably lead to more questions. There seem to be only two possible final answers: 1) Everything exists. 2) Reality is essentially arbitrary
Re: The past hypothesis
On 5/1/2010 10:43 AM, Rex Allen wrote: On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Jesse Mazerlaserma...@gmail.com wrote: I think you've got the argument wrong. I think you're wrong about my getting the argument wrong. :) Carroll discusses this in his book From Eternity to Here From Eternity To Here, Pg. 182 (my comments follow the quote): Cognitive Instability I know from experience that not everyone is convinced by this argument. One stumbling block is the crucial assertion that what we start with is knowledge of our present macrostate, including some small-scale details about a photograph or a history book or a memory lurking in our brains. Although it seems like a fairly innocent assumption, we have an intuitive feeling that we don't know something only about the present; we *know* something about the past, because we see it, in a way that we don't see the future. But this argument assumes that knowing is timeless and that if we reversed all the momenta we would still perceive the physical evolution of systems per the same time-symmetric laws but with things going backwards. But I don't see how knowledge, perception, etc can be timeless. They already imply an evolution in time and they pick out a direction. So if you say you know that the micro-physics of the universe, including your brain, are time-symmetric then you must also give an account of how they *seem* time-asymmetric. This is usually done by a statistical mechanics kind of argument relating local entropy growth (including formation of memories) to expansion of the universe and quantum decoherence. This argument is not definitive mainly because we don't have a definitive theory of consciousness, but to the extent we assume a physical basis for consciousness it seems pretty good. Cosmology is a good example, just because the speed of light plays an important role, and we have a palpable sense of looking at an event in the past. When we try to reconstruct the history of the universe it's tempting to look at (for example) the cosmic microwave background and say, I can *see* what the universe was like almost 14 billion years ago; I don't have to appeal to any fancy Past Hypothesis to reason my way into drawing any conclusions. That's not right. When we look at the cosmic microwave background (or light from any other distant source, or a photograph of any purported past event), we're not looking at the past. We're observing what certain photons are doing right here and now. But observing, i.e. forming a thought about a perception is not timeless and already assumes both duration and direction. If you reversed everything via a CPT transformation, then according to a physical model of the world nothing would change - including your perceptions and thoughts. When we scan our radio telescope across the sky and observe a bath of radiation at about 2.7 Kelvin that is very close to uniform in every direction, we've learned something about the radiation passing through our *present* location, which we then need to extrapolate backward to infer something about the past. It's conceivable that this uniform radiation came from a past that was actually highly non-uniform, but from which a set of finely tuned conspiracies between temperatures and Doppler shifts and gravitational effects produced a very smooth-looking set of photons arriving at us today. You may say that's very unlikely, but the time-reverse of that is exactly what we would expect if we took a typical microstate within our present macrostate and evolved it toward a Big Crunch. The truth is, we don't have any more direct empirical access to the past than we have to the future, unless we allow ourselves to assume a Past Hypothesis. Indeed, the Past Hypothesis is more than just allowed; it's completely necessary, if we hope to tell a sensible story about the universe. Imagine that we simply refused to invoke such an idea and stuck solely with the data given to us by our current macrostate, How could any data be given if we didn't have thoughts with duration and direction? There is no macrostate as a static thing with no implicit or explicit direction. This is very clear in Newtonian mechanics since evolution equations are second-order and include momenta as well as position. It's not so clear in QM where the evolution equations are first-order. This results in the cosmological problem-of-time illustrated by the Wheeler-Dewitt equation having no time variable. But there is still a continuous topology and physical time can presumably be recovered as a statistical approximation. Brent including the state of our brains and our photographs and our history books. We would then predict with strong probability that the past as well as the future was a high-entropy state, and that all of the low-entropy features of our present condition arose as random fluctuations. That sounds bad enough, but the reality is worse
Re: The past hypothesis
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: This argument is not definitive mainly because we don't have a definitive theory of consciousness, but to the extent we assume a physical basis for consciousness it seems pretty good. Ha! As long as you assume there is no problem of consciousness, then there's no problem! That is pretty good. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 11:24 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: But if the universe arose from a quantum fluctuation, it would necessarily start with very low entropy since it would not be big enough to encode more than one or two bits at the Planck scale. If one universe can start that way then arbitrarily many can. So then it is no longer clear that the evolved brain is less probable than the Boltzmann brain. I asked Sean about the application of probability to the Boltzmann brain scenario on his blog: So, in chapter 10 you rule out the possibility of the eternal recurrence scenario based on the low probability of an observer of our type (human) being surrounded by a non-equilibrium visible universe compared to the probability being a “boltzmann brain” human observer who pops into existence to find himself surrounded by chaos. As you say, in the eternal recurrence scenario there should be far far more of the later than of the former. Okay. So, my question: If the recurrences are really eternal, then shouldn’t there be infinitely many of BOTH types of observers? Countably infinite? And aren’t all countably infinite sets of equal size? So in an infinite amount of time we would accumulate one countably infinite set of our type of observer. And over that same amount of time we’d could also accumulate another countably infinite set of the “Boltzmann Brain” type of observer. The two sets would be of the same size…countably infinite. Right? So probabilistic reasoning wouldn’t apply here, would it? Especially not in a “block” universe where we don’t even have to wait for an infinite amount of time to pass. AND, here was his reply: Sean Says: January 27th, 2010 at 9:49 am Rex, this is certainly a good problem, related to the “measure” issue that cosmologists are always talking about. Yes, in an eternal universe there are countably infinite numbers of “ordinary” observers and freak (thermal-fluctuation) observers. But the frequency of the latter — the average number in any particular length of time — is much larger. We generally assume that this is enough to calculate probabilities, although it’s hardly an airtight principle. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On 5/1/2010 12:25 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: This argument is not definitive mainly because we don't have a definitive theory of consciousness, but to the extent we assume a physical basis for consciousness it seems pretty good. Ha! As long as you assume there is no problem of consciousness, then there's no problem! That is pretty good. So you do have a theory of consciousness in which we can have timeless thoughts? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On 5/1/2010 12:31 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 11:24 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: But if the universe arose from a quantum fluctuation, it would necessarily start with very low entropy since it would not be big enough to encode more than one or two bits at the Planck scale. If one universe can start that way then arbitrarily many can. So then it is no longer clear that the evolved brain is less probable than the Boltzmann brain. I asked Sean about the application of probability to the Boltzmann brain scenario on his blog: So, in chapter 10 you rule out the possibility of the eternal recurrence scenario based on the low probability of an observer of our type (human) being surrounded by a non-equilibrium visible universe compared to the probability being a “boltzmann brain” human observer who pops into existence to find himself surrounded by chaos. As you say, in the eternal recurrence scenario there should be far far more of the later than of the former. Okay. So, my question: If the recurrences are really eternal, then shouldn’t there be infinitely many of BOTH types of observers? Countably infinite? And aren’t all countably infinite sets of equal size? So in an infinite amount of time we would accumulate one countably infinite set of our type of observer. And over that same amount of time we’d could also accumulate another countably infinite set of the “Boltzmann Brain” type of observer. The two sets would be of the same size…countably infinite. Right? So probabilistic reasoning wouldn’t apply here, would it? Especially not in a “block” universe where we don’t even have to wait for an infinite amount of time to pass. AND, here was his reply: Sean Says: January 27th, 2010 at 9:49 am Rex, this is certainly a good problem, related to the “measure” issue that cosmologists are always talking about. Yes, in an eternal universe there are countably infinite numbers of “ordinary” observers and freak (thermal-fluctuation) observers. But the frequency of the latter — the average number in any particular length of time — is much larger. We generally assume that this is enough to calculate probabilities, although it’s hardly an airtight principle. Seems like a good answer to me. Suppose there were infinitely many rolls of a die (which frequentist statisticians assume all the time). The fact that the number of 1s would be countably infinite and the number of not-1s would be countably infinite would change the fact that the not-1s are five times more probable. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 4:02 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 5/1/2010 12:25 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: This argument is not definitive mainly because we don't have a definitive theory of consciousness, but to the extent we assume a physical basis for consciousness it seems pretty good. Ha! As long as you assume there is no problem of consciousness, then there's no problem! That is pretty good. So you do have a theory of consciousness in which we can have timeless thoughts? I'll go with Kant. Time is an aspect of consciousness, not something that exists independently of conscious experience. So one possibility is that the universe exists and causes our conscious experience...that our conscious experience is an aspect of the physical world. But what stops us from reversing that and saying that our consciousnesses exist and the physical world is just an aspect of that conscious experience? How do you justify accepting the former while rejecting the latter? I accept the latter and reject the former because I don't see what introducing the physical world as something prior to and independent of consciousness buys us in our attempts to explain our orderly conscious experiences. If it is intended to explain the order and consistency of our experiences, then what explains the physical world's order and consistency? It seems to me that we've just changed the question, not answered it. And in the process introduced the additional question of how consciousness arises from matter. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On 5/1/2010 2:40 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 4:02 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 5/1/2010 12:25 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: This argument is not definitive mainly because we don't have a definitive theory of consciousness, but to the extent we assume a physical basis for consciousness it seems pretty good. Ha! As long as you assume there is no problem of consciousness, then there's no problem! That is pretty good. So you do have a theory of consciousness in which we can have timeless thoughts? I'll go with Kant. Time is an aspect of consciousness, not something that exists independently of conscious experience. So one possibility is that the universe exists and causes our conscious experience...that our conscious experience is an aspect of the physical world. But what stops us from reversing that and saying that our consciousnesses exist and the physical world is just an aspect of that conscious experience? How do you justify accepting the former while rejecting the latter? I accept the latter and reject the former because I don't see what introducing the physical world as something prior to and independent of consciousness buys us in our attempts to explain our orderly conscious experiences. If it is intended to explain the order and consistency of our experiences, then what explains the physical world's order and consistency? It seems to me that we've just changed the question, not answered it. And in the process introduced the additional question of how consciousness arises from matter. Fine. You solve all problems by postulating that your consciousness is fundamental, it just IS, and for some unknowable reason it is a sequence of experiences which happen to correspond to living in an orderly and time directed universe. And do you believe this sequence will persist in producing orderly and consistent experiences? When hungry do you still expect that eating will assuage it? Do you imagine you are discussing this question with someone named Brent? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Seems like a good answer to me. Suppose there were infinitely many rolls of a die (which frequentist statisticians assume all the time). The fact that the number of 1s would be countably infinite and the number of not-1s would be countably infinite would change the fact that the not-1s are five times more probable. So let's say that we have an infinitely long array of identically sized squares. Inside each square a single number is written, from 1 to 6. First let's say that the numbered squares just repeat: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...over and over, infinitely many times. Now, we randomly throw a dart at this infinitely long row of squares. Should we expect to hit a 1, or not-1? Not-1, right? Because we have extra information about the internal structure of the infinitely long row. The dart has to hit in some finite space, and the layout of the numbers in the squares for any given finite space is known. So the probability of hitting a 1 is 1 in 6. NOW. Let's say the ordering of the numbers in the squares is completely random. We've lost information here. When we throw the dart at the row, we have no idea what numbers will be in the randomly selected finite area we aim towards. In an infinite sequence, any given finite sequence will appear infinitely often...so there are stretches as large as you want to specify that contain only 1s or only not-1s. Further more, as you say, the 1's and not-1's can be put into a one-to-one correspondence...both sets are countably infinite. There are as many 1's as not-1's. And there are as many 2's as not-2's and so on. So, we lost a lot of information there when we abandoned the strictly repeating structure. Before we lost that information, we could safely say that the probability of hitting a 1 was 1 in 6...but after losing that information surely we can't say anything at all about the probability of hitting a 1 with our dart. Whereas the interpretation of quantum mechanics has only been puzzling us for ∼75 years, the interpretation of probability has been doing so for more than 300 years [16, 17]. Poincare [18] (p. 186) described probability as an obscure instinct. In the century that has elapsed since then philosophers have worked hard to lessen the obscurity. However, the result has not been to arrive at any consensus. Instead, we have a number of competing schools (for an overview see Gillies [19], von Plato [20], Sklar [21, 22] and Guttman [23]). (http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0402/0402015v1.pdf) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On 5/1/2010 3:17 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Seems like a good answer to me. Suppose there were infinitely many rolls of a die (which frequentist statisticians assume all the time). The fact that the number of 1s would be countably infinite and the number of not-1s would be countably infinite would change the fact that the not-1s are five times more probable. So let's say that we have an infinitely long array of identically sized squares. Inside each square a single number is written, from 1 to 6. First let's say that the numbered squares just repeat: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...over and over, infinitely many times. Now, we randomly throw a dart at this infinitely long row of squares. Should we expect to hit a 1, or not-1? Not-1, right? Because we have extra information about the internal structure of the infinitely long row. The dart has to hit in some finite space, and the layout of the numbers in the squares for any given finite space is known. So the probability of hitting a 1 is 1 in 6. NOW. Let's say the ordering of the numbers in the squares is completely random. We've lost information here. When we throw the dart at the row, we have no idea what numbers will be in the randomly selected finite area we aim towards. In an infinite sequence, any given finite sequence will appear infinitely often...so there are stretches as large as you want to specify that contain only 1s or only not-1s. Further more, as you say, the 1's and not-1's can be put into a one-to-one correspondence...both sets are countably infinite. There are as many 1's as not-1's. And there are as many 2's as not-2's and so on. So, we lost a lot of information there when we abandoned the strictly repeating structure. Before we lost that information, we could safely say that the probability of hitting a 1 was 1 in 6...but after losing that information surely we can't say anything at all about the probability of hitting a 1 with our dart. Sure we can, because part of the meaning of random, the very thing that lost us the information, includes each square having the same measure for being one of the numbers. If, for example, we said let all the 1s come first - in which case we can't hit any not-1s, that would be inconsistent with saying we didn't have any information. Whereas the interpretation of quantum mechanics has only been puzzling us for ∼75 years, the interpretation of probability has been doing so for more than 300 years [16, 17]. Poincare [18] (p. 186) described probability as an obscure instinct. In the century that has elapsed since then philosophers have worked hard to lessen the obscurity. However, the result has not been to arrive at any consensus. Instead, we have a number of competing schools (for an overview see Gillies [19], von Plato [20], Sklar [21, 22] and Guttman [23]). (http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0402/0402015v1.pdf) My personal view is the probability is a mathematical tool something like linear algebra. It's useful precisely because it has different interpretations. Here's the introductory paragraph I wrote for a course for engineers I taught years ago. If you'd like can send you the rest of the hand-out off-line: Probability has several different meanings and philosophers argue over them as if one must settle on the /*real*/ meaning. But this is a mistake. Just like “cost” or “energy”, “probability” is useful precisely because the same value has different interpretations. There are four interpretations that commonly come up. 1. It has a mathematical definition that lets us manipulate it and draw inferences. 2. It has a physical interpretation as a symmetry. 3. It quantifies a degree of belief that tells us whether to act on it. 4. It has an empirical meaning that lets us measure it. The usefulness of probability is that we can start with one of these, we can then manipulate it mathematically, and then interpret the result in one of the other ways. For example, you might observe that dice are perfectly cubical and uniform and so by (2) each face should be equally probable, i.e. P=1/6. Then you could calculate, using (1), that there are three ways of rolling a 4, . .:, : :, and .: . , out of a total of 36 possible outcomes. So the probability of a 4 on a throw is 3/36=1/12. Which tells you to only bet (3) on making a point of 4 at 12-to-1 or better odds. If you watch many game of craps and tally the results, you can approximately confirm the relative fraction of times 4 comes up (4). Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at
Re: The past hypothesis
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 5:47 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Fine. You solve all problems by postulating that your consciousness is fundamental, it just IS, I don't solve all problems. I only solve all metaphysical problems. But isn't that what physicalists attempt to do by postulating a physical universe? and for some unknowable reason it is a sequence of experiences which happen to correspond to living in an orderly and time directed universe. The reason isn't unknowable. There is no reason. Period. Full stop. This is in comparison to the two physicalist alternatives available to explain *actually* living in an orderly and time directed universe: 1) There was a first cause that led to our orderly universe, but that cause was itself *uncaused*. 2) There's an infinite chain of prior causes that led to our current orderly universe. Option 1 is not significantly different from my proposal. It just adds this extra physical component that in some way underlies the conscious experience that we all know and love. Option 2 is...also not significantly different. There is no finite knowable reason for our orderly universe's existence. And this also raises the further question of why our infinite causal chain instead of some other? And if you have an answer, then why that answer instead of some other? So not only does option 2 lead to an infinite causal chain - it also requires an infinite chain of infinite chains of reasons to explain why *our* infinite causal chain exists instead of some other infinite causal chain. If you ever stop and say because that's just the way it is, then you collapse back into option 1. Right? And do you believe this sequence will persist in producing orderly and consistent experiences? I do believe that. BUT...why do I believe it? Well, ultimately, there is no reason I believe it. I just do. Do you believe it? And if so, why? I would expect an honest physicalist to say that he believed it because, given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, it could not be otherwise. He has no *choice* except to believe it. To not believe it would require different initial conditions, or different causal laws. Do you imagine you are discussing this question with someone named Brent? I go back and forth on whether I believe this. I certainly believe that there is a Brent out there somewhere who is experiencing the flip side of this conversation, but not necessarily that there is any causal connection between us. And I certainly don't believe that either of us has any choice in the path the discussion takes. What would causality amount to in an Einstein-style static block universe? If it turned out that 4-dimensionalism was correct, what would it mean to say that you and I are discussing this question? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On 5/1/2010 4:54 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 5:47 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Fine. You solve all problems by postulating that your consciousness is fundamental, it just IS, I don't solve all problems. I only solve all metaphysical problems. But isn't that what physicalists attempt to do by postulating a physical universe? and for some unknowable reason it is a sequence of experiences which happen to correspond to living in an orderly and time directed universe. The reason isn't unknowable. There is no reason. Period. Full stop. This is in comparison to the two physicalist alternatives available to explain *actually* living in an orderly and time directed universe: 1) There was a first cause that led to our orderly universe, but that cause was itself *uncaused*. 2) There's an infinite chain of prior causes that led to our current orderly universe. Option 1 is not significantly different from my proposal. It just adds this extra physical component that in some way underlies the conscious experience that we all know and love. Option 2 is...also not significantly different. There is no finite knowable reason for our orderly universe's existence. And this also raises the further question of why our infinite causal chain instead of some other? And if you have an answer, then why that answer instead of some other? So not only does option 2 lead to an infinite causal chain - it also requires an infinite chain of infinite chains of reasons to explain why *our* infinite causal chain exists instead of some other infinite causal chain. If you ever stop and say because that's just the way it is, then you collapse back into option 1. Right? And do you believe this sequence will persist in producing orderly and consistent experiences? I do believe that. BUT...why do I believe it? Well, ultimately, there is no reason I believe it. I just do. Then why don't you believe that a physical universe is a good explanatory model for it? Or do you believe that and you're just playing at not believing it? Do you believe it? And if so, why? I would expect an honest physicalist to say that he believed it because, given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, it could not be otherwise. That's a particular model. It's not why one believes the model. Actually an honest physicist or engineer never *believes* a model - he entertains it, he uses it, he considers it. He prefers one to another because it predicts more of his experience or is more accurate in those predictions. He only believes it in the practical sense that if acting he will act as if it's true. But I'm not sure where that leaves you. You started with the Boltzmann Brain argument that our thoughts are probably mistaken. But that probably depended on a certain model universes and how they work. And it implied that having thoughts is already extremely improbable. So if you have thoughts - and you must since you take consciousness as fundamental - then that already implies something about the world, i.e. it is not timeless since thoughts have duration. So if you don't adopt solipism, if you assume there is some world outside the flow of your thoughts to which they refer, then a model of that world needs to include time, both duration and direction. He has no *choice* except to believe it. To not believe it would require different initial conditions, or different causal laws. I thought you were not believing it because there were no initial conditions or causal laws or universe. It's all what a physicalist would call an illusion - i.e. a seemingly coherent series of experiences that do not refer to anything but just are. But then you seem to switch viewpoints and want to use the consistency of a solipist know-nothing position to argue about which universes might exist?? You seem like the man who wrote to Bertrand Russell, There is no way to refute solipism. I don't know why more people don't believe it. Brent Do you imagine you are discussing this question with someone named Brent? I go back and forth on whether I believe this. I certainly believe that there is a Brent out there somewhere who is experiencing the flip side of this conversation, but not necessarily that there is any causal connection between us. And I certainly don't believe that either of us has any choice in the path the discussion takes. What would causality amount to in an Einstein-style static block universe? If it turned out that 4-dimensionalism was correct, what would it mean to say that you and I are discussing this question? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
Re: The past hypothesis
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 7:37 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Sure we can, because part of the meaning of random, the very thing that lost us the information, includes each square having the same measure for being one of the numbers. If, for example, we said let all the 1s come first - in which case we can't hit any not-1s, that would be inconsistent with saying we didn't have any information. We have two things here. Random. And infinite. Three things actually. My random aim. An infinite row of squares. And each square's randomly assigned number lying between 1 and 6. If, due to the nature of infinity, there are the same number of 1's and not-1's, then I'd expect the probability of hitting a 1 to be 50-50. But, there are also the same number of 1's and even numbers. And the same number of evens and odds. And the same number of 1's and 2's. And the same number of 2's and not-2's. AND...I have the *random* aim of the dart that I'm throwing at the row. So it's not a question of saying which number is likely to be next in a sequence. Rather, the question is which number am I likely to hit on this infinite row of squares. SO, I think we have zero information that we can use to base our probability calculation on. Because of the counting issues introduced by the infinity combined with the lack of pattern. There is no usable information. All we can say for sure is that we won't ever hit a 7. Ha! We could say something about the probability in the case where the numbers followed a repeating pattern. There we only had one random variable...my aim. And we had definite information...the repeating pattern. Actually the infinite aspect in that case didn't add anything. So, I think the eternal recurrence Boltzmann brain scenario is more similar to the random aim at an infinite grid of randomly arranged numbers. My personal view is the probability is a mathematical tool something like linear algebra. It's useful precisely because it has different interpretations. Here's the introductory paragraph I wrote for a course for engineers I taught years ago. If you'd like can send you the rest of the hand-out off-line: By all means, send it my way! I'll give it a gander. More information is better! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: I think you've got the argument wrong. I think you're wrong about my getting the argument wrong. :) I suppose it depends what you mean by the argument. It is possible you could find *some* mainstream scientist who seriously considers the possibility that all our historical records of a low-entropy past are wrong or that we are actually Boltzmann brains with false memories, but for any of the physicists I have read who have brought up these ideas, like Sean Carroll and Brian Greene, it is completely clear to me that they only consider these to be reductio ad absurdum arguments, not that they actually think these are likely to be true. If you disagree, I suggest you haven't actually read these authors very carefully, or haven't really understood what you read. Carroll discusses this in his book From Eternity to Here From Eternity To Here, Pg. 182 (my comments follow the quote): Cognitive Instability I know from experience that not everyone is convinced by this argument. One stumbling block is the crucial assertion that what we start with is knowledge of our present macrostate, including some small-scale details about a photograph or a history book or a memory lurking in our brains. Although it seems like a fairly innocent assumption, we have an intuitive feeling that we don't know something only about the present; we *know* something about the past, because we see it, in a way that we don't see the future. Cosmology is a good example, just because the speed of light plays an important role, and we have a palpable sense of looking at an event in the past. When we try to reconstruct the history of the universe it's tempting to look at (for example) the cosmic microwave background and say, I can *see* what the universe was like almost 14 billion years ago; I don't have to appeal to any fancy Past Hypothesis to reason my way into drawing any conclusions. That's not right. When we look at the cosmic microwave background (or light from any other distant source, or a photograph of any purported past event), we're not looking at the past. We're observing what certain photons are doing right here and now. When we scan our radio telescope across the sky and observe a bath of radiation at about 2.7 Kelvin that is very close to uniform in every direction, we've learned something about the radiation passing through our *present* location, which we then need to extrapolate backward to infer something about the past. It's conceivable that this uniform radiation came from a past that was actually highly non-uniform, but from which a set of finely tuned conspiracies between temperatures and Doppler shifts and gravitational effects produced a very smooth-looking set of photons arriving at us today. You may say that's very unlikely, but the time-reverse of that is exactly what we would expect if we took a typical microstate within our present macrostate and evolved it toward a Big Crunch. The truth is, we don't have any more direct empirical access to the past than we have to the future, unless we allow ourselves to assume a Past Hypothesis. Indeed, the Past Hypothesis is more than just allowed; it's completely necessary, if we hope to tell a sensible story about the universe. Imagine that we simply refused to invoke such an idea and stuck solely with the data given to us by our current macrostate, including the state of our brains and our photographs and our history books. We would then predict with strong probability that the past as well as the future was a high-entropy state, and that all of the low-entropy features of our present condition arose as random fluctuations. That sounds bad enough, but the reality is worse. Under such circumstances, among the things that randomly fluctuated into existence are all of the pieces of information we traditionally use to justify our understanding of the laws of physics, or for that matter all of the mental states (or written-down arguments) we traditionally use to justify mathematics and logic and the scientific method. Such assumptions, in other words, give us absolutely no reason to believe that we have justified anything, including those assumptions themselves. David Albert has referred to such a conundrum as *cognitive instability* - the condition that we face when a set of assumptions undermines the reasons we might have used to justify those very assumptions. It is a kind of helplessness that can't be escaped without reaching beyond the present moment. Without the Past Hypothesis, we simply can't tell any intelligible story about the world; so we seem to be stuck with it, or stuck with trying to find a theory that actually explains it. Did you actually read the whole book? If you did, I don't see how you can have missed the fact
Re: The past hypothesis
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 11:24 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: But if the universe arose from a quantum fluctuation, it would necessarily start with very low entropy since it would not be big enough to encode more than one or two bits at the Planck scale. If one universe can start that way then arbitrarily many can. So then it is no longer clear that the evolved brain is less probable than the Boltzmann brain. I asked Sean about the application of probability to the Boltzmann brain scenario on his blog: So, in chapter 10 you rule out the possibility of the eternal recurrence scenario based on the low probability of an observer of our type (human) being surrounded by a non-equilibrium visible universe compared to the probability being a “boltzmann brain” human observer who pops into existence to find himself surrounded by chaos. As you say, in the eternal recurrence scenario there should be far far more of the later than of the former. Okay. So, my question: If the recurrences are really eternal, then shouldn’t there be infinitely many of BOTH types of observers? Countably infinite? And aren’t all countably infinite sets of equal size? So in an infinite amount of time we would accumulate one countably infinite set of our type of observer. And over that same amount of time we’d could also accumulate another countably infinite set of the “Boltzmann Brain” type of observer. The two sets would be of the same size…countably infinite. Right? So probabilistic reasoning wouldn’t apply here, would it? Especially not in a “block” universe where we don’t even have to wait for an infinite amount of time to pass. AND, here was his reply: Sean Says: January 27th, 2010 at 9:49 am Rex, this is certainly a good problem, related to the “measure” issue that cosmologists are always talking about. Yes, in an eternal universe there are countably infinite numbers of “ordinary” observers and freak (thermal-fluctuation) observers. But the frequency of the latter — the average number in any particular length of time — is much larger. We generally assume that this is enough to calculate probabilities, although it’s hardly an airtight principle. And he says something similar in the book, but adds that he thinks it's plausible that ordinary observers in the early low-entropy growth of baby universes will be more probable than Boltzmann brains with false memories. From pages 363-364: 'This version of the multiverse will feature both isolated Boltzmann brains lurking in the empty de Sitter regions, and ordinary observers found in the aftermath of the low-entropy beginnings of the baby universes. Indeed, there should be an infinite number of both types. So which infinity wins? The kinds of fluctuations that create freak observers in an equilibrium background are certainly rare, but the kinds of fluctuations that create baby universes are also very rare. It's not enough to draw fun pictures of universes branching off in both directions of time; we need to understand things at a quantitative level well enough to make reliable predictions. The state of the art, I have to admit, isn't up to that task just yet. But it's certainly plausible that a lot more observers arise as the baby universes grow and cool toward equilibrium than come about through random fluctuations in empty space.' Jesse -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 8:23 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: And do you believe this sequence will persist in producing orderly and consistent experiences? I do believe that. BUT...why do I believe it? Well, ultimately, there is no reason I believe it. I just do. Then why don't you believe that a physical universe is a good explanatory model for it? Or do you believe that and you're just playing at not believing it? It seems like I've explained my position on this before: because I don't see what introducing the physical world as something prior to and independent of consciousness buys us in our attempts to explain our orderly conscious experiences. If it is intended to explain the order and consistency of our experiences, then what explains the physical world's order and consistency? It seems to me that we've just changed the question, not answered it. And in the process introduced the additional question of how consciousness arises from matter. Kant was on the right track generally I think. If you drop the noumena. At least that's the description of the experience of my thought processes on this topic. I would expect an honest physicalist to say that he believed it because, given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, it could not be otherwise. That's a particular model. It's not why one believes the model. Actually an honest physicist or engineer never *believes* a model - he entertains it, he uses it, he considers it. He prefers one to another because it predicts more of his experience or is more accurate in those predictions. He only believes it in the practical sense that if acting he will act as if it's true. I'm fine with that as a practical guide to life and ramjet design. However, surely there must be some fact of the matter as to what exists and how things really are. And surely you have some belief about that. In fact, as I recall, you said that you believe that a physical world exists and that it is indeterministic. You often return to this usefulness point...but, in these discussions at least, I'm not really interested in engineering principles and guidelines. The question isn't what's useful. The question is what's true...and more specifically, what do you believe is true, and why. But I'm not sure where that leaves you. You started with the Boltzmann Brain argument that our thoughts are probably mistaken. But that probably depended on a certain model universes and how they work. And it implied that having thoughts is already extremely improbable. So if you have thoughts - and you must since you take consciousness as fundamental - then that already implies something about the world, i.e. it is not timeless since thoughts have duration. So if you don't adopt solipism, if you assume there is some world outside the flow of your thoughts to which they refer, then a model of that world needs to include time, both duration and direction. Just like there is no red in the world (in the sense that I experience it), there is no time in the world (in the sense that I experience it). Time is like red. Both only exist as aspects of experience. The world is all surface, all appearance. Like a movie. No depth. I would expect an honest physicalist to say that he believed it because, given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, it could not be otherwise. He has no *choice* except to believe it. To not believe it would require different initial conditions, or different causal laws. I thought you were not believing it because there were no initial conditions or causal laws or universe. It's all what a physicalist would call an illusion - i.e. a seemingly coherent series of experiences that do not refer to anything but just are. But then you seem to switch viewpoints and want to use the consistency of a solipist know-nothing position to argue about which universes might exist?? I'm not switching positions, I'm saying that the honest physicalist should believe that his beliefs are determined only by the initial conditions and causal laws of the universe. The two paragraphs went together. The second was a continuation of the first. You treated them separately. Of course, I also believe that I have no choice about my beliefs. But I don't attribute this lack of choice to initial conditions plus causal laws. I don't attribute it to anything. There is no process or mechanism that gave rise to my beliefs. They just exist as aspects of my conscious experience. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at
Re: The past hypothesis
On 5/1/2010 6:15 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 8:23 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: And do you believe this sequence will persist in producing orderly and consistent experiences? I do believe that. BUT...why do I believe it? Well, ultimately, there is no reason I believe it. I just do. Then why don't you believe that a physical universe is a good explanatory model for it? Or do you believe that and you're just playing at not believing it? It seems like I've explained my position on this before: because I don't see what introducing the physical world as something prior to and independent of consciousness buys us in our attempts to explain our orderly conscious experiences. If it is intended to explain the order and consistency of our experiences, then what explains the physical world's order and consistency? It seems to me that we've just changed the question, not answered it. And in the process introduced the additional question of how consciousness arises from matter. Kant was on the right track generally I think. If you drop the noumena. At least that's the description of the experience of my thought processes on this topic. I would expect an honest physicalist to say that he believed it because, given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, it could not be otherwise. That's a particular model. It's not why one believes the model. Actually an honest physicist or engineer never *believes* a model - he entertains it, he uses it, he considers it. He prefers one to another because it predicts more of his experience or is more accurate in those predictions. He only believes it in the practical sense that if acting he will act as if it's true. I'm fine with that as a practical guide to life and ramjet design. However, surely there must be some fact of the matter as to what exists and how things really are. And surely you have some belief about that. In fact, as I recall, you said that you believe that a physical world exists and that it is indeterministic. You often return to this usefulness point...but, in these discussions at least, I'm not really interested in engineering principles and guidelines. The question isn't what's useful. The question is what's true...and more specifically, what do you believe is true, and why. That's assuming I believe some things are true in some absolute sense unrelated to usefulness. I don't. I don't deny that there may be such things or that it is useful to postulate (i.e. assign the value true for purposes of logical inference) such things. But apparently you're asking about some other kind of believe. Maybe you can explain what you mean by believe and true. But I'm not sure where that leaves you. You started with the Boltzmann Brain argument that our thoughts are probably mistaken. But that probably depended on a certain model universes and how they work. And it implied that having thoughts is already extremely improbable. So if you have thoughts - and you must since you take consciousness as fundamental - then that already implies something about the world, i.e. it is not timeless since thoughts have duration. So if you don't adopt solipism, if you assume there is some world outside the flow of your thoughts to which they refer, then a model of that world needs to include time, both duration and direction. Just like there is no red in the world (in the sense that I experience it), there is no time in the world (in the sense that I experience it). Time is like red. Both only exist as aspects of experience. But (according to you) that is the only way anything exists. So time and red exist if exist has any meaning at all. If it doesn't then you might as well be saying, BarLLfeg% (I'm assuming that's NOT the name of a volcano in Iceland). The world is all surface, all appearance. Like a movie. No depth. How do you know that? Sounds to me like just another model - but a useless one. I would expect an honest physicalist to say that he believed it because, given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, it could not be otherwise. He has no *choice* except to believe it. To not believe it would require different initial conditions, or different causal laws. I thought you were not believing it because there were no initial conditions or causal laws or universe. It's all what a physicalist would call an illusion - i.e. a seemingly coherent series of experiences that do not refer to anything but just are. But then you seem to switch viewpoints and want to use the consistency of a solipist know-nothing position to argue about which universes might exist?? I'm not switching positions, I'm saying that the honest physicalist should believe that his
Re: The past hypothesis
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 8:40 PM, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: I think you've got the argument wrong. I think you're wrong about my getting the argument wrong. :) I suppose it depends what you mean by the argument. It is possible you could find *some* mainstream scientist who seriously considers the possibility that all our historical records of a low-entropy past are wrong or that we are actually Boltzmann brains with false memories, but for any of the physicists I have read who have brought up these ideas, like Sean Carroll and Brian Greene, it is completely clear to me that they only consider these to be reductio ad absurdum arguments, not that they actually think these are likely to be true. If you disagree, I suggest you haven't actually read these authors very carefully, or haven't really understood what you read. Well, I think the passage I quoted pretty much stands on it's own. Without the extra assumption of the Past Hypothesis, the data we have available leads to a conclusion that isn't cognitively stable when combined with the assumption of physicalism. I would take this as a reductio ad absurdum argument against physicalism. The eternal recurrence problem is a related, but not identical, problem than the issue introduced by the principle of indifference. Here Sean invokes probabilistic reasoning on infinite sets, which Brent and I are still discussing. Though I just noticed that we accidently wandered off the main list into a private email exchange. Oops. Anyway. Onwards: Then on p. 223 he explains in more detail why we can be confident we aren't Boltzmann brains: because the level of order we experience is far greater than what the vast majority of possible Boltzmann brains should be predicted to experience (though he does bring up the possibility that our experience of an orderly environment could just be a hallucination). This was one of the points of my The 'no miracles' argument against scientific realism thread...which died an untimely death. So how does he rule out this hallucination possibility? Or the Boltzmann brain simulator possibility? What facts do we have about the nature of reality that rules it out? Another extra assumption. The we can trust our observations, even though our observations imply that we can't trust our observations hypothesis. Quoting the book, page 363: This version of the multiverse will feature both isolated Boltzmann brains lurking in the empty de Sitter regions, and ordinary observers found in the aftermath of the low-entropy beginnings of the baby universes. Indeed, there will be an infinite number of both types. So which infinity wins? The kinds of fluctuations that create freak observers in an equilibrium background are certainly rare, but the kinds of fluctuations that create baby universes are also very rare. Ultimately it's not enough to daw fun pictures of universes branching off in both directions of time; we need to understand things at a quantitative level well enough to make reliable predictions. The state of the art, I have to admit, isn't up to that task just yet. But it's certainly plausible that a lot more observers arise as the baby universes grow and cool toward equilibrium than come about through random fluctuations in empty space. SO. I think it's significant that *even with* all of his auxiliary hypothesis, he still judges it likely that Boltzmann brains do exist. And in such numbers that it's not clear whether they are more or less common than normal observers. BUT these things all inevitably lead to more questions. There seem to be only two possible final answers: 1) Everything exists. 2) Reality is essentially arbitrary. There is no reason why existence is this way as opposed to some other way. It just is. Even if everything exists, there is still the possibility of some definite probability distribution on this everything--either a probability distribution on all possible universes/computations/mathematical structures, or a probability distribution on all possible observer-moments. It's quite possible that the probability distribution would be such that observers who had *true* memories of a low-entropy past would be much more common than random Boltzmann brains with no memories or false memories. Isn't it also quite possible that the opposite is true? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 11:07 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 8:40 PM, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: I think you've got the argument wrong. I think you're wrong about my getting the argument wrong. :) I suppose it depends what you mean by the argument. It is possible you could find *some* mainstream scientist who seriously considers the possibility that all our historical records of a low-entropy past are wrong or that we are actually Boltzmann brains with false memories, but for any of the physicists I have read who have brought up these ideas, like Sean Carroll and Brian Greene, it is completely clear to me that they only consider these to be reductio ad absurdum arguments, not that they actually think these are likely to be true. If you disagree, I suggest you haven't actually read these authors very carefully, or haven't really understood what you read. Well, I think the passage I quoted pretty much stands on it's own. Without the extra assumption of the Past Hypothesis, the data we have available leads to a conclusion that isn't cognitively stable when combined with the assumption of physicalism. I would take this as a reductio ad absurdum argument against physicalism. Physicalism is much too vague--we can imagine a wide variety of *possible* laws of physics, including ones where the universe would be predicted to maintain a consistent low entropy (I think the old Steady State cosmology would be an example, with new low-entropy matter and energy being continually created in empty space). Carroll's reductio ad absurdum relied on more specific features of the laws of physics in *our* universe, like time-symmetry. But if we're talking about the laws of physics in our universe, it's not as if we already know that these laws would naturally lead us to predict Boltzmann brains would be more common than ordinary observers and so we have to tack on the Past Hypothesis as an extra assumption. The point is that since we don't yet know the ultimate laws of physics, we can't yet calculate a probability distribution for histories of the universe/multiverse that would allow us to decide whether ordinary observers are likely to be more common than Boltzmann brains or vice versa. The Past Hypothesis basically amounts to the idea that if we *did* know these ultimate laws, they would indeed imply that in an average history of the universe/multiverse, ordinary observers will be more common than Boltzmann brains. And Carroll proposes a specific way the laws of physics might work that could make this plausible. The eternal recurrence problem is a related, but not identical, problem than the issue introduced by the principle of indifference. Here Sean invokes probabilistic reasoning on infinite sets, which Brent and I are still discussing. Though I just noticed that we accidently wandered off the main list into a private email exchange. Oops. Anyway. Onwards: Then on p. 223 he explains in more detail why we can be confident we aren't Boltzmann brains: because the level of order we experience is far greater than what the vast majority of possible Boltzmann brains should be predicted to experience (though he does bring up the possibility that our experience of an orderly environment could just be a hallucination). This was one of the points of my The 'no miracles' argument against scientific realism thread...which died an untimely death. So how does he rule out this hallucination possibility? Or the Boltzmann brain simulator possibility? What facts do we have about the nature of reality that rules it out? Another extra assumption. The we can trust our observations, even though our observations imply that we can't trust our observations hypothesis. He doesn't specifically address the hallucination possibility, but I think one could naturally extend his argument to deal with it. His initial argument assumes that a Boltzmann brain would have a properly-functioning sensory system, and that it would be overwhelmingly likely that such a brain would perceive high-entropy surroundings rather than low-entropy surroundings...so, the fact that we *do* see low-entropy surroundings can itself be seen as a falsification of the Boltzmann-brain-with-functional-sensory-system hypothesis. It is true that a Boltzmann brain in high-entropy surroundings might not have a functional sensory system and might instead hallucinate a low-entropy world. But I'd argue that if we consider all possible arrangements of a set of particles that would be sufficiently brainlike to be conscious, we should expect the average observer produced by a random fluctuation would have an arrangement with the *bare minimum* of order needed for consciousness, which I think would
The past hypothesis
Probably most of you are familiar with this already, BUT, just in case anyone has any interesting comments... If physicalism is true, your memories are almost certainly false. Consider: Entropy is a measure of the disorder of a system. The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder. If a deck of cards is ordered by suit and then within each suit by ascending rank, then that’s a low entropy state. This is because out of the 8.06 * 10 to the 67th (52!) possible unique arrangements of the cards in a standard 52 card deck, there’s only 24 that fit that particular description. A “random looking” arrangement of the deck is a high entropy state, because there are trillions of unique arrangements of a standard 52 card deck that will fit the description of looking “randomly shuffled”. Same with the egg. There are (relatively) few ways to arrange the molecules of an egg that will result in it looking unbroken, compared to the huge number of ways that will result in it looking broken. SO, unbroken egg…low entropy. Broken egg…high entropy. AND the same with the universe…there are (again, relatively) few ways to arrange the atoms of the universe in a way that makes it resemble what we see with people and trees and planets and stars and galaxies, compared with the gargantuan number of ways to arrange things so that it resembles a generic looking cloud of dust. OKAY. Now. Of the relatively few ways that the elementary particles of the universe can be arranged so as to resemble what we see around us today, only a tiny fraction of those particle arrangements will have values for momentum and position that are consistent with them having arrived at that state 13.7 billion years after something like the Big Bang. The vast majority of the particle arrangements that macroscopically resemble the world around us will *instead* have particles in states (e.g., with positions and velocities) that are consistent with the particles having previously been in something more like a giant dust cloud. By which I mean: If we take their current positions and velocities, and work backwards to see where they came from, and go back far enough in time, eventually we will not arrive at the Big Bang. Instead we will arrive at a state resembling a giant dust cloud (probably a very thin, spread-out dust cloud). SO, bottom line: Out of all the possible configurations that the universe could be in, ones that have people, and planets, and stars, and galaxies are extremely rare. Further, even if we then only consider those extremely rare possible configurations that have people, and planets, and stars, and galaxies – the ones with particles in states (e.g., with positions and velocities) that are consistent with having arrived at this configuration 13.7 billion years after something like the Big Bang are STILL rare. We don’t know the exact state of our universe’s particles, but in statistical mechanics the Principle of Indifference requires us to consider all possible microscopic states that are consistent with our current macroscopic state equally likely. So given all of the above, and our current knowledge of the laws of physics, the most likely explanation is that all of your current memories are false and that yesterday the universe was in a HIGHER state of entropy, not a lower state (as would be required by any variation of the Big Bang theory). Physical systems with low states of entropy are very rare, by definition. So it’s very improbable (but not impossible) that the unlikely low entropy state of the universe of today is the result of having evolved from an EVEN MORE UNLIKELY lower entropy universe that existed yesterday. Instead, statistically it’s overwhelmingly more probable that the unlikely low entropy state of the universe today is the result of a random fluctuation from a HIGHER entropy universe that existed yesterday. And thus your memories of a lower entropy yesterday are most likely due to this random fluctuation, not due to yesterday actually having had a lower entropy than today. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The past hypothesis
On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 9:53 PM, rexallen...@gmail.com rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: Probably most of you are familiar with this already, BUT, just in case anyone has any interesting comments... If physicalism is true, your memories are almost certainly false. Consider: Entropy is a measure of the disorder of a system. The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder. If a deck of cards is ordered by suit and then within each suit by ascending rank, then that’s a low entropy state. This is because out of the 8.06 * 10 to the 67th (52!) possible unique arrangements of the cards in a standard 52 card deck, there’s only 24 that fit that particular description. A “random looking” arrangement of the deck is a high entropy state, because there are trillions of unique arrangements of a standard 52 card deck that will fit the description of looking “randomly shuffled”. Same with the egg. There are (relatively) few ways to arrange the molecules of an egg that will result in it looking unbroken, compared to the huge number of ways that will result in it looking broken. SO, unbroken egg…low entropy. Broken egg…high entropy. AND the same with the universe…there are (again, relatively) few ways to arrange the atoms of the universe in a way that makes it resemble what we see with people and trees and planets and stars and galaxies, compared with the gargantuan number of ways to arrange things so that it resembles a generic looking cloud of dust. OKAY. Now. Of the relatively few ways that the elementary particles of the universe can be arranged so as to resemble what we see around us today, only a tiny fraction of those particle arrangements will have values for momentum and position that are consistent with them having arrived at that state 13.7 billion years after something like the Big Bang. The vast majority of the particle arrangements that macroscopically resemble the world around us will *instead* have particles in states (e.g., with positions and velocities) that are consistent with the particles having previously been in something more like a giant dust cloud. By which I mean: If we take their current positions and velocities, and work backwards to see where they came from, and go back far enough in time, eventually we will not arrive at the Big Bang. Instead we will arrive at a state resembling a giant dust cloud (probably a very thin, spread-out dust cloud). SO, bottom line: Out of all the possible configurations that the universe could be in, ones that have people, and planets, and stars, and galaxies are extremely rare. Further, even if we then only consider those extremely rare possible configurations that have people, and planets, and stars, and galaxies – the ones with particles in states (e.g., with positions and velocities) that are consistent with having arrived at this configuration 13.7 billion years after something like the Big Bang are STILL rare. We don’t know the exact state of our universe’s particles, but in statistical mechanics the Principle of Indifference requires us to consider all possible microscopic states that are consistent with our current macroscopic state equally likely. So given all of the above, and our current knowledge of the laws of physics, the most likely explanation is that all of your current memories are false and that yesterday the universe was in a HIGHER state of entropy, not a lower state (as would be required by any variation of the Big Bang theory). Physical systems with low states of entropy are very rare, by definition. So it’s very improbable (but not impossible) that the unlikely low entropy state of the universe of today is the result of having evolved from an EVEN MORE UNLIKELY lower entropy universe that existed yesterday. Instead, statistically it’s overwhelmingly more probable that the unlikely low entropy state of the universe today is the result of a random fluctuation from a HIGHER entropy universe that existed yesterday. And thus your memories of a lower entropy yesterday are most likely due to this random fluctuation, not due to yesterday actually having had a lower entropy than today. I think you've got the argument wrong. The idea is *not* that any physicists actually believe our memories are false and that the entropy was higher in the past, it's just a sort of reductio ad absurdum argument that points out you *would* be forced to this conclusion *if* you assumed there was no process that could have naturally led to a high probability that our universe would start out in low-entropy state. But in fact there is thought to be such a process: inflation, which could cause a very small region of an earlier universe (a small region which had somewhat lower entropy than average due to a random fluctuation) to expand to a very large and smooth initial state for our universe (which would be at tremendously low entropy for its size, since gravity causes
Re: The past hypothesis
On 4/29/2010 6:53 PM, rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: Probably most of you are familiar with this already, BUT, just in case anyone has any interesting comments... If physicalism is true, your memories are almost certainly false. Consider: Entropy is a measure of the disorder of a system. The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder. If a deck of cards is ordered by suit and then within each suit by ascending rank, then that’s a low entropy state. This is because out of the 8.06 * 10 to the 67th (52!) possible unique arrangements of the cards in a standard 52 card deck, there’s only 24 that fit that particular description. A “random looking” arrangement of the deck is a high entropy state, because there are trillions of unique arrangements of a standard 52 card deck that will fit the description of looking “randomly shuffled”. Same with the egg. There are (relatively) few ways to arrange the molecules of an egg that will result in it looking unbroken, compared to the huge number of ways that will result in it looking broken. SO, unbroken egg…low entropy. Broken egg…high entropy. AND the same with the universe…there are (again, relatively) few ways to arrange the atoms of the universe in a way that makes it resemble what we see with people and trees and planets and stars and galaxies, compared with the gargantuan number of ways to arrange things so that it resembles a generic looking cloud of dust. OKAY. Now. Of the relatively few ways that the elementary particles of the universe can be arranged so as to resemble what we see around us today, only a tiny fraction of those particle arrangements will have values for momentum and position that are consistent with them having arrived at that state 13.7 billion years after something like the Big Bang. The vast majority of the particle arrangements that macroscopically resemble the world around us will *instead* have particles in states (e.g., with positions and velocities) that are consistent with the particles having previously been in something more like a giant dust cloud. By which I mean: If we take their current positions and velocities, and work backwards to see where they came from, and go back far enough in time, eventually we will not arrive at the Big Bang. Instead we will arrive at a state resembling a giant dust cloud (probably a very thin, spread-out dust cloud). This isn't quite right. If the evolution of the universe is deterministic, then it's time reversible, and reversing all the momenta will take it back to it's initial state - whether that's a Big Bang or not. And even if it's not strictly deterministc or instead of reversing every particle's momentum we just reverse them roughly so that the macroscopic level momenta are reversed, then all the stuff we can see will collapse back to a reverse Big Bang - in fact that's why we think there was a Big Bang. SO, bottom line: Out of all the possible configurations that the universe could be in, ones that have people, and planets, and stars, and galaxies are extremely rare. That doesn't follow. Assuming the same laws of physics obtain and the universe is big enough, it may be that having some people and some planets a some stars etc is probable. And if the universe is spatially infinite (and it looks like it is) then all those things are inevitable in some part of the universe. Further, even if we then only consider those extremely rare possible configurations that have people, and planets, and stars, and galaxies – the ones with particles in states (e.g., with positions and velocities) that are consistent with having arrived at this configuration 13.7 billion years after something like the Big Bang are STILL rare. We don’t know the exact state of our universe’s particles, but in statistical mechanics the Principle of Indifference requires us to consider all possible microscopic states that are consistent with our current macroscopic state equally likely. So given all of the above, and our current knowledge of the laws of physics, the most likely explanation is that all of your current memories are false and that yesterday the universe was in a HIGHER state of entropy, not a lower state (as would be required by any variation of the Big Bang theory). That's true if by our current knowledge you take only the large scale state of the universe. Physical systems with low states of entropy are very rare, by definition. So it’s very improbable (but not impossible) that the unlikely low entropy state of the universe of today is the result of having evolved from an EVEN MORE UNLIKELY lower entropy universe that existed yesterday. Instead, statistically it’s overwhelmingly more probable that the unlikely low entropy state of the universe today is the result of a random fluctuation from a HIGHER entropy universe that existed yesterday. And thus your memories of a lower entropy yesterday are most likely due to this random fluctuation, not due to
