Re: relevant probability distribution
On 15 Jun 2002, at 14:27, Russell Standish wrote: No the issue concerns any conscious program, rather than any particular one. The fact that there are vastly more amoeba than homo sapiens tends to argue against amoebae being consious. This remind me of Jack Vance novels Alastor. One of the characters is the king that rules over a vast area of the galaxy. He likes to travel incognito among his subjects, and he often ask himself the question: There is billions of men and only one king. How is it possible that it happens that I am the king ? Do your position about this is that subjects are not conscious, only kings? From a third-person point of view (the reader of the novel), the question is simple. There is billions of subjects, and they can all ask themselves Why I am me and not someone else ?. The problem is we have only a first-person point of view on our universe (or on the everything). We must use our imagination, to do thought experiments, to get a third-person point of view. Matthieu. -- http://matthieu.walraet.free.fr
Re: relevant probability distribution
Russell wrote: I take consciousness to be that property essential for the operation of the Anthropic Principle. The universe is the way it is because we are here observing it as conscious beings. The first problem this raises is why does the anthropic principle work? - one can conceive of being immersed in a virtual reality which is totally inconsistent with our existence as conscious observers, for example. Tha must be explained by the unlikeliness of such a situation. Why would anyone simulate me living happily on the surface of Venus? They could have taken any possible person However, let us accept the AP. After all, it has passed observational test with flying colours. We should also expect that we should be an example of the most likely form of consciousness. The second problem is raises is that if ameobae are conscious, then why aren't we amoebae? There are many more amoebae on the planet than there are human beings. I can well accept that dolphins and chimpanzees (for instance) _could_ be conscious, since there are vastly greater numbers of humans around today than there are of these other species, but there is something special that we have that amoeba (or even ants, lets say) don't have. Not sure about ant nests (Hofstadter style). Anyone got a good estimate of the number of extant ant nests vis a vis human population? One possibility is that there is some kind of measure function that rates our consciousness as far more likely to be occupied than an amoeba's, however I'm personally sceptical of this. Consciousness seem to be so much of an either/or thing... I think that one should first define oneself as a particular program, and then look at where and how often that program is actually running. Amoebas are incapable of running me. Maybe artificial intelligent agents pose more of a problem. Why am I not a robot, that can copy himself as many times as he pleases? B.t.w. Ken Olum made an interesting remark in his paper in which he advocates the Self Indicating Assumption (SIA) (see arxiv.org). If universes with more observers are more likely than universes with less observers, then why don't we live in a universe in which the number was pre-programmed to be some ridicolously large number, say N = 10^10? (Ken gave a different example). He concludes that apparently such universes must be unlikelier by a factor of at least N, to compensate for the factor N coming from the number of observers. This fits in nice with the idea that more complex programs should have lower measure. You can see that the measure of a program must decrease faster than 2^(-p) where p is the length of the program. Saibal
Re: relevant probability distribution
Saibal Mitra wrote: So, I am not saying that only certain programs are conscious and others not. I am really saying that if you the universe is running (in some approximation) a certain program in my head. That program defines me. If you run that program on a computer, that computer would have my consciousness, i.e. that computer would be me. Since most members of this list (except for Russell?) believe that our universe itself a program, you could say that in some sense it is conscious. Most of us think, however, that our universe's program is very simple. A retarded amoeba would probably be more intelligent. I take consciousness to be that property essential for the operation of the Anthropic Principle. The universe is the way it is because we are here observing it as conscious beings. The first problem this raises is why does the anthropic principle work? - one can conceive of being immersed in a virtual reality which is totally inconsistent with our existence as conscious observers, for example. However, let us accept the AP. After all, it has passed observational test with flying colours. We should also expect that we should be an example of the most likely form of consciousness. The second problem is raises is that if ameobae are conscious, then why aren't we amoebae? There are many more amoebae on the planet than there are human beings. I can well accept that dolphins and chimpanzees (for instance) _could_ be conscious, since there are vastly greater numbers of humans around today than there are of these other species, but there is something special that we have that amoeba (or even ants, lets say) don't have. Not sure about ant nests (Hofstadter style). Anyone got a good estimate of the number of extant ant nests vis a vis human population? One possibility is that there is some kind of measure function that rates our consciousness as far more likely to be occupied than an amoeba's, however I'm personally sceptical of this. Consciousness seem to be so much of an either/or thing... Cheers A/Prof Russell Standish Director High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile) UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 () Australia[EMAIL PROTECTED] Room 2075, Red Centrehttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
Re: relevant probability distribution
Hi Saibal, gt; As I said I agree with you. But do you really mean a measure defined gt; on a set of computer programs, or a set of computer program *states*? I think that you can derive one from the other. I have thought about this before, and I now think that the observer should associate himself with a (to himself unknown) program, or better, a set of programs, that could generate him. E.g. there exists a program that only calculates me and nothing else. This program e.g. could compute me in an infinite dream. Many such (very complex) programs must exist. I think that these programs define our identities (or vice versa, but then not uniquely). Now, if conscious objects correspond to programs then you don't have the paradox that any clock or lookup table has intelligence. The fact that I don't live in my own personal universe, but that my universe is generated by a simpler one, suggests that simpler programs have larger probabilities. If you now have an a priory probability over the set of all programs, you can compute (in principle) the probability that I will observe a certain outcome if I perform a certain experiment. At least you can formulate this question in a mathematical unambiguous way. I have difficulty with the concept of many distinct programs, each representing an individual conscious entity. My understanding of modern physics is that the concept of an isolated individual is essentially obsolete, in that nothing can be defined without relation to everything else. As a result, surely the underlying program for each must be similarly connected, so that in fact an individual physical object is simply a concentration of processes operating in one part of the program? The significance of this is that the paradox of intelligent objects doesn't arise at all. I work on the assumption that your program is synonymous with universal awareness (the abstract form of consciousness), and that intelligence would be the result of local information-processing systems. Partly because of the view of everything being inter-related, I'm uncomfortable with a sharp, intelligent/non-intelligent distinction, and have no problem with a mechanical object expressing a very low degree of intelligence. Indeed, anything which responds to stimuli could be seen in this way, including a rock undergoing thermal expansion. However, an object can only become self-aware once the processing centre is reasonably complex, and based on sufficient local inputs to define a boundary to the region of the observer; this, I guess, would be the manifestation of a closed (or at least self-referent) processing loop within the program. As I understand your view, it by-passes the paradox by introducing arbitrariness, and any approach of this type seems to me to result in more problems. At what point in evolution did an organism first become intelligent? Do we then assume that a qualitatively different faculty was introduced? If so, how? These sorts of questions seem to be the result of over-reductionism, of separating gradations into artificial categories. (Of course, being a palaeontologist, I spend much of my time doing just that, but never mind!) All the best, Joe - Department of Earth Sciences University of Cambridge Downing Street Cambridge CB2 3EQ Phone: ( +44 ) 1223 333400 Fax: ( +44 ) 1223 333450
