Superfluous Qualia Challenge For Comp
Craig Weinberg
darkness. If qualia were based on computation, we should expect that
no sensory input should equate to total blackness, since there is no
information to report. Since we can dream or imagine total darkness
without this kind of noise, that would indicate that what we are
seeing in this visual noise is related to the neurology of the optic
nerve and retina rather than Top-down pattern generation. This is
consistent with the multisense realism approach, that we see our own
experience without noise, but when we focus our attention to the
external facing senses, we see through the experiences of the living
tissues of the brain and sense organs, not just 'our own'.
With a representational qualia model, we should expect our visual
system to behave like a window on a computer screen. We should not be
able to see 'static' from the program's logic. Static would come from
the unintended consequence of analog hardware, it has no reasonable
place in a purely computational world, especially since we can easily
conceive of a noiseless visual field. Why the difference between the
total darkness we can see in our experience, memory, and imagination,
and the darkness we can see when we focus on literally looking at
darkness through our eyes?
Quentin Anciaux
When we close our eyes, we still see visual noise, even in total
darkness. If qualia were based on computation, we should expect that
no sensory input should equate to total blackness, since there is no
information to report.
??????
WTF ?
Since we can dream or imagine total darkness
without this kind of noise, that would indicate that what we are
seeing in this visual noise is related to the neurology of the optic
nerve and retina rather than Top-down pattern generation. This is
consistent with the multisense realism approach, that we see our own
experience without noise, but when we focus our attention to the
external facing senses, we see through the experiences of the living
tissues of the brain and sense organs, not just 'our own'.
With a representational qualia model, we should expect our visual
system to behave like a window on a computer screen. We should not be
able to see 'static' from the program's logic. Static would come from
the unintended consequence of analog hardware, it has no reasonable
place in a purely computational world, especially since we can easily
conceive of a noiseless visual field. Why the difference between the
total darkness we can see in our experience, memory, and imagination,
and the darkness we can see when we focus on literally looking at
darkness through our eyes?
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Craig Weinberg
> 2012/1/31 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>
> > When we close our eyes, we still see visual noise, even in total
> > darkness. If qualia were based on computation, we should expect that
> > no sensory input should equate to total blackness, since there is no
> > information to report.
>
> ??????
>
> WTF ?
Quentin Anciaux
Nothing is easily represented... why something ? Have you more stupid though to discuss in your pocket ?
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Craig Weinberg
> Nothing is easily represented... why something ? Have you more stupid
> though to discuss in your pocket ?
>
instead?
acw
There is absolutely nothing contradicting COMP about seeing noise when
other patterns are not being organized by the cortex's hierarchy - no
correction/prediction occurs (such as in HTM models).
Let's take it one step at a time, first all the images captured by the
eye or even an ideal photon receptor are noisy, this has nothing to do
with analog and everything to do with how photons and photon detectors work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_noise
> Image noise can also originate in film grain and in *the unavoidable
shot noise of an ideal photon detector*.
A digital or analog camera would get similar amounts of noise as the
eye, actually probably less than the eye.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow
> Closed-eye hallucinations and closed-eye visualizations (CEV) are a
distinct class of hallucination. These types of hallucinations generally
only occur when one's eyes are closed or when one is in a darkened room.
They are a form of phosphene.
..
> The noise probably originates from thermal noise exciting the
photoreceptor cells in the retina
Why don't we see clean images instead of a noisy convoluted mess during
our daily lives? Because we actually "see" patterns which also happen to
"correct" the input data (look at the hierarchical structure of the
cortex or read "On Intelligence" for some examples. I could also link
some PLoS articles about this, but I don't have them handy right now.) -
we don't usually see raw unfiltered inputs.
Static and noise can occur just as well within COMP - they are
incredibly common within the UD at various levels. Set up a system with
some random rules and you have a good chance of observing noise. Noise
is so damn easy to make... However, if considered from the COMP
perspective, even incompressible noise (Kolmogorov random) is very
common due to 1p indeterminacy. I think you must have the wrong
conception about what COMP really is.
Joseph Knight
2012/1/31 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com>On Jan 31, 11:46 am, Quentin Anciaux <allco...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2012/1/31 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>
>Visual silence is easily represented. Why the superfluous light show?
> > When we close our eyes, we still see visual noise, even in total
> > darkness. If qualia were based on computation, we should expect that
> > no sensory input should equate to total blackness, since there is no
> > information to report.
>
> ??????
>
> WTF ?
Nothing is easily represented... why something ? Have you more stupid though to discuss in your pocket ?
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Joseph Knight
Stephen P. King
On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 11:03 AM, Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:
2012/1/31 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com>
On Jan 31, 11:46 am, Quentin Anciaux <allco...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2012/1/31 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>
>Visual silence is easily represented. Why the superfluous light show?
> > When we close our eyes, we still see visual noise, even in total
> > darkness. If qualia were based on computation, we should expect that
> > no sensory input should equate to total blackness, since there is no
> > information to report.
>
> ??????
>
> WTF ?
Nothing is easily represented... why something ? Have you more stupid though to discuss in your pocket ?
I am debating with myself the matter of whether or not Craig is a troll.
He commits the cardinal sin of not being willing to learn the basic ideas of a realm of discourse, before trying to demonstrate important results in that realm. I tried talking to him a couple of times but he refused to meet me halfway by understanding the real meaning of rigorous terms like computation. He has surely spent enough time on this list to have at least some grasp of, say, what COMP actually says, but he shows no evidence of it. I can only chalk this up to laziness. Worse, much of his writing reads like one of these generative postmodernist essays. I am tempted to give him the Baez treatment, but I don't want to fan the flames.
In Craig's defense I would like to point out that however trolling or postmodernist you might see his ideas, he is trying hard to think outside of the box that you guys are gyrating in like the ball in a game of Pong. How does science advance unless people are willing to contemplate alternative ideas?
Onward!
Stephen
Joseph Knight
Onward!
Stephen
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Joseph Knight
Craig Weinberg
>
> A digital or analog camera would get similar amounts of noise as the
> eye, actually probably less than the eye.
I just looked at my digital camera in my phone and blocked the lens
with my hand and there is no noise or snow whatsoever. If I unplug the
monitor from my computer but leave it powered on - no snow.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucinationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow
> > Closed-eye hallucinations and closed-eye visualizations (CEV) are a
> distinct class of hallucination. These types of hallucinations generally
> only occur when one's eyes are closed or when one is in a darkened room.
> They are a form of phosphene.
a loaded term. They are visual qualia, to me pretty obviously related
to the physical neurology of the optical system and not to any
computational interpretation software. You all can disagree, but I
know that what I see seems like analog 'respiration', not digital
representation.
> ..
> > The noise probably originates from thermal noise exciting the
> photoreceptor cells in the retina
no business leaking into our visual software. No computer has
comparable thermal noise that leaks into the software, does it? You
can get RF interference, sure, but why would a program tuned precisely
to represent some things and not others include unfiltered noise in
it's representation? I know it's not evidence that contradicts comp,
but it's not supportive of it at all.
>
> Why don't we see clean images instead of a noisy convoluted mess during
> our daily lives? Because we actually "see" patterns which also happen to
> "correct" the input data (look at the hierarchical structure of the
> cortex or read "On Intelligence" for some examples. I could also link
> some PLoS articles about this, but I don't have them handy right now.) -
> we don't usually see raw unfiltered inputs.
doesn't make sense as a filtered process.
>
> Static and noise can occur just as well within COMP - they are
> incredibly common within the UD at various levels. Set up a system with
> some random rules and you have a good chance of observing noise. Noise
> is so damn easy to make... However, if considered from the COMP
> perspective, even incompressible noise (Kolmogorov random) is very
> common due to 1p indeterminacy. I think you must have the wrong
> conception about what COMP really is.
attention to the front of our visual field and absent if we visualize
darkness. The fact that there is a difference for human vision behind
closed eyes and within the mind's eye would need to be explained.
I don't know what people think I don't understand about COMP is. It
makes perfect sense to me, it just happens to be exactly wrong in the
real world. In a theoretical world, COMP is the way to go, definitely.
Craig
Quentin Anciaux
A conscious program should involves deep computation and self reflection, visual qualia "inputs" are not only from visual sensors but also from internal parts like in human.
Also when you close your eyes, your sensor still receive stimuli from the eyes. Only in total blackness would you see black, but you'll still receive information from other senses and parts of your brain. You never have "no inputs". Even in sense deprivation tanks, you have your own mind inputs. A conscious computation should not stop processing like our consciousness.
But whatever, between your continuous straw man arguments, or your illumination on a subject matter, it's becoming more and more boring reading you.
If blackness qualia when closing your eyes was a valid refutation of comp it would be hilarious.
Quentin
Craig
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Craig Weinberg
> I agree with your point about thinking outside the box, but barring some
> astronomically improbable stroke of luck, it would be necessary for Craig
is that I know for a fact that you don't understand my view, and there
is nothing anyone has said here which surprises me in any way about
comp. It's all old hat to me, even if it seems exciting and fresh to
you, I have been thinking about neurological simulations using
computation for probably 35 years. I have drawings of multi-sensory
Walkman designs from when I was 12.
What is the big amazing thing about comp? Arithmetic truth? UDA?
Substitution level? Self-reference and Turing Machines? I understand
that you think it makes sense because computers can seem to simulate
so many things, including computers, but that doesn't impress me
because I understand that computers are only computers because users
are using them that way. Otherwise they are just humming boxes.
meekerdb
Also when you close your eyes, your sensor still receive stimuli from the eyes. Only in total blackness would you see black, but you'll still receive information from other senses and parts of your brain. You never have "no inputs". Even in sense deprivation tanks, you have your own mind inputs. A conscious computation should not stop processing like our consciousness.
I have not been able to find the reference, but I remember reading, back in the 60's when sensory deprivation was the new fad, that persons staying in sensory deprivation more than about 45min had their conscious thoughts go into a loop.
Brent
Joseph Knight
On Jan 31, 1:18 pm, Joseph Knight <joseph.9...@gmail.com> wrote:> to *understand what he is criticizing *before he could actually make useful
> I agree with your point about thinking outside the box, but barring some
> astronomically improbable stroke of luck, it would be necessary for Craig
> progress away from it. Surely this is not an unreasonable demand?What is it that you think I don't understand about COMP?
The problem
is that I know for a fact that you don't understand my view
, and there
is nothing anyone has said here which surprises me in any way about
comp. It's all old hat to me, even if it seems exciting and fresh to
you, I have been thinking about neurological simulations using
computation for probably 35 years. I have drawings of multi-sensory
Walkman designs from when I was 12.
What is the big amazing thing about comp? Arithmetic truth? UDA?
Substitution level? Self-reference and Turing Machines?
I understand
that you think it makes sense because computers can seem to simulate
so many things,
including computers, but that doesn't impress me
because I understand that computers are only computers because users
are using them that way.
Otherwise they are just humming boxes.
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Joseph Knight
acw
> On Jan 31, 12:45 pm, acw<a...@lavabit.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> A digital or analog camera would get similar amounts of noise as the
>> eye, actually probably less than the eye.
>
> Why do you say that? Have you ever taken a photo with the lens cap on?
well. Second, no, but I've seen photos taken in almost (as was feasible
to be) dark rooms, and there tends to be some noise, if you don't see
it, try using some filters to better differentiate the pixels.
> I just looked at my digital camera in my phone and blocked the lens
> with my hand and there is no noise or snow whatsoever.
In an very dark room, a human might as well not perceive any noise as
well. Noise is perceived when there's still a few photons here and there
hitting the retina.
> If I unplug the
> monitor from my computer but leave it powered on - no snow.
That's normal if you have a DVI or HDMI digital display - if the data is
transmitted digitally, that greatly reduces the chances of it getting
damaged. The problem I was talking about wasn't as much about display
and transmitting as much as of the limitation of an ideal photon
detector. I've seen you mention Feynman and QED - surely that would have
given you a decent understanding on the limitations of capture devices
(and no, QM does not contradicted by COMP: COMP predicts the 1p
indeterminacy which gives rise locally to some QM/observational laws).
>
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucinationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow
>>
>> > Closed-eye hallucinations and closed-eye visualizations (CEV) are a
>> distinct class of hallucination. These types of hallucinations generally
>> only occur when one's eyes are closed or when one is in a darkened room.
>> They are a form of phosphene.
>
> Phosphene is nothing more than a name. Calling them hallucinations is
> a loaded term. They are visual qualia, to me pretty obviously related
> to the physical neurology of the optical system and not to any
> computational interpretation software. You all can disagree, but I
> know that what I see seems like analog 'respiration', not digital
> representation.
>
I take it you didn't read the rest of the article? The noise is inherent
in any accurate simulation of such systems, be they the eye, an ideal
photon detector or some quantum systems.
Sure, hallucinations is a term, but is it 'wrong'? If for some reason
I've been very tired and my cognitive load is high, my brain could start
making errors when recognizing certain patterns - I would be
hallucinating as whatever it is I was perceiving wasn't the correct
perception. Any such mismatches would be hallucinations. Feed just noise
into a neural network and you'll be sure it'll be making errors, and
thus "hallucinate" - how do you think dreaming works? If what you
perceive is likely 3p correct, it's not a hallucination. OF course, 3p
being an inference done from the 1p, you can only bet on what is real
and what isn't, you cannot ever truly know, and with COMP, real is just
sharable reality.
Also, you are very sure about your raw access to "analog" data, I wonder
where you derive that confidence from. I have absolutely no way of
knowing I have *direct* access to any analog data, actually I would be
very skeptical of that, because of the implications it would have for
local physics. Even with qualia, I don't see infinitely complex details
- the only thing that I can communicate is that my view is coherent and
unified.
>> ..
>> > The noise probably originates from thermal noise exciting the
>> photoreceptor cells in the retina
>
> That should be easy enough to test. The point though, is that it has
> no business leaking into our visual software. No computer has
> comparable thermal noise that leaks into the software, does it? You
> can get RF interference, sure, but why would a program tuned precisely
> to represent some things and not others include unfiltered noise in
> it's representation? I know it's not evidence that contradicts comp,
> but it's not supportive of it at all.
>
I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean by 'leaking'. If the
data that I captured is noisy (such as visual data), the software will
handle noisy data. Nothing more, nothing less. If I do some image
recognition or filter or *dynamically reconstruct* the image, it may
look much cleaner, which is not that much different from what our visual
system is *sometimes* doing (when it was enough matching patterns).
>>
>> Why don't we see clean images instead of a noisy convoluted mess during
>> our daily lives? Because we actually "see" patterns which also happen to
>> "correct" the input data (look at the hierarchical structure of the
>> cortex or read "On Intelligence" for some examples. I could also link
>> some PLoS articles about this, but I don't have them handy right now.) -
>> we don't usually see raw unfiltered inputs.
>
> We shouldn't ever see raw unfiltered inputs, that's why the phosphene
> doesn't make sense as a filtered process.
>
Why not? Well, we don't quite see, completely raw unfiltered inputs, but
if the visual system can't recognize any high-level patterns, thus it
cannot "fix" the image, I see no reason why noise/static shouldn't be
experienced.
>>
>> Static and noise can occur just as well within COMP - they are
>> incredibly common within the UD at various levels. Set up a system with
>> some random rules and you have a good chance of observing noise. Noise
>> is so damn easy to make... However, if considered from the COMP
>> perspective, even incompressible noise (Kolmogorov random) is very
>> common due to 1p indeterminacy. I think you must have the wrong
>> conception about what COMP really is.
>
> Noise should either be unavoidable or absent, not present if we pay
> attention to the front of our visual field and absent if we visualize
> darkness. The fact that there is a difference for human vision behind
> closed eyes and within the mind's eye would need to be explained.
>
Imagine you have this amazing piece of software, it can reconstruct
images really well, if it can process enough to recognize high-level
patterns, it will dynamically redraw the picture to better fit those
high-level patterns... it'd be like having your own little master
painter constantly improving and embellishing your dull captured noisy
image to give you a perfect crystal-clear image - one which uses all the
patterns that you could possibly know or recognize. It's all good when
you feed it things which are usual and can be understood, but imagine
you would be feeding it only noise (you're already feeding it noise, but
plenty of information as well, but now it's devoid of information) -
what happens now is that either your master painter mismatches
("hallucinates") some patterns, or it just fails to recognize anything
and leaves your picture as it is - a mess, "garbage in - garbage out".
> I don't know what people think I don't understand about COMP is. It
> makes perfect sense to me, it just happens to be exactly wrong in the
> real world. In a theoretical world, COMP is the way to go, definitely.
>
There are many details about COMP which you seem to miss, at least when
I read your posts about COMP. Here, it seemed like you were surprised
there would be noise in either the 1p indeterminacy of COMP or some
non-COMP digital physics - there's absolutely no problem with there
being noise in either, in one case you get free incompressible random
noise, in the other you get compressible, but not easily humanly
recognizable as compressible noise (that is, statistically random).
I also have no clear idea about what your theory *actually is*. Some
details are understandable, but the whole makes little sense to me, and
whatever your thought processes about your theory - they seem opaque to
me, and you don't seem to explain why should one theory be preferred
over the other and how you got to some conclusion or another. What's
worse, we use different terms and sometimes even when using the same
terms, the semantics I have for some of the terms and the semantics you
have for them are sometimes different.
> Craig
>
Terren Suydam
The movie The Matrix is essentially about comp. What is it about that
movie's premise that seems impossible to you?
Terren
Bruno Marchal
Craig Weinberg
> A conscious program should involves deep computation and self reflection,
> visual qualia "inputs" are not only from visual sensors but also from
> internal parts like in human.
>
> Also when you close your eyes, your sensor still receive stimuli from the
> eyes. Only in total blackness would you see black,
> but you'll still receive
> information from other senses and parts of your brain. You never have "no
> inputs". Even in sense deprivation tanks, you have your own mind inputs. A
> conscious computation should not stop processing like our consciousness.
should either be unavoidable or intentionally included in comp. What
our visual sense seems to do it both in different contexts.
>
> But whatever, between your continuous straw man arguments, or your
> illumination on a subject matter, it's becoming more and more boring
> reading you.
> If blackness qualia when closing your eyes was a valid refutation of comp
> it would be hilarious.
going into total darkness created no noise, I would take that as
supporting comp.
Craig
Quentin Anciaux
On Jan 31, 2:11 pm, Quentin Anciaux <allco...@gmail.com> wrote:I can see black in my imagination anytime I want.
> A conscious program should involves deep computation and self reflection,
> visual qualia "inputs" are not only from visual sensors but also from
> internal parts like in human.
>
> Also when you close your eyes, your sensor still receive stimuli from the
> eyes. Only in total blackness would you see black,
Straw man
As soon as we start falling asleep though, the noise goes away. Noise
> but you'll still receive
> information from other senses and parts of your brain. You never have "no
> inputs". Even in sense deprivation tanks, you have your own mind inputs. A
> conscious computation should not stop processing like our consciousness.
should either be unavoidable or intentionally included in comp.
Non sensical.
What
our visual sense seems to do it both in different contexts.
Nobody is holding a gun to your head.
>
> But whatever, between your continuous straw man arguments, or your
> illumination on a subject matter, it's becoming more and more boring
> reading you.
Of course, because religious faith cannot be refuted by mere truth. If
> If blackness qualia when closing your eyes was a valid refutation of comp
> it would be hilarious.
going into total darkness created no noise, I would take that as
supporting comp.
Craig
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Craig Weinberg
>
> > On Jan 31, 1:18 pm, Joseph Knight <joseph.9...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > I agree with your point about thinking outside the box, but barring some
> > > astronomically improbable stroke of luck, it would be necessary for Craig
> > > to *understand what he is criticizing *before he could actually make
> > useful
> > > progress away from it. Surely this is not an unreasonable demand?
>
> > What is it that you think I don't understand about COMP?
>
> Let's start with the basics. I know that you don't understand what a
> computer is, since you claim a bit later that it is a "humming box". In an
> earlier post you said 'computers are arrays of semiconductor materials
> arranged to conduct electrical current in a dynamic and orderly fashion'.
> Wrong. When I directed you to an article explaining why you are wrong, you
> replied "you're pointing me to references to Boolean algebra". Boolean
> algebra was not mentioned even once on the page! You didn't read it!
> Laziness.
strangers on the internet. I'm not your student. I understand that the
term computer *can* apply to anything that can be used to perform
computation (I use the abacus as an example too, steam powered
machines, whatever). Obviously from my wording I am talking about
contemporary electronic computers. This kind of semantic nitpicking is
the lowest form of argumentative desperation.
>
> > The problem
> > is that I know for a fact that you don't understand my view
>
> I don't think anyone on this list understands your view, except perhaps
> yourself. Who is to blame?
either try to understand what I mean or not, that's fine, but you
aren't telling me anything I don't already know so I'm not curious
about your views.
>
> > , and there
> > is nothing anyone has said here which surprises me in any way about
> > comp. It's all old hat to me, even if it seems exciting and fresh to
> > you, I have been thinking about neurological simulations using
> > computation for probably 35 years. I have drawings of multi-sensory
> > Walkman designs from when I was 12.
>
> Cool.
>
>
>
> > What is the big amazing thing about comp? Arithmetic truth? UDA?
> > Substitution level? Self-reference and Turing Machines?
>
> Among other things.
>
> > I understand
> > that you think it makes sense because computers can seem to simulate
> > so many things,
>
> They certainly can simulate many things. However, I have seen you conflate
> simulations run by scientists working with simplified models of something,
about it in a clearer, more truthful way.
> with the kind of simulation that matters when we talk about the
> computational theory of mind.
>
> > including computers, but that doesn't impress me
> > because I understand that computers are only computers because users
> > are using them that way.
>
> Ludicrous, and this only reinforces my suspicion that you have no idea what
> a "computer", conceived mathematically, actually is.
word computer. A computer is anything that can be used to compute. It
doesn't have to be a material object, in theory, I understand that. In
practice though *all* known computation eventually has a physical
layer, even if it's neurological. If I make a virtual server (and I am
a network engineer MCSE, CCEA btw) it still runs on a real hardware
node as if it were a real server. There is no virtualization without
physics underwriting it. I understand that what I say on this subject
is provocative and doesn't make sense to you. That's because you are
only focused on my being wrong and fail to give my ideas the slightest
unbiased consideration. It doesn't mean you're a jerk, it just means
you are typical. I'm not interested in typical though.
> > Otherwise they are just humming boxes.
>
> See above.
refer to computers and not the mathematically defined theoretical
conception of computation.
Craig
Craig Weinberg
> Craig,
>
> The movie The Matrix is essentially about comp. What is it about that
> movie's premise that seems impossible to you?
to simulate the sense of being a person. I have no problem with full
sensory substitution, but I understand that there cannot be a
replacement for sense itself. Something real and physical ultimately
has to interpret anything to give it sense, otherwise it is non-sense.
A program is real in a mind, and real in software, but unless the
software is enacted literally on a physical machine or organism at the
bottom level, there is no reality.
Quentin Anciaux
How do you know there is a bottom level ? Reality did told you so ?
That in your theory you posit a bottom level why not... but here you know it, so is it too much to ask you how you know so ?
Why a human is able to "interpret" himself and a program couldn't ? Where does sense come from in you theory ? How meaning arises ? Why something ?
Quentin
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Quentin Anciaux
On 1/31/2012 11:11 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:Also when you close your eyes, your sensor still receive stimuli from the eyes. Only in total blackness would you see black, but you'll still receive information from other senses and parts of your brain. You never have "no inputs". Even in sense deprivation tanks, you have your own mind inputs. A conscious computation should not stop processing like our consciousness.
I have not been able to find the reference, but I remember reading, back in the 60's when sensory deprivation was the new fad, that persons staying in sensory deprivation more than about 45min had their conscious thoughts go into a loop.
If you find some reference about that I'd be interested.
But even in a loop... consciousness does not stop ;)
Brent
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Terren Suydam
Assume that (as in the movie) the sensory inputs are rich enough that
if we were to experience it, we would be hard pressed to detect that
it was a virtual reality.
If the baby grows up in a virtual world, complete with rich social
interaction, then why wouldn't she still develop a sense of
personhood? What is it about the source of the sensory data that
prohibits personhood from developing?
Terren
Joseph Knight
On Jan 31, 2:33 pm, Joseph Knight <joseph.9...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 1:12 PM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>wrote:
>Not laziness. I'm just not in the business of doing errands for
> > On Jan 31, 1:18 pm, Joseph Knight <joseph.9...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > I agree with your point about thinking outside the box, but barring some
> > > astronomically improbable stroke of luck, it would be necessary for Craig
> > > to *understand what he is criticizing *before he could actually make
> > useful
> > > progress away from it. Surely this is not an unreasonable demand?
>
> > What is it that you think I don't understand about COMP?
>
> Let's start with the basics. I know that you don't understand what a
> computer is, since you claim a bit later that it is a "humming box". In an
> earlier post you said 'computers are arrays of semiconductor materials
> arranged to conduct electrical current in a dynamic and orderly fashion'.
> Wrong. When I directed you to an article explaining why you are wrong, you
> replied "you're pointing me to references to Boolean algebra". Boolean
> algebra was not mentioned even once on the page! You didn't read it!
> Laziness.
strangers on the internet.
I'm not your student. I understand that the
term computer *can* apply to anything that can be used to perform
computation (I use the abacus as an example too, steam powered
machines, whatever). Obviously from my wording I am talking about
contemporary electronic computers.
This kind of semantic nitpicking is
the lowest form of argumentative desperation.
You can blame me if you want, but it makes no difference. You can
>
> > The problem
> > is that I know for a fact that you don't understand my view
>
> I don't think anyone on this list understands your view, except perhaps
> yourself. Who is to blame?
either try to understand what I mean or not,
that's fine, but you
aren't telling me anything I don't already know so I'm not curious
about your views.
I'm doing that intentionally to strip away the confusion and think
>
> > , and there
> > is nothing anyone has said here which surprises me in any way about
> > comp. It's all old hat to me, even if it seems exciting and fresh to
> > you, I have been thinking about neurological simulations using
> > computation for probably 35 years. I have drawings of multi-sensory
> > Walkman designs from when I was 12.
>
> Cool.
>
>
>
> > What is the big amazing thing about comp? Arithmetic truth? UDA?
> > Substitution level? Self-reference and Turing Machines?
>
> Among other things.
>
> > I understand
> > that you think it makes sense because computers can seem to simulate
> > so many things,
>
> They certainly can simulate many things. However, I have seen you conflate
> simulations run by scientists working with simplified models of something,
about it in a clearer, more truthful way.
It sounds like you are asserting some special case definition of the
> with the kind of simulation that matters when we talk about the
> computational theory of mind.
>
> > including computers, but that doesn't impress me
> > because I understand that computers are only computers because users
> > are using them that way.
>
> Ludicrous, and this only reinforces my suspicion that you have no idea what
> a "computer", conceived mathematically, actually is.
word computer.
A computer is anything that can be used to compute. It
doesn't have to be a material object, in theory, I understand that. In
practice though *all* known computation eventually has a physical
layer, even if it's neurological. If I make a virtual server (and I am
a network engineer MCSE, CCEA btw) it still runs on a real hardware
node as if it were a real server. There is no virtualization without
physics underwriting it. I understand that what I say on this subject
is provocative and doesn't make sense to you. That's because you are
only focused on my being wrong and fail to give my ideas the slightest
unbiased consideration. It doesn't mean you're a jerk, it just means
you are typical. I'm not interested in typical though.
Yeah, I know. I'm a big moron because I used the word computer to
> > Otherwise they are just humming boxes.
>
> See above.
refer to computers and not the mathematically defined theoretical
conception of computation.
Craig
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Joseph Knight
Stephen P. King
On 31 Jan 2012, at 19:11, Stephen P. King wrote:
snip
Hi,
In Craig's defense I would like to point out that however trolling or postmodernist you might see his ideas, he is trying hard to think outside of the box that you guys are gyrating in like the ball in a game of Pong. How does science advance unless people are willing to contemplate alternative ideas?
I don't see any alternative idea or theory. When he says that qualia explains the universe, that fits with the proven consequences of comp, where quanta are case of qualia. He is not bad at introspection, he might grasp comp a little bit, but he does not try to submit a theory in the usual meaning of the terms. So we can't help.
Stephen, don't confuse comp, as used as a "pretext for not addressing the mind-body problem by materialist", and what we can already see from a formulation of the mind body problem when computationalism is taken seriously into account. This already leads to a rational alternative, if not reversal.
To be frank, you fail also to provide a theory, as your notion of "Existence" illustrates. Existence of what? You never answered.
My my, are we in a snit of a mood! I am assuming a basic axiom: Existence exists. If this is difficult for you to grasp, please watch this lecture on Epistemology:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL59B2C09D51EBD222
Some times you might wish to stop thinking like an automaton and enjoy how other people think. :-)
Onward!
Stephen
Craig Weinberg
> On 1/31/2012 19:01, Craig Weinberg wrote:> On Jan 31, 12:45 pm, acw<a...@lavabit.com> wrote:
>
> >> A digital or analog camera would get similar amounts of noise as the
> >> eye, actually probably less than the eye.
>
> > Why do you say that? Have you ever taken a photo with the lens cap on?
>
> First, the eyes don't have a perfect lens cap, photons get through quite
> well.
> Second, no, but I've seen photos taken in almost (as was feasible
> to be) dark rooms, and there tends to be some noise, if you don't see
> it, try using some filters to better differentiate the pixels.
though. You don't have to try very hard to see them. I cannot see any
such patterns in my digital camera's picture.
> I just looked at my digital camera in my phone and blocked the lens
> > with my hand and there is no noise or snow whatsoever.
>
> Check the pixel values directly then.
> In an very dark room, a human might as well not perceive any noise as
> well. Noise is perceived when there's still a few photons here and there
> hitting the retina.
increases, or becomes easier to see anyhow.
>
> > If I unplug the
> > monitor from my computer but leave it powered on - no snow.
>
> That's normal if you have a DVI or HDMI digital display - if the data is
> transmitted digitally, that greatly reduces the chances of it getting
> damaged.
pulled? If that's true it still shows that the ocular noise is
unnecessary.
>The problem I was talking about wasn't as much about display
> and transmitting as much as of the limitation of an ideal photon
> detector. I've seen you mention Feynman and QED - surely that would have
> given you a decent understanding on the limitations of capture devices
> (and no, QM does not contradicted by COMP: COMP predicts the 1p
> indeterminacy which gives rise locally to some QM/observational laws).
me, but it's possible.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucinationhttp://en.wikipe...
> >> > Closed-eye hallucinations and closed-eye visualizations (CEV) are a
> >> distinct class of hallucination. These types of hallucinations generally
> >> only occur when one's eyes are closed or when one is in a darkened room.
> >> They are a form of phosphene.
>
> > Phosphene is nothing more than a name. Calling them hallucinations is
> > a loaded term. They are visual qualia, to me pretty obviously related
> > to the physical neurology of the optical system and not to any
> > computational interpretation software. You all can disagree, but I
> > know that what I see seems like analog 'respiration', not digital
> > representation.
>
> I take it you didn't read the rest of the article? The noise is inherent
> in any accurate simulation of such systems, be they the eye, an ideal
> photon detector or some quantum systems.
simulations of visual systems. Where does it say that? If that's true
it still makes no case for representational qualia. Why wouldn't it be
filtered out?
> Sure, hallucinations is a term, but is it 'wrong'?
misrepresented.
> If for some reason
> I've been very tired and my cognitive load is high, my brain could start
> making errors when recognizing certain patterns - I would be
> hallucinating as whatever it is I was perceiving wasn't the correct
> perception. Any such mismatches would be hallucinations.
these qualia match those pattens, not mismatch them.
> Feed just noise
> into a neural network and you'll be sure it'll be making errors, and
> thus "hallucinate"
don't match the expected exterior correlates. I'm sure that neural
networks make errors but are they imaginative and reference myths?
> - how do you think dreaming works?
agendas. Some regions of the brain are active that normally aren't
while waking, others are less active or inactive, which loosens
inhibitions and associations. The content of the dream can range from
non-sequiturs to highly insightful and poignant narratives.
> If what you
> perceive is likely 3p correct, it's not a hallucination. OF course, 3p
> being an inference done from the 1p, you can only bet on what is real
> and what isn't, you cannot ever truly know, and with COMP, real is just
> sharable reality.
COMP postulates any reality at all.
>
> Also, you are very sure about your raw access to "analog" data, I wonder
> where you derive that confidence from. I have absolutely no way of
> knowing I have *direct* access to any analog data, actually I would be
> very skeptical of that, because of the implications it would have for
> local physics. Even with qualia, I don't see infinitely complex details
> - the only thing that I can communicate is that my view is coherent and
> unified.
the details of your experience, only those which are significant to
'you' on your scale. There is no reason to assume that our perception
is indirect just because it is not monolithic and literal. It is a
compromise of many microcosmic and macrocosmic agendas, so it is not
complete by an objective standard, but neither is it a Cartesian
theater of representation. It's more like specular reflection. We are
seeing through our visual sense - into our world or our dreams. The
mechanics associated with that are secondary. They do not produce the
content, but they do influence it.
>
> >> ..
> >> > The noise probably originates from thermal noise exciting the
> >> photoreceptor cells in the retina
>
> > That should be easy enough to test. The point though, is that it has
> > no business leaking into our visual software. No computer has
> > comparable thermal noise that leaks into the software, does it? You
> > can get RF interference, sure, but why would a program tuned precisely
> > to represent some things and not others include unfiltered noise in
> > it's representation? I know it's not evidence that contradicts comp,
> > but it's not supportive of it at all.
>
> I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean by 'leaking'. If the
> data that I captured is noisy (such as visual data), the software will
> handle noisy data. Nothing more, nothing less. If I do some image
> recognition or filter or *dynamically reconstruct* the image, it may
> look much cleaner, which is not that much different from what our visual
> system is *sometimes* doing (when it was enough matching patterns).
thermal noise into the environment, it is not going to cause changes
in the digital content of the jpeg file.
>
> >> Why don't we see clean images instead of a noisy convoluted mess during
> >> our daily lives? Because we actually "see" patterns which also happen to
> >> "correct" the input data (look at the hierarchical structure of the
> >> cortex or read "On Intelligence" for some examples. I could also link
> >> some PLoS articles about this, but I don't have them handy right now.) -
> >> we don't usually see raw unfiltered inputs.
>
> > We shouldn't ever see raw unfiltered inputs, that's why the phosphene
> > doesn't make sense as a filtered process.
>
> Why not? Well, we don't quite see, completely raw unfiltered inputs, but
> if the visual system can't recognize any high-level patterns, thus it
> cannot "fix" the image, I see no reason why noise/static shouldn't be
> experienced.
functionally. All of the optical illusions which are used to point out
that our visual sense is fabricated are contradicted here. It's a
pointless fabrication of noise which adds nothing functionally to the
interpretation of the experience.
>
> >> Static and noise can occur just as well within COMP - they are
> >> incredibly common within the UD at various levels. Set up a system with
> >> some random rules and you have a good chance of observing noise. Noise
> >> is so damn easy to make... However, if considered from the COMP
> >> perspective, even incompressible noise (Kolmogorov random) is very
> >> common due to 1p indeterminacy. I think you must have the wrong
> >> conception about what COMP really is.
>
> > Noise should either be unavoidable or absent, not present if we pay
> > attention to the front of our visual field and absent if we visualize
> > darkness. The fact that there is a difference for human vision behind
> > closed eyes and within the mind's eye would need to be explained.
>
> Imagine you have this amazing piece of software, it can reconstruct
> images really well, if it can process enough to recognize high-level
> patterns, it will dynamically redraw the picture to better fit those
> high-level patterns... it'd be like having your own little master
> painter constantly improving and embellishing your dull captured noisy
> image to give you a perfect crystal-clear image - one which uses all the
> patterns that you could possibly know or recognize. It's all good when
> you feed it things which are usual and can be understood, but imagine
> you would be feeding it only noise (you're already feeding it noise, but
> plenty of information as well, but now it's devoid of information) -
> what happens now is that either your master painter mismatches
> ("hallucinates") some patterns, or it just fails to recognize anything
> and leaves your picture as it is - a mess, "garbage in - garbage out"
patterns are inherently true in all visual systems or whether they are
hallucinatory mismatches. I would find it hard to believe that a
visual system that has been evolving in homo sapiens for millennia
would be thrown into confusion by the natural state of closing one's
eyes.
.> I don't know what people think I don't understand about COMP is. It
> > makes perfect sense to me, it just happens to be exactly wrong in the
> > real world. In a theoretical world, COMP is the way to go, definitely.
>
> There are many details about COMP which you seem to miss, at least when
> I read your posts about COMP. Here, it seemed like you were surprised
> there would be noise in either the 1p indeterminacy of COMP or some
> non-COMP digital physics - there's absolutely no problem with there
> being noise in either, in one case you get free incompressible random
> noise, in the other you get compressible, but not easily humanly
> recognizable as compressible noise (that is, statistically random).
with the lack of noise in our 'mind's eye'. It means that this noise
is intentionally created or left unfiltered. Either way it doesn't
make sense for the qualia to work that way in comp. In functionalism,
the purpose of our sense of sight is to see something - even
hallucinations, but why a default hallucination associated with no
signal? This being the case, it would surprise me if COMP were true.
> I also have no clear idea about what your theory *actually is*. Some
> details are understandable, but the whole makes little sense to me, and
> whatever your thought processes about your theory - they seem opaque to
> me, and you don't seem to explain why should one theory be preferred
> over the other and how you got to some conclusion or another. What's
> worse, we use different terms and sometimes even when using the same
> terms, the semantics I have for some of the terms and the semantics you
> have for them are sometimes different.
experimenting to try to get better descriptions. My theory is that
reality is a continuum of different experiences presented as varying
degrees of private time and public space. The more subjective the
experience, like listening to music in your mind, the less the
experience can be understood by it's public shadow (neural correlate,
facial expression, maybe humming or gestures). The more objective the
experience, like driving a truck, the more relevant the public aspects
are. Time and space are therefore opposite and time is tied with
subjectivity, space with objectivity. This means that since energy is
nothing but change over time, that energy is also subjective. It is an
experience. It is not a wavelength, but a frequency with space scalar
consequences. I'm happy to try to explain anything that's not clear. I
have written a lot about it already, so it's hard for me to respond to
'what your theory actually is'. My theory is that the symmetry of
matter and experience is what is real and what makes the universe
real. It is the same thing in an interior sense and an exterior sense,
so that I can make sense of things in my world because I *am* my world
on one level, I am in my world on another level, and my world is in me
on another level.
Craig
Craig Weinberg
> 2012/1/31 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>
>
> > > Craig,
>
> > > The movie The Matrix is essentially about comp. What is it about that
> > > movie's premise that seems impossible to you?
>
> > It's possible to simulate a world for a person but it is not possible
> > to simulate the sense of being a person. I have no problem with full
> > sensory substitution, but I understand that there cannot be a
> > replacement for sense itself. Something real and physical ultimately
> > has to interpret anything to give it sense, otherwise it is non-sense.
> > A program is real in a mind, and real in software, but unless the
> > software is enacted literally on a physical machine or organism at the
> > bottom level, there is no reality.
>
> How do you know there is a bottom level ? Reality did told you so ?
computer from electric power, does it not stop, regardless of the
software?
>
> That in your theory you posit a bottom level why not... but here you know
> it, so is it too much to ask you how you know so ?
physical matter certainly seems to be the bottom of our world. Why
would it not be? What is it that would be beneath that bottom? Can you
build a bomb out of numbers alone?
>
> Why a human is able to "interpret" himself and a program couldn't ?
capacity is native to his physiology. A program is an idea native to
human psychology exported onto electronic glass or gears.
> Where
> does sense come from in you theory ? How meaning arises ? Why something ?
subjects, motive, sequence, anabolic accumulation through time,
energy) and entropy (teleonomy, unfeeling, discrete objects,
determinism, randomness, catabolic evanescence across space, matter).
Sense, significance, and entropy are all the same thing on one sense,
and two or three different things in different senses. It is
singularity folded, and folded again. Meaning does not arise, arise-
ness arises from meaning. Meaning is primordial (not human scale
meaning of course).
Craig
Craig Weinberg
> What if a baby is fed a virtual reality from the day it was born?
> Assume that (as in the movie) the sensory inputs are rich enough that
> if we were to experience it, we would be hard pressed to detect that
> it was a virtual reality.
reality may be felt literally in your bones on some (maybe
unconscious) level. There may be no way of truly trapping someone in a
fantasy with no chance of them knowing it.
>
> If the baby grows up in a virtual world, complete with rich social
> interaction, then why wouldn't she still develop a sense of
> personhood?
not an adding machine.
> What is it about the source of the sensory data that
> prohibits personhood from developing?
not a human, it can't have a human life. A computer has an experience
of it's switches and routers, maybe qualia we can't imagine, but there
is no indication that any program shows signs of turning into a
person.
Craig
Craig Weinberg
prove that I am right, I am here to learn if there is something that I
haven't considered and to share my ideas. Nothing you have said is new
to me. I have been debating this for several years now.
>
> > I'm not your student. I understand that the
> > term computer *can* apply to anything that can be used to perform
> > computation (I use the abacus as an example too, steam powered
> > machines, whatever). Obviously from my wording I am talking about
> > contemporary electronic computers.
>
> In that context, and indeed essentially all contexts on this list, the
> precise definition was the one being employed.
>
> > This kind of semantic nitpicking is
> > the lowest form of argumentative desperation.
>
> No, we need to know exactly what each other means when they use a word if
> we are to make any progress. So there's a problem when you use one word to
> refer to two quite different things.
computer from the start. It is a hypothetical idea...a good one, but
nothing to do with reality directly. In the real world, all computers
will always have a physical substrate or at least a physical
interface.
>
>
>
> > > > The problem
> > > > is that I know for a fact that you don't understand my view
>
> > > I don't think anyone on this list understands your view, except perhaps
> > > yourself. Who is to blame?
>
> > You can blame me if you want, but it makes no difference. You can
> > either try to understand what I mean or not,
>
> I certainly have tried, and failed, repeatedly. I haven't personally
> inquired about it because others have, and you have been less than helpful
> for them. You invent dozens of new terms, abuse the meanings of dozens of
> commonly used terms from science and philosophy....I don't see any concrete
> predictions about the result of an experiment, any falsifiability, or any
> concern for precision.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > that's fine, but you
> > aren't telling me anything I don't already know so I'm not curious
> > about your views.
>
> > > > , and there
> > > > is nothing anyone has said here which surprises me in any way about
> > > > comp. It's all old hat to me, even if it seems exciting and fresh to
> > > > you, I have been thinking about neurological simulations using
> > > > computation for probably 35 years. I have drawings of multi-sensory
> > > > Walkman designs from when I was 12.
>
> > > Cool.
>
> > > > What is the big amazing thing about comp? Arithmetic truth? UDA?
> > > > Substitution level? Self-reference and Turing Machines?
>
> > > Among other things.
>
> > > > I understand
> > > > that you think it makes sense because computers can seem to simulate
> > > > so many things,
>
> > > They certainly can simulate many things. However, I have seen you
> > conflate
> > > simulations run by scientists working with simplified models of
> > something,
>
> > I'm doing that intentionally to strip away the confusion and think
> > about it in a clearer, more truthful way.
>
> Hold on -- you are purposefully causing confusion in order to strip away
> confusion?
THANK YOU on the lid is not really being polite, I intend that someone
could see how that simple principle scales up to complex digital
simulation not being really conscious.
>
>
>
> > > with the kind of simulation that matters when we talk about the
> > > computational theory of mind.
>
> > > > including computers, but that doesn't impress me
> > > > because I understand that computers are only computers because users
> > > > are using them that way.
>
> > > Ludicrous, and this only reinforces my suspicion that you have no idea
> > what
> > > a "computer", conceived mathematically, actually is.
>
> > It sounds like you are asserting some special case definition of the
> > word computer.
>
> I never asserted anything.
>
> > A computer is anything that can be used to compute. It
> > doesn't have to be a material object, in theory, I understand that. In
> > practice though *all* known computation eventually has a physical
> > layer, even if it's neurological. If I make a virtual server (and I am
> > a network engineer MCSE, CCEA btw) it still runs on a real hardware
> > node as if it were a real server. There is no virtualization without
> > physics underwriting it. I understand that what I say on this subject
> > is provocative and doesn't make sense to you. That's because you are
> > only focused on my being wrong and fail to give my ideas the slightest
> > unbiased consideration. It doesn't mean you're a jerk, it just means
> > you are typical. I'm not interested in typical though.
>
> Arrogance will not get you, or "multisense realism", anywhere.
> If you lay
> out for me your theory and assumptions, in language I can understand
> ("telesemantic entanglement" won't cut it)
and everyone suddenly slows down, what is that called? That's what
electromagnetism is. Cars changing how they drive because the driver
makes sense of something. The police car is not smacking into traffic
and mechanically causing a slowdown, there is mutual entanglement of
meaning between all of the cars.
>, if you stop using words *you *don't
> for your theory, if you stop acting like a victim, I will be all ears.
you are interested, but I'm not here for your edification.
> Otherwise, you are wasting my time and I won't be responding anymore.
Craig
Bruno Marchal
Some times you might wish to stop thinking like an automaton and enjoy how other people think. :-)
Bruno Marchal
On 01 Feb 2012, at 00:02, Craig Weinberg wrote:
> On Jan 31, 4:40 pm, Terren Suydam <terren.suy...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> What if a baby is fed a virtual reality from the day it was born?
>> Assume that (as in the movie) the sensory inputs are rich enough that
>> if we were to experience it, we would be hard pressed to detect that
>> it was a virtual reality.
>
> I will agree for the sake of argument, but if my theory is true,
> reality may be felt literally in your bones on some (maybe
> unconscious) level. There may be no way of truly trapping someone in a
> fantasy with no chance of them knowing it.
That is again a consequence of the comp theory. Indeed, with comp, the
QM facts can already be interpreted as us realizing that we are in
*the* arithmetical simulation. I have often explained that with comp,
to hide that arithmetical simulation, and thus to trap people in a
higher level fantasy, we need to introduce a potentially infinite
amount of information in the simulating system, or we need to
artificially withdraw information in the mind of the simulated
entities. To sum up, if we can be failed for some instants by a
simulation, we cannot be failed for a arbitrary longer sequence of
instants.
Bruno
Stephen P. King
Stephen P. King
Hi Stephen,
On 31 Jan 2012, at 23:06, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 1/31/2012 3:03 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 31 Jan 2012, at 19:11, Stephen P. King wrote:
snip
Hi,
In Craig's defense I would like to point out that however trolling or postmodernist you might see his ideas, he is trying hard to think outside of the box that you guys are gyrating in like the ball in a game of Pong. How does science advance unless people are willing to contemplate alternative ideas?
I don't see any alternative idea or theory. When he says that qualia explains the universe, that fits with the proven consequences of comp, where quanta are case of qualia. He is not bad at introspection, he might grasp comp a little bit, but he does not try to submit a theory in the usual meaning of the terms. So we can't help.
Stephen, don't confuse comp, as used as a "pretext for not addressing the mind-body problem by materialist", and what we can already see from a formulation of the mind body problem when computationalism is taken seriously into account. This already leads to a rational alternative, if not reversal.
To be frank, you fail also to provide a theory, as your notion of "Existence" illustrates. Existence of what? You never answered.
Hi Bruno,
My my, are we in a snit of a mood! I am assuming a basic axiom: Existence exists. If this is difficult for you to grasp, please watch this lecture on Epistemology:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL59B2C09D51EBD222
This did not help. Sorry. I am used to appreciate Ayn Rand, but progress have been made. Pointing on a playlist with 30 videos is unecessary distraction. If you have a point, you should try to make it.
When you say "Existence exist", either I interpret it intuitively by "something exists" --- the non-nothing theory---and I hardly doubt it, or I interpret it as a reification of existence, like if it was a property or an object, and that would deserve a precise (and non standard) theoretical frame to be made precise. Without precision, an expression like "Existence exists" does not convey information, and seems like a category error.
What I ask is a scientific theory, by which I mean a first order logical theory about what you assume to exist, and then theorems justifying the other form that "existence" can take.
Some times you might wish to stop thinking like an automaton and enjoy how other people think. :-)
When I do not understand a joke/theory, I do not laugh/enjoy.
Onward!
Stephen
John Clark
acw <a...@lavabit.com> wrote:
>> A digital or analog camera would get similar amounts of noise as the eye, actually probably less than the eye.
> Why do you say that? Have you ever taken a photo with the lens cap on? I just looked at my digital camera in my phone and blocked the lens with my hand and there is no noise or snow whatsoever. If I unplug the monitor from my computer but leave it powered on - no snow.
Turn up the gain and guess what, snow! The idea that electronic light detectors (or any electronic circuit for that matter, or any biological circuit, or any anything) can produce not low noise but no noise whatsoever is of course ridiculous, but unlike so many other of your ridiculous statements this one is informative. No it tells us nothing about the nature of intelligence or consciousness and it certainly contains nothing informative about electronics, but it does tell us a lot about the depth of your scientific knowledge. Zero.
John K Clark
Bruno Marchal
On 2/1/2012 6:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:Hi Stephen,
On 31 Jan 2012, at 23:06, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 1/31/2012 3:03 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 31 Jan 2012, at 19:11, Stephen P. King wrote:
snip
Hi,
In Craig's defense I would like to point out that however trolling or postmodernist you might see his ideas, he is trying hard to think outside of the box that you guys are gyrating in like the ball in a game of Pong. How does science advance unless people are willing to contemplate alternative ideas?
I don't see any alternative idea or theory. When he says that qualia explains the universe, that fits with the proven consequences of comp, where quanta are case of qualia. He is not bad at introspection, he might grasp comp a little bit, but he does not try to submit a theory in the usual meaning of the terms. So we can't help.
Stephen, don't confuse comp, as used as a "pretext for not addressing the mind-body problem by materialist", and what we can already see from a formulation of the mind body problem when computationalism is taken seriously into account. This already leads to a rational alternative, if not reversal.
To be frank, you fail also to provide a theory, as your notion of "Existence" illustrates. Existence of what? You never answered.
Hi Bruno,
My my, are we in a snit of a mood! I am assuming a basic axiom: Existence exists. If this is difficult for you to grasp, please watch this lecture on Epistemology:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL59B2C09D51EBD222
This did not help. Sorry. I am used to appreciate Ayn Rand, but progress have been made. Pointing on a playlist with 30 videos is unecessary distraction. If you have a point, you should try to make it.
As I am not as skilled in composing words as many others I was allowing the argument of some other people, that I agree with, to stand in the place of my own. You might take this as a sign that I lack understanding of the concepts but you would be mistaken.
A person that is mute and armless can nevertheless have consistent thoughts.
BTW, I should not have to point out that we have gone through this before, but since I value your ideas I guess that I need to do it again, but unhappily so.
When you say "Existence exist", either I interpret it intuitively by "something exists" --- the non-nothing theory---and I hardly doubt it, or I interpret it as a reification of existence, like if it was a property or an object, and that would deserve a precise (and non standard) theoretical frame to be made precise. Without precision, an expression like "Existence exists" does not convey information, and seems like a category error.
It is a tautology, similar to A is A, but maximal is that is is not limited to specific instances such as what "something exists" conveys. What one states "something exists" that necessitates the possibility that "something else may not exist". I take Existence as primary and primitive and neutral.
What I ask is a scientific theory, by which I mean a first order logical theory about what you assume to exist, and then theorems justifying the other form that "existence" can take.
All that does not contradict itself and is thus necessarily possible exists, thus I claim that existence is necessary possibility.
Stephen P. King
What I ask is a scientific theory, by which I mean a first order logical theory about what you assume to exist, and then theorems justifying the other form that "existence" can take.
All that does not contradict itself and is thus necessarily possible exists, thus I claim that existence is necessary possibility.
That's an old idea in philosophy. It is the indexical idea that existence is consistence seen from inside. In first order logic it makes a lot of sense, given that consistence is equivalent with the existence of a model.And in AUDA, the necessity of the possibility of p, BDp, is the consequence of sigma_1 truth, and its leads to an arithmetical quantization. Here Bp is for (Bew(p) & Diamond("1=1")), and Dp is (Diamond(p) v Bew(f) 'relative consistency)). p is sigma_1.
Once you are using notion of necessity or possibility, being precise forces you to suggest in which modal logic you are working, and how you justify it. There are infinities of modal logics.UDA justifies the use of the self-reference modal logic, and their variants. Gödel's results (and Löb's one, and Solovay) don't let many possible choice for the ideally correct machines. The variant described above are the one needed to find the correct physic (correct with respect to comp, if you get UDA).
I don't know if comp is true or not, but comp makes theoretical computer science a lantern to find the key. It allows a mathematical formulation of many subproblems of the (comp) mind body problem.
Bruno
On these particulars we can agree. Our only disagreement is that you seem to consider that Arithmetic is at the same level as bare Existence and I see bare existence as neutral and that both logics (including arithmetic) and physicality are non-primitive. Have you noticed that I claim that the duality that I am considering vanishes at the level of Existence itself? This is because we cannot consider Existence to be partitioned without specifying a basis for the partition, in other words our ontological models have to start at our level of substitution and cannot remain coherent if we subtract out our existence as entities that can distinguish, for example, 0 from 1.
Onward!
Stephen
Bruno Marchal
On 2/1/2012 3:06 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I don't get it.
Many people have discussed this idea that Existence, in-itself, is primitive and neutral (has no properties or divisions). It is not original with me. For example, Bertrand Russell's discussion of neutral monism and Russell Standish's ToN explain it well.
Hi Bruno,
What I ask is a scientific theory, by which I mean a first order logical theory about what you assume to exist, and then theorems justifying the other form that "existence" can take.
All that does not contradict itself and is thus necessarily possible exists, thus I claim that existence is necessary possibility.
That's an old idea in philosophy. It is the indexical idea that existence is consistence seen from inside. In first order logic it makes a lot of sense, given that consistence is equivalent with the existence of a model.And in AUDA, the necessity of the possibility of p, BDp, is the consequence of sigma_1 truth, and its leads to an arithmetical quantization. Here Bp is for (Bew(p) & Diamond("1=1")), and Dp is (Diamond(p) v Bew(f) 'relative consistency)). p is sigma_1.
Once you are using notion of necessity or possibility, being precise forces you to suggest in which modal logic you are working, and how you justify it. There are infinities of modal logics.UDA justifies the use of the self-reference modal logic, and their variants. Gödel's results (and Löb's one, and Solovay) don't let many possible choice for the ideally correct machines. The variant described above are the one needed to find the correct physic (correct with respect to comp, if you get UDA).
I don't know if comp is true or not, but comp makes theoretical computer science a lantern to find the key. It allows a mathematical formulation of many subproblems of the (comp) mind body problem.
Bruno
On these particulars we can agree. Our only disagreement is that you seem to consider that Arithmetic is at the same level as bare Existence and I see bare existence as neutral and that both logics (including arithmetic) and physicality are non-primitive.
Have you noticed that I claim that the duality that I am considering vanishes at the level of Existence itself?
This is because we cannot consider Existence to be partitioned without specifying a basis for the partition, in other words our ontological models have to start at our level of substitution and cannot remain coherent if we subtract out our existence as entities that can distinguish, for example, 0 from 1.
Stephen P. King
On 01 Feb 2012, at 21:48, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 2/1/2012 3:06 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I don't get it.
Many people have discussed this idea that Existence, in-itself, is primitive and neutral (has no properties or divisions). It is not original with me. For example, Bertrand Russell's discussion of neutral monism and Russell Standish's ToN explain it well.
There might exist phenomenological hermeneutic of the monist kind, but this, once we chose to do science, is a private affair, which can inspire but cannot be communicated.
I do not understand what "phenomenological hermeneutic of the monist kind" is.
So by a neutral monist theory, its is meant a theory which does not assume mind, nor matter, and explain them from something else. That something else needs to be able to be described in first order logic, at least. It should have terms for the existing objects, and axioms for the laws to which those objects obey. Without those two components, we can do nothing.
What I ask is a scientific theory, by which I mean a first order logical theory about what you assume to exist, and then theorems justifying the other form that "existence" can take.
All that does not contradict itself and is thus necessarily possible exists, thus I claim that existence is necessary possibility.
That's an old idea in philosophy. It is the indexical idea that existence is consistence seen from inside. In first order logic it makes a lot of sense, given that consistence is equivalent with the existence of a model.And in AUDA, the necessity of the possibility of p, BDp, is the consequence of sigma_1 truth, and its leads to an arithmetical quantization. Here Bp is for (Bew(p) & Diamond("1=1")), and Dp is (Diamond(p) v Bew(f) 'relative consistency)). p is sigma_1.
Once you are using notion of necessity or possibility, being precise forces you to suggest in which modal logic you are working, and how you justify it. There are infinities of modal logics.UDA justifies the use of the self-reference modal logic, and their variants. Gödel's results (and Löb's one, and Solovay) don't let many possible choice for the ideally correct machines. The variant described above are the one needed to find the correct physic (correct with respect to comp, if you get UDA).
I don't know if comp is true or not, but comp makes theoretical computer science a lantern to find the key. It allows a mathematical formulation of many subproblems of the (comp) mind body problem.
[SPK]
On these particulars we can agree. Our only disagreement is that you seem to consider that Arithmetic is at the same level as bare Existence and I see bare existence as neutral and that both logics (including arithmetic) and physicality are non-primitive.
[BM]
Then tell me what you mean by "Existence", and show me how you derive logics, arithmetic and physicality from that.Unfortunately, people mature enough in logic know that you can't do that. No formal arithmetic can be deduced from anything less than itself.
[SPK]
It is a basic axiom of ontology, but not the only one. It is a necessary but not sufficient part of any ontology. I do not understand how the idea that I am discussing is confusing to you! Existence (noun) exists (verb). I am not claiming that it alone is stipulated. What does the word "exist", as in "A number exists" mean? What does the word "existence" in the following sentence "the existence of numbers in independent of any particular person or persons knowledge of them" mean? Am I being unclear?
Our beliefs in the natural numbers is authentically mysterious. But with comp we can, and we must, explain everything from them. And it works, because arithmetic emulate the ... self-referential resonance of numbers, which appears to be very rich and full of surprise.
I reject that our belief in numbers is "mysterious" as we can easily match up one set of objects with another set of different objects. We can observe physical objects, we can distinguish between them as they are present in differing locations or, if present in the same location, are located at differing times. Objects can have a wide variety of properties that our observations can determine. This is kindergarten material, Bruno, why are we tripping all over it as if it where a conundrum or requiring many years of meditation and training?
Have you noticed that I claim that the duality that I am considering vanishes at the level of Existence itself?
[BM]
I have still not the slightest clue of what you mean by "Existence".
[SPK]
Is it possible for you to think of the most primitive ontological level, prior to even hypostases? What is "at" that level? Bare and naked Existence, undifferentiated, unnamed and raw. It is obviously neutral with respect to properties and it cannot be a property for if Existence where a property then it could not be a fundamental primitive as it would necessarily supervene on something deeper.
This is because we cannot consider Existence to be partitioned without specifying a basis for the partition, in other words our ontological models have to start at our level of substitution and cannot remain coherent if we subtract out our existence as entities that can distinguish, for example, 0 from 1.
[BM]
This does not follow logically. We, the distinguishers of 0 and 1, certainly exist at some level, from some point of view. But that existence might be derivable (and is derivable) in arithmetic, once we assume comp.
[SPK]
We must assume existence as prior to even numbers, for numbers are, at least, differentiated aspects of existence. A "differentiated aspect of existence" is a thing, it is not existence per se. You are thinking of existence as being dependent on something else. It simply cannot be dependent as it is neither a property or emergent. It seems that you need to take a review course in Ontology! http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-ontology/#Ont
Some aspect of it are not derivable, and yet are still true and existing, and can be meta-justified for simpler machines than us, so that we can grasp them indirectly, including our incompleteness with respect to those truth, and which comes from our local relative finiteness.
That a logical sentence is true and that it exists are completely different situations that must not be conflated or considered at the same level. You seem to tacitly assume that numbers have properties completely independent of the ability of any entity of knowing of them. This is what I call the error of "implicit meaningfulness". A string of numbers, combinatorials, hierarchical sets or whatever, stripped of all relation to the possibility of physical instantiation, is less than a "ghost of a departed quantity", it is vacuous and vapid.
This is obvious Platonism, and it fails for the same reason that Plato's theory of Forms fails. It cannot account for knowledge, even in the Theaetetian sense, because prior to the consideration of what "Bp&p" is as different from "%r*0" or "Pb&b" or "1234" or ... as a possible meaningful statement, it has no meaning. This is the inevitable flaw of idealism: taking Mind or Consciousness as a singular primitive removes the possibility of distiguishing what something *is* from *what it is not*. Additionally, absent the ability that space and time provide to multiply representations of values, concepts, and other mental objects, there is simply no more than undifferentiated oneness. The ability to distinguish "this" from "that" requires the physical and cannot be sustained in its absence.
For example, in your result you use the notion of teleportation and digital substitution. Both of these concepts require the multiplicity of place and time that the physical world gives to be coherent, therefore your result cannot even be considered absent the physical. The idea of "implementing the UD" requires that it is possible for a physical system to implement it. This does *NOT* mean that the physical is primitive in the ontological sense, but neither does the UD itself exist as a primitive "idea". Neither ideas nor physical objects can be fundamental primitives as they require each other for their actuality.
You wrote in http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm :
"Instead of linking [the pain I feel] at space-time (x,t) to [a machine state] at space-time (x,t), we are obliged to associate [the pain I feel at space-time (x,t)] to a type or a sheaf of computations (existing forever in the arithmetical Platonia which is accepted as existing independently of our selves with arithmetical realism)."
This assumes that the "arithmetical Platonia" has specific properties that involve distinctions between them to follow simply from the necessary possibility of the sentence "Arithmetical Platonia exists". This is a hollow and empty statement as absent the disctinctions that the physical world provides, there can be no Platonia except as a abstraction within the thoughts of conscious entities. You are assuming that you can have all of the gifts of consciousness without having to pay the price of consciousness. Sorry, Bruno, there is no free lunch. The mere existence of numbers does nothing at all to indicate their properties.
If not, like Craig, perhaps like Rex Allen and Benjayk, you are postulating that comp is false.
You wrote: "Laws of physics, in particular, should be inferable from the true verifiable “atomic sentences”." Inferable by *what* or *whom*? The Atomic sentences themselves can do nothing at all, must less "infer" anything from themselves because they have no means to reflect back upon themselves. Even a Godel Number must be different from that it is representing in some way. "The number seven is prime" is meaningless if we cannot write it down somewhere and somehow and evaluate its implications.
If that is the case, I encourage you to make that precise, and to study comp and computer science to even just define "non-comp".That will not be easy. AUDA works, for example, for many transfinite sequences of weakening of comp.
Onward!
Stephen
Craig Weinberg
>
> acw <a...@lavabit.com> wrote:
> >> A digital or analog camera would get similar amounts of noise as the
> >> eye, actually probably less than the eye.
>
> > > Why do you say that? Have you ever taken a photo with the lens cap on? I
> > just looked at my digital camera in my phone and blocked the lens with my
> > hand and there is no noise or snow whatsoever. If I unplug the monitor from
> > my computer but leave it powered on - no snow.
>
electronic light detector but a pure abstraction tailored to suit the
semantics of the human intelligence program. Daniel Dennett has his
optical illusions which show how what we see is not what is real that
support his conclusion that qualia is purely representational for the
brain to tell it's stories, this is a contrary example of an optical
non-illusion that shows how what we see can be real even if there is
no reason for it to be available as qualia for our awareness.
> Turn up the gain and guess what, snow! The idea that electronic light
> detectors (or any electronic circuit for that matter, or any biological
> circuit, or any anything) can produce not low noise but no noise whatsoever
> is of course ridiculous,
inverse) is what comp predicts for visual qualia of conditions where
we cannot see. There is no reason to represent anything else, and
there is no noise whatsoever in this image.
> but unlike so many other of your ridiculous
> statements this one is informative. No it tells us nothing about the nature
> of intelligence or consciousness and it certainly contains nothing
> informative about electronics, but it does tell us a lot about the depth of
> your scientific knowledge. Zero.
that you don't understand what I'm talking about. Other people do
though, so I can tell the difference. I on the other hand know exactly
what you are talking about and why your understanding fails to take
the whole reality into account. The more that bothers you, the more I
know that part of you knows I might be right.
Craig
Quentin Anciaux
On Feb 1, 11:06 am, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:My entire point is that comp suggests that our visual qualia is not an
>
> acw <a...@lavabit.com> wrote:
> >> A digital or analog camera would get similar amounts of noise as the
> >> eye, actually probably less than the eye.
>
> > > Why do you say that? Have you ever taken a photo with the lens cap on? I
> > just looked at my digital camera in my phone and blocked the lens with my
> > hand and there is no noise or snow whatsoever. If I unplug the monitor from
> > my computer but leave it powered on - no snow.
>
electronic light detector but a pure abstraction tailored to suit the
semantics of the human intelligence program. Daniel Dennett has his
optical illusions which show how what we see is not what is real that
support his conclusion that qualia is purely representational for the
brain to tell it's stories, this is a contrary example of an optical
non-illusion that shows how what we see can be real even if there is
no reason for it to be available as qualia for our awareness.
Go into Photoshop or Paint. File > New > OK. This image (or it's
> Turn up the gain and guess what, snow! The idea that electronic light
> detectors (or any electronic circuit for that matter, or any biological
> circuit, or any anything) can produce not low noise but no noise whatsoever
> is of course ridiculous,
inverse) is what comp predicts for visual qualia of conditions where
we cannot see.
No that's not what comp predict. Comp predict that what you see is what you see. Comp is the computation theory of mind. If you start assuming stupid thing you can only conclude stupid thing, but your conclusion has nothing to do with comp.
There is no reason to represent anything else, and
there is no noise whatsoever in this image.
This kind of ad hominem stuff means Zero to me. Why? Because I know
> but unlike so many other of your ridiculous
> statements this one is informative. No it tells us nothing about the nature
> of intelligence or consciousness and it certainly contains nothing
> informative about electronics, but it does tell us a lot about the depth of
> your scientific knowledge. Zero.
that you don't understand what I'm talking about. Other people do
though, so I can tell the difference. I on the other hand know exactly
what you are talking about and why your understanding fails to take
the whole reality into account. The more that bothers you, the more I
know that part of you knows I might be right.
Craig
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Craig Weinberg
.
> No that's not what comp predict. Comp predict that what you see is what you
> see.
quaia? Do tell.
> Comp is the computation theory of mind. If you start assuming stupid
> thing you can only conclude stupid thing, but your conclusion has nothing
> to do with comp.
Why does he use those if his view of the universe (comp), says that
'what you see is what you see.'?
Quentin Anciaux
Because comp is the theory saying that *you are turing emulable* If you current vision was not turing emulable, it's a fail from the starting point... If you can't see that you're more stupid than I thought. You could always posit that vision was not turing emulable... but without any proof, like John Clark says, it's gaz...
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Craig Weinberg
> 2012/2/3 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>
>
> > Do you say the same of Dennett's many examples of optical illusions?
> > Why does he use those if his view of the universe (comp), says that
> > 'what you see is what you see.'?
>
> Because comp is the theory saying that *you are turing emulable* If you
> current vision was not turing emulable, it's a fail from the starting
> point... If you can't see that you're more stupid than I thought. You could
> always posit that vision was not turing emulable... but without any proof,
> like John Clark says, it's gaz...
>
as some kind of deified abstraction. We only know about Turing because
of our consciousness. We don't need proof of our own consciousness. We
are the proof. If you reject that, then you are gaz, therefore there
can be no proof that your opinions exist, or proof if anything for
that matter.
Bruno Marchal
On 2/2/2012 1:07 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 01 Feb 2012, at 21:48, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 2/1/2012 3:06 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I don't get it.
Many people have discussed this idea that Existence, in-itself, is primitive and neutral (has no properties or divisions). It is not original with me. For example, Bertrand Russell's discussion of neutral monism and Russell Standish's ToN explain it well.
There might exist phenomenological hermeneutic of the monist kind, but this, once we chose to do science, is a private affair, which can inspire but cannot be communicated.
Hi Bruno,
I do not understand what "phenomenological hermeneutic of the monist kind" is.
So by a neutral monist theory, its is meant a theory which does not assume mind, nor matter, and explain them from something else. That something else needs to be able to be described in first order logic, at least. It should have terms for the existing objects, and axioms for the laws to which those objects obey. Without those two components, we can do nothing.
Neutral monism does not assume that mind or matter have primitive existence.
Neutral monism considers that both Mind and Matter emerge from a common neutral ground that is, in-itself, neither.
My proposed dualism becomes neutral monism in the limit of lower levels of entities (assuming well foundedness).
This is different from "material monism" that assumes that the material physical would is primitive, or "ideal monism" that assumes that Mind is primitive. Your ideas seems to be a form of Ideal Monism.
[SPK]
What I ask is a scientific theory, by which I mean a first order logical theory about what you assume to exist, and then theorems justifying the other form that "existence" can take.
All that does not contradict itself and is thus necessarily possible exists, thus I claim that existence is necessary possibility.
That's an old idea in philosophy. It is the indexical idea that existence is consistence seen from inside. In first order logic it makes a lot of sense, given that consistence is equivalent with the existence of a model.And in AUDA, the necessity of the possibility of p, BDp, is the consequence of sigma_1 truth, and its leads to an arithmetical quantization. Here Bp is for (Bew(p) & Diamond("1=1")), and Dp is (Diamond(p) v Bew(f) 'relative consistency)). p is sigma_1.
Once you are using notion of necessity or possibility, being precise forces you to suggest in which modal logic you are working, and how you justify it. There are infinities of modal logics.UDA justifies the use of the self-reference modal logic, and their variants. Gödel's results (and Löb's one, and Solovay) don't let many possible choice for the ideally correct machines. The variant described above are the one needed to find the correct physic (correct with respect to comp, if you get UDA).
I don't know if comp is true or not, but comp makes theoretical computer science a lantern to find the key. It allows a mathematical formulation of many subproblems of the (comp) mind body problem.
On these particulars we can agree. Our only disagreement is that you seem to consider that Arithmetic is at the same level as bare Existence and I see bare existence as neutral and that both logics (including arithmetic) and physicality are non-primitive.[BM]
Then tell me what you mean by "Existence", and show me how you derive logics, arithmetic and physicality from that.Unfortunately, people mature enough in logic know that you can't do that. No formal arithmetic can be deduced from anything less than itself.
[SPK]
It is a basic axiom of ontology, but not the only one. It is a necessary but not sufficient part of any ontology. I do not understand how the idea that I am discussing is confusing to you! Existence (noun) exists (verb).
I am not claiming that it alone is stipulated. What does the word "exist", as in "A number exists" mean?
What does the word "existence" in the following sentence "the existence of numbers in independent of any particular person or persons knowledge of them" mean? Am I being unclear?
[SPK]Our beliefs in the natural numbers is authentically mysterious. But with comp we can, and we must, explain everything from them. And it works, because arithmetic emulate the ... self-referential resonance of numbers, which appears to be very rich and full of surprise.
I reject that our belief in numbers is "mysterious" as we can easily match up one set of objects with another set of different objects.
We can observe physical objects,
we can distinguish between them as they are present in differing locations
or, if present in the same location, are located at differing times.
Objects can have a wide variety of properties that our observations can determine.
This is kindergarten material, Bruno, why are we tripping all over it as if it where a conundrum or requiring many years of meditation and training?
Have you noticed that I claim that the duality that I am considering vanishes at the level of Existence itself?[BM]
I have still not the slightest clue of what you mean by "Existence".
[SPK]
Is it possible for you to think of the most primitive ontological level, prior to even hypostases? What is "at" that level? Bare and naked Existence, undifferentiated, unnamed and raw. It is obviously neutral with respect to properties and it cannot be a property for if Existence where a property then it could not be a fundamental primitive as it would necessarily supervene on something deeper.
[SPK]
This is because we cannot consider Existence to be partitioned without specifying a basis for the partition, in other words our ontological models have to start at our level of substitution and cannot remain coherent if we subtract out our existence as entities that can distinguish, for example, 0 from 1.
[BM]
This does not follow logically. We, the distinguishers of 0 and 1, certainly exist at some level, from some point of view. But that existence might be derivable (and is derivable) in arithmetic, once we assume comp.
We must assume existence as prior to even numbers, for numbers are, at least, differentiated aspects of existence.
A "differentiated aspect of existence" is a thing, it is not existence per se. You are thinking of existence as being dependent on something else. It simply cannot be dependent as it is neither a property or emergent. It seems that you need to take a review course in Ontology! http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-ontology/#Ont
[SPK]Some aspect of it are not derivable, and yet are still true and existing, and can be meta-justified for simpler machines than us, so that we can grasp them indirectly, including our incompleteness with respect to those truth, and which comes from our local relative finiteness.
That a logical sentence is true and that it exists are completely different situations that must not be conflated or considered at the same level.
You seem to tacitly assume that numbers have properties completely independent of the ability of any entity of knowing of them.
This is what I call the error of "implicit meaningfulness". A string of numbers, combinatorials, hierarchical sets or whatever, stripped of all relation to the possibility of physical instantiation, is less than a "ghost of a departed quantity", it is vacuous and vapid.
This is obvious Platonism, and it fails for the same reason that Plato's theory of Forms fails.
It cannot account for knowledge, even in the Theaetetian sense, because prior to the consideration of what "Bp&p" is as different from "%r*0" or "Pb&b" or "1234" or ... as a possible meaningful statement, it has no meaning.
This is the inevitable flaw of idealism: taking Mind or Consciousness as a singular primitive removes the possibility of distiguishing what something *is* from *what it is not*.
Additionally, absent the ability that space and time provide to multiply representations of values, concepts, and other mental objects, there is simply no more than undifferentiated oneness.
The ability to distinguish "this" from "that" requires the physical and cannot be sustained in its absence.
For example, in your result you use the notion of teleportation and digital substitution. Both of these concepts require the multiplicity of place and time that the physical world gives to be coherent, therefore your result cannot even be considered absent the physical.
The idea of "implementing the UD" requires that it is possible for a physical system to implement it.
This does *NOT* mean that the physical is primitive in the ontological sense, but neither does the UD itself exist as a primitive "idea". Neither ideas nor physical objects can be fundamental primitives as they require each other for their actuality.
You wrote in http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm :
"Instead of linking [the pain I feel] at space-time (x,t) to [a machine state] at space-time (x,t), we are obliged to associate [the pain I feel at space-time (x,t)] to a type or a sheaf of computations (existing forever in the arithmetical Platonia which is accepted as existing independently of our selves with arithmetical realism)."
This assumes that the "arithmetical Platonia" has specific properties that involve distinctions between them to follow simply from the necessary possibility of the sentence "Arithmetical Platonia exists".
This is a hollow and empty statement as absent the disctinctions that the physical world provides,
there can be no Platonia except as a abstraction within the thoughts of conscious entities.
You are assuming that you can have all of the gifts of consciousness without having to pay the price of consciousness. Sorry, Bruno, there is no free lunch. The mere existence of numbers does nothing at all to indicate their properties.
If not, like Craig, perhaps like Rex Allen and Benjayk, you are postulating that comp is false.
No, I am not. I bet that comp is TRUE, but I don't see COMP as requiring that the physical world is supervening on numbers (up to isomorphisms) as primitives.
I am trying to point out the obvious and even trivial fact that comp is meaningless and mute as an explanatory model or "result" absent the physical world with its chalkboards, paper, computer screens, etc. Its existence, per se, has nothing to do with its meaningfulness.
You wrote: "Physics is given by a measure on the consistent computational histories, or maximal consistent extensions as seen from some first person point of view." What exactly is this "First Person point of view"
if there is nothing that can act as such by your account?
You wrote: "Laws of physics, in particular, should be inferable from the true verifiable “atomic sentences”." Inferable by *what* or *whom*?
The Atomic sentences themselves can do nothing at all,
must less "infer" anything from themselves because they have no means to reflect back upon themselves.
Even a Godel Number must be different from that it is representing in some way.
"The number seven is prime" is meaningless if we cannot write it down somewhere and somehow and evaluate its implications.
If that is the case, I encourage you to make that precise, and to study comp and computer science to even just define "non-comp".That will not be easy. AUDA works, for example, for many transfinite sequences of weakening of comp.
However one might "weaken comp" it still requires the possibility of implementation in a substrate no matter how universal it might be.
Universality merely makes the computation free from specific physical implementations, it does *NOT* obviate the need for the possibility of physical implementation.
Ideal monism still fails because it contradicts the requirement that it be meaningful.
Something cannot be said to be meaningful when there is no object (that it is not) to whom it has a meaning.
To claim the opposite is to claim that "I can have meaning to my self but I have no self".
John Clark
> My entire point is that comp suggests that our visual qualia is not an electronic light detector
The visual cortex in your brain is not a light detector and the image compression program connected to the camera on your cellphone is not a light detector either, electronic or otherwise.
> Go into Photoshop or Paint. File > New > OK. This image (or it's inverse) is what comp predicts for visual qualia of conditions where we cannot see. There is no reason to represent anything else, and there is no noise whatsoever in this image.
Photoshop can paint a smooth image therefore computers can never be intelligent or conscious. Of course, I see the light at last, its all so obvious now that you point out that vital fact! Why oh why didn't I see it before?!
> This kind of ad hominem stuff means Zero to me. Why?
I don't know, maybe because your used to people saying "this is stupid".
> I know that you don't understand what I'm talking about.
True, and the reason for that is you don't understand what you're talking about, thus there is little chance I would know what you mean when you obviously do not.
> I on the other hand know exactly what you are talking about
The fact that I do know what I'm talking about explains this asymmetry.
John K Clark
John K Clark
Stephen P. King
On 02 Feb 2012, at 21:52, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 2/2/2012 1:07 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 01 Feb 2012, at 21:48, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 2/1/2012 3:06 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I don't get it.
��� Many people have discussed this idea that Existence, in-itself, is primitive and neutral (has no properties or divisions). It is not original with me. For example, Bertrand Russell's discussion of neutral monism and Russell Standish's ToN explain it well.
There might exist phenomenological hermeneutic of the monist kind, but this, once we chose to do science, is a private affair, which can inspire but cannot be communicated.
Hi Bruno,
��� I do not understand what "phenomenological hermeneutic of the monist kind" is.
It is (monist) continental philosophy. Something I avoid, because it lacks the amount of rigor which I think is needed in any public communication.�
So by a neutral monist theory, its is meant a theory which does not assume mind, nor matter, and explain them from something else. That something else needs to be able to be described in first order logic, at least. It should have terms for the existing objects, and axioms for the laws to which those objects obey. Without those two components, we can do nothing.
��� Neutral monism does not assume that mind or matter have primitive existence.
Right.
Neutral monism considers that both Mind and Matter emerge from a common neutral ground that is, in-itself, neither.
[SPK]OK. I think comp can be described as neutral monism. It assumes numbers with the + and * law. And from that precise neutral grounds, it explains mind and the appearance of matter. Cf NUMBERS => MIND => MATTER.�
��� That is a contradiction. If you stipulate or postulate (up to isomorphisms) that "assumes numbers and the + and * law" then you are requiring that the neutrality is violated, as "numbers and the + and * laws" must be distinguished at the fundamental level from, say, "non-numbers and the @ and $ law" or "derfsfrswe and Q and P laws" or "wfwefwf and R and T laws" or .... You cannot have a differentiation at the foundation and claim that it is neutral. Y
Neutral monism as I am considering it is : Existence (Neutral undifferentiated) => MIND (including numbers and all other representations) AND MATTER
��� I am using the property of "representability" that mental aspect have, such as what you use with Goedel numbering, to communicate the idea that MIND and MATTER are dual aspects of the fundamental primitive neutral Existence and that this duality is the great-great-great-...- grandfather of the Stone Duality between Boolean algebras and fields of sets - also known as "topological spaces". Vaughan Pratt has explained this idea well enough to start the considerations of it.
��� You are assuming that numbers are entities that have properties inherently in themselves, that their properties (primeness, squareness, etc.) is completely separate and isolated from our ability to apprehend those properties. This is fatally flawed because it, like Descartes Substance Dualism, has no means to explain how we can come to know of those properties. Plato's idea was that we "remember" the properties of the Forms somehow. But this explanation fails because to remember a datum requires some prior contact with the source of the datum. How can we contact the Forms is they are, by definition, "independent of the mind"?
��� Forgive me, there might be a definition of "independent" that allows contact but can be so weakened to become degenerate, but in mathematics when two entities are independent they have no relation at all with each other. The only way that we can consider independent entities, take vectors, is to have then existing in a common basis structure. But to do this with Forms and our minds would put Forms and our minds on the same ontological level. Your explanation would consider this a treachery.
��� You might protest and say that numbers are universal and that you are considering the function that numbers and that the + and * laws perform is "neutral" in the sense of Neutral monism, but that claim also fails for the very same reason as I have outlined. We simply cannot have "specification of properties" and ontological neutrality at the same level. One is the exclusion of the other.
���
My proposed dualism becomes neutral monism in the limit of lower levels of entities (assuming well foundedness).
So you assume a set theory. That's OK, with comp, but might be too much, and quite unpedagogical, if not confusing. Sets are controversial in the foundational problems. I prefer to avoid them for the ontology.All set theories assumes implicitly arithmetic. Set theory is equivalent with arithmetic + some other stronger axioms.
This is different from "material monism" that assumes that the material physical would is primitive, or "ideal monism" that assumes that Mind is primitive. Your ideas seems to be a form of Ideal Monism.
Not at all. Although UDA assumes consciousness (in its invariance for the comp substitution at some level), UDA+AUDA explicitly eliminates it at the ontological level, and is explained in the math of the epistemology of numbers, so that the TOE is literally only elementary arithmetic.
What I ask is a scientific theory, by which I mean a first order logical theory about what you assume to exist, and then theorems justifying the other form that "existence" can take.
��� All that does not contradict itself and is thus necessarily possible exists, thus I claim that existence is necessary possibility.
That's an old idea in philosophy. It is the indexical idea that existence is consistence seen from inside. In first order logic it makes a lot of sense, given that consistence is equivalent with the existence of a model.And in AUDA, the necessity of the possibility of p, BDp, is the consequence of sigma_1 truth, and its leads to an arithmetical quantization. Here Bp is for (Bew(p) & Diamond("1=1")), and Dp is (Diamond(p) v Bew(f) 'relative consistency)). p is sigma_1.
[SPK]Once you are using notion of necessity or possibility, being precise forces you to suggest in which modal logic you are working, and how you justify it. There are infinities of modal logics.�UDA justifies the use of the self-reference modal logic, and their variants. G�del's results (and L�b's one, and Solovay) don't let many possible choice for the ideally correct machines. The variant described above are the one needed to find the correct physic (correct with respect to comp, if you get UDA).
I don't know if comp is true or not, but comp makes theoretical computer science a lantern to find the key. It allows a mathematical formulation of many subproblems of the (comp) mind body problem.�
��� On these particulars we can agree. Our only disagreement is that you seem to consider that Arithmetic is at the same level as bare Existence and I see bare existence as neutral and that both logics (including arithmetic) and physicality are non-primitive.
[BM]
Then tell me what you mean by "Existence", and show me how you derive logics, arithmetic and physicality from that.Unfortunately, people mature enough in logic know that you can't do that. No formal arithmetic can be deduced from anything less than itself.
[SPK]
��� It is a basic axiom of ontology, but not the only one. It is a necessary but not sufficient part of any ontology. I do not understand how the idea that I am discussing is confusing to you! Existence (noun) exists (verb).[BM]
"Existence exist" �is equivalent to Snark borgles. Snark (noun) borgles (verb).
��� Please. Do not do that. You are insulting your own intelligence with remarks like those.
By an axiom I mean something that either you can present in first order logic, or it is clear enough that we can understand that it can be so translated if we have enough time. Or that you can represent/explained in some other first order logical theory, like set theory, if you want.
��� But that is the same trap what you are caught in and refuse to see! To state something in first order logic requires that the object that the statement represents is amenable to the "rules" of first order logic. You are tacitly assuming the benefits of the proto-Stone duality without obeying its requirements. Do you not see/understand that concepts have the property that they can represent themselves but cannot implement themselves? You care confusing these two very different properties which is quasi-consistent since you also assume the doctrine of inherent properties .
The expression "existence exists" has really no meaning for me. Except a vague idea that the "Nothing" theory is false.
I am not claiming that it alone is stipulated. What does the word "exist", as in "A number exists" mean?
It means that the statement "ExP(x)" is provable in the theory. It can also mean, at the metalevel, that the object exists in a (usually standard) model of the theory. For example "0 exist" in PA because you can prove in PA that �Ex(x = 0). And 0 exists in the standard model of PA, N = {0, 1, 2, ...}, with the usual + and * laws.
��� OK, but cannot you see that that entire argument is predicated upon the possibility of its implementation as distinguishable from alternatives? How can distinguishability obtain without the means to produce it? When you make consciousness vanish so too does the distinguishably that it engenders. You simply cannot posit the existence of entities that have distinguishable properties and prohibit (even passively) the means by which the differences between the entities obtain. If there is no "we" as physical entities that can distinguish a 1 from a 2 from a 3 and a + operation from a * operations from a # operation or even to be able to speak the words or name them, how can we argue that such entities even exist? To do so is no better that the claims of mystics and Scholastics, and ultimately, becomes prey to "might is right" argumentation: "7 exists and is prime because I say so..."
What does the word "existence" in the following sentence "the existence of numbers in independent of any particular person or persons knowledge of them" mean? Am I being unclear?
It means that the standard truth value of Ex(x = 0), Ex(x = s(0)), are independent of the intuitive existence of me, you, etc.
[SPK]Our beliefs in the natural numbers is authentically mysterious. But with comp we can, and we must, explain everything from them. And it works, because arithmetic emulate the ... self-referential resonance of numbers, which appears to be very rich and full of surprise.
��� I reject that our belief in numbers is "mysterious" as we can easily match up one set of objects with another set of different objects.
In which theory?
��� In a theory whose claims are falsifiable.
here you practice phenomenology again.
By mysterious, I was meaning that we cannot derive them from any weaker theory. For example we cannot derive them from logic alone (contrary to what B. Russell thought in Principia Mathematica).
You refutation here used "me", "sets" "objects", "matching" like if we knew how to recover that notion in your theory (which one?).
You refer many times to paper which are correct from the formal points of view. You should work hard to write something similar.
We can observe physical objects,
This is either a tautology, or what?
We cannot take physical object for granted if we assume comp. If you assume set theory + a physical reality, you have to say so.
we can distinguish between them as they are present in differing locations
What is a location?
or, if present in the same location, are located at differing times.
What is time?
Objects can have a wide variety of properties that our observations can determine.
What is "observation", what is "our"?
This is kindergarten material, Bruno, why are we tripping all over it as if it where a conundrum or requiring many years of meditation and training?
The fact that we can derive A from (A & B) can be considered kindergarten too, yet we have to assume such kind of rule explicitly once we do science.�
Nothing is kindergarten in science, especially in fundamental science.
��� Touche! But you are avoiding my claim.
�
Have you noticed that I claim that the duality that I am considering vanishes at the level of Existence itself?[BM]
I have still not the slightest clue of what you mean by "Existence".
[SPK]
��� Is it possible for you to think of the most primitive ontological level, prior to even hypostases?� What is "at" that level? Bare and naked Existence, undifferentiated, unnamed and raw. It is obviously neutral with respect to properties and it cannot be a property for if Existence where a property then it could not be a fundamental primitive as it would necessarily supervene on something deeper.
Existence is for me, and many, a quantifier. We note it "E", and we use it following rules or axioms, like, if you can deduce in the theory that P(t), for some term t, then you can deduce ExP(x) (it exists something verifying P.�
I have no idea what you mean by "Bare and naked Existence, undifferentiated, unnamed and raw". It looks like the TAO, God, or things like that, which I can find very interesting, but to postulate them makes no sense (if only because they are unnameable indeed).
��� This is an example of what I mean when I ask you to stop acting like an automaton. Yes, Existence is unnameable in-it-self, but for the sake of conversation we can use a word for it, no? I am just trying to be consistent with the requirement of informal and formal logic and not just leaving assumptions unstated. This is something that I learned from David Bohm's discussion of Tacit assumptions.
[SPK]
This is because we cannot consider Existence to be partitioned without specifying a basis for the partition, in other words our ontological models have to start at our level of substitution and cannot remain coherent if we subtract out our existence as entities that can distinguish, for example, 0 from 1.
[BM]
This does not follow logically. We, the distinguishers of 0 and 1, certainly exist at some level, from some point of view. But that existence might be derivable (and is derivable) in arithmetic, once we assume comp.
��� We must assume existence as prior to even numbers, for numbers are, at least, differentiated aspects of existence.
Sorry Stephen. This sentence does not help.
��� They you are worse off than I suspected. Bruno, you cannot complain that you and your ideas are not being taken seriously when you insist in such an intransigent way on not noticing the obvious. As I explained above, we cannot make claims about entities having properties at the same time claiming that those properties are completely independent of our ability to know them. Yes, the primeness of 7 does not depend on any particular person or entity knowing so, but that does not necessitate that the primeness of 7 is a properties that is completely cut off from our physicality. You do not see the flaw of idealism, it is in your mental blind spot I guess....
A "differentiated aspect of existence" is a thing, it is not existence per se. You are thinking of existence as being dependent on something else. It simply cannot be dependent as it is neither a property or emergent. It seems that you need to take a review course in Ontology! http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-ontology/#Ont�
[SPK]Some aspect of it are not derivable, and yet are still true and existing, and can be meta-justified for simpler machines than us, so that we can grasp them indirectly, including our incompleteness with respect to those truth, and which comes from our local relative finiteness.
��� That a logical sentence is true and that it exists are completely different situations that must not be conflated or considered at the same level.
I made a short language abuse. By "true and existing" I meant "P(t) true and t existing", for some predicate P and object (term) t.
��� I have no problem with either version, the meaning is the same for me. Whether we bracket sentences or not, they still require some form of physical implementation to be said to have properties.
You seem to tacitly assume that numbers have properties completely independent of the ability of any entity of knowing of them.Not tacitly. Explicitly.
You too, when you refer to set theoretical axioms, like well-foundedness?
This is what I call the error of "implicit meaningfulness". A string of numbers, combinatorials, hierarchical sets or whatever, stripped of all relation to the possibility of physical instantiation, is less than a "ghost of a departed quantity", it is vacuous and vapid.
You are doing exactly that when you say that "existence exists" is an axiom.
��� This is obvious Platonism, and it fails for the same reason that Plato's theory of Forms fails.
That is an ultra-strong statement.
��� Indeed! I am not the first to state it.
It cannot account for knowledge, even in the Theaetetian sense, because prior to the consideration of what� "Bp&p" is as different from "%r*0" or "Pb&b" or "1234" or ... as a possible meaningful statement, it has no meaning.
The meaning is given by the axioms, and, at the meta-level, by the models. Like in algebra and math.You are confusing explanatory levels.
��� Please explain to me the difference of these levels and disabuse me of this confusion.
This is the inevitable flaw of idealism: taking Mind or Consciousness as a singular primitive removes the possibility of distiguishing what something *is* from *what it is not*.
I keep insisting that I do not take consciousness or mind as primitive. Only numbers, with the + and * laws.
Additionally, absent the ability that space and time provide to multiply representations of values, concepts, and other mental objects, there is simply no more than undifferentiated oneness.
That's the first hypostases, and we get 8 different ones, including the two plotinian (sensible and intelligible) matters.
The ability to distinguish "this" from "that" requires the physical and cannot be sustained in its absence.
You said that you were not assuming physical as primitive, and here you talk like you do.Please, send us your theory. I try hard to attribute some sense and intuition, but once you make strong negative statement, you need a very precise theory to do that.
��� For example, in your result you use the notion of teleportation and digital substitution. Both of these concepts require the multiplicity of place and time that the physical world gives to be coherent, therefore your result cannot even be considered absent the physical.
UDA is not at the same level of AUDA. UDA assumes comp, and thus some physical universe. But the consequence of UDA is that the universe is not an ontological object. It is a shared dream of numbers.
��� No, numbers cannot have dreams or anything else if they are ontological primitives as ontological primitives must be neutral with respect to properties. You are also conflating the representations of concepts with the referent of those representations, so your accusation that I am confusing levels is aimed in the wrong direction.
The idea of "implementing the UD" requires that it is possible for a physical system to implement it.
Not at all. Implementation is a purely arithmetical concept. It needs only (N,+,*).
This does *NOT*� mean that the physical is primitive in the ontological sense, but neither does the UD itself exist as a primitive "idea". Neither ideas nor physical objects can be fundamental primitives as they require each other for their actuality.
��� You wrote in http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm :
"Instead of linking [the pain I feel] at space-time (x,t) to [a machine state] at space-time (x,t), we are obliged to associate [the pain I feel at space-time (x,t)] to a type or a sheaf of computations (existing forever in the arithmetical Platonia which is accepted as existing independently of our selves with arithmetical realism)."
��� This assumes that the "arithmetical Platonia" has specific properties that involve distinctions between them to follow simply from the necessary possibility of the sentence "Arithmetical Platonia exists".
Not at all. You need only predicate calculus with equality (first order logic). PA can prove ~(0=1).
��� And the sentence "PA can prove ~(0=1)." requires some means of being physically implemented to be distinguishable and thus have a meaning that is different from any other ASCII string. This is where your idea fails and it is the same failure as any other form of idealism. It cannot account for the necessity of the physical world nor the causal efficacy of ideas.
This is a hollow and empty statement as absent the disctinctions that the physical world provides,
What is a physical world?
there can be no Platonia except as a abstraction within the thoughts of conscious entities.
Proof?
You are assuming that you can have all of the gifts of consciousness without having to pay the price of consciousness. Sorry, Bruno, there is no free lunch. The mere existence of numbers does nothing at all to indicate their properties.
This contradicts the fact that numbers do have a very rich self-reference logic.
If not, like Craig, perhaps like Rex Allen and Benjayk, you are postulating that comp is false.
��� No, I am not. I bet that comp is TRUE, but I don't see COMP as requiring that the physical world is supervening on numbers (up to isomorphisms) as primitives.
So you have to explicitly show what is not valid in the UDA1-8. You miss something, let us try to find out what.
��� I am not missing a thing, Bruno. You are missing something that is obvious to the rest of us. The very fact that we can read your paper and come to some understanding of the subject of your symol strings is proof that concepts, including numbers, cannot have properties absent the possibility of a physical reality. This proof implies that numbers and physical reality exist at the same level, so that if numbers are primitive then so too is physical reality. But we agree that physical reality cannot be primitive therefore neither can numbers be considered as primitive.
I am trying to point out the obvious and even trivial fact that comp is meaningless and mute as an explanatory model or "result" absent the physical world with its chalkboards, paper, computer screens, etc. Its existence, per se, has nothing to do with its meaningfulness.
UDA explains that concrete chalkboards are epinoumena. Even if they exist, we cannot use them to explain the observation of chalkboards. Occam trows the epinoumena out.
You wrote: "Physics is given by a measure on the consistent computational histories, or maximal consistent extensions as seen from some first person point of view." What exactly is this "First Person point of view"
It is the person associated to a machine/number whose knowledge obeys the S4Grz modal logic, in virtue of being described by the Theaetetu's definition of knowledge (Bp & p), when Bp means "asserted soon or later by that machine", for machine ideally correct.It is the third hypostase. The only one which does not split in two.
In UDA, you can already get the intuition, it is the one who wrote in his diary "I am in W", and who is in W.
At that moment you get a new machine with "I am in W" as new axiom. �And you know that his physics will be given by the consistent extension, whose correct self-referential logic is given by Bp & Dt. The fourth "intelligible matter" hypostases.�
��� No, there is no machine, axiom or anything else because there is only "epiphenomena". You have stultified your own result.
if there is nothing that can act as such by your account?
There are infinitely many things, in (N,+,*) which plays that role. All the universal L�bian numbers.
��� And they have a meaning and express coherent meaningful implications because it is possible to implement them physically. When remove the possibility of physical implementation my claiming that such are "epiphenomena" then they lose what ever meaningful content they might have.
��� You wrote: "Laws of physics, in particular, should be inferable from the true verifiable �atomic sentences�." Inferable by *what* or *whom*?
By the ideally correct�universal L�bian numbers. Like Everett, arithmetic extracts its own correct (theological) internal interpretations.
��� Sure, and again, we can distinguish L�bian from non- L�bian machines by the effects that their physical implementation causes.
The Atomic sentences themselves can do nothing at all,
They corresponds to the existence of the accessible computational states. The atomic sentences are the true Sigma_1 sentences. They are provable, and their proofs are, in that setting, computations. (Except that we must generalize a bit the notion of proof, to get the measure genuine with respect to UDA).
��� This is the fatal flaw of idealism and ironically, it the same same flaw of materialism: epiphenomena. The material world is epiphenomena for ideal monism and the mental world is epiphenomena for materialism. WE can only break this impasse by some form of dualism that puts the mater and mind on the same level.
must less "infer" anything from themselves because they have no means to reflect back upon themselves.
The universal sigma_1 sentence, like Bp, does exactly that. They extrapolate by self-completion. But she go bezerk, because the arithmetical truth run deep and strange (and uncomputable).
Even a Godel Number must be different from that it is representing in some way.
Yes.
"The number seven is prime" is meaningless if we cannot write it down somewhere and somehow and evaluate its implications.
Who is we? tell me his name, so that I will add its existence to the Peano axioms.
Is "we" Stephen Paul King?
In that case here is my new theory:
Ax ~(0 = s(x)) �(For all number x the successor of x is different from zero). WithAxAy ~(x = y) -> ~(s(x) = s(y)) ���(different numbers have different successors)Ax x + 0 = x �(0 adds nothing)AxAy �x + s(y) = s(x + y) ��( meaning x + (y +1) = (x + y) +1)Ax ��x *0 = 0
AxAy x*s(y) = x*y + xExAy(x = STEPHEN & (Bew(y) -> STEPHEN(y)).
With STEPHEN a new constant term, denoting you in the union of the standard model of arithmetic with {you}.
��� Sorry Bruno, I am not isomorphic to any particular representation of me. At worse, my "being" supervenes on all possible representations of Stephen Paul King + the possibility of at least one form of physical implementation of all of those representations.
Well, that will give a conservative extension of PA. So it changes nothing, except for a trivial explanation of the existence of you, which, probably like adding primitive matter, can only make the relation between the "real comp stephen(s)" and STEPHEN quite mysterious.
"Ax ~(0 = s(x)) �(For all number x the successor of x is different from zero). With
With S a new constant term, denoting you in the union of the standard model of arithmetic with {you}.
Where {you} is a referent of the class of entities that can make and note differences."
��� The argument that I am making, indeed maybe a sketch of a proof, is that these ASCII strings have a meaning only because there exists the possibility that they can be implemented as some pattern of differences in a substrate capable of being differentiated. If this substrate is epiphenomena then the possibility of meaningfulness itself vanishes.
If that is the case, I encourage you to make that precise, and to study comp and computer science to even just define "non-comp".That will not be easy. AUDA works, for example, for many transfinite sequences of weakening of comp.
��� However one might "weaken comp" it still requires the possibility of implementation in a substrate no matter how universal it might be.
Why? Once you have N and +, and *, you can't avoid the universal numbers and all their relative implementations.�
And numbers get an explanation why some implementations (like the quantum one) are observable in they neighborhood (by first person indeterminacy).
��� Explanations that contradict themselves are not explanations, they are maybe myths or "just so" tales.
Universality merely makes the computation free from specific physical implementations, it does *NOT* obviate the need for the possibility of physical implementation.
It does obviate that needs. That's the consequence of UDA-step-8 specifically. The physical implementations are just very particular computations occurring below our level of substitution, where all universal numbers compete. It is the consequence of the global first person indeterminacy with respect to the sigma_1 complete arithmetical truth.
Ideal monism still fails because it contradicts the requirement that it be meaningful.
Sure. Comp is neutral monist. The mind is "easily" explained by computer science, and the self-reference logic is a shortcut. It is an interview of a wise universal number.
Something cannot be said to be meaningful when there is no object (that it is not) to whom it has a meaning.
But if you say "yes" to the doctor, you have to understand that arithmetic truth is full of such "whom".
To claim the opposite is to claim that "I can have meaning to my self but I have no self".
The 8 hypostases, which no universal machine/numbers can avoid, are given by their self-reference logics. Once you say "yes" to the doctor, you can trust computer science on the notion of self. It is were theoretical computer science excels the most. The key tool is again diagonalization. The 8 hypostases are 8 variants of the universal number's self, for any self believing in the arithmetical induction axioms (or equivalent).
Onward!
Stephen
Craig Weinberg
>
> > My entire point is that comp suggests that our visual qualia is not an
> > electronic light detector
>
> The visual cortex in your brain is not a light detector and the image
> compression program connected to the camera on your cellphone is not a
> light detector either, electronic or otherwise.
on light detection.
>
> > Go into Photoshop or Paint. File > New > OK. This image (or it's inverse)
> > is what comp predicts for visual qualia of conditions where we cannot see.
> > There is no reason to represent anything else, and there is no noise
> > whatsoever in this image.
>
> Photoshop can paint a smooth image therefore computers can never be
> intelligent or conscious. Of course, I see the light at last, its all so
> obvious now that you point out that vital fact! Why oh why didn't I see it
> before?!
contain noise is spurious.
>
> > This kind of ad hominem stuff means Zero to me. Why?
>
> I don't know, maybe because your used to people saying "this is stupid".
>
> > I know that you don't understand what I'm talking about.
>
> True, and the reason for that is you don't understand what you're talking
> about, thus there is little chance I would know what you mean when you
> obviously do not.
that he doesn't understand what he is talking about. For you to admit
that you don't understand what I am talking about and then announce
that means I don't understand it either, makes you, what? Smart? I
have mentioned that there is a neuroscientist who does understand what
I am talking about and agrees that I may very well be on to something.
We have been in periodic contact and I look forward to developing the
particular ideas on perception with him further. You have already
demonstrated how blind you are to your own prejudice, praising
tolerance in the same breath and you reveal your own intolerance.
>
> > I on the other hand know exactly what you are talking about
>
> The fact that I do know what I'm talking about explains this asymmetry.
explain that I am right about you but wrong about myself?
Craig
Bruno Marchal
You might protest and say that numbers are universal and that you are considering the function that numbers and that the + and * laws perform is "neutral" in the sense of Neutral monism, but that claim also fails for the very same reason as I have outlined. We simply cannot have "specification of properties" and ontological neutrality at the same level. One is the exclusion of the other.
As to set theory, we should discuss that seperately, since I am confused as to how you think of set theory. For example, are you considering that there exist many different self-consistent set theories that differ in their choice of axioms?
This is different from "material monism" that assumes that the material physical would is primitive, or "ideal monism" that assumes that Mind is primitive. Your ideas seems to be a form of Ideal Monism.
Not at all. Although UDA assumes consciousness (in its invariance for the comp substitution at some level), UDA+AUDA explicitly eliminates it at the ontological level, and is explained in the math of the epistemology of numbers, so that the TOE is literally only elementary arithmetic.
Then you are confirming that you assume the doctrine of inherent properties and thus contradict neutrality.
My argument is that we cannot make what consciousness does remain if we make consciousness vanish.
It is like claiming that one can have, in physics, a sourceless field. Perhaps you do believe, like many physicists, in primitive scalar fields (which are sourceless!) but it does not take much reasoning to show that these simply cannot exists because if they did they allow the equivalent of work at no entropic cost. This is consistent with your thinking as your reasoning seems to assume that knowledge can exist (via Bp&p) without any cost what so ever. You have avoided this fatal flaw by the slight of hand of not considering the requirements of neutrality.
[BM]
"Existence exist" is equivalent to Snark borgles. Snark (noun) borgles (verb).
Please. Do not do that. You are insulting your own intelligence with remarks like those.
OK, but cannot you see that that entire argument is predicated upon the possibility of its implementation as distinguishable from alternatives?
How can distinguishability obtain without the means to produce it? When you make consciousness vanish so too does the distinguishably that it engenders.
You simply cannot posit the existence of entities that have distinguishable properties and prohibit (even passively) the means by which the differences between the entities obtain.
If there is no "we" as physical entities that can distinguish a 1 from a 2 from a 3 and a + operation from a * operations from a # operation or even to be able to speak the words or name them, how can we argue that such entities even exist?
To do so is no better that the claims of mystics and Scholastics, and ultimately, becomes prey to "might is right" argumentation: "7 exists and is prime because I say so..."
What does the word "existence" in the following sentence "the existence of numbers in independent of any particular person or persons knowledge of them" mean? Am I being unclear?
It means that the standard truth value of Ex(x = 0), Ex(x = s(0)), are independent of the intuitive existence of me, you, etc.
But that very statement vanishes when we disconnect the ability to physically express the sentence "the standard truth value of Ex(x = 0), Ex(x = s(0))" from its referent therefore its "truth value" is a "meaningless ASCII string", to quote John K Clark. If it is not possible to distinguish properties from each other then it is impossible to express what those properties might be.
[SPK]Our beliefs in the natural numbers is authentically mysterious. But with comp we can, and we must, explain everything from them. And it works, because arithmetic emulate the ... self-referential resonance of numbers, which appears to be very rich and full of surprise.
I reject that our belief in numbers is "mysterious" as we can easily match up one set of objects with another set of different objects.
In which theory?
In a theory whose claims are falsifiable.
here you practice phenomenology again.
How can I not practice phenomenology? Phenomena is the general term referring to what can be experienced and represented and communicated about, no? Or are you thinking of the particular philosophical doctrine of "phenomenology" such as that of Sartre or Husserl?
By mysterious, I was meaning that we cannot derive them from any weaker theory. For example we cannot derive them from logic alone (contrary to what B. Russell thought in Principia Mathematica).
Maybe you are not noticing that this inability to derive them follows from your restriction to first order logic + Platonism?
You refutation here used "me", "sets" "objects", "matching" like if we knew how to recover that notion in your theory (which one?).
You refer many times to paper which are correct from the formal points of view. You should work hard to write something similar.
I beg your indulgence, writing only comes with a great effort for me. For example it took me two hours to compose this response since I have to spend a great deal of time correcting the errors that my dyslexia causes.
We can observe physical objects,
This is either a tautology, or what?
It is a tautology and with good reason. It seems that sometimes you forget its implications.
We cannot take physical object for granted if we assume comp. If you assume set theory + a physical reality, you have to say so.
I have to assume a set theory (or more primitively, a mereology) and existence of the physical world as I cannot avoid the direct evidence of my first person experience without opening myself to stultification and contradiction.
This is obvious. Where we differ on COMP is what you take Yes doctor and Arithmetic Realism to remain coherent at the primitive neutral level and I do not.
we can distinguish between them as they are present in differing locations
What is a location?
What is representable by a partly ordered set of numbers in a coordinate system or representable by a set membership function on a collection or representable by a "name" or ...
Existence is for me, and many, a quantifier. We note it "E", and we use it following rules or axioms, like, if you can deduce in the theory that P(t), for some term t, then you can deduce ExP(x) (it exists something verifying P.
I have no idea what you mean by "Bare and naked Existence, undifferentiated, unnamed and raw". It looks like the TAO, God, or things like that, which I can find very interesting, but to postulate them makes no sense (if only because they are unnameable indeed).
This is an example of what I mean when I ask you to stop acting like an automaton. Yes, Existence is unnameable in-it-self, but for the sake of conversation we can use a word for it, no?
I am just trying to be consistent with the requirement of informal and formal logic and not just leaving assumptions unstated.
[SPK]
We must assume existence as prior to even numbers, for numbers are, at least, differentiated aspects of existence.
Sorry Stephen. This sentence does not help.
They you are worse off than I suspected. Bruno, you cannot complain that you and your ideas are not being taken seriously
when you insist in such an intransigent way on not noticing the obvious. As I explained above, we cannot make claims about entities having properties at the same time claiming that those properties are completely independent of our ability to know them. Yes, the primeness of 7 does not depend on any particular person or entity knowing so, but that does not necessitate that the primeness of 7 is a properties that is completely cut off from our physicality.
You do not see the flaw of idealism, it is in your mental blind spot I guess....
I have no problem with either version, the meaning is the same for me. Whether we bracket sentences or not, they still require some form of physical implementation to be said to have properties.
You seem to tacitly assume that numbers have properties completely independent of the ability of any entity of knowing of them.Not tacitly. Explicitly.
So you explicitly contradict yourself. You are brave! How am I to falsify your claims if I can substitute any entity for numbers (as you define them) and obtain the same "result"? This is the epitome of nonsense! This is a return to the mysticism that science has struggled against. We might as well lobotomize ourselves and remove our ability to think critically about ourselves and our world.
You are doing exactly that when you say that "existence exists" is an axiom.
No, I am being explicit in my axiomatics. We simply cannot avoid the fact that all of our claims, statements, thoughts, etc. necessitate the existence of at least ourselves to be meaningful. This is the first lesson of epistemology and ontology. Since I am not making the claim that the properties of entities, such as numbers, follow only from their "existence" I am not being vacuous.
This is obvious Platonism, and it fails for the same reason that Plato's theory of Forms fails.
That is an ultra-strong statement.
Indeed! I am not the first to state it.
It cannot account for knowledge, even in the Theaetetian sense, because prior to the consideration of what "Bp&p" is as different from "%r*0" or "Pb&b" or "1234" or ... as a possible meaningful statement, it has no meaning.
The meaning is given by the axioms, and, at the meta-level, by the models. Like in algebra and math.You are confusing explanatory levels.
Please explain to me the difference of these levels and disabuse me of this confusion.
This is the inevitable flaw of idealism: taking Mind or Consciousness as a singular primitive removes the possibility of distiguishing what something *is* from *what it is not*.
I keep insisting that I do not take consciousness or mind as primitive. Only numbers, with the + and * laws.
Numbers and the + and * laws, are entities with specific properties. They are different from other possible entities as they are, at least, the unique possessors of the property of "being a number such that 1 +1 = 2, 2+2 = 4, etc." Therefore to take them as primitives requires that there exists an asymmetry at the primitive level and such an asymmetry violates the definition of neutrality.
Additionally, absent the ability that space and time provide to multiply representations of values, concepts, and other mental objects, there is simply no more than undifferentiated oneness.
That's the first hypostases, and we get 8 different ones, including the two plotinian (sensible and intelligible) matters.
OK. I have no problem with the hypostases per se, I only have a problem with the assertion that the properties of the hypostases are differentiable from each other at the primitive level.
The ability to distinguish "this" from "that" requires the physical and cannot be sustained in its absence.
You said that you were not assuming physical as primitive, and here you talk like you do.Please, send us your theory. I try hard to attribute some sense and intuition, but once you make strong negative statement, you need a very precise theory to do that.
I am still learning how to write up my theory, if I even have a "theory"! At this point I am merely a student trying to find a consistent set of ideas and concepts. I see a paradox in your explanation of COMP and am trying to fix it.
For example, in your result you use the notion of teleportation and digital substitution. Both of these concepts require the multiplicity of place and time that the physical world gives to be coherent, therefore your result cannot even be considered absent the physical.
UDA is not at the same level of AUDA. UDA assumes comp, and thus some physical universe. But the consequence of UDA is that the universe is not an ontological object. It is a shared dream of numbers.
No, numbers cannot have dreams or anything else if they are ontological primitives as ontological primitives must be neutral with respect to properties.
You are also conflating the representations of concepts with the referent of those representations,
so your accusation that I am confusing levels is aimed in the wrong direction.
The idea of "implementing the UD" requires that it is possible for a physical system to implement it.
Not at all. Implementation is a purely arithmetical concept. It needs only (N,+,*).
And why not {Z, @, %} or [R, ^, #] or "WTFWTFWTFWTFWTF" or .... ? You are violating neutrality!
Not at all. You need only predicate calculus with equality (first order logic). PA can prove ~(0=1).
And the sentence "PA can prove ~(0=1)." requires some means of being physically implemented to be distinguishable and thus have a meaning that is different from any other ASCII string.
This is where your idea fails and it is the same failure as any other form of idealism. It cannot account for the necessity of the physical world nor the causal efficacy of ideas.
This is a hollow and empty statement as absent the disctinctions that the physical world provides,
What is a physical world?
For example, what you experience as you read the text of this message.
there can be no Platonia except as a abstraction within the thoughts of conscious entities.
Proof?
The fact that this sentence has a meaning to you.
You are assuming that you can have all of the gifts of consciousness without having to pay the price of consciousness. Sorry, Bruno, there is no free lunch. The mere existence of numbers does nothing at all to indicate their properties.
This contradicts the fact that numbers do have a very rich self-reference logic.
So? That fact only obtains because there exists the possibility of physically implementing,
say as a set of symbols on a chalk board, a set of equations of a "very rich self-reference logic". You would have us believe that absent that possibility that the ASCII string "very rich self-reference logic" is has different properties from the ASCII string "WNW()Q DHW)D E" or the ASCII string "IK_((&M)_" or ... .
If not, like Craig, perhaps like Rex Allen and Benjayk, you are postulating that comp is false.
No, I am not. I bet that comp is TRUE, but I don't see COMP as requiring that the physical world is supervening on numbers (up to isomorphisms) as primitives.
So you have to explicitly show what is not valid in the UDA1-8. You miss something, let us try to find out what.
I am not missing a thing, Bruno. You are missing something that is obvious to the rest of us.
The very fact that we can read your paper and come to some understanding of the subject of your symol strings is proof that concepts, including numbers, cannot have properties absent the possibility of a physical reality.
This proof implies that numbers and physical reality exist at the same level, so that if numbers are primitive then so too is physical reality.
But we agree that physical reality cannot be primitive therefore neither can numbers be considered as primitive.
I am trying to point out the obvious and even trivial fact that comp is meaningless and mute as an explanatory model or "result" absent the physical world with its chalkboards, paper, computer screens, etc. Its existence, per se, has nothing to do with its meaningfulness.
UDA explains that concrete chalkboards are epinoumena. Even if they exist, we cannot use them to explain the observation of chalkboards. Occam trows the epinoumena out.
OK, but you need to understand that this is equivalent to requiring that OCCAM is refuting itself. You are denying the very possibility of having properties, such as truth values or primeness, by reducing concretes to epiphenomena.
You wrote: "Physics is given by a measure on the consistent computational histories, or maximal consistent extensions as seen from some first person point of view." What exactly is this "First Person point of view"
It is the person associated to a machine/number whose knowledge obeys the S4Grz modal logic, in virtue of being described by the Theaetetu's definition of knowledge (Bp & p), when Bp means "asserted soon or later by that machine", for machine ideally correct.It is the third hypostase. The only one which does not split in two.
That is not relevant to the argument. The problem is that you are attributing properties that are definite to entities that by your definition cannot have definite properties.
In UDA, you can already get the intuition, it is the one who wrote in his diary "I am in W", and who is in W.
No, there is no difference between "the one who wrote in his diary "I am in W"" and "who is in W" if there is not a means to tell the difference between the two. You cannot claim that difference exists if there is no means for those differences to obtain.
At that moment you get a new machine with "I am in W" as new axiom. And you know that his physics will be given by the consistent extension, whose correct self-referential logic is given by Bp & Dt. The fourth "intelligible matter" hypostases.
No, there is no machine, axiom or anything else because there is only "epiphenomena". You have stultified your own result.
if there is nothing that can act as such by your account?
There are infinitely many things, in (N,+,*) which plays that role. All the universal Löbian numbers.
And they have a meaning and express coherent meaningful implications because it is possible to implement them physically.
When remove the possibility of physical implementation my claiming that such are "epiphenomena" then they lose what ever meaningful content they might have.
You wrote: "Laws of physics, in particular, should be inferable from the true verifiable “atomic sentences”." Inferable by *what* or *whom*?
By the ideally correct universal Löbian numbers. Like Everett, arithmetic extracts its own correct (theological) internal interpretations.
Sure, and again, we can distinguish Löbian from non- Löbian machines by the effects that their physical implementation causes.
The Atomic sentences themselves can do nothing at all,
They corresponds to the existence of the accessible computational states. The atomic sentences are the true Sigma_1 sentences. They are provable, and their proofs are, in that setting, computations. (Except that we must generalize a bit the notion of proof, to get the measure genuine with respect to UDA).
And we distinguish the referents of " true Sigma_1 sentences" from "false Sigma_1 sentences" because we can physically implement them as, say, a set of symbols on a chalkboard a possibility that vanishes when we reduce the physical world to Epiphenomena.
This is the fatal flaw of idealism and ironically, it the same same flaw of materialism: epiphenomena. The material world is epiphenomena for ideal monism
and the mental world is epiphenomena for materialism. WE can only break this impasse by some form of dualism that puts the mater and mind on the same level.
must less "infer" anything from themselves because they have no means to reflect back upon themselves.
The universal sigma_1 sentence, like Bp, does exactly that. They extrapolate by self-completion. But she go bezerk, because the arithmetical truth run deep and strange (and uncomputable).
I agree, but that is not the flaw.
Even a Godel Number must be different from that it is representing in some way.
Yes.
OK, so does the difference flow merely from the necessary possibility of a Godel number? Again, existence does not distinguish properties from each other.
"The number seven is prime" is meaningless if we cannot write it down somewhere and somehow and evaluate its implications.
Who is we? tell me his name, so that I will add its existence to the Peano axioms.
The entity that can understand the Peano axioms and thus distinguish them from non-Peano axioms.
Is "we" Stephen Paul King?
In that case here is my new theory:
Ax ~(0 = s(x)) (For all number x the successor of x is different from zero). WithAxAy ~(x = y) -> ~(s(x) = s(y)) (different numbers have different successors)Ax x + 0 = x (0 adds nothing)AxAy x + s(y) = s(x + y) ( meaning x + (y +1) = (x + y) +1)Ax x *0 = 0
AxAy x*s(y) = x*y + xExAy(x = STEPHEN & (Bew(y) -> STEPHEN(y)).
With STEPHEN a new constant term, denoting you in the union of the standard model of arithmetic with {you}.
Sorry Bruno, I am not isomorphic to any particular representation of me. At worse, my "being" supervenes on all possible representations of Stephen Paul King + the possibility of at least one form of physical implementation of all of those representations.
Well, that will give a conservative extension of PA. So it changes nothing, except for a trivial explanation of the existence of you, which, probably like adding primitive matter, can only make the relation between the "real comp stephen(s)" and STEPHEN quite mysterious.
OK, but you forgot to notice that you have to do that same extension for each and every possible entity that can be named; so we have at least a countable infinity of theories such as:
"Ax ~(0 = s(x)) (For all number x the successor of x is different from zero). WithAxAy ~(x = y) -> ~(s(x) = s(y)) (different numbers have different successors)Ax x + 0 = x (0 adds nothing)AxAy x + s(y) = s(x + y) ( meaning x + (y +1) = (x + y) +1)Ax x *0 = 0
AxAy x*s(y) = x*y + xExAy(x = S & (Bew(y) -> S(y)).
With S a new constant term, denoting you in the union of the standard model of arithmetic with {you}.
Where {you} is a referent of the class of entities that can make and note differences."
The argument that I am making, indeed maybe a sketch of a proof, is that these ASCII strings have a meaning only because there exists the possibility that they can be implemented as some pattern of differences in a substrate capable of being differentiated. If this substrate is epiphenomena then the possibility of meaningfulness itself vanishes.
If that is the case, I encourage you to make that precise, and to study comp and computer science to even just define "non-comp".That will not be easy. AUDA works, for example, for many transfinite sequences of weakening of comp.
However one might "weaken comp" it still requires the possibility of implementation in a substrate no matter how universal it might be.
Why? Once you have N and +, and *, you can't avoid the universal numbers and all their relative implementations.
And numbers get an explanation why some implementations (like the quantum one) are observable in they neighborhood (by first person indeterminacy).
Explanations that contradict themselves are not explanations, they are maybe myths or "just so" tales.
Universality merely makes the computation free from specific physical implementations, it does *NOT* obviate the need for the possibility of physical implementation.
It does obviate that needs. That's the consequence of UDA-step-8 specifically. The physical implementations are just very particular computations occurring below our level of substitution, where all universal numbers compete. It is the consequence of the global first person indeterminacy with respect to the sigma_1 complete arithmetical truth.
UDA-step-8 must be physically implemented to be distinguishable from any other of the countable(?) infinity of finite strings of symbols, thus if physical implementation is "epiphenomena" then so is the meanign of UDA-step-1 or UDA-step2 or ..., UDA-step-8.
Ideal monism still fails because it contradicts the requirement that it be meaningful.
Sure. Comp is neutral monist. The mind is "easily" explained by computer science, and the self-reference logic is a shortcut. It is an interview of a wise universal number.
It is "neutral monist" only if it satisfied the requirements of neutral monism. I have repeatedly shown here in this post how it does not and thus your claim is false.
There is no such thing as an interview of a number, wise or ignorant, if we also claim that the physical world is epiphenomena.
Something cannot be said to be meaningful when there is no object (that it is not) to whom it has a meaning.
But if you say "yes" to the doctor, you have to understand that arithmetic truth is full of such "whom".
Yes, and I can know the "whom" only because it is possible to physically write a string of symbols on a substrate that has semi-permanence over time.
If such is not permissible then there can be no "to whom".
To claim the opposite is to claim that "I can have meaning to my self but I have no self".
The 8 hypostases, which no universal machine/numbers can avoid, are given by their self-reference logics. Once you say "yes" to the doctor, you can trust computer science on the notion of self. It is were theoretical computer science excels the most. The key tool is again diagonalization. The 8 hypostases are 8 variants of the universal number's self, for any self believing in the arithmetical induction axioms (or equivalent).
I cannot trust any idea that contradicts itself even to the point of eliminating its meaningfulness. To do so your to bet on a sure loser. There is an escape from this conundrum: admit that neither the numbers nor the physical is primitive and embrace truly neutral monism and its dualistic finite model.
Stephen P. King
On 03 Feb 2012, at 23:24, Stephen P. King wrote:
��� You might protest and say that numbers are universal and that you are considering the function that numbers and that the + and * laws perform is "neutral" in the sense of Neutral monism, but that claim also fails for the very same reason as I have outlined. We simply cannot have "specification of properties" and ontological neutrality at the same level. One is the exclusion of the other.
In that case your notion of "existence" is so neutral that you can't derive, in the usual sense, anything from it. You don't present a theory, but are using a God-gap type of explanation, and this to pretend a reasoning is invalid, without providing any clue where, except attributing me a metaphysical belief in numbers, where I only assume to grasp them in high school and every day life.You cannot refute a reasoning with philosophical ideology.
As to set theory, we should discuss that seperately, since I am confused as to how you think of set theory. For example, are you considering that there exist many different self-consistent set theories that differ in their choice of axioms?
Is that a rethorical trick? You are repeating the reason why I avoid set theories. That problem does not exist on the integers. I assume the numbers, because everyone agree on them, and nobody can derive the axioms from conceptually less rich theory.
Hi Bruno,snip
��� I have spent a long time studying your work and reasoning through it so that I have a good idea what it concerns and implies. I just wish that you would spent a tiny fraction of that trying to comprehend my critique. You do not even seem to try to understand the idea that I am considering. You really should read up on Bertrand Russell's neutral monism. I have no more time to spend on trying to explain it to you. Good luck.
Onward!
Stephen
David Nyman
> No, I am not. I bet that comp is TRUE, but I don't see COMP as requiring
> that the physical world is supervening on numbers (up to isomorphisms) as
> primitives.
>
>
> So you have to explicitly show what is not valid in the UDA1-8. You miss
> something, let us try to find out what.
>
>
> I am not missing a thing, Bruno. You are missing something that is
> obvious to the rest of us.
>
>
> If someone else can confirm this, and put some light on what Stephen is
> saying, I would be pleased.
Bruno, I used to think that you were indeed missing "something that is
obvious to the rest of us". I don't think so any longer, because I
understand now that you are presenting a theory and your arguments
consequently derive strictly from the axioms and assumptions of that
theory. I don't pretend to understand all aspects of that theory of
course, but through discussion and the contrast of ideas I have come a
bit closer than when I started.
I don't know if it will help at all for me to state here my
understanding of what might motivate the theory in the first place,
but I'll try. Firstly, as you have so often said, the
informational/computational theory of mind (CTM) is more or less the
default assumption in science. Indeed this conclusion seems almost
unavoidable given that brain research seems to imply, more or less
unambiguously, the correlation of mental states with relations,
rather than relata. However, CTM in its uncritically-assumed form
continues to be combined with the additional assumption of an
Aristotelian primitively-physical state of affairs. This leads
directly either to denialism of the first-person, or alternatively to
some ill-defined species of property dualism. These consequences by
themselves might well lead us to reject such primitive-physicalism as
incoherent, even without an explicit reductio ad absurdum of the
unambiguous association of conscious states with "physical
computation". Either way, in order to retain CTM, one is led to
contemplate some form of neutral monism.
The question of what form such a "neutral" theory should take now
arises. Since the theory is explicitly *computational*, the axioms
and assumptions of such a theory should obviously be restricted to the
absolute minimum necessary to construct a "computational universe" (in
the traditional sense of "universe") or rather to indicate how such a
universe would necessarily construct itself, given those axioms and
assumptions. The basic assumption is of a first-order combinatorial
system, of which numbers are the most widely-understood example.
Given the arithmetical nature of such a universe, construction and
differentiability of composite entities must necessarily derive from
arithmetical assumptions, which permits the natural emergence of
higher-order structural integration via the internal logic of the
system. Of particular note is the emergence in this way of
self-referential entities, which form the logical basis of
person-hood.
Since the reality of first-person localisation is not denied in this
theory (indeed the theory positively seeks to rationalise it), the
system is not posited as having merely third-personal status, but as
possessing a first-person self-referential point-of-view which is
associated with consciousness. Perhaps it is this aspect of the
theory which is the most tricky, as it cuts across a variety of
different intuitions about consciousness and its relation to the
phenomena it reveals. For rather than positing a primitively-physical
universe which "instantiates" conscious states, the theory must
reverse the relation and posit conscious states that "instantiate"
physical phenomena. In so doing, it exposes itself to empirical
refutation, since those phenomena must be, at least, consistent with
ordinary observation (although they also predict, in the limit,
observations of high improbability).
It is this last issue of instantiation which seems to be one of main
bones of contention between Stephen and yourself, though I'm not sure
why this is the case. From my own perspective, unsophisticated though
it may be, it seems reasonable that the emergence of "truly physical"
phenomena should indeed be the result of "personal instantiation" in
the conjunction of consciousness and computation. After all, when do
questions as to what is "truly physical" emerge, other than in the
context of what is "truly experiential"? The rest is calculation.
David
Stephen P. King
Does my claim that our primitive ground must be neutral with
respect to any properties make any sense? It like the zero of arithmetic
from which we can extricate any set of positive and negative quantities
in pairs such that their sum is equal to zero. What I see in Bruno's
interpretation of COMP is that it permits for the primitive to have a
set of properties (numbers and + and *) to the exclusion of its
complementary opposites. Since this is a violation of neutrality, thus I
see a fatal flaw in Bruno's Ideal monist interpretation.
Onward!
Stephen
David Nyman
> Does my claim that our primitive ground must be neutral with respect to
> any properties make any sense? It like the zero of arithmetic from which we
> can extricate any set of positive and negative quantities in pairs such that
> their sum is equal to zero. What I see in Bruno's interpretation of COMP is
> that it permits for the primitive to have a set of properties (numbers and +
> and *) to the exclusion of its complementary opposites. Since this is a
> violation of neutrality, thus I see a fatal flaw in Bruno's Ideal monist
> interpretation.
I think it may make some intuitive sense, but I don't quite see what
role it could play in a theory, in the technical sense Bruno proposes.
For example, Bruno sometimes refers to the metaphor of the One - from
Plotinus. Sometimes in my mind's eye I think of the symmetry of the
One as somehow breaking into an infinity of "computational"
self-relations, individuated instances of consciousness then emerging
from that complexity as spatio-temporally-distinguishable aspects of
the differentiated self-intimacy thus engendered. The seamless
symmetry of the One - the solus ipse, if you like - might indeed serve
here as a sort of primitive neutral background, any further properties
emerging only as a consequence of the subsequent breaking of that
primal symmetry.
But this is merely an intuitive attempt to grasp the ungraspable, not
a theory, in the sense of something that has any practical
consequences (nothing being so practical as a good theory). I'd
certainly be interested if you have anything more substantial to
propose.
David
Stephen P. King
> On 4 February 2012 14:38, Stephen P. King<step...@charter.net> wrote:
>
>> Does my claim that our primitive ground must be neutral with respect to
>> any properties make any sense? It like the zero of arithmetic from which we
>> can extricate any set of positive and negative quantities in pairs such that
>> their sum is equal to zero. What I see in Bruno's interpretation of COMP is
>> that it permits for the primitive to have a set of properties (numbers and +
>> and *) to the exclusion of its complementary opposites. Since this is a
>> violation of neutrality, thus I see a fatal flaw in Bruno's Ideal monist
>> interpretation.
> I think it may make some intuitive sense, but I don't quite see what
> role it could play in a theory, in the technical sense Bruno proposes.
> For example, Bruno sometimes refers to the metaphor of the One - from
> Plotinus. Sometimes in my mind's eye I think of the symmetry of the
> One as somehow breaking into an infinity of "computational"
> self-relations, individuated instances of consciousness then emerging
> from that complexity as spatio-temporally-distinguishable aspects of
> the differentiated self-intimacy thus engendered. The seamless
> symmetry of the One - the solus ipse, if you like - might indeed serve
> here as a sort of primitive neutral background, any further properties
> emerging only as a consequence of the subsequent breaking of that
> primal symmetry.
Hi David,
This concept, as you explain it ,is exactly what I have in mind
even to the part about the (unnameable! cardinality of) "infinity of
"computational" self-relations" each potentially generating the
"individuated instances of consciousness" as per Bruno's Loebian
"Machine" idea. My claim is that this "primitive neutral background" of
the "One" is infinitely deeper even than the (N, +, *) of Bruno as its
symmetry must be perfect and thus neutral even with respect to (N, +, *).
>
> But this is merely an intuitive attempt to grasp the ungraspable, not
> a theory, in the sense of something that has any practical
> consequences (nothing being so practical as a good theory). I'd
> certainly be interested if you have anything more substantial to
> propose.
>
Is it inappropriate to use the "One" in an axiomatic form as part
of a theory, not that I am proposing the concept just that as a theory
standing on its own? It makes sense to me as it leads inevitably to
ontological implications that both firm up the theory of Neutral monism
(as per Bertrand Russell) and allow for the dualism (per Vaughan Pratt)
that I am researching. The theory that I am considering is a hybrid of
many concepts from many other people, and Bruno Marchal result is a big
part of it as his result shows how consciousness can emerge from
computations on the Mind side of the duality. My own contribution to the
theory, explaining how interactions between "minds" occurs, is just a
tiny piece of it.
Onward!
Stephen
David Nyman
> Is it inappropriate to use the "One" in an axiomatic form as part of a
> theory, not that I am proposing the concept just that as a theory standing
> on its own? It makes sense to me as it leads inevitably to ontological
> implications that both firm up the theory of Neutral monism (as per Bertrand
> Russell) and allow for the dualism (per Vaughan Pratt) that I am
> researching.
I'm not sure, to tell you the truth. I must say that my intuition of
the centrality of "oneness" - what I've sometimes called the solipsism
of the One - is at the heart of my recent discussions with Bruno
around the general topic of "why am I me and not you?". But at the
same time, precisely as a result of those very conversations, I'm less
sure that anything directly communicable follows from that intuition,
unless it be a sharing of the intuition itself. Is a common intuition
an axiom? What is deducible from it, other than a vague sense that
somehow "whatever I am most primitively" will always find some
uniquely present conscious expression? If you can indeed employ the
axiomatic method to put more detailed flesh on these bones, it would
be most helpful.
David
Stephen P. King
> On 4 February 2012 15:44, Stephen P. King<step...@charter.net> wrote:
>
>> Is it inappropriate to use the "One" in an axiomatic form as part of a
>> theory, not that I am proposing the concept just that as a theory standing
>> on its own? It makes sense to me as it leads inevitably to ontological
>> implications that both firm up the theory of Neutral monism (as per Bertrand
>> Russell) and allow for the dualism (per Vaughan Pratt) that I am
>> researching.
> I'm not sure, to tell you the truth. I must say that my intuition of
> the centrality of "oneness" - what I've sometimes called the solipsism
> of the One - is at the heart of my recent discussions with Bruno
> around the general topic of "why am I me and not you?". But at the
> same time, precisely as a result of those very conversations, I'm less
> sure that anything directly communicable follows from that intuition,
> unless it be a sharing of the intuition itself. Is a common intuition
> an axiom? What is deducible from it, other than a vague sense that
> somehow "whatever I am most primitively" will always find some
> uniquely present conscious expression? If you can indeed employ the
> axiomatic method to put more detailed flesh on these bones, it would
> be most helpful.
>
> David
>
>
My problem is that axiomatic renderings of theories or ideas in
general are almost impossible because of my memory and output dyslexia.
I simply do not think that way. :-( Let me think on this a bit more and
see what I can come up with.
Onward!
Stephen
acw
One can wonder what is the most "general" theory that we can postulate
to explain our existence. Tegmark postulates all of consistent
mathematics, whatever that is, but is 'all of consistent mathematics'
consistent in itself? Schmidhuber postulates something much less, just
the UD, but strangely forgets the first-person or the what the
implementation substrate of that UD would be (and resorts to a Great
Programmer to hand-wave it away).
Before reading the UDA, I used to think that something like Tegmark's
solution would be general enough and sufficient, but now I think 'just
arithmetic' (or combinators, or lambda calculus, or ...) or is
sufficient. Why? By the Church-Turing Thesis, these systems posses the
same computability power, that is, they all can run the UD. Now, if we
do admit a digital substitution, all that we can experience is already
contained within the UD, including the worlds where we find a physical
world with us having a physical body/brain (which exist computationally,
but let us not forget that random oracle that comes with 1p
indeterminacy). If we are machines, then we can only experience finite
amount of information given some finite interval of time, some of this
information may be incompressible, due to 1p indeterminacy, thus we
could experience "reals" in the limit, despite there only being finite
computations at any given time. This essentially means that any
mathematical object which can be described in Tegmark's "Ultimate
Ensemble" and that can contain us, is already part of the 1p experiences
of those existing within the UD and we can look at 1p experiences, as
well as the UD* trace as being part of the greater "arithmetical" truth
(or any other theory with equivalent computational power, by the
Church-Turing Thesis).
This is why I think "arithmetic" is as good as any for a neutral
foundation, and we cannot really distinguish (from the inside) between
these foundations by the CTT. However, there might be other possible
foundations, if you wish to postulate concrete infinities, but even if
they existed, how could we tell them apart, it doesn't seem to be
possible for someone admitting a digital substitution, which has a
finite mind (at any finite point in time). If you can show that those
other foundations are necessary and they affect our
measure/continuations, or that concrete infinities are involved in the
implementation of our brain, it could prove COMP wrong.
There is another problem with taking a set theory as foundational rather
than arithmetic - some set theories have independent axioms and they can
be extended by adding either an axiom or its negation, and they result
in different set theoretical truths. This doesn't really happen with
computation - if there's anything absolute in math, it's computation
(although different theories about what arithmetic is will result in
different things the theory can talk about, but it won't make
computation any less absolute).
As a side-note, I don't see why the primitive physical world is
necessary, from the 1p, we can only know that we have senses and from
the senses we can infer the existence of the external world. If
consciousness is how some (possibly self-referential) arithmetical (or
computational) truth feels from the inside, it does not seem impossible
that there would not be computations representing some physical (just
not primitive) world and that world would contain us and our
bodies/brains, and the existence of such computations would be a theorem
in arithmetic.
meekerdb
One can wonder what is the most "general" theory that we can postulate to explain our existence. Tegmark postulates all of consistent mathematics, whatever that is, but is 'all of consistent mathematics' consistent in itself?
Tegmark has realized the problem with "all consistent mathematics" and more recently has considered only Turing computable universes.
Brent
Richard Ruquist
Stephen
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meekerdb
http://www.fisica.net/quantica/Peres%20-%20Quantum%20Theory%20Concepts%20and%20Methods.pdf
which is available free online.
Brent
On 2/4/2012 7:56 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote:
Regarding the issue of instantiation, the recent GHZM quantum experiments may be relevant as they imply a lack of a pre-existing reality.
�
Here is a rather long and technical argument that there is no pre-existing reality.
�
I provide below the first and last paragraphs in this argument. The last paragraph explains what he means by pre-existing reality. In it he negates MWI, all hidden variables theories and even classical physics.Richard Ruquist-----------------------------
Lubos Motl:�
I want to go through the GHZM experiment again and somewhat carefully (and in latex) and discuss the insanity of the assumptions about the laws of Nature that are forced upon you if you want to believe in "realism", i.e. the idea that the results of experiments (including those at the microscopic level) reflect a pre-existing reality.
What I finally want to emphasize is that all this redundant and "objectively real but totally unobservable" superstructure – from many worlds to extra invisible Bohmian positions of particles (which can't help in the case of spin or particle production, anyway) or other hidden variables to GRW collapses prescribed from above – is only being invented because certain people behave as bigots who are unable to admit that the physics research in the 20th century has irreversibly falsified all intrinsically classical models of the reality. All the new "fanciful stuff" with tons of choices and processes (superluminal communication, preferred frames, collapses, the length scale to which the GRW collapses shrink the wave function, the frequency of such flashes etc.) that can never be observed and with the infinite amount of fine-tuning and obfuscation that is needed for it to fake the real, relativistic quantum world (to guarantee that none of the new predictions is really observed) is only being proposed because some people's bigotry has no limits. Their dogmas about "realism" are more important for them than any amount of empirical evidence, more important for them than everything that science has actually found.
�
�
On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 9:38 AM, Stephen P. King <step...@charter.net> wrote:
On 2/4/2012 8:58 AM, David Nyman wrote:
On 4 February 2012 12:22, Bruno Marchal<mar...@ulb.ac.be> �wrote:
No, I am not. I bet that comp is TRUE, but I don't see COMP as requiring
that the physical world is supervening on numbers (up to isomorphisms) as
primitives.
So you have to explicitly show what is not valid in the UDA1-8. You miss
something, let us try to find out what.
� � I am not missing a thing, Bruno. You are missing something that is
obvious to the rest of us.
If someone else can confirm this, and put some light on what Stephen is
saying, I would be pleased.
Bruno, I used to think that you were indeed missing "something that is
obvious to the rest of us". �I don't think so any longer, because I
understand now that you are presenting a theory and your arguments
consequently derive strictly from the axioms and assumptions of that
theory. �I don't pretend to understand all aspects of that theory of
course, but through discussion and the contrast of ideas I have come a
bit closer than when I started.
I don't know if it will help at all for me to state here my
understanding of what might motivate the theory in the first place,
but I'll try. �Firstly, as you have so often said, the
informational/computational theory of mind (CTM) is more or less the
default assumption in science. �Indeed this conclusion seems almost
unavoidable given that brain research seems to imply, more or less
unambiguously, the correlation of �mental states with relations,
rather than relata. �However, CTM in its uncritically-assumed form
continues to be combined with the additional assumption of an
Aristotelian primitively-physical state of affairs. �This leads
directly either to denialism of the first-person, or alternatively to
some ill-defined species of property dualism. �These consequences by
themselves might well lead us to reject such primitive-physicalism as
incoherent, even without an explicit reductio ad absurdum of the
unambiguous association of conscious states with "physical
computation". �Either way, in order to retain CTM, one is led to
contemplate some form of neutral monism.
The question of what form such a "neutral" theory should take now
arises. �Since the theory is explicitly *computational*, the axioms
and assumptions of such a theory should obviously be restricted to the
absolute minimum necessary to construct a "computational universe" (in
the traditional sense of "universe") or rather to indicate how such a
universe would necessarily construct itself, given those axioms and
assumptions. �The basic assumption is of a first-order combinatorial
system, of which numbers are the most widely-understood example.
Given the arithmetical nature of such a universe, construction and
differentiability of composite entities must necessarily derive from
arithmetical assumptions, which permits the natural emergence of
higher-order structural integration via the internal logic of the
system. �Of particular note is the emergence in this way of
self-referential entities, which form the logical basis of
person-hood.
Since the reality of first-person localisation is not denied in this
theory (indeed the theory positively seeks to rationalise it), the
system is not posited as having merely third-personal status, but as
possessing a first-person self-referential point-of-view which is
associated with consciousness. �Perhaps it is this aspect of the
theory which is the most tricky, as it cuts across a variety of
different intuitions about consciousness and its relation to the
phenomena it reveals. �For rather than positing a primitively-physical
universe which "instantiates" conscious states, the theory must
reverse the relation and posit conscious states that "instantiate"
physical phenomena. �In so doing, it exposes itself to empirical
refutation, since those phenomena must be, at least, consistent with
ordinary observation (although they also predict, in the limit,
observations of �high improbability).
It is this last issue of instantiation which seems to be one of main
bones of contention between Stephen and yourself, though I'm not sure
why this is the case. �From my own perspective, unsophisticated though
it may be, it seems reasonable that the emergence of "truly physical"
phenomena should indeed be the result of "personal instantiation" in
the conjunction of consciousness and computation. �After all, when do
questions as to what is "truly physical" emerge, other than in the
context of what is "truly experiential"? �The rest is calculation.Dear David,
David
� �Does my claim that our primitive ground must be neutral with respect to any properties make any sense? It like the zero of arithmetic from which we can extricate any set of positive and negative quantities in pairs such that their sum is equal to zero. What I see in Bruno's interpretation of COMP is that it permits for the primitive to have a set of properties (numbers and + and *) to the exclusion of its complementary opposites. Since this is a violation of neutrality, thus I see a fatal flaw in Bruno's Ideal monist interpretation.
Onward!
Stephen
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Stephen P. King
Regarding the issue of instantiation, the recent GHZM quantum experiments may be relevant as they imply a lack of a pre-existing reality.
�
Here is a rather long and technical argument that there is no pre-existing reality.
�
I provide below the first and last paragraphs in this argument. The last paragraph explains what he means by pre-existing reality. In it he negates MWI, all hidden variables theories and even classical physics.Richard Ruquist-----------------------------
Lubos Motl:�
I want to go through the GHZM experiment again and somewhat carefully (and in latex) and discuss the insanity of the assumptions about the laws of Nature that are forced upon you if you want to believe in "realism", i.e. the idea that the results of experiments (including those at the microscopic level) reflect a pre-existing reality.
What I finally want to emphasize is that all this redundant and "objectively real but totally unobservable" superstructure – from many worlds to extra invisible Bohmian positions of particles (which can't help in the case of spin or particle production, anyway) or other hidden variables to GRW collapses prescribed from above – is only being invented because certain people behave as bigots who are unable to admit that the physics research in the 20th century has irreversibly falsified all intrinsically classical models of the reality. All the new "fanciful stuff" with tons of choices and processes (superluminal communication, preferred frames, collapses, the length scale to which the GRW collapses shrink the wave function, the frequency of such flashes etc.) that can never be observed and with the infinite amount of fine-tuning and obfuscation that is needed for it to fake the real, relativistic quantum world (to guarantee that none of the new predictions is really observed) is only being proposed because some people's bigotry has no limits. Their dogmas about "realism" are more important for them than any amount of empirical evidence, more important for them than everything that science has actually found.
Hi Richard,�
��� Thank you for posting this. I am a *huge* fan of Lubos, well except for his fanatical belief in SUSY... My take on this article is a reasoning from physics that backs up, in a sense, Bruno's claim that the physical world is not primitive. But it is not just a dream of primitively existing numbers either. Somehow the UD must be physically implemented, so instead of trying to figure out how the "pre-ordained harmony" of the Platonic UD is set up, why not just let the UD run eternally, eventually there will be strings in the dovetailing that are exact virtual reality computations of each and every one of our 1p. So instead of a ab initio special blue print of our universe, we might consider all possible physical worlds obtaining as per Lubos' discussion� and running some version of a UD. The trick is figuring out the finite bounds on the 1p of observers. My conjecture is that the 1p content of observers is restricted to being representable by Boolean algebras, but I have to prove this somehow. :-)
Onward!
Stephen
Russell Standish
>
> On 03 Feb 2012, at 23:24, Stephen P. King wrote:
> >
> > I am not missing a thing, Bruno. You are missing something
> >that is obvious to the rest of us.
>
> If someone else can confirm this, and put some light on what Stephen
> is saying, I would be pleased.
>
Having had some skype discussions with Stephen, I believe Stephen is
referring to "that which breathes fire into the equations", as Hawking
puts it.
We all agree that COMP does not posit any particular "fire breather" -
any entity capable of universal computation will do. Bruno selects
Peano arithmetic as a sufficient system (PA supports universal
computation), for pedagogical reasons, although he'd really rather use
combinators, which would also suit the purpose, but are less known.
Stephen is objecting that such abstract systems are, well, too
abstract. He'd prefer something more concrete - whatever "concrete"
might actually be. It is true, I understand, that the UDA (and AUDA) does
not eliminate the possibility of a "concrete physical
underpinning". It is just that such a concrete physical underpinning has
no measurable, or detectable effect on our phenomonology other than
that due to its capability of universal computation.
Which is why I'd like to remind people of Witgenstein's comment: Whereof
one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Cheers
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bruno Marchal
Brent
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Craig Weinberg
> Stephen is objecting that such abstract systems are, well, too
> abstract. He'd prefer something more concrete - whatever "concrete"
> might actually be.
"Stephen is objecting that such non-concrete systems are, well, not
concrete. He'd prefer something more actual - whatever "actual" might
concretely be.
It's hard for me to take seriously the idea of failing to grasp the
meaning of 'concrete' in the same breath that uses the word actual and
abstract. Talking about a mountain is not a mountain. The menu does
not taste like the meal. All of the quant descriptions in the universe
do not add up to a single experienced quality. Quantites are only
quantities. They don't scale up into anything else without something
that is capable of experiencing the low level granular quantities as a
completely novel level of continuous qualities. Digital computing
cannot do that. Any kind of semantic scaling in a digital computation
can only wind up as being more or less a-signifying generic digits.
> It is true, I understand, that the UDA (and AUDA) does
> not eliminate the possibility of a "concrete physical
> underpinning". It is just that such a concrete physical underpinning has
> no measurable, or detectable effect on our phenomonology other than
> that due to its capability of universal computation.
effect on our phenomenology when you are working from a theory which
presupposes that phenomenology is detectable only by quantitative
measurement in the first place. In our actual experience, we know that
in fact all phenomenological systems without exception exist as a
function of physical systems - virtual servers do not fly off into the
data center on their own virtual power grid - they are still only a
complicated event of electrified semiconductors. Unplug the hardware
node and all of the operating systems, be they first order software or
second order virtual hardware or still only software, 100% dependent
on the physical resources. It is generators burning diesel fuel fifty
miles away that literally pushes the entire computation - not
arithmetic. Arithmetic has 0% independence of physical systems *as a
whole* even though computations can be understood *figuratively* as
being independent of any particular physical structure.
All computation can be impacted by changes to it's physical
underpinning. Devices which are damaged or have low power supply, or
brains which have physiological irregularities produce changes to
their phenomenology independent of program logic. The physical
topology, the materials and events that effect them can drive
phenomenology as well.
>
> Which is why I'd like to remind people of Witgenstein's comment: Whereof
> one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
to silence speculation. Unfortunately I have only ever seen it used to
serve that function. What he refers to is the limitation of language
to express the sense that language makes to the listener (http://
www.teleologie.org/OT/deboard/2117.html). That meaning is reversed
when used as an admonition, so that the meaning becomes something like
"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open
your mouth and remove all doubt".
Craig
Bruno Marchal
On 05 Feb 2012, at 15:41, Craig Weinberg wrote:
> On Feb 5, 2:09 am, Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:
>
>> Stephen is objecting that such abstract systems are, well, too
>> abstract. He'd prefer something more concrete - whatever "concrete"
>> might actually be.
>
> Here is another way to look at that sentence:
> "Stephen is objecting that such non-concrete systems are, well, not
> concrete. He'd prefer something more actual - whatever "actual" might
> concretely be.
>
> It's hard for me to take seriously the idea of failing to grasp the
> meaning of 'concrete' in the same breath that uses the word actual and
> abstract.
They are indexicals. Those things are obvious for 1-person, but of
course, less obvious when you work in some (any) 3p-theory. You are
the one making them infinitely complex, by lowering the subst level in
the infinite.
But they are simple indeed, and can be handled from the simple
diagonalization (if Dx gives xx, then DD gives DD. Also with D'x =
F(xx), for any F. D'D' will gives F(D'D')).
> Talking about a mountain is not a mountain.
Right.
> The menu does
> not taste like the meal.
Rarely.
It might smell like the meal, in bad restaurant, though.
> All of the quant descriptions in the universe
> do not add up to a single experienced quality.
You don't know that. Is it an axiom?
> Quantites are only
> quantities.
No. All universal numbers can interpret a number as a function on
quantities, or as properties on quantities, which are not quantities
themselves. Universal numbers can also transform, or interpret numbers
as transformation of transformation, properties of properties, up in
the constructive transfinite, etc.
When the quantities can add and multiply, soon their attributes are
beyond all quantities, and Löbian quantities are arguably already
knowing that about themselves.
> They don't scale up into anything else without something
> that is capable of experiencing the low level granular quantities as a
> completely novel level of continuous qualities.
I take this as another axiom. You postulate the existence of something
vague. I think that something like that might make sense perhaps, but
as I see it it would be a consequence of the comp meta-axiom.
> Digital computing
> cannot do that.
I think that this intuition is grounded by the fact that digital
computing *can* do that, but cannot, indeed, justify that they can do
that.
So, this is just an *easy* insult on digital computing. You might as
well say to your brother that he is stupid.
> Any kind of semantic scaling in a digital computation
> can only wind up as being more or less a-signifying generic digits.
On the contrary. The semantics of machines explodes in the infinities.
They can be aware of their ignorance, and conceive transcendent
realities.
Of course, it is not the machine's who think, but abstract and
relatively concrete person, or more generally living ideas, in
relatively concrete realities, with their sharable and non sharable
parts.
>
>> It is true, I understand, that the UDA (and AUDA) does
>> not eliminate the possibility of a "concrete physical
>> underpinning". It is just that such a concrete physical
>> underpinning has
>> no measurable, or detectable effect on our phenomonology other than
>> that due to its capability of universal computation.
>
> It's circular reasoning to say that physical underpinnings have no
> effect on our phenomenology when you are working from a theory which
> presupposes that phenomenology is detectable only by quantitative
> measurement in the first place. In our actual experience, we know that
> in fact all phenomenological systems without exception exist as a
> function of physical systems -
We don't know that.
Nor am I sure what it means exactly. Define "physical".
Here, in AUDA terms, you might be confusing the "intelligible", with
the "intelligible matter"
(Bp with Bp & Dt). [] p with [] p & <> t.
> virtual servers do not fly off into the
> data center on their own virtual power grid - they are still only a
> complicated event of electrified semiconductors. Unplug the hardware
> node and all of the operating systems, be they first order software or
> second order virtual hardware or still only software, 100% dependent
> on the physical resources. It is generators burning diesel fuel fifty
> miles away that literally pushes the entire computation - not
> arithmetic.
At first sight.
> Arithmetic has 0% independence of physical systems *as a
> whole* even though computations can be understood *figuratively* as
> being independent of any particular physical structure.
Why figuratively? The computable functions from N to N have been
discovered in math. It happens that we are surrounded by local
physical approximation of universal system, from gas in complex
volume, to bacteria genome, subset of human languages, brains, higher
animals and man made computers.
You can postulate or assume some universal numbers, and say "that's
the ultimate local universal number", but comp predict that any named
ultimate local universal numbers hides the "real" one. With comp the
real "one" has no name.
or by "physical" you mean something more vague, and mixing the 3p and
1p, and then, I might interpret your intuition in some perplexities of
the LUMs.
>
> All computation can be impacted by changes to it's physical
> underpinning. Devices which are damaged or have low power supply, or
> brains which have physiological irregularities produce changes to
> their phenomenology independent of program logic. The physical
> topology, the materials and events that effect them can drive
> phenomenology as well.
Obviously assuming comp. We have to bet on locally stable universal
number to say "yes" to a doctor.
The physical is not denied. On the contrary it is justified on a
conceptually deeper ground.
>
>>
>> Which is why I'd like to remind people of Witgenstein's comment:
>> Whereof
>> one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
>
> A great quote, but I do not think Wittgenstein intended it to be used
> to silence speculation. Unfortunately I have only ever seen it used to
> serve that function. What he refers to is the limitation of language
> to express the sense that language makes to the listener (http://
> www.teleologie.org/OT/deboard/2117.html). That meaning is reversed
> when used as an admonition, so that the meaning becomes something like
> "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open
> your mouth and remove all doubt".
That's a good one!
Now, when Wittgenstein said "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one
must be silent.", he should have remained silent. We can only ask to
Wittgenstein "But what where you speaking about?".
Note the similarity with Gödel's second theorem: Dt -> ~BDt (dually
BDt -> Bf).
<> t -> ~[] <> t
[] <> t -> [] f
But looking closer, Wittgenstein paradox (close to Damascius's one,
and to the problem met by Plotinus on the ineffability of the one), is
plausibly more related to Tarski-Gödel theorem on the non definability
of truth.
Damascius wrote thousand of pages to explain that even one sentence on
the ineffable is one sentence too much.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Craig Weinberg
> I hope Russell will indulge my comment on that first paragraph.
>
> On 05 Feb 2012, at 15:41, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> > On Feb 5, 2:09 am, Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:
>
> >> Stephen is objecting that such abstract systems are, well, too
> >> abstract. He'd prefer something more concrete - whatever "concrete"
> >> might actually be.
>
> > Here is another way to look at that sentence:
> > "Stephen is objecting that such non-concrete systems are, well, not
> > concrete. He'd prefer something more actual - whatever "actual" might
> > concretely be.
>
> > It's hard for me to take seriously the idea of failing to grasp the
> > meaning of 'concrete' in the same breath that uses the word actual and
> > abstract.
>
> They are indexicals. Those things are obvious for 1-person, but of
> course, less obvious when you work in some (any) 3p-theory. You are
> the one making them infinitely complex, by lowering the subst level in
> the infinite.
indexical.
> But they are simple indeed, and can be handled from the simple
> diagonalization (if Dx gives xx, then DD gives DD. Also with D'x =
> F(xx), for any F. D'D' will gives F(D'D')).
>
> > Talking about a mountain is not a mountain.
>
> Right.
>
> > The menu does
> > not taste like the meal.
>
> Rarely.
> It might smell like the meal, in bad restaurant, though.
>
> > All of the quant descriptions in the universe
> > do not add up to a single experienced quality.
>
> You don't know that. Is it an axiom?
>
> > Quantites are only
> > quantities.
>
> No. All universal numbers can interpret a number as a function on
> quantities, or as properties on quantities, which are not quantities
> themselves.
> Universal numbers can also transform, or interpret numbers
> as transformation of transformation, properties of properties, up in
> the constructive transfinite, etc.
> When the quantities can add and multiply, soon their attributes are
> beyond all quantities, and Löbian quantities are arguably already
> knowing that about themselves.
>
> > They don't scale up into anything else without something
> > that is capable of experiencing the low level granular quantities as a
> > completely novel level of continuous qualities.
>
> I take this as another axiom. You postulate the existence of something
> vague. I think that something like that might make sense perhaps, but
> as I see it it would be a consequence of the comp meta-axiom.
comp a consequence of the ecumenical meta-axiom.
>
> > Digital computing
> > cannot do that.
>
> I think that this intuition is grounded by the fact that digital
> computing *can* do that, but cannot, indeed, justify that they can do
> that.
> So, this is just an *easy* insult on digital computing. You might as
> well say to your brother that he is stupid.
>
> > Any kind of semantic scaling in a digital computation
> > can only wind up as being more or less a-signifying generic digits.
>
> On the contrary. The semantics of machines explodes in the infinities.
> They can be aware of their ignorance, and conceive transcendent
> realities.
> Of course, it is not the machine's who think, but abstract and
> relatively concrete person, or more generally living ideas, in
> relatively concrete realities, with their sharable and non sharable
> parts.
>
>
>
> >> It is true, I understand, that the UDA (and AUDA) does
> >> not eliminate the possibility of a "concrete physical
> >> underpinning". It is just that such a concrete physical
> >> underpinning has
> >> no measurable, or detectable effect on our phenomonology other than
> >> that due to its capability of universal computation.
>
> > It's circular reasoning to say that physical underpinnings have no
> > effect on our phenomenology when you are working from a theory which
> > presupposes that phenomenology is detectable only by quantitative
> > measurement in the first place. In our actual experience, we know that
> > in fact all phenomenological systems without exception exist as a
> > function of physical systems -
>
> We don't know that.
always experienced by a person with a body.
> Nor am I sure what it means exactly. Define "physical".
effectively with other phenomena bearing those properties.
>
> Here, in AUDA terms, you might be confusing the "intelligible", with
> the "intelligible matter"
> (Bp with Bp & Dt). [] p with [] p & <> t.
very clear on my distinctions.
>
> > virtual servers do not fly off into the
> > data center on their own virtual power grid - they are still only a
> > complicated event of electrified semiconductors. Unplug the hardware
> > node and all of the operating systems, be they first order software or
> > second order virtual hardware or still only software, 100% dependent
> > on the physical resources. It is generators burning diesel fuel fifty
> > miles away that literally pushes the entire computation - not
> > arithmetic.
>
> At first sight.
>
> > Arithmetic has 0% independence of physical systems *as a
> > whole* even though computations can be understood *figuratively* as
> > being independent of any particular physical structure.
>
> Why figuratively? The computable functions from N to N have been
> discovered in math. It happens that we are surrounded by local
> physical approximation of universal system, from gas in complex
> volume, to bacteria genome, subset of human languages, brains, higher
> animals and man made computers.
> You can postulate or assume some universal numbers, and say "that's
> the ultimate local universal number", but comp predict that any named
> ultimate local universal numbers hides the "real" one. With comp the
> real "one" has no name.
> or by "physical" you mean something more vague, and mixing the 3p and
> 1p, and then, I might interpret your intuition in some perplexities of
> the LUMs.
have the luxury of being protected from physicality by an advanced
civilization. Survival of the body and the world of the body is
physical. It doesn't need to be an absolute universal of all possible
experiences, but it is a universal of our conscious waking experience.
>
>
>
> > All computation can be impacted by changes to it's physical
> > underpinning. Devices which are damaged or have low power supply, or
> > brains which have physiological irregularities produce changes to
> > their phenomenology independent of program logic. The physical
> > topology, the materials and events that effect them can drive
> > phenomenology as well.
>
> Obviously assuming comp. We have to bet on locally stable universal
> number to say "yes" to a doctor.
> The physical is not denied. On the contrary it is justified on a
> conceptually deeper ground.
>
>
theoretical justification while hiding the fact that it is the
theoretical justification itself that is more in need of tethering to
the physical.
>
> >> Which is why I'd like to remind people of Witgenstein's comment:
> >> Whereof
> >> one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
>
> > A great quote, but I do not think Wittgenstein intended it to be used
> > to silence speculation. Unfortunately I have only ever seen it used to
> > serve that function. What he refers to is the limitation of language
> > to express the sense that language makes to the listener (http://
> >www.teleologie.org/OT/deboard/2117.html). That meaning is reversed
> > when used as an admonition, so that the meaning becomes something like
> > "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open
> > your mouth and remove all doubt".
>
> That's a good one!
>
> Now, when Wittgenstein said "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one
> must be silent.", he should have remained silent. We can only ask to
> Wittgenstein "But what where you speaking about?".
>
> Note the similarity with Gödel's second theorem: Dt -> ~BDt (dually
> BDt -> Bf).
>
> <> t -> ~[] <> t
> [] <> t -> [] f
>
> But looking closer, Wittgenstein paradox (close to Damascius's one,
> and to the problem met by Plotinus on the ineffability of the one), is
> plausibly more related to Tarski-Gödel theorem on the non definability
> of truth.
>
> Damascius wrote thousand of pages to explain that even one sentence on
> the ineffable is one sentence too much.
Craig
meekerdb
No. All universal numbers can interpret a number as a function on quantities, or as properties on quantities, which are not quantities themselves. Universal numbers can also transform, or interpret numbers as transformation of transformation, properties of properties, up in the constructive transfinite, etc.
When the quantities can add and multiply, soon their attributes are beyond all quantities, and Löbian quantities are arguably already knowing that about themselves.
I don't understand this. Maybe I don't know what universal number is. I thought it was a number whose representation in digits was such that every number appeared in the representation. But I don't understand how such number does things: transform, interpret,...
Brent
Stephen P. King
On Sat, Feb 04, 2012 at 01:22:10PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:On 03 Feb 2012, at 23:24, Stephen P. King wrote:I am not missing a thing, Bruno. You are missing something that is obvious to the rest of us.If someone else can confirm this, and put some light on what Stephen is saying, I would be pleased.Having had some skype discussions with Stephen, I believe Stephen is referring to "that which breathes fire into the equations", as Hawking puts it.
Thank you for these remarks!
We all agree that COMP does not posit any particular "fire breather" - any entity capable of universal computation will do. Bruno selects Peano arithmetic as a sufficient system (PA supports universal computation), for pedagogical reasons, although he'd really rather use combinators, which would also suit the purpose, but are less known.
Stephen is objecting that such abstract systems are, well, too abstract. He'd prefer something more concrete - whatever "concrete" might actually be.
My point is that some form of dualism is inevitable. Platonism is ultimately dualistic because it has to include the ability of entities to percieve the properties of mathematical object, aka The Forms. Unless we posit our existence to be at the same level as the Forms, how can we explain the effect that the Forms have on our individual and finite minds? To do this would be to obviate the entire point of the Forms being "perfect". To be consistent with the requirements of Ideal Monism, we cannot even consider any notion of implementation of it, this includes the ability to make sounds about it or make marks on our papers about it or type out email postings, etc. Ideal Monism is a theory of free floating casually ineffective ideas that, like pure photons, can never touch each other.
It is true, I understand, that the UDA (and AUDA) does not eliminate the possibility of a "concrete physical underpinning".
It is just that such a concrete physical underpinning has no measurable, or detectable effect on our phenomonology other than that due to its capability of universal computation.
Which is why I'd like to remind people of Witgenstein's comment: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Onward!
Stephen
John Mikes
On 2/3/2012 12:47 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 02 Feb 2012, at 21:52, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 2/2/2012 1:07 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 01 Feb 2012, at 21:48, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 2/1/2012 3:06 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:I don't get it.
Many people have discussed this idea that Existence, in-itself, is primitive and neutral (has no properties or divisions). It is not original with me. For example, Bertrand Russell's discussion of neutral monism and Russell Standish's ToN explain it well.
There might exist phenomenological hermeneutic of the monist kind, but this, once we chose to do science, is a private affair, which can inspire but cannot be communicated.
Hi Bruno,
I do not understand what "phenomenological hermeneutic of the monist kind" is.
It is (monist) continental philosophy. Something I avoid, because it lacks the amount of rigor which I think is needed in any public communication.
So by a neutral monist theory, its is meant a theory which does not assume mind, nor matter, and explain them from something else. That something else needs to be able to be described in first order logic, at least. It should have terms for the existing objects, and axioms for the laws to which those objects obey. Without those two components, we can do nothing.
Neutral monism does not assume that mind or matter have primitive existence.
Right.
Neutral monism considers that both Mind and Matter emerge from a common neutral ground that is, in-itself, neither.OK. I think comp can be described as neutral monism. It assumes numbers with the + and * law. And from that precise neutral grounds, it explains mind and the appearance of matter. Cf NUMBERS => MIND => MATTER.
[SPK]
That is a contradiction. If you stipulate or postulate (up to isomorphisms) that "assumes numbers and the + and * law" then you are requiring that the neutrality is violated, as "numbers and the + and * laws" must be distinguished at the fundamental level from, say, "non-numbers and the @ and $ law" or "derfsfrswe and Q and P laws" or "wfwefwf and R and T laws" or .... You cannot have a differentiation at the foundation and claim that it is neutral. Y
Neutral monism as I am considering it is : Existence (Neutral undifferentiated) => MIND (including numbers and all other representations) AND MATTER
I am using the property of "representability" that mental aspect have, such as what you use with Goedel numbering, to communicate the idea that MIND and MATTER are dual aspects of the fundamental primitive neutral Existence and that this duality is the great-great-great-...- grandfather of the Stone Duality between Boolean algebras and fields of sets - also known as "topological spaces". Vaughan Pratt has explained this idea well enough to start the considerations of it.
You are assuming that numbers are entities that have properties inherently in themselves, that their properties (primeness, squareness, etc.) is completely separate and isolated from our ability to apprehend those properties. This is fatally flawed because it, like Descartes Substance Dualism, has no means to explain how we can come to know of those properties. Plato's idea was that we "remember" the properties of the Forms somehow. But this explanation fails because to remember a datum requires some prior contact with the source of the datum. How can we contact the Forms is they are, by definition, "independent of the mind"?
Forgive me, there might be a definition of "independent" that allows contact but can be so weakened to become degenerate, but in mathematics when two entities are independent they have no relation at all with each other. The only way that we can consider independent entities, take vectors, is to have then existing in a common basis structure. But to do this with Forms and our minds would put Forms and our minds on the same ontological level. Your explanation would consider this a treachery.
You might protest and say that numbers are universal and that you are considering the function that numbers and that the + and * laws perform is "neutral" in the sense of Neutral monism, but that claim also fails for the very same reason as I have outlined. We simply cannot have "specification of properties" and ontological neutrality at the same level. One is the exclusion of the other.
My proposed dualism becomes neutral monism in the limit of lower levels of entities (assuming well foundedness).So you assume a set theory. That's OK, with comp, but might be too much, and quite unpedagogical, if not confusing. Sets are controversial in the foundational problems. I prefer to avoid them for the ontology.All set theories assumes implicitly arithmetic. Set theory is equivalent with arithmetic + some other stronger axioms.
You are confusing my pedagogy and verbiage with the concept I am trying to discuss. That is beneath you, Bruno. You are very smart, maybe too smart for your own good. ;-) So don't do that kind of informal fallacy. As to set theory, we should discuss that seperately, since I am confused as to how you think of set theory. For example, are you considering that there exist many different self-consistent set theories that differ in their choice of axioms?
This is different from "material monism" that assumes that the material physical would is primitive, or "ideal monism" that assumes that Mind is primitive. Your ideas seems to be a form of Ideal Monism.
Not at all. Although UDA assumes consciousness (in its invariance for the comp substitution at some level), UDA+AUDA explicitly eliminates it at the ontological level, and is explained in the math of the epistemology of numbers, so that the TOE is literally only elementary arithmetic.
Then you are confirming that you assume the doctrine of inherent properties and thus contradict neutrality. My argument is that we cannot make what consciousness does remain if we make consciousness vanish. It is like claiming that one can have, in physics, a sourceless field. Perhaps you do believe, like many physicists, in primitive scalar fields (which are sourceless!) but it does not take much reasoning to show that these simply cannot exists because if they did they allow the equivalent of work at no entropic cost. This is consistent with your thinking as your reasoning seems to assume that knowledge can exist (via Bp&p) without any cost what so ever. You have avoided this fatal flaw by the slight of hand of not considering the requirements of neutrality.
What I ask is a scientific theory, by which I mean a first order logical theory about what you assume to exist, and then theorems justifying the other form that "existence" can take.
All that does not contradict itself and is thus necessarily possible exists, thus I claim that existence is necessary possibility.
That's an old idea in philosophy. It is the indexical idea that existence is consistence seen from inside. In first order logic it makes a lot of sense, given that consistence is equivalent with the existence of a model.And in AUDA, the necessity of the possibility of p, BDp, is the consequence of sigma_1 truth, and its leads to an arithmetical quantization. Here Bp is for (Bew(p) & Diamond("1=1")), and Dp is (Diamond(p) v Bew(f) 'relative consistency)). p is sigma_1.Once you are using notion of necessity or possibility, being precise forces you to suggest in which modal logic you are working, and how you justify it. There are infinities of modal logics.
UDA justifies the use of the self-reference modal logic, and their variants. Gödel's results (and Löb's one, and Solovay) don't let many possible choice for the ideally correct machines. The variant described above are the one needed to find the correct physic (correct with respect to comp, if you get UDA).
I don't know if comp is true or not, but comp makes theoretical computer science a lantern to find the key. It allows a mathematical formulation of many subproblems of the (comp) mind body problem.
[SPK]
On these particulars we can agree. Our only disagreement is that you seem to consider that Arithmetic is at the same level as bare Existence and I see bare existence as neutral and that both logics (including arithmetic) and physicality are non-primitive.
[BM]Then tell me what you mean by "Existence", and show me how you derive logics, arithmetic and physicality from that.Unfortunately, people mature enough in logic know that you can't do that. No formal arithmetic can be deduced from anything less than itself.
[SPK]
It is a basic axiom of ontology, but not the only one. It is a necessary but not sufficient part of any ontology. I do not understand how the idea that I am discussing is confusing to you! Existence (noun) exists (verb).
[BM]"Existence exist" is equivalent to Snark borgles. Snark (noun) borgles (verb).
Please. Do not do that. You are insulting your own intelligence with remarks like those.
By an axiom I mean something that either you can present in first order logic, or it is clear enough that we can understand that it can be so translated if we have enough time. Or that you can represent/explained in some other first order logical theory, like set theory, if you want.
[SPK]
But that is the same trap what you are caught in and refuse to see! To state something in first order logic requires that the object that the statement represents is amenable to the "rules" of first order logic. You are tacitly assuming the benefits of the proto-Stone duality without obeying its requirements. Do you not see/understand that concepts have the property that they can represent themselves but cannot implement themselves? You care confusing these two very different properties which is quasi-consistent since you also assume the doctrine of inherent properties .
The expression "existence exists" has really no meaning for me. Except a vague idea that the "Nothing" theory is false.
I am not claiming that it alone is stipulated. What does the word "exist", as in "A number exists" mean?
It means that the statement "ExP(x)" is provable in the theory. It can also mean, at the metalevel, that the object exists in a (usually standard) model of the theory. For example "0 exist" in PA because you can prove in PA that Ex(x = 0). And 0 exists in the standard model of PA, N = {0, 1, 2, ...}, with the usual + and * laws.
OK, but cannot you see that that entire argument is predicated upon the possibility of its implementation as distinguishable from alternatives? How can distinguishability obtain without the means to produce it? When you make consciousness vanish so too does the distinguishably that it engenders. You simply cannot posit the existence of entities that have distinguishable properties and prohibit (even passively) the means by which the differences between the entities obtain. If there is no "we" as physical entities that can distinguish a 1 from a 2 from a 3 and a + operation from a * operations from a # operation or even to be able to speak the words or name them, how can we argue that such entities even exist? To do so is no better that the claims of mystics and Scholastics, and ultimately, becomes prey to "might is right" argumentation: "7 exists and is prime because I say so..."
What does the word "existence" in the following sentence "the existence of numbers in independent of any particular person or persons knowledge of them" mean? Am I being unclear?
It means that the standard truth value of Ex(x = 0), Ex(x = s(0)), are independent of the intuitive existence of me, you, etc.
But that very statement vanishes when we disconnect the ability to physically express the sentence "the standard truth value of Ex(x = 0), Ex(x = s(0))" from its referent therefore its "truth value" is a "meaningless ASCII string", to quote John K Clark. If it is not possible to distinguish properties from each other then it is impossible to express what those properties might be.
[SPK]Our beliefs in the natural numbers is authentically mysterious. But with comp we can, and we must, explain everything from them. And it works, because arithmetic emulate the ... self-referential resonance of numbers, which appears to be very rich and full of surprise.
I reject that our belief in numbers is "mysterious" as we can easily match up one set of objects with another set of different objects.
In which theory?
In a theory whose claims are falsifiable.
here you practice phenomenology again.
How can I not practice phenomenology? Phenomena is the general term referring to what can be experienced and represented and communicated about, no? Or are you thinking of the particular philosophical doctrine of "phenomenology" such as that of Sartre or Husserl?
By mysterious, I was meaning that we cannot derive them from any weaker theory. For example we cannot derive them from logic alone (contrary to what B. Russell thought in Principia Mathematica).
Maybe you are not noticing that this inability to derive them follows from your restriction to first order logic + Platonism?
You refutation here used "me", "sets" "objects", "matching" like if we knew how to recover that notion in your theory (which one?).You refer many times to paper which are correct from the formal points of view. You should work hard to write something similar.
I beg your indulgence, writing only comes with a great effort for me. For example it took me two hours to compose this response since I have to spend a great deal of time correcting the errors that my dyslexia causes.
We can observe physical objects,This is either a tautology, or what?
It is a tautology and with good reason. It seems that sometimes you forget its implications.
We cannot take physical object for granted if we assume comp. If you assume set theory + a physical reality, you have to say so.
I have to assume a set theory (or more primitively, a mereology) and existence of the physical world as I cannot avoid the direct evidence of my first person experience without opening myself to stultification and contradiction. This is obvious. Where we differ on COMP is what you take Yes doctor and Arithmetic Realism to remain coherent at the primitive neutral level and I do not.
we can distinguish between them as they are present in differing locationsWhat is a location?
What is representable by a partly ordered set of numbers in a coordinate system or representable by a set membership function on a collection or representable by a "name" or ...
or, if present in the same location, are located at differing times.What is time?
A measure of change.
Objects can have a wide variety of properties that our observations can determine.What is "observation", what is "our"?
Observation is the association of a list of properties to a datum. The word "our" refers to belonging to or associated with entities in general that are capable of holding such an attribution.
This is kindergarten material, Bruno, why are we tripping all over it as if it where a conundrum or requiring many years of meditation and training?The fact that we can derive A from (A & B) can be considered kindergarten too, yet we have to assume such kind of rule explicitly once we do science.
Nothing is kindergarten in science, especially in fundamental science.
Touche! But you are avoiding my claim.
Have you noticed that I claim that the duality that I am considering vanishes at the level of Existence itself?[BM]I have still not the slightest clue of what you mean by "Existence".
[SPK]
Is it possible for you to think of the most primitive ontological level, prior to even hypostases? What is "at" that level? Bare and naked Existence, undifferentiated, unnamed and raw. It is obviously neutral with respect to properties and it cannot be a property for if Existence where a property then it could not be a fundamental primitive as it would necessarily supervene on something deeper.
Existence is for me, and many, a quantifier. We note it "E", and we use it following rules or axioms, like, if you can deduce in the theory that P(t), for some term t, then you can deduce ExP(x) (it exists something verifying P.
I have no idea what you mean by "Bare and naked Existence, undifferentiated, unnamed and raw". It looks like the TAO, God, or things like that, which I can find very interesting, but to postulate them makes no sense (if only because they are unnameable indeed).
This is an example of what I mean when I ask you to stop acting like an automaton. Yes, Existence is unnameable in-it-self, but for the sake of conversation we can use a word for it, no? I am just trying to be consistent with the requirement of informal and formal logic and not just leaving assumptions unstated. This is something that I learned from David Bohm's discussion of Tacit assumptions.
[SPK]
This is because we cannot consider Existence to be partitioned without specifying a basis for the partition, in other words our ontological models have to start at our level of substitution and cannot remain coherent if we subtract out our existence as entities that can distinguish, for example, 0 from 1.
[BM]This does not follow logically. We, the distinguishers of 0 and 1, certainly exist at some level, from some point of view. But that existence might be derivable (and is derivable) in arithmetic, once we assume comp.
We must assume existence as prior to even numbers, for numbers are, at least, differentiated aspects of existence.
Sorry Stephen. This sentence does not help.
They you are worse off than I suspected. Bruno, you cannot complain that you and your ideas are not being taken seriously when you insist in such an intransigent way on not noticing the obvious. As I explained above, we cannot make claims about entities having properties at the same time claiming that those properties are completely independent of our ability to know them. Yes, the primeness of 7 does not depend on any particular person or entity knowing so, but that does not necessitate that the primeness of 7 is a properties that is completely cut off from our physicality. You do not see the flaw of idealism, it is in your mental blind spot I guess....
A "differentiated aspect of existence" is a thing, it is not existence per se. You are thinking of existence as being dependent on something else. It simply cannot be dependent as it is neither a property or emergent. It seems that you need to take a review course in Ontology! http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-ontology/#Ont
[SPK]Some aspect of it are not derivable, and yet are still true and existing, and can be meta-justified for simpler machines than us, so that we can grasp them indirectly, including our incompleteness with respect to those truth, and which comes from our local relative finiteness.
That a logical sentence is true and that it exists are completely different situations that must not be conflated or considered at the same level.
I made a short language abuse. By "true and existing" I meant "P(t) true and t existing", for some predicate P and object (term) t.
I have no problem with either version, the meaning is the same for me. Whether we bracket sentences or not, they still require some form of physical implementation to be said to have properties.
You seem to tacitly assume that numbers have properties completely independent of the ability of any entity of knowing of them.Not tacitly. Explicitly.
So you explicitly contradict yourself. You are brave! How am I to falsify your claims if I can substitute any entity for numbers (as you define them) and obtain the same "result"? This is the epitome of nonsense! This is a return to the mysticism that science has struggled against. We might as well lobotomize ourselves and remove our ability to think critically about ourselves and our world.
You too, when you refer to set theoretical axioms, like well-foundedness?
I was being specific of the mereology that I was assuming since if I where using the non-well founded version there would be no concept of an "ultimate level".
This is what I call the error of "implicit meaningfulness". A string of numbers, combinatorials, hierarchical sets or whatever, stripped of all relation to the possibility of physical instantiation, is less than a "ghost of a departed quantity", it is vacuous and vapid.
You are doing exactly that when you say that "existence exists" is an axiom.
No, I am being explicit in my axiomatics. We simply cannot avoid the fact that all of our claims, statements, thoughts, etc. necessitate the existence of at least ourselves to be meaningful. This is the first lesson of epistemology and ontology. Since I am not making the claim that the properties of entities, such as numbers, follow only from their "existence" I am not being vacuous.
This is obvious Platonism, and it fails for the same reason that Plato's theory of Forms fails.That is an ultra-strong statement.
Indeed! I am not the first to state it.
It cannot account for knowledge, even in the Theaetetian sense, because prior to the consideration of what "Bp&p" is as different from "%r*0" or "Pb&b" or "1234" or ... as a possible meaningful statement, it has no meaning.
The meaning is given by the axioms, and, at the meta-level, by the models. Like in algebra and math.You are confusing explanatory levels.
Please explain to me the difference of these levels and disabuse me of this confusion.
This is the inevitable flaw of idealism: taking Mind or Consciousness as a singular primitive removes the possibility of distiguishing what something *is* from *what it is not*.I keep insisting that I do not take consciousness or mind as primitive. Only numbers, with the + and * laws.
Numbers and the + and * laws, are entities with specific properties. They are different from other possible entities as they are, at least, the unique possessors of the property of "being a number such that 1 +1 = 2, 2+2 = 4, etc." Therefore to take them as primitives requires that there exists an asymmetry at the primitive level and such an asymmetry violates the definition of neutrality.
Additionally, absent the ability that space and time provide to multiply representations of values, concepts, and other mental objects, there is simply no more than undifferentiated oneness.That's the first hypostases, and we get 8 different ones, including the two plotinian (sensible and intelligible) matters.
OK. I have no problem with the hypostases per se, I only have a problem with the assertion that the properties of the hypostases are differentiable from each other at the primitive level.
The ability to distinguish "this" from "that" requires the physical and cannot be sustained in its absence.You said that you were not assuming physical as primitive, and here you talk like you do.Please, send us your theory. I try hard to attribute some sense and intuition, but once you make strong negative statement, you need a very precise theory to do that.
I am still learning how to write up my theory, if I even have a "theory"! At this point I am merely a student trying to find a consistent set of ideas and concepts. I see a paradox in your explanation of COMP and am trying to fix it.
For example, in your result you use the notion of teleportation and digital substitution. Both of these concepts require the multiplicity of place and time that the physical world gives to be coherent, therefore your result cannot even be considered absent the physical.UDA is not at the same level of AUDA. UDA assumes comp, and thus some physical universe. But the consequence of UDA is that the universe is not an ontological object. It is a shared dream of numbers.
No, numbers cannot have dreams or anything else if they are ontological primitives as ontological primitives must be neutral with respect to properties. You are also conflating the representations of concepts with the referent of those representations, so your accusation that I am confusing levels is aimed in the wrong direction.
The idea of "implementing the UD" requires that it is possible for a physical system to implement it.Not at all. Implementation is a purely arithmetical concept. It needs only (N,+,*).
And why not {Z, @, %} or [R, ^, #] or "WTFWTFWTFWTFWTF" or .... ? You are violating neutrality!
This does *NOT* mean that the physical is primitive in the ontological sense, but neither does the UD itself exist as a primitive "idea". Neither ideas nor physical objects can be fundamental primitives as they require each other for their actuality.
You wrote in http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm :
"Instead of linking [the pain I feel] at space-time (x,t) to [a machine state] at space-time (x,t), we are obliged to associate [the pain I feel at space-time (x,t)] to a type or a sheaf of computations (existing forever in the arithmetical Platonia which is accepted as existing independently of our selves with arithmetical realism)."
This assumes that the "arithmetical Platonia" has specific properties that involve distinctions between them to follow simply from the necessary possibility of the sentence "Arithmetical Platonia exists".
Not at all. You need only predicate calculus with equality (first order logic). PA can prove ~(0=1).
And the sentence "PA can prove ~(0=1)." requires some means of being physically implemented to be distinguishable and thus have a meaning that is different from any other ASCII string. This is where your idea fails and it is the same failure as any other form of idealism. It cannot account for the necessity of the physical world nor the causal efficacy of ideas.
This is a hollow and empty statement as absent the disctinctions that the physical world provides,What is a physical world?
For example, what you experience as you read the text of this message.
there can be no Platonia except as a abstraction within the thoughts of conscious entities.Proof?
The fact that this sentence has a meaning to you.
You are assuming that you can have all of the gifts of consciousness without having to pay the price of consciousness. Sorry, Bruno, there is no free lunch. The mere existence of numbers does nothing at all to indicate their properties.
This contradicts the fact that numbers do have a very rich self-reference logic.
So? That fact only obtains because there exists the possibility of physically implementing, say as a set of symbols on a chalk board, a set of equations of a "very rich self-reference logic". You would have us believe that absent that possibility that the ASCII string "very rich self-reference logic" is has different properties from the ASCII string "WNW()Q DHW)D E" or the ASCII string "IK_((&M)_" or ... .
If not, like Craig, perhaps like Rex Allen and Benjayk, you are postulating that comp is false.
No, I am not. I bet that comp is TRUE, but I don't see COMP as requiring that the physical world is supervening on numbers (up to isomorphisms) as primitives.
So you have to explicitly show what is not valid in the UDA1-8. You miss something, let us try to find out what.
I am not missing a thing, Bruno. You are missing something that is obvious to the rest of us. The very fact that we can read your paper and come to some understanding of the subject of your symol strings is proof that concepts, including numbers, cannot have properties absent the possibility of a physical reality. This proof implies that numbers and physical reality exist at the same level, so that if numbers are primitive then so too is physical reality. But we agree that physical reality cannot be primitive therefore neither can numbers be considered as primitive.
I am trying to point out the obvious and even trivial fact that comp is meaningless and mute as an explanatory model or "result" absent the physical world with its chalkboards, paper, computer screens, etc. Its existence, per se, has nothing to do with its meaningfulness.UDA explains that concrete chalkboards are epinoumena. Even if they exist, we cannot use them to explain the observation of chalkboards. Occam trows the epinoumena out.
OK, but you need to understand that this is equivalent to requiring that OCCAM is refuting itself. You are denying the very possibility of having properties, such as truth values or primeness, by reducing concretes to epiphenomena.
You wrote: "Physics is given by a measure on the consistent computational histories, or maximal consistent extensions as seen from some first person point of view." What exactly is this "First Person point of view"It is the person associated to a machine/number whose knowledge obeys the S4Grz modal logic, in virtue of being described by the Theaetetu's definition of knowledge (Bp & p), when Bp means "asserted soon or later by that machine", for machine ideally correct.It is the third hypostase. The only one which does not split in two.
That is not relevant to the argument. The problem is that you are attributing properties that are definite to entities that by your definition cannot have definite properties. This is equivalent to the ouroboros that has completely consumed itself.
In UDA, you can already get the intuition, it is the one who wrote in his diary "I am in W", and who is in W.
No, there is no difference between "the one who wrote in his diary "I am in W"" and "who is in W" if there is not a means to tell the difference between the two. You cannot claim that difference exists if there is no means for those differences to obtain.
At that moment you get a new machine with "I am in W" as new axiom. And you know that his physics will be given by the consistent extension, whose correct self-referential logic is given by Bp & Dt. The fourth "intelligible matter" hypostases.
No, there is no machine, axiom or anything else because there is only "epiphenomena". You have stultified your own result.
if there is nothing that can act as such by your account?
There are infinitely many things, in (N,+,*) which plays that role. All the universal Löbian numbers.
And they have a meaning and express coherent meaningful implications because it is possible to implement them physically. When remove the possibility of physical implementation my claiming that such are "epiphenomena" then they lose what ever meaningful content they might have.
You wrote: "Laws of physics, in particular, should be inferable from the true verifiable “atomic sentences”." Inferable by *what* or *whom*?By the ideally correct universal Löbian numbers. Like Everett, arithmetic extracts its own correct (theological) internal interpretations.
Sure, and again, we can distinguish Löbian from non- Löbian machines by the effects that their physical implementation causes.
The Atomic sentences themselves can do nothing at all,They corresponds to the existence of the accessible computational states. The atomic sentences are the true Sigma_1 sentences. They are provable, and their proofs are, in that setting, computations. (Except that we must generalize a bit the notion of proof, to get the measure genuine with respect to UDA).
And we distinguish the referents of " true Sigma_1 sentences" from "false Sigma_1 sentences" because we can physically implement them as, say, a set of symbols on a chalkboard a possibility that vanishes when we reduce the physical world to Epiphenomena.
This is the fatal flaw of idealism and ironically, it the same same flaw of materialism: epiphenomena. The material world is epiphenomena for ideal monism and the mental world is epiphenomena for materialism. WE can only break this impasse by some form of dualism that puts the mater and mind on the same level.
must less "infer" anything from themselves because they have no means to reflect back upon themselves.The universal sigma_1 sentence, like Bp, does exactly that. They extrapolate by self-completion. But she go bezerk, because the arithmetical truth run deep and strange (and uncomputable).
I agree, but that is not the flaw.
Even a Godel Number must be different from that it is representing in some way.Yes.
OK, so does the difference flow merely from the necessary possibility of a Godel number? Again, existence does not distinguish properties from each other.
"The number seven is prime" is meaningless if we cannot write it down somewhere and somehow and evaluate its implications.Who is we? tell me his name, so that I will add its existence to the Peano axioms.
The entity that can understand the Peano axioms and thus distinguish them from non-Peano axioms.
Is "we" Stephen Paul King?In that case here is my new theory:
Ax ~(0 = s(x)) (For all number x the successor of x is different from zero). WithAxAy ~(x = y) -> ~(s(x) = s(y)) (different numbers have different successors)Ax x + 0 = x (0 adds nothing)AxAy x + s(y) = s(x + y) ( meaning x + (y +1) = (x + y) +1)Ax x *0 = 0
AxAy x*s(y) = x*y + xExAy(x = STEPHEN & (Bew(y) -> STEPHEN(y)).With STEPHEN a new constant term, denoting you in the union of the standard model of arithmetic with {you}.
Sorry Bruno, I am not isomorphic to any particular representation of me. At worse, my "being" supervenes on all possible representations of Stephen Paul King + the possibility of at least one form of physical implementation of all of those representations.
Well, that will give a conservative extension of PA. So it changes nothing, except for a trivial explanation of the existence of you, which, probably like adding primitive matter, can only make the relation between the "real comp stephen(s)" and STEPHEN quite mysterious.
OK, but you forgot to notice that you have to do that same extension for each and every possible entity that can be named; so we have at least a countable infinity of theories such as:
"Ax ~(0 = s(x)) (For all number x the successor of x is different from zero). WithAxAy ~(x = y) -> ~(s(x) = s(y)) (different numbers have different successors)Ax x + 0 = x (0 adds nothing)AxAy x + s(y) = s(x + y) ( meaning x + (y +1) = (x + y) +1)Ax x *0 = 0
AxAy x*s(y) = x*y + xExAy(x = S & (Bew(y) -> S(y)).
With S a new constant term, denoting you in the union of the standard model of arithmetic with {you}.
Where {you} is a referent of the class of entities that can make and note differences."
The argument that I am making, indeed maybe a sketch of a proof, is that these ASCII strings have a meaning only because there exists the possibility that they can be implemented as some pattern of differences in a substrate capable of being differentiated. If this substrate is epiphenomena then the possibility of meaningfulness itself vanishes.
If that is the case, I encourage you to make that precise, and to study comp and computer science to even just define "non-comp".That will not be easy. AUDA works, for example, for many transfinite sequences of weakening of comp.
However one might "weaken comp" it still requires the possibility of implementation in a substrate no matter how universal it might be.
Why? Once you have N and +, and *, you can't avoid the universal numbers and all their relative implementations.
And numbers get an explanation why some implementations (like the quantum one) are observable in they neighborhood (by first person indeterminacy).
Explanations that contradict themselves are not explanations, they are maybe myths or "just so" tales.
Universality merely makes the computation free from specific physical implementations, it does *NOT* obviate the need for the possibility of physical implementation.It does obviate that needs. That's the consequence of UDA-step-8 specifically. The physical implementations are just very particular computations occurring below our level of substitution, where all universal numbers compete. It is the consequence of the global first person indeterminacy with respect to the sigma_1 complete arithmetical truth.
UDA-step-8 must be physically implemented to be distinguishable from any other of the countable(?) infinity of finite strings of symbols, thus if physical implementation is "epiphenomena" then so is the meanign of UDA-step-1 or UDA-step2 or ..., UDA-step-8.
Ideal monism still fails because it contradicts the requirement that it be meaningful.Sure. Comp is neutral monist. The mind is "easily" explained by computer science, and the self-reference logic is a shortcut. It is an interview of a wise universal number.
It is "neutral monist" only if it satisfied the requirements of neutral monism. I have repeatedly shown here in this post how it does not and thus your claim is false. There is no such thing as an interview of a number, wise or ignorant, if we also claim that the physical world is epiphenomena.
Something cannot be said to be meaningful when there is no object (that it is not) to whom it has a meaning.But if you say "yes" to the doctor, you have to understand that arithmetic truth is full of such "whom".
Yes, and I can know the "whom" only because it is possible to physically write a string of symbols on a substrate that has semi-permanence over time. If such is not permissible then there can be no "to whom".
To claim the opposite is to claim that "I can have meaning to my self but I have no self".The 8 hypostases, which no universal machine/numbers can avoid, are given by their self-reference logics. Once you say "yes" to the doctor, you can trust computer science on the notion of self. It is were theoretical computer science excels the most. The key tool is again diagonalization. The 8 hypostases are 8 variants of the universal number's self, for any self believing in the arithmetical induction axioms (or equivalent).
I cannot trust any idea that contradicts itself even to the point of eliminating its meaningfulness. To do so your to bet on a sure loser. There is an escape from this conundrum: admit that neither the numbers nor the physical is primitive and embrace truly neutral monism and its dualistic finite model.
Onward!
Stephen
--
Stephen P. King
On 2/4/2012 1:53 PM, acw wrote:
One can wonder what is the most "general" theory that we can postulate to explain our existence. Tegmark postulates all of consistent mathematics, whatever that is, but is 'all of consistent mathematics' consistent in itself?
Schmidhuber postulates something much less, just the UD, but strangely forgets the first-person or the what the implementation substrate of that UD would be (and resorts to a Great Programmer to hand-wave it away).
Before reading the UDA, I used to think that something like Tegmark's solution would be general enough and sufficient, but now I think 'just arithmetic' (or combinators, or lambda calculus, or ...) or is sufficient. Why? By the Church-Turing Thesis, these systems posses the same computability power, that is, they all can run the UD.
Now, if we do admit a digital substitution, all that we can experience is already contained within the UD, including the worlds where we find a physical world with us having a physical body/brain (which exist computationally, but let us not forget that random oracle that comes with 1p indeterminacy).
This idea goes back to my claim that the "Pre-established harmony" idea of Leibniz is false because it requires the computation of an infinite NP-Complete problem to occur in zero steps. As we know, given even infinite resources a UTM must take at least one computational step to solve such a NP-Complete problem. My solution to this dilemma is to have an eternally running process at some primitive level. Bruno seems to identify this with the UD, but I claim that he goes too far and eliminates the "becoming" nature of the process.
If we are machines, then we can only experience finite amount of information given some finite interval of time, some of this information may be incompressible, due to 1p indeterminacy, thus we could experience "reals" in the limit, despite there only being finite computations at any given time. This essentially means that any mathematical object which can be described in Tegmark's "Ultimate Ensemble" and that can contain us, is already part of the 1p experiences of those existing within the UD and we can look at 1p experiences, as well as the UD* trace as being part of the greater "arithmetical" truth (or any other theory with equivalent computational power, by the Church-Turing Thesis).
This is why I think "arithmetic" is as good as any for a neutral foundation, and we cannot really distinguish (from the inside) between these foundations by the CTT.
However, there might be other possible foundations, if you wish to postulate concrete infinities, but even if they existed, how could we tell them apart, it doesn't seem to be possible for someone admitting a digital substitution, which has a finite mind (at any finite point in time). If you can show that those other foundations are necessary and they affect our measure/continuations, or that concrete infinities are involved in the implementation of our brain, it could prove COMP wrong.
There is more to add to this, such as the Pontryagin duality that expands the class of dual spaces out to range between the discrete spaces to the compact spaces, but that is for another conversation. :-)
There is another problem with taking a set theory as foundational rather than arithmetic - some set theories have independent axioms and they can be extended by adding either an axiom or its negation, and they result in different set theoretical truths.
This doesn't really happen with computation - if there's anything absolute in math, it's computation (although different theories about what arithmetic is will result in different things the theory can talk about, but it won't make computation any less absolute).
As a side-note, I don't see why the primitive physical world is necessary, from the 1p, we can only know that we have senses and from the senses we can infer the existence of the external world.
(see
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Laws_of_Form_-_double_cross.gif)Additionally, I see this conjecture as similar to Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis except that I do not see how the postulate "All structures that exist mathematically also exist physically." implies a mathematical monism as the wiki article states. If for any structure that exists mathematically there must exist a physical structure, there is the implication of a duality between the mathematical and the physical. This is a different sort of duality than that of Descartes as it does not assume distinct "substances", it is a form of dual aspect theory where the dynamics of each aspect run in opposite directions. Vaughn Pratt explains the idea here: http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/dti.pdf
If consciousness is how some (possibly self-referential) arithmetical (or computational) truth feels from the inside, it does not seem impossible that there would not be computations representing some physical (just not primitive) world and that world would contain us and our bodies/brains, and the existence of such computations would be a theorem in arithmetic.
Onward!
Stephen
Bruno Marchal
1Z
On Jan 31, 4:44 pm, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
> When we close our eyes, we still see visual noise, even in total
> darkness. If qualia were based on computation, we should expect that
> no sensory input should equate to total blackness, since there is no
> information to report.
No we shouldn't. Try using a digital camera to take
a picture of pitch darkness. You will see noise.
1Z
On Feb 3, 11:13 pm, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 3, 4:16 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Photoshop can paint a smooth image therefore computers can never be
> > intelligent or conscious. Of course, I see the light at last, its all so
> > obvious now that you point out that vital fact! Why oh why didn't I see it
> > before?!
>
> No, I'm pointing out that the claim that all digital images must
> contain noise is spurious.
The counterclaim is that some do, not that all do.
Bruno Marchal
On Feb 5, 11:19 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:They are indexicals. Those things are obvious for 1-person, but ofcourse, less obvious when you work in some (any) 3p-theory. You arethe one making them infinitely complex, by lowering the subst level inthe infinite.
I'm not lowering subst level at all, I'm saying that subst level is an
indexical.
All of the quant descriptions in the universedo not add up to a single experienced quality.You don't know that. Is it an axiom?
I don't know it, but I clearly understand why it is the case.
Quantites are onlyquantities.No. All universal numbers can interpret a number as a function onquantities, or as properties on quantities, which are not quantitiesthemselves.
Then what are they?
I take this as another axiom. You postulate the existence of somethingvague. I think that something like that might make sense perhaps, butas I see it it would be a consequence of the comp meta-axiom.
That just gives a name to comp's lack of explanatory power. I can call
comp a consequence of the ecumenical meta-axiom.
On the contrary. The semantics of machines explodes in the infinities.
Explodes into what? What does it signify other than itself?
It's circular reasoning to say that physical underpinnings have noeffect on our phenomenology when you are working from a theory whichpresupposes that phenomenology is detectable only by quantitativemeasurement in the first place. In our actual experience, we know thatin fact all phenomenological systems without exception exist as afunction of physical systems -We don't know that.
Are you talking about ghosts or NDEs? Even so, those phenomena are
always experienced by a person with a body.
Nor am I sure what it means exactly. Define "physical".
Phenomena whose properties include mass, density, volume and interact
effectively with other phenomena bearing those properties.
Here, in AUDA terms, you might be confusing the "intelligible", withthe "intelligible matter"(Bp with Bp & Dt). [] p with [] p & <> t.
I'm really not confused at all. You keep accusing me of that but I'm
very clear on my distinctions.
virtual servers do not fly off into thedata center on their own virtual power grid - they are still only acomplicated event of electrified semiconductors. Unplug the hardwarenode and all of the operating systems, be they first order software orsecond order virtual hardware or still only software, 100% dependenton the physical resources. It is generators burning diesel fuel fiftymiles away that literally pushes the entire computation - notarithmetic.At first sight.
What happens at second sight?
Arithmetic has 0% independence of physical systems *as awhole* even though computations can be understood *figuratively* asbeing independent of any particular physical structure.Why figuratively? The computable functions from N to N have beendiscovered in math. It happens that we are surrounded by localphysical approximation of universal system, from gas in complexvolume, to bacteria genome, subset of human languages, brains, higheranimals and man made computers.You can postulate or assume some universal numbers, and say "that'sthe ultimate local universal number", but comp predict that any namedultimate local universal numbers hides the "real" one. With comp thereal "one" has no name.
Maybe it has no name because there's nothing there?or by "physical" you mean something more vague, and mixing the 3p and1p, and then, I might interpret your intuition in some perplexities ofthe LUMs.
Physical can only be contemplated in these poetic terms because we
have the luxury of being protected from physicality by an advanced
civilization. Survival of the body and the world of the body is
physical. It doesn't need to be an absolute universal of all possible
experiences, but it is a universal of our conscious waking experience.
All computation can be impacted by changes to it's physicalunderpinning. Devices which are damaged or have low power supply, orbrains which have physiological irregularities produce changes totheir phenomenology independent of program logic. The physicaltopology, the materials and events that effect them can drivephenomenology as well.Obviously assuming comp. We have to bet on locally stable universalnumber to say "yes" to a doctor.The physical is not denied. On the contrary it is justified on aconceptually deeper ground.
That's the problem. It is presumed that the physical needs our
theoretical justification while hiding the fact that it is the
theoretical justification itself that is more in need of tethering to
the physical.
You cannot invoke your own understanding. That's an argument perauthority (it proves nothing and augment the plausibility that you arecrackpot in the interlocutor ear).
It's not an argument from authority, it's an argument from sense.
Just
as your theory is contingent upon the acceptance of primitive
arithmetic truth, my hypothesis comes out of a sense primitive. In
order to understand the cosmos as a whole, including subjectivity, we
must invoke our own understanding or mechanism will mislead us into
disproving ourselves. Sense is the price of admission to the real
world.
It willonly change according to what and how it's script allows it to change.The "allowing" is a universal machine dependent notion, and they aremany.
But what is allowed can never exceed the range of possibilities of the
script. Living organisms seem to be able to do that.
When you talk with them, do they answer the same way to the samequestion every time?The conversation is made in Platonia, and is not entangled to ourhistory, except for period where I implement it on some machines. Evenin that case, they didn't dispose on short and long term memories,except for their intrinsic basic arithmetical experiences (whichbifurcate up to you and me).
I can't really interpret that in any way other than an evasion of the
question. You say there have been public dialogs at various times. I
asked if the answers are the same every time. You answered in a way
that sounds like 'talking to machines isn't anything like talking and
it doesn't occur in time, but then somehow they become us and then
talking becomes talking.'
that all such machines remain silenton all of these questions every time tells me that they clearlypossess no awareness.You have frightening telepathic power.
It's not telepathy, it's first hand knowledge that awareness entails
natural variation in response. You cannot ask any question of any
person over and over and expect to get the same response every time
for every person.
That's because awareness is not mechanical.
That's
what makes a machine a machine, a lack of capacity to transcend
recursive behavior or deviate from universal behavior.
Because I limit myself to ideally self-referentially correct machine.They already know that it is insane to let the secret of theiridentity slip.
So it's impossible for a machine to go insane? Seems like another
fundamental difference between minds and machines.
Not at all. When you ask them why they remain silent on some question,they can find answer and provide (theological) theories/hypothesis.
For example?
What about them makes them perceptible as opposed to computational?But they are perceptible, if the theory is correct.
Only because deciding that they are perceptible is the only way to
preserve the possibility that the theory could be correct.
I didn't say that. You confuse level. When you say that sense andmatter are self-explanatory, you just make no sense at all.
You're overthinking it. Sense is the ability to detect and incorporate
what is detected into a larger coherence.
How? Given that sense are primitive, which makes no sense.
If sense is primitive, then it makes sense by definition.
A machine can say "17 is prime".
Can it? Or do we have to define what prime is for it in advance? Most
machines don't know what 17 or prime is.
It also means that machine can justify it by the +and * laws.Ideally correct machine cannot say, in general "True('17 is prime')".They can refer to a reality as such. they are modest.
It makes the entire universe into a uniform meaningless exercise of
self reference.
That doesn't even make sense. Any scientific truth can be expressed in
a poetic form. Genres aren't real.
That's only half of reality, but it is only through that reality thatwe can know any part of the other half.Argument?
The argument is that all truths beyond our senses are known to us only
through our senses. What is the argument against it?
No problem with that. I wish only you try harder.
Try harder to be impartial, or try harder to stack the deck in favor
of comp?
No, a machine cannot think because the only reason that we might be
tempted to think it could can be explained through that example. You
can make the piano more sensitive to bumps, and you can make the bumps
more sophisticated to articulate the piano's mechanism better, but
neither the truck, the piano, nor the bumps can play the piano, they
are all parts of a recording made by humans trying to imitate their
own playing of the piano.
The logical sense of coherence is in the "Dt", the tangible detectionis in "p", and the machine's body and relative belief is in "Bp". TheBp & Dt & p is a variant of the self-reference logic. The non firstperson communicable part of the logic of that variant (named X1* inAUDA) is the qualia logic, or the sensible matter hypostasis. Thebootstrap law is given by p -> [] <> p, with []p defined roughly by Bp& Dt & p. Bp is Gödel probability applied on the arithmetical sigma_1sentence p. Dp is ~B~p. <> p is ~ [] ~, and t is "1=1".
The existence of variables like Dt and p already presupposes sense and
detection of visual symbols.
It sounds like bones are ontologically less important than brains?I don't see why. Brains are also locally stable patterns obtained by arelative statistics oninfinities of (infinite) computations.
So why are brains more associated with human consciousness than bones?
In string theory, you can compute the mass of the photon. A longcomputation (from precise general axiom) leads spectacularly to a sumof two terms which when evaluated gives (1+2+3+4+ ...) + 1/12.Of course this only shows that IF string theory is correct then themass of the photon is zero (because it is obvious that 1+2+3+4+5+ ...= minus 1/12, isn't it?).
I don't understand the minus 1/12 part.
Who said this? The pope? The Ayatollah? The government?It's not an authoritative proposition, it's a voluntary interpretation(which, if I'm right, is what half of the universe is anyhow).You dream aloud.
Isn't that what you say numbers do also?
We are sharply divided in the US in our opinions about that. Are
universal numbers less conflicted about when life or consciousness
begins and ends? Are they Pro-Life or Pro-Choice?
But here all the problem is in linking the easy 1p and the less easy 3p.
It's not a problem when you realize they are linked in only in their
anomalous symmetry with each other.
We don't have to include it. Brains are the simplifier tools.
No, brains are just the meaty end of a simplifier tool which is
semantic and experiential.
Study the work of other people. Address their problem, with orwithoutyour "theory" as training.That would be worthwhile I'm sure, but unfortunately it would be toomuch of a distraction.OK. That why I am not good in saucer. All those guy running after theball distract me too much. But then I don't pretend marking the goal.
This isn't a game though, it's the truth of reality.
Why not? What about numbers suggests dreaming?
Incompleteness says the opposite to me that it does to you. I see
Gödel showing the limitation of arithmetic truth in the face of
organic sense, not the omnipotence of it.
But it has, in the relevant sense, once you admit there is asubstitution level.
Substitution level is an indexical of perception.
You are saying that you are superior, in some sense, to otherentities. You deny a soul to a class of individuals, by invoking fuzzyrhetorical trick reifying your own experience.
That is precisely why I am superior to a machine, because I can do
that. A machine can't. It needs a reason to presume it's own
existence. I don't. I can assert my primordial authority because I
feel and know, and understand that I can. I don't need permission from
a program or a script or a rule book. I embody the theory. We don't
view the universe as impartial voyeurs, we are fully immersed within
it. We define it and it defines us.
You confuse the script and the show, for the numbers. The universalnumbers plays the shows of the numbers.
Why would they play anything? For what audience?
By having some disease in some part of the cortex inside. Themodalities can be stopped to be handled correctly, or self-referentially correctly.
Why wouldn't the machine just route around the disease? If color is
everywhere inside, I don't see why color blindness should be localized
to some part of anything.
That sounds to me like the song does the singing and songwriting.Yes. That's the magic of the universal numbers. They can do both.
Then the singers and songwriters are innocent bystanders?
I don't assume theory as primitive. Only numbers and +, *.The existence of theories and machines is a theorem in N,+, *.
But +, * is already a theory of what can be done with numbers.
Which would make sense if we lived in aworld of disembodied theories settling into matter but it seemsobvious that he opposite is the case.Because we are deluded by the fact that we participate to the dramafrom inside.
Why does that prevent us from encountering disembodied theories from
entering our drama?
Arithmetic emulate all histories.
Only if you believe in emulation.
Comp is not a truth. It is not an obligation either. But it is a right.
Sure, it's a right. So are the other alternatives.
meekerdb
On 05 Feb 2012, at 21:32, meekerdb wrote:
On 2/5/2012 8:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:No. All universal numbers can interpret a number as a function on quantities, or as properties on quantities, which are not quantities themselves. Universal numbers can also transform, or interpret numbers as transformation of transformation, properties of properties, up in the constructive transfinite, etc.
When the quantities can add and multiply, soon their attributes are beyond all quantities, and Löbian quantities are arguably already knowing that about themselves.
I don't understand this. Maybe I don't know what universal number is. I thought it was a number whose representation in digits was such that every number appeared in the representation. But I don't understand how such number does things: transform, interpret,...
Let phi_i be an enumeration of the (partial and total) computable functions from N to N.Let <x,y> be a bijection from NXN to N.
A universal number u is a number u such that, for all x and y, we have phi_u(<x,y>) = phi_x(y).The equality means that the LHS and RHS are either both defined and equal, or both undefined.
Brent
u, applied on x and y simulate the machine x on the input y. u is called the computer, x the program (the machine to be emulated), and y is the datum/data. u interpret x as a machine, and it simulates x behavior on the input y.
You can see it as the number-code of a universal machine or programming language interpreter.
u depends on the choice of the bijection and of the phi_i base, but if you choose (N, +, *) as a universal system, you can make it intrinsic, and for any bijection, you will have different but equivalent universal numbers. This is not a problem because we have to consider *all* universal numbers to retrieve the physics and psychology of machines (this will include all such bijection).
Bruno
No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
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Craig Weinberg
contain noise, and certainly that no digital image intended to produce
zero output need contain noise.
> The counterclaim is that some do, not that all do.
Craig
Craig Weinberg
> On 05 Feb 2012, at 20:10, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> > I'm not lowering subst level at all, I'm saying that subst level is an
> > indexical.
>
> ?
is not a scalar variable.
>
>
>
> >>> All of the quant descriptions in the universe
> >>> do not add up to a single experienced quality.
>
> >> You don't know that. Is it an axiom?
>
> > I don't know it, but I clearly understand why it is the case.
>
> That's not an argument.
supervenience to all 1p experiences.
>
>
>
> >>> Quantites are only
> >>> quantities.
>
> >> No. All universal numbers can interpret a number as a function on
> >> quantities, or as properties on quantities, which are not quantities
> >> themselves.
>
> > Then what are they?
>
> Functions, relations, properties, modalities, qualities, etc.
(quantitative) modalities, quantitative qualities.
>
>
>
> >> I take this as another axiom. You postulate the existence of
> >> something
> >> vague. I think that something like that might make sense perhaps, but
> >> as I see it it would be a consequence of the comp meta-axiom.
>
> > That just gives a name to comp's lack of explanatory power. I can call
> > comp a consequence of the ecumenical meta-axiom.
>
> comp *is* the meta-axiom. It is an axiom bearing on your own
> consciousness property (of being invariant for some substitution at
> some level).
>
>
>
> >> On the contrary. The semantics of machines explodes in the
> >> infinities.
>
> > Explodes into what? What does it signify other than itself?
>
> Explodes into the number of possible different interpretation of
> itself, which might impact on different decisions and futures, from
> the machine's point of view.
machine. It doesn't signify anything, it's syntax only.
>
>
>
> >>> It's circular reasoning to say that physical underpinnings have no
> >>> effect on our phenomenology when you are working from a theory which
> >>> presupposes that phenomenology is detectable only by quantitative
> >>> measurement in the first place. In our actual experience, we know
> >>> that
> >>> in fact all phenomenological systems without exception exist as a
> >>> function of physical systems -
>
> >> We don't know that.
>
> > Are you talking about ghosts or NDEs? Even so, those phenomena are
> > always experienced by a person with a body.
>
> I was not talking on NDE, but on the fact that primitive matter does
> not exist.
are associated with persons or animals who have bodies.
>
>
>
> >> Nor am I sure what it means exactly. Define "physical".
>
> > Phenomena whose properties include mass, density, volume and interact
> > effectively with other phenomena bearing those properties.
>
> Define mass, density, volume, and interaction.
>
>
>
> >> Here, in AUDA terms, you might be confusing the "intelligible", with
> >> the "intelligible matter"
> >> (Bp with Bp & Dt). [] p with [] p & <> t.
>
> > I'm really not confused at all. You keep accusing me of that but I'm
> > very clear on my distinctions.
>
> You are not. And you are not well place to judge this.
have other people who are familiar with my ideas who don't share your
facts.
>
>
>
> >>> virtual servers do not fly off into the
> >>> data center on their own virtual power grid - they are still only a
> >>> complicated event of electrified semiconductors. Unplug the hardware
> >>> node and all of the operating systems, be they first order
> >>> software or
> >>> second order virtual hardware or still only software, 100% dependent
> >>> on the physical resources. It is generators burning diesel fuel
> >>> fifty
> >>> miles away that literally pushes the entire computation - not
> >>> arithmetic.
>
> >> At first sight.
>
> > What happens at second sight?
>
> You realize that this might be the other way round. It is in the comp
> theory. Cf UDA.
dependent on data centers?
>
>
>
> >>> Arithmetic has 0% independence of physical systems *as a
> >>> whole* even though computations can be understood *figuratively* as
> >>> being independent of any particular physical structure.
>
> >> Why figuratively? The computable functions from N to N have been
> >> discovered in math. It happens that we are surrounded by local
> >> physical approximation of universal system, from gas in complex
> >> volume, to bacteria genome, subset of human languages, brains, higher
> >> animals and man made computers.
> >> You can postulate or assume some universal numbers, and say "that's
> >> the ultimate local universal number", but comp predict that any named
> >> ultimate local universal numbers hides the "real" one. With comp the
> >> real "one" has no name.
>
> > Maybe it has no name because there's nothing there?
>
> >> or by "physical" you mean something more vague, and mixing the 3p and
> >> 1p, and then, I might interpret your intuition in some perplexities
> >> of
> >> the LUMs.
>
> > Physical can only be contemplated in these poetic terms because we
> > have the luxury of being protected from physicality by an advanced
> > civilization. Survival of the body and the world of the body is
> > physical. It doesn't need to be an absolute universal of all possible
> > experiences, but it is a universal of our conscious waking experience.
>
> I am waiting for a theory. I have no clue what you mean by "physical",
> "body" etc.
Earth means when they say "physical" and "body". By splitting
vernacular terms into infinities of linguistic formalism, you tip the
scales to prejudice theory over practice. It's not necessary and adds
nothing.
>
>
>
> >>> All computation can be impacted by changes to it's physical
> >>> underpinning. Devices which are damaged or have low power supply, or
> >>> brains which have physiological irregularities produce changes to
> >>> their phenomenology independent of program logic. The physical
> >>> topology, the materials and events that effect them can drive
> >>> phenomenology as well.
>
> >> Obviously assuming comp. We have to bet on locally stable universal
> >> number to say "yes" to a doctor.
> >> The physical is not denied. On the contrary it is justified on a
> >> conceptually deeper ground.
>
> > That's the problem. It is presumed that the physical needs our
> > theoretical justification while hiding the fact that it is the
> > theoretical justification itself that is more in need of tethering to
> > the physical.
>
> You confuse level of explanation. You could say that we cannot explain
> how a chalkboard works because we need it to write the explanation on
> the board.
writing explanations, but no explanation has ever existed which was
not associated with some physical body's activity.
>
> >> You cannot invoke your own understanding. That's an argument per
> >> authority (it proves nothing and augment the plausibility that you
> >> are
> >> crackpot in the interlocutor ear).
>
> > It's not an argument from authority, it's an argument from sense.
>
> An argument cannot refer to senses.
>
> > Just
> > as your theory is contingent upon the acceptance of primitive
> > arithmetic truth, my hypothesis comes out of a sense primitive. In
> > order to understand the cosmos as a whole, including subjectivity, we
> > must invoke our own understanding or mechanism will mislead us into
> > disproving ourselves. Sense is the price of admission to the real
> > world.
>
> Define cosmos, define sense. Only a wrong understanding of mechanism
> can mislead us.
common usage definitions of cosmos and sense will suffice.
>
> >>> It will
> >>> only change according to what and how it's script allows it to
> >>> change.
>
> >> The "allowing" is a universal machine dependent notion, and they are
> >> many.
>
> > But what is allowed can never exceed the range of possibilities of the
> > script. Living organisms seem to be able to do that.
>
> There are no evidence for that.
> We cannot change the physical laws,
> which are deterministic in all physical theories (except QM+collapse,
> which is not really a theory).
psychological non-laws.
>
> >>> When you talk with them, do they answer the same way to the same
> >>> question every time?
>
> >> The conversation is made in Platonia, and is not entangled to our
> >> history, except for period where I implement it on some machines.
> >> Even
> >> in that case, they didn't dispose on short and long term memories,
> >> except for their intrinsic basic arithmetical experiences (which
> >> bifurcate up to you and me).
>
> > I can't really interpret that in any way other than an evasion of the
> > question. You say there have been public dialogs at various times. I
> > asked if the answers are the same every time. You answered in a way
> > that sounds like 'talking to machines isn't anything like talking and
> > it doesn't occur in time, but then somehow they become us and then
> > talking becomes talking.'
>
> They become us when entangled in the long and deep computations (which
> belongs to arithmetic).
>
> >>> that all such machines remain silent
> >>> on all of these questions every time tells me that they clearly
> >>> possess no awareness.
>
> >> You have frightening telepathic power.
>
> > It's not telepathy, it's first hand knowledge that awareness entails
> > natural variation in response. You cannot ask any question of any
> > person over and over and expect to get the same response every time
> > for every person.
>
> Because they have a good handling on short and among term memories.
> The machine I interview are virgin of any sustained experience related
> to our environment. Your question just don't apply to them.
>
> > That's because awareness is not mechanical.
>
> It is not entirely mechanical, but that is a theorem in the comp
> theory. Not an argument against mechanism.
>
> > That's
> > what makes a machine a machine, a lack of capacity to transcend
> > recursive behavior or deviate from universal behavior.
>
> They don't lack that capacity, at their own high level.
> They lack that
> capacity on their lower levels, and below. So do we, very plausibly. I
> cannot change the local laws of physics.
>
> >> Because I limit myself to ideally self-referentially correct machine.
> >> They already know that it is insane to let the secret of their
> >> identity slip.
>
> > So it's impossible for a machine to go insane? Seems like another
> > fundamental difference between minds and machines.
>
> On the contrary all sane machine can know that they can become insane,
> and even that they cannot know if they are sane or not.
> Of course any self-referentially correct entity, be it man or machine,
> is sane (by definition).
up their mysteries under questioning through that insanity, that puts
an arbitrary limit on insanity. Humans don't have any kind of limit
like that. They can answer any question they want, any way they want,
sane or insane. If there is any limitation at all for machines, then
they can never have fully human consciousness.
>
> >> Not at all. When you ask them why they remain silent on some
> >> question,
> >> they can find answer and provide (theological) theories/hypothesis.
>
> > For example?
>
> Question: <>t ? (= ~[] f ? = Are you consistent. = "Will you prove
> bulshit?")
> Answer: <none> (= the machine remains silent)
>
> But later the machine asserts <> t -> ~[] <> t (If I am consistent
> I will never tell you so).
>
> Note that <> t, [] f are used here as abbreviation of purely
> arithmetical propositions, and I interview any sound (and rich enough)
> theorem prover of arithmetical proposition.
awareness at all there, there would be variation in the answers
locally from machine to machine. It can't have a personality if all of
them tell you that they won't tell you if they are consistent.
>
> >>> What about them makes them perceptible as opposed to computational?
>
> >> But they are perceptible, if the theory is correct.
>
> > Only because deciding that they are perceptible is the only way to
> > preserve the possibility that the theory could be correct.
>
> Not just that. They verifies the usual property of qualia. (Having
> qualitative attributes which are non communicable in a 3p-way,
> obeying already given axiomatic for qualia, etc).
communicability.
>
> >> I didn't say that. You confuse level. When you say that sense and
> >> matter are self-explanatory, you just make no sense at all.
>
> > You're overthinking it. Sense is the ability to detect and incorporate
> > what is detected into a larger coherence.
>
> That is a not to bad 3p-definition of sense. Note that machine have
> that ability, although they have to assume locally the larger
> coherence, and bet on some truth, and so they have to be a bit
> mystical (conscious) for this. But they are indeed. Note that this
> implicit inference allows us to connect the 1p-sense to the 3p-notion
> that you describe.
mechanism. The real 1p- sense of any given machine reflects the
experience of the substrate, not the human code riding on top of that.
The 1p we imagine behind the function of the program is 100%
projection.
>
> >> How? Given that sense are primitive, which makes no sense.
>
> > If sense is primitive, then it makes sense by definition.
>
> So the ability to detect and incorporate what is detected into a
> larger coherence is a primitive operation?
> That seems senseless to me.
coherence, it cannot be as primitive as sense. Nothing more primitive
than sense can make sense by definition, so it cannot be detected or
integrated. This is what I'm telling you - sense is *the* primitive of
the cosmos.
>
> >> A machine can say "17 is prime".
>
> > Can it? Or do we have to define what prime is for it in advance? Most
> > machines don't know what 17 or prime is.
>
> Same for man. Of course we have to define the object we talk about if
> we want argue for or against their existence. This does not
> distinguish machine and man, unless you endow man with magical
> abilities.
arithmetically a magical ability?
>
> I took it here that prime (17) is something like (~(x = 1) and ((y
> divides x) -> ((x = 1) or (x = 17))))
> (y divides x) is supposed to be an abbreviation of Ez (yz = x).
>
> >> It also means that machine can justify it by the +
> >> and * laws.
> >> Ideally correct machine cannot say, in general "True('17 is
> >> prime')".
> >> They can refer to a reality as such. they are modest.
>
> > It makes the entire universe into a uniform meaningless exercise of
> > self reference.
>
> Shakespeare said so. And then what? Science is not wishful thinking.
> To be sure, what you say does not follow, given that the self-
> reference and contexts provides the 1p and 3p sense (in comp +
> classical theory of knowledge).
>
> > That doesn't even make sense. Any scientific truth can be expressed in
> > a poetic form. Genres aren't real.
>
> There is no scientific truth. There is only scientific beliefs.
> "scientific truth" is a term used by journalist in bad popular
> journal. Or by old scientists having brain problems, or by
> epistemologists working at a higher non assertive level. In science we
> never use the word truth, nor should we do in religion, except when it
> is the subject matter, but again, we will not pretend that we are
> true, or that we propose scientific truth. Science is only beliefs,
> even when true (by chance, for example).
can be expressed in a poetic form. Or are you saying there are no
truths or that arithmetic is not poetic?
>
> >>> That's only half of reality, but it is only through that reality
> >>> that
> >>> we can know any part of the other half.
>
> >> Argument?
>
> > The argument is that all truths beyond our senses are known to us only
> > through our senses. What is the argument against it?
>
> I asked an argument for the quantity 1/2.
>
> >> No problem with that. I wish only you try harder.
>
> > Try harder to be impartial, or try harder to stack the deck in favor
> > of comp?
>
> Try harder to refute comp.
tautology.
>
> > No, a machine cannot think because the only reason that we might be
> > tempted to think it could can be explained through that example. You
> > can make the piano more sensitive to bumps, and you can make the bumps
> > more sophisticated to articulate the piano's mechanism better, but
> > neither the truck, the piano, nor the bumps can play the piano, they
> > are all parts of a recording made by humans trying to imitate their
> > own playing of the piano.
>
> You beg the question.
truck is a pianist, you certainly are entitled to that view - and it's
a logical view for figurative purposes, but if we apply it literally
in public, it would be considered delusional, and not for no reason.
>
> >> The logical sense of coherence is in the "Dt", the tangible detection
> >> is in "p", and the machine's body and relative belief is in "Bp". The
> >> Bp & Dt & p is a variant of the self-reference logic. The non first
> >> person communicable part of the logic of that variant (named X1* in
> >> AUDA) is the qualia logic, or the sensible matter hypostasis. The
> >> bootstrap law is given by p -> [] <> p, with []p defined roughly by
> >> Bp
> >> & Dt & p. Bp is Gödel probability applied on the arithmetical sigma_1
> >> sentence p. Dp is ~B~p. <> p is ~ [] ~, and t is "1=1".
>
> > The existence of variables like Dt and p already presupposes sense and
> > detection of visual symbols.
>
> It does not. But it implies them.
>
> >>> It sounds like bones are ontologically less important than brains?
>
> >> I don't see why. Brains are also locally stable patterns obtained
> >> by a
> >> relative statistics on
> >> infinities of (infinite) computations.
>
> > So why are brains more associated with human consciousness than bones?
>
> Because brains seems to be needed for a person to manifest his
> consciousness relatively to another, one; where bones seem to be
> needed only to stand up and make sports.
>
> >> In string theory, you can compute the mass of the photon. A long
> >> computation (from precise general axiom) leads spectacularly to a sum
> >> of two terms which when evaluated gives (1+2+3+4+ ...) + 1/12.
> >> Of course this only shows that IF string theory is correct then the
> >> mass of the photon is zero (because it is obvious that 1+2+3+4+5+ ...
> >> = minus 1/12, isn't it?).
>
> > I don't understand the minus 1/12 part.
>
> It is not simple to understand. The shorter explanation is that
> (1+2+3+...) = Riemann-Zeta(-1), which gives, on the complex plane the
> value -1/12 in its provable unique analytical extension.
> Riemann-zeta(z) is the analytical extension of Euler sum (1 + 1/2^z +
> 1/3^z + ...). By a beautiful formula of Euler, the Riemann-zeta
> functions provides crucial information on the distribution of the
> prime number.
you spoke French I could try to pick out some words here and there.
>
> >>>> Who said this? The pope? The Ayatollah? The government?
>
> >>> It's not an authoritative proposition, it's a voluntary
> >>> interpretation
> >>> (which, if I'm right, is what half of the universe is anyhow).
>
> >> You dream aloud.
>
> > Isn't that what you say numbers do also?
>
> OK. But with the number I limit myself to those simple one who are
> easily shown to be self-referentially correct.
>
>
>
> > We are sharply divided in the US in our opinions about that. Are
> > universal numbers less conflicted about when life or consciousness
> > begins and ends? Are they Pro-Life or Pro-Choice?
>
> I intuit that the correct LUMs are pro-choice, but the LUMs in general
> can harbor any idea.
>
> >> But here all the problem is in linking the easy 1p and the less
> >> easy 3p.
>
> > It's not a problem when you realize they are linked in only in their
> > anomalous symmetry with each other.
>
> That does not help.
>
> >> We don't have to include it. Brains are the simplifier tools.
>
> > No, brains are just the meaty end of a simplifier tool which is
> > semantic and experiential.
>
> Such brain does not exist in the comp theory. yet we can explain why
> person will correctly believe in the observation of such brain, in the
> epistemology.
of comp too, even though the universe of comp is not real.
>
>
>
> >>>> Study the work of other people. Address their problem, with or
> >>>> without
> >>>> your "theory" as training.
>
> >>> That would be worthwhile I'm sure, but unfortunately it would be too
> >>> much of a distraction.
>
> >> OK. That why I am not good in saucer. All those guy running after the
> >> ball distract me too much. But then I don't pretend marking the goal.
>
> > This isn't a game though, it's the truth of reality.
>
> If you don't study the work of others, you will not succeed in making
> your point "really" accessible to others.
>
succeed in making any point to all others.
>
>
> > Why not? What about numbers suggests dreaming?
>
> The fact that they organize themselves, by just obeying their + and *
> laws, into computations.
apophenia.
>The, the fact that comp implies a mind-comp
> supervenience thesis.
>
> > Incompleteness says the opposite to me that it does to you. I see
> > Gödel showing the limitation of arithmetic truth in the face of
> > organic sense, not the omnipotence of it.
>
> Gödel's result show on the contrary that arithmetical truth is beyond
> the grasp of any machine (and of any super-machine, super-super-
> machine, etc.).
not that reality emerges from it. Fantasy is the same way. It too is
beyond the grasp of all real systems and arithmetic too.
>
> >> But it has, in the relevant sense, once you admit there is a
> >> substitution level.
>
> > Substitution level is an indexical of perception.
>
> If this is true, then comp would lead to solipsism.
It leads to vacuous nihilism.
> But the evidences
> are that first person plural makes sense, in the comp theory, and in
> "reality" (thanks to the MWI which multiplies collection of machines).
programmatically. Come to the light side Bruno...
>
> >> You are saying that you are superior, in some sense, to other
> >> entities. You deny a soul to a class of individuals, by invoking
> >> fuzzy
> >> rhetorical trick reifying your own experience.
>
> > That is precisely why I am superior to a machine, because I can do
> > that. A machine can't. It needs a reason to presume it's own
> > existence. I don't. I can assert my primordial authority because I
> > feel and know, and understand that I can. I don't need permission from
> > a program or a script or a rule book. I embody the theory. We don't
> > view the universe as impartial voyeurs, we are fully immersed within
> > it. We define it and it defines us.
>
> What makes you sure that some machine cannot do that? This is still an
> example of your persistent question begging.
can do this, but I naturally define machines as not being able to do
that, I would need to see or understand something that convinces me
otherwise.
>
> >> You confuse the script and the show, for the numbers. The universal
> >> numbers plays the shows of the numbers.
>
> > Why would they play anything? For what audience?
>
> For the local UMs in their neighborhood, or for themselves.
>
> >> By having some disease in some part of the cortex inside. The
> >> modalities can be stopped to be handled correctly, or self-
> >> referentially correctly.
>
> > Why wouldn't the machine just route around the disease? If color is
> > everywhere inside, I don't see why color blindness should be localized
> > to some part of anything.
>
> That's a problem for your theory.
labor among sense organs.
>
> >>> That sounds to me like the song does the singing and songwriting.
>
> >> Yes. That's the magic of the universal numbers. They can do both.
>
> > Then the singers and songwriters are innocent bystanders?
>
> No. They are UMs too.
>
> >> I don't assume theory as primitive. Only numbers and +, *.
> >> The existence of theories and machines is a theorem in N,+, *.
>
> > But +, * is already a theory of what can be done with numbers.
>
> No. They are symbol used in a theory.
is required for their interpretation.
> The theory assumes some formula,
> among which you will not find a formula assuming the existence of a
> theory. You are confusing level of explanation. You could say that the
> big-bang theory assumes the existence of an alphabet, without which we
> cannot express "big-bang".
perspective you cannot have a formula without a theory that it is part
of.
>
> >>> Which would make sense if we lived in a
> >>> world of disembodied theories settling into matter but it seems
> >>> obvious that he opposite is the case.
>
> >> Because we are deluded by the fact that we participate to the drama
> >> from inside.
>
> > Why does that prevent us from encountering disembodied theories from
> > entering our drama?
>
> Nothing. The question is what do you mean by matter, and please don't
> refer to physical notion, because this would beg the question.
>
> >> Arithmetic emulate all histories.
>
> > Only if you believe in emulation.
>
> Emulations existence is a theorem in arithmetic (even without comp).
interchangeability and discards the primacy of 1p unrepeatability.
>
> >> Comp is not a truth. It is not an obligation either. But it is a
> >> right.
>
> > Sure, it's a right. So are the other alternatives.
>
> Sure. But this does not make your argument against comp more valid.
belief system, it just has different strengths and weaknesses. My
argument is for a meta theory.
> you should study computer science. It could help you to understand
> that comp is hard to be refuted.
refuted in it's own narrow terms which disqualify subjective authority
a priori.
> UDA itself comes from an attempt to
> refute it, but computer science already explains how machines
> themselves can debunk the anti-comp arguments.
>
> Judson Webb has already well understood the problem. Either your
> argument if fuzzy and proves nothing, or your argument is precise and
> technical, and machines can found them for themselves leading to prove
> correctly that their first person is not a machine (which is true) or
> that their body are not Turing machine emulable (which is true), or
> that comp is false (which makes no genuine sense when proved by a
> correct machine).
>
> I don't think I will comment paragraph where you refer to truth,
> reality, your personal understanding, nor will I comment paragraph
> which I have already answered, nor will I comment the begging question
> trick. So you have to work a bit harder.
interested. I'm not working to convince you of something that I
already suspect you cannot be convinced of.
Craig
acw
> Hi ACW,
>
> On 2/4/2012 1:53 PM, acw wrote:
>>
>> One can wonder what is the most "general" theory that we can postulate
>> to explain our existence. Tegmark postulates all of consistent
>> mathematics, whatever that is, but is 'all of consistent mathematics'
>> consistent in itself?
>
> I have read several papers that argue strongly that it cannot be! For
> instance see: http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.0342 The fact that there are set
> theories that use axioms that are completely opposite each other is
> another strong indication of this.
>
time allows.
>> Schmidhuber postulates something much less, just the UD, but strangely
>> forgets the first-person or the what the implementation substrate of
>> that UD would be (and resorts to a Great Programmer to hand-wave it
>> away).
>
> I wonder why Schmidhuber held back? Did he fear ridicule?
>
see in the long discussions on this mailing list.
>> Before reading the UDA, I used to think that something like Tegmark's
>> solution would be general enough and sufficient, but now I think 'just
>> arithmetic' (or combinators, or lambda calculus, or ...) or is
>> sufficient. Why? By the Church-Turing Thesis, these systems posses the
>> same computability power, that is, they all can run the UD.
>
> I agree with this line of reasoning, but I see no upper bound on
> mathematics since I take Cantor's results as "real". There is not upper
> bound on the cardinality of Mathematics. I see this as an implication of
> the old dictum "Nature explores all possibilities."
>
foundation, what different consequences will follow for COMP or the new
theory?
>> Now, if we do admit a digital substitution, all that we can experience
>> is already contained within the UD, including the worlds where we find
>> a physical world with us having a physical body/brain (which exist
>> computationally, but let us not forget that random oracle that comes
>> with 1p indeterminacy).
>
> Not quite, admitting digital substitution does not necessarily admit to
> pre-specifiability as is assumed in the definition of the algorithms of
> just assumes that we can substitute functionally equivalent components.
> Functional equivalence does not free us from the prison of the flesh, it
> merely frees us from the prison of just one particular body. ;-)
extremes which seem possible in COMP. After a digital substitution, a
body could very well be some software running somewhere, on any kind of
substrate, with an arbitrary time-frame/ordering (as long as 1p
coherent), it could even run directly on some abstract machine which is
not part of our universe (such as some machine emulating another machine
which is contained in the UD) - the only thing that the mind would have
in common is that some program is being instantiated somewhere, somehow.
In this more extreme form, I'm not sure I can see any difference between
a substrate that has the label 'physical' and some UD running in
abstract Platonia. If you can show why the 'physical' version would be
required or how can someone even tell the difference between someone
living in a 'physical' world vs someone living in a purely mathematical
(Platonic) world which sees the world from within said structure in
Platonia and calls it 'physical'. It seems that 'physical' is very much
what we call the structure in which we exist, but that's indexical, and
if you claim that only one such structure exists (such as this
universe), then you think COMP is false (that is, no digital
substitution exists) or that arithmetic is inconsistent (which we cannot
really know, but we can hope)?
If there's any difference between a physical and non-physical
implementation in the context of COMP, I'd like to know what it is and
what effect it has.
> This idea goes back to my claim that the "Pre-established harmony
> is false because it requires the computation of an infinite NP-Complete
> problem to occur in zero steps. As we know, given even infinite
> resources a UTM must take at least one computational step to solve such
> a NP-Complete problem. My solution to this dilemma is to have an
> eternally running process at some primitive level. Bruno seems to
> identify this with the UD, but I claim that he goes too far and
> eliminates the "becoming" nature of the process.
>
has a truth-value, it will have that truth value, regardless if you know
it or not. In essence, Platonia might very well contain Chaitin's
constant of some machine, even if we cannot know it (although we can
make guesses at it by making stronger and stronger theories). Your
objections seem intuitionist/constructivist at its core, that is, that
something does not have a truth value if we can't prove it. Some
sentences may require infinite proofs ("this machine will never halt"),
thus we cannot say that they are true, even if they are (such as the
absence of proof of a contradiction in arithmetic). In another way, this
seems like a problem with the provably unprovable (or a form of
"religion"), although COMP is itself a bet of this sort (existence of a
1p continuation). Yet, we all make the bet that we will be subjectively
conscious in our probable future, the bet that there will be a future
observer moment, that the sun will still exist and so on. It also seems
to me that given the time/space/structure indeterminacy that is shown in
the UDA, the bet on a continuation is justified (if one admits a digital
subst.), and almost magical.
As for your solution, again, I'm not entirely sure there would be any
difference in the experienced reality (your objection seems to be the
transition from UDA step 7 to UDA step 8/MGA?), although you now need a
more complex theory to get the initial substrate (which we cannot even
know anything about). Such an idea seems to lose the elegant solution to
the "why something instead of nothing" question, which was solved rather
nicely by assuming a Platonia (that some mathematical sentences have
truth values, such as arithmetical ones). Such an approach also makes
consciousness more mysterious again, and by MGA (or UDA step 8), we do
know of the conflict between mechanism and materialism. All in all, it
seems to make the theory more complex and at great cost, with many added
problems, and the only benefit of making it more friendly to the
intuitionist/constructivist.
>> If we are machines, then we can only experience finite amount of
>> information given some finite interval of time, some of this
>> information may be incompressible, due to 1p indeterminacy, thus we
>> could experience "reals" in the limit, despite there only being finite
>> computations at any given time. This essentially means that any
>> mathematical object which can be described in Tegmark's "Ultimate
>> Ensemble" and that can contain us, is already part of the 1p
>> experiences of those existing within the UD and we can look at 1p
>> experiences, as well as the UD* trace as being part of the greater
>> "arithmetical" truth (or any other theory with equivalent
>> computational power, by the Church-Turing Thesis).
>
> Umm, we have to show that the finiteness of machines is necessary from
> first principles, we cannot just assume that it is so.
Are you using a more general definition of machine? A machine always has
a finite body (an integer), even though the grown itself may be
unbounded, but the growth at each step is finite, and given finite
time-steps, there is no way for the machine to become infinite (only in
the "limit").
> I agree that the
> "arithmetical truth" of the UD may be enough to "force" the 1p to have
> content, but we still need to account for the appearance of interactions
> or histories of interactions (ala Julian Barbour'sTime Capsule
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Barbour> idea). There reaches a
> point, even if it is in the limit of infinitely many, that we cannot put
> off the concurrency problem, we have to deal with interactions. An
> option is to take the "running of the UD" as a primitive kind of dynamic
> that at our local 1p emerges as time and notions of forces, fields, etc.
> emerge from the algebras of interactions between the many distinct 1p.
>
So your beef is with the appearance of continuity in our 1p experience
and our inferred 3p world? The local 3p world may indeed to considered
like a Block Universe (or similar extensions to MWI), although by COMP,
that's just a valid model that we could be using, and a matter of
epistemology. This is indeed a tricky problem, which I'm not sure I'm
satisfied with the tentative answer I'm currently thinking for it. From
the 1p, we can only be certain of the existence of the observer moment,
this can lead someone to consider the ASSA (disconnected OM(observer
moments)). From the 3p or 1p's memories/knowledge, that is, at a higher
level than just experience, we bet on the existence of the past and
future, as a matter of self-consciousness and self-reference. We tend to
identify with the (abstract) structure making this bet. This leads one
to RSSA - OM's being relative to each other - that we will make our bets
based only on expected continuations and past/journal/history. If
consciousness is how some truths associated with a self-referential
universal number feel from the inside, and given the bets that number is
making, it wouldn't seem that strange that we will experience apparent
continuity (even though we cannot prove to anyone that we actually
experience such continuity - we cannot even show that to ourselves - if
we just consider a few moments in the past).
I don't think the continuity problem gets solved by dismissing a
Platonia and using something more "physical"(what is that though?). See:
MGA for why.
>>
>> This is why I think "arithmetic" is as good as any for a neutral
>> foundation, and we cannot really distinguish (from the inside) between
>> these foundations by the CTT.
>
> This does not address the neutrality problem though. How can the
> foundation be neutral if it is biased toward a particular structure,
> even if it is as elegant as arithmetic? My point is that whatever
> foundation we take, within our ontological theories, it must be neutral
> with respect to a basis, reference frame, grammar or any other structure
> that would break its perfect symmetry. Nature does not respect any
> privileged framing what so ever and thus there cannot be a privileged
> observational stance. This stance toward neutrality may seem unusually
> strong, but I don't see how it can be any other way, even allowing
> arithmetic to be a primitive is to allow a bias against non-arithmetical
> structures and any bias, however weak, is still a rupture of neutrality.
>
But it doesn't have to be "arithmetic", it can be any system capable of
universal computation. Take something less and nothing truly intelligent
can exist (going less than computation). Take something more (concrete
infinities) and I'm not sure that those structures would be conscious
like you and me. I'm not that against the "more" possibility, just that
I don't think we can ever know too much about them except by our
mathematical theories, this being a consequence of COMP (if one is
turing-emulable). In a way, while more "general" foundations can exist,
it's unlikely we'll ever be able to truly know more about them than we
can compute about them (that is, any theory we'll come up with will be
limited to what a theorem prover can prove about it, and we cannot know
more, although we could bet on more by adding more axioms, although we
cannot know if some of those axioms are truly correct), and it's also
unlikely that they can affect arithmetical/computational matters (if you
think otherwise, you'll have to explain why or show a proof; I'm aware
of Goodstein's theorem, but to prove it, we have to have stronger
axioms, which we cannot know if they are correct or not! Similar
stronger theories are needed for solving some other specific halting
problem-related questions).
>> However, there might be other possible foundations, if you wish to
>> postulate concrete infinities, but even if they existed, how could we
>> tell them apart, it doesn't seem to be possible for someone admitting
>> a digital substitution, which has a finite mind (at any finite point
>> in time). If you can show that those other foundations are necessary
>> and they affect our measure/continuations, or that concrete infinities
>> are involved in the implementation of our brain, it could prove COMP
>> wrong.
>
> The Dualism that follows the analogy of the Stone duality covers this
> question. Boolean algebras have a specific kind of topological space as
> their dual. It is forced and as such there is a direct and predictable
> link between the behavior of the logic and the behavior of the dual
> space. Is it a complete accident that the topological space that is the
> dual to Boolean algebras looks like a collection of primitive atoms
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomism> in a void? I don't think so! So
> if the logic that observers are limited to is required to be
> representable in terms (up to isomorphism) with Boolean algebras, then
> the physical world that those logical entities have as 1p must look like
> "atoms in a void". No wonder our particle physics works so well!
> There is more to add to this, such as the Pontryagin duality that
> expands the class of dual spaces out to range between the discrete
> spaces to the compact spaces, but that is for another conversation. :-)
>
That's interesting, although my Category theory knowledge is rather
incomplete, so I can't really comment on the specifics. In a way though,
it seems that your idea is even more restricted than the UD*, in which
case, it would fall to your generality objection, would it not?
>> There is another problem with taking a set theory as foundational
>> rather than arithmetic - some set theories have independent axioms and
>> they can be extended by adding either an axiom or its negation, and
>> they result in different set theoretical truths.
>
>
> I didn't mean to take set theory per se as fundamental, I was thinking
> of set theory as just a mereology - a schemata of sorts - of how we
> define relations between parts and wholes. But as to your point about
> set theory, does not the proven existence of non-standard Arithmetic
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-standard_model_of_arithmetic> argue
> the other way? While the Tennenbaum Theorem
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennenbaum%27s_theorem> seems to make
> standard (ala Peano) arithmetics "special" and "unique", I strongly
> suspect that this is just an invariance property, similar to the
> invariance of the speed of light in physics: any logical entity will see
> its own Arithmetic model as countable and recursive, it cannot see the
> "constant" that would make it non-standard as such is its fixed point,
> its "identity" if you will. I do not have any formal description of this
> latter idea nor even a proof of it, so please just take this as a
> conjecture. ;-)
>
Non-standard models no longer have computable addition and
multiplication, thus they're not considered in COMP - where the
observer's body is assumed to be computable (as an axiom). Your latter
idea seems interesting, although for me to better understand what you
mean, you'd have to elaborate on the details.
>> This doesn't really happen with computation - if there's anything
>> absolute in math, it's computation (although different theories about
>> what arithmetic is will result in different things the theory can talk
>> about, but it won't make computation any less absolute).
>
> I strongly suspect that your argument here about the "absoluteness" of
> computation is a bit too strong or even misplaced. Restricting
> information to only being a binary bit on mappings in the Integers is a
> harsh regime, no wonder computation is so "well behaved", any deviation
> of the bits from the tyranny of the integers at all is terminated with
> extreme prejudice! I see computation, in general, as "the transformation
> of representations" and thus do not see the by fiat confinement to the
> integers as beneficial.
>
>
By absoluteness I mostly meant the very wide consequences that follow
from the Church-Turing Thesis. In another way, the behavior of finite
things to which we apply finite processes is always well-defined. Things
are never as clear when we have infinitely-sized things or potentially
infinite processes. At least 'we' cannot know how they behave without
adding some axioms and when we do add those axioms, we can also consider
alternate theories where the negation of the axiom is considered and
that results in different consequences. The "absoluteness" of
computation is of this nature. If we can truly *know* more than
arithmetic while still remaining correct, I do not know (assuming COMP).
>>
>> As a side-note, I don't see why the primitive physical world is
>> necessary, from the 1p, we can only know that we have senses and from
>> the senses we can infer the existence of the external world.
>
> We have the problem of other minds to deal with! That is why, among
> other things, we need the physical world albeit NOT primitive, the
> physical world allows form an "external" differentiation of 1p that
> would otherwise be identical by Leibniz' identity of indiscernibles. I
> am just claiming that the abstrac
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_object>t and the concrete
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_object> are always co-present at
> any level until we go to the limit of bare neutral existence. At that
> point any differences that might make a difference vanish, thus logic
> and spaces would cease being different yet isomorphic. Vaughn Pratt
> shows how this works in terms of the directions of the Arrows of the
> categorical representations of LOGIC and SPACE, they point in opposite
> directions thus if we add them up their directions and scalars would
> vanish. -> + <- = (see
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Laws_of_Form_-_double_cross.gif)
>
>
Maybe we mean different things by the physical world. I think of it as
an implementation substrate and thus I have no problem with it being a
direct or indirect consequence of some abstract computations.
It's also not obvious at all to me why the 1p would be the same for any
structure in Platonia (such as some computation running in the UD), but
different for magical-physical-land (non-platonic, but still running an
UD). 1p differences should exist if the contents of the mind's
body/brain are different, regardless of the substrate that it's
implemented on. I'd venture to guess that given 2 identical
structures/universes/..., the observers in them will have identical
experiences, or even identical 1p (in COMP it doesn't matter how many
copies you make of a computation, there's only one 1p associated with it
- the body just lets it manifest relatively to you).
> Additionally, I see this conjecture as similar to Tegmark's Mathematical
> Universe Hypothesis
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis> except
> that I do not see how the postulate "/All structures that exist
> mathematically also exist physically."/ implies a mathematical monism as
> the wiki article states. If for any structure that exists mathematically
> there must exist a physical structure, there is the implication of a
> duality between the mathematical and the physical. This is a different
> sort of duality than that of Descartes as it does not assume distinct
> "substances", it is a form of dual aspect theory
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-aspect_theory> where the dynamics
> of each aspect run in opposite directions. Vaughn Pratt explains the
> idea here: http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/dti.pdf
>
>
I'm not going to comment on the paper as my category theory knowledge is
insufficient, instead I'll save reading it until I'm more familiar.
As for the MUH, I'm not even sure what the word 'physical' means anymore
for it. If all the consistent mathematical structures do exist and you
happen to find yourself in one, you call it 'physics', while you call
the rest 'abstract', however that just makes the term 'physical' an
indexical - "The time now is xx:xx", "I'm in structure y".
The UDA also shows that you can find yourself in a different structure
at a different subjective time, and the only global "inescapable" one is
the UD, but it's so limitless in its possibilities that it shouldn't
particularly matter.
>> If consciousness is how some (possibly self-referential) arithmetical
>> (or computational) truth feels from the inside, it does not seem
>> impossible that there would not be computations representing some
>> physical (just not primitive) world and that world would contain us
>> and our bodies/brains, and the existence of such computations would be
>> a theorem in arithmetic.
>>
>
> I agree, but the representation of a thing is not the thing except in
> very special cases, such as what we have when we say that the "best"
> simulation of an object is the object itself.
> <http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/physics/85-undecidability/2/text.html>
> This takes us into a discussion of questions like "when might the map =>
> the territory or, by duality,the territory => the map
> <http://chorasimilarity.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/entering-chora-the-infinitesimal-place/>?
> This is a subtle and important question! ;-)
>
>
We can never know for sure what structure we're part of, but we can
always make more and more accurate maps of the local one we're in.
One can call the global one the UD* if we happen to admit a digital
substitution (by the UDA/MGA), or more generally some arithmetical
Platonia. Just knowing how the UD works does not mean we have complete
access to it. We just have a tool for generating the territory (or the
"perfect" map), but we'll never be able to actually generate the full
UD* (if we could, COMP would be false, and thus UD* itself wouldn't be
our "global" territory), although we can generate any parts we have the
resources/memory to compute.
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
>
meekerdb
I'm not so sure to term ``body'' is as meaningful if we consider the extremes which seem possible in COMP. After a digital substitution, a body could very well be some software running somewhere, on any kind of substrate, with an arbitrary time-frame/ordering (as long as 1p coherent), it could even run directly on some abstract machine which is not part of our universe (such as some machine emulating another machine which is contained in the UD) - the only thing that the mind would have in common is that some program is being instantiated somewhere, somehow. In this more extreme form, I'm not sure I can see any difference between a substrate that has the label 'physical' and some UD running in abstract Platonia. If you can show why the 'physical' version would be required or how can someone even tell the difference between someone living in a 'physical' world vs someone living in a purely mathematical (Platonic) world which sees the world from within said structure in Platonia and calls it 'physical'. It seems that 'physical' is very much what we call the structure in which we exist, but that's indexical, and if you claim that only one such structure exists (such as this universe), then you think COMP is false (that is, no digital substitution exists) or that arithmetic is inconsistent (which we cannot really know, but we can hope)?
Physics is already extremely abstract and mathematical, so it is really not a big step to suppose that the fundamental ontology is mathematics or computation as Bruno, Tegmark, and others have speculated. The big step is between supposing that somethings happen and some don't versus everything (in some sense) happens. To say there must be substrate, some 'ur-stuff', is really just to say that some things have existence (the ur-stuff) and some don't.
Brent
acw
What do you mean by 'ur-stuff'? Some structure which is more privileged
than others with 'existence'?
In my opinion, the claim that some things (for example, some
computations) don't happen is incredibly strong. It makes sense for
someone who has only lived in one universe to say that any other
universe doesn't exist because his classical rationality (such as
Russell's teapot, the requirement for a burden of proof) says that we
can't really claim existence for things we don't have direct evidence
for. On the other hand, Occam's razor makes us favor the simplest
possible theories. A theory which explicitly has to deny some structures
or computations from existing is much more complex and stronger (and
thus will be favored less by Occam or its formalizations). COMP as
derived from UDA/MGA already places great constraints on what the
ontology has to be given the assumption that our brains do admit a
digital substitution and such an act is survivable. Any theory which
claims the UD's existence, but limits the laws of physics to only a
single instance of some string theory, with only one history and one
universe and so on is incredibly strong/very complex, thus shouldn't be
favored (by Occam). It also leads to many other questions such as: why
this mathematical structure is granted existence, but the others are
not? and the conflict between mechanism and materialism as shown in the
MGA. To me it seems like privileging the indexicals, which seems like a
popular conservative materialist position, although I do wonder why it
is that popular - it just favors one "magic" over the other (this
structure, my structure is "special", all the others aren't), thus I'm
not so sure it's the most rational choice possible, despite that being
its aim.
meekerdb
Not structure, just 'existence'.
> In my opinion, the claim that some things (for example, some computations) don't happen
> is incredibly strong. It makes sense for someone who has only lived in one universe to
> say that any other universe doesn't exist because his classical rationality (such as
> Russell's teapot, the requirement for a burden of proof) says that we can't really claim
> existence for things we don't have direct evidence for. On the other hand, Occam's razor
> makes us favor the simplest possible theories. A theory which explicitly has to deny
> some structures or computations from existing is much more complex and stronger (and
> thus will be favored less by Occam or its formalizations).
But Occam's razor is just a rule-of-thumb. A Russell Standish points out, in the simplest
possible theory nothing exists.
> COMP as derived from UDA/MGA already places great constraints on what the ontology has
> to be given the assumption that our brains do admit a digital substitution and such an
> act is survivable.
Does it? I thought it entailed infinitely many different universes with physics limited
only by the constraint that they be locally computable.
> Any theory which claims the UD's existence, but limits the laws of physics to only a
> single instance of some string theory, with only one history and one universe and so on
> is incredibly strong/very complex, thus shouldn't be favored (by Occam). It also leads
> to many other questions such as: why this mathematical structure is granted existence,
> but the others are not? and the conflict between mechanism and materialism as shown in
> the MGA. To me it seems like privileging the indexicals, which seems like a popular
> conservative materialist position, although I do wonder why it is that popular - it just
> favors one "magic" over the other (this structure, my structure is "special", all the
> others aren't), thus I'm not so sure it's the most rational choice possible, despite
> that being its aim.
Except it favors the 'magic' we see and use over 'magic' that is inaccessible.
Brent
acw
>> In my opinion, the claim that some things (for example, some
>> computations) don't happen is incredibly strong. It makes sense for
>> someone who has only lived in one universe to say that any other
>> universe doesn't exist because his classical rationality (such as
>> Russell's teapot, the requirement for a burden of proof) says that we
>> can't really claim existence for things we don't have direct evidence
>> for. On the other hand, Occam's razor makes us favor the simplest
>> possible theories. A theory which explicitly has to deny some
>> structures or computations from existing is much more complex and
>> stronger (and thus will be favored less by Occam or its formalizations).
>
> But Occam's razor is just a rule-of-thumb. A Russell Standish points
> out, in the simplest possible theory nothing exists.
>
>
Some theories (such as Platonia) do give an easy solution to the 'why'.
Occam's razor may be a rule of the thumb, but doesn't mean it's not
valid, it can also be formalized (although, I won't insist on it,
because most formalizations will instantly bias the winner to some
'everything' theory - for example if the formalization is towards
computable stuff, the bias is toward the UD). Either way, even ignoring
the explicitly stated Occam's razor, when we'll consider some theory for
the physics of our local universe, we'll inevitably wonder why these
particular laws and the typical answers tend to be either "all
possibilities, we're just one of them" or "don't ask" or "divine magic".
You can guess which answer I prefer.
>> COMP as derived from UDA/MGA already places great constraints on what
>> the ontology has to be given the assumption that our brains do admit a
>> digital substitution and such an act is survivable.
>
> Does it? I thought it entailed infinitely many different universes with
> physics limited only by the constraint that they be locally computable.
>
>
UD (or arithmetical truth or ...). Even if there was something more, a
Turing-emulable body will never be able to find out. Although, I guess
that's a core part of this debate - would some transfinite stuff in the
ontology be able to affect the measure or continuations of a
machine/brain (assuming COMP)?
>> Any theory which claims the UD's existence, but limits the laws of
>> physics to only a single instance of some string theory, with only one
>> history and one universe and so on is incredibly strong/very complex,
>> thus shouldn't be favored (by Occam). It also leads to many other
>> questions such as: why this mathematical structure is granted
>> existence, but the others are not? and the conflict between mechanism
>> and materialism as shown in the MGA. To me it seems like privileging
>> the indexicals, which seems like a popular conservative materialist
>> position, although I do wonder why it is that popular - it just favors
>> one "magic" over the other (this structure, my structure is "special",
>> all the others aren't), thus I'm not so sure it's the most rational
>> choice possible, despite that being its aim.
>
> Except it favors the 'magic' we see and use over 'magic' that is
> inaccessible.
>
favoritism is similar to that of Copenhagen (or some other single
timeline versions) vs MWI - one offers a very complex incomplete view to
make it so the only thing it can talk about is what we see, while the
other gives you a simple view, but it also tells you that there's more
than you can see. Some people seem bothered about this 'more' part,
especially if it's not obviously accessible (although I'd debate this
being the case with COMP).
> Brent
>
>
meekerdb
Maybe. As Bohr said, "Prediction is difficult, especially about the future." So far
comp's predictions have been about the past.
> This sort of favoritism is similar to that of Copenhagen (or some other single timeline
> versions) vs MWI - one offers a very complex incomplete view to make it so the only
> thing it can talk about is what we see,
I don't see that it's complex or incomplete. It predicts probabilities. Some things
happen and some don't in accord with the predicted probabilities. Is it really any
simpler to say all those other possibilities happened too - we just can't access them?
> while the other gives you a simple view, but it also tells you that there's more than
> you can see. Some people seem bothered about this 'more' part, especially if it's not
> obviously accessible (although I'd debate this being the case with COMP).
I'm not bothered, but neither am I convinced. The branches of the MWI are not obviously
accessible and in fact they are not accessible at all. I wouldn't say that rules them out
- but it doesn't count in their favor.
Brent
Stephen P. King
On 2/6/2012 06:25, Stephen P. King wrote:
Hi ACW,
On 2/4/2012 1:53 PM, acw wrote:
The question is if transfinite extensions are considered as part of the foundation, what different consequences will follow for COMP or the new theory?Before reading the UDA, I used to think that something like Tegmark's
solution would be general enough and sufficient, but now I think 'just
arithmetic' (or combinators, or lambda calculus, or ...) or is
sufficient. Why? By the Church-Turing Thesis, these systems posses the
same computability power, that is, they all can run the UD.
I agree with this line of reasoning, but I see no upper bound on
mathematics since I take Cantor's results as "real". There is not upper
bound on the cardinality of Mathematics. I see this as an implication of
the old dictum "Nature explores all possibilities."
I am not sure, but they seem to be necessary for completeness.
What do you mean by ``pre-specifiability''? Care to elaborate?Now, if we do admit a digital substitution, all that we can experience
is already contained within the UD, including the worlds where we find
a physical world with us having a physical body/brain (which exist
computationally, but let us not forget that random oracle that comes
with 1p indeterminacy).
Not quite, admitting digital substitution does not necessarily admit to
pre-specifiability as is assumed in the definition of the algorithms of
Universal Turing machines, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm> it
just assumes that we can substitute functionally equivalent components.
Functional equivalence does not free us from the prison of the flesh, itI'm not so sure to term ``body'' is as meaningful if we consider the extremes which seem possible in COMP.
merely frees us from the prison of just one particular body. ;-)
After a digital substitution, a body could very well be some software running somewhere, on any kind of substrate, with an arbitrary time-frame/ordering (as long as 1p coherent), it could even run directly on some abstract machine which is not part of our universe (such as some machine emulating another machine which is contained in the UD) - the only thing that the mind would have in common is that some program is being instantiated somewhere, somehow. In this more extreme form, I'm not sure I can see any difference between a substrate that has the label 'physical' and some UD running in abstract Platonia.
If you can show why the 'physical' version would be required or how can someone even tell the difference between someone living in a 'physical' world vs someone living in a purely mathematical (Platonic) world which sees the world from within said structure in Platonia and calls it 'physical'.
It seems that 'physical' is very much what we call the structure in which we exist, but that's indexical, and if you claim that only one such structure exists (such as this universe), then you think COMP is false (that is, no digital substitution exists) or that arithmetic is inconsistent (which we cannot really know, but we can hope)?
If there's any difference between a physical and non-physical implementation in the context of COMP, I'd like to know what it is and what effect it has.
This idea goes back to my claim that the "Pre-established harmonyI think the idea of Platonia is closer to the fact that if a sentence has a truth-value, it will have that truth value, regardless if you know it or not.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-established_harmony>" idea of Leibniz
is false because it requires the computation of an infinite NP-Complete
problem to occur in zero steps. As we know, given even infinite
resources a UTM must take at least one computational step to solve such
a NP-Complete problem. My solution to this dilemma is to have an
eternally running process at some primitive level. Bruno seems to
identify this with the UD, but I claim that he goes too far and
eliminates the "becoming" nature of the process.
In essence, Platonia might very well contain Chaitin's constant of some machine, even if we cannot know it (although we can make guesses at it by making stronger and stronger theories).
Your objections seem intuitionist/constructivist at its core, that is, that something does not have a truth value if we can't prove it.
Some sentences may require infinite proofs ("this machine will never halt"), thus we cannot say that they are true, even if they are (such as the absence of proof of a contradiction in arithmetic). In another way, this seems like a problem with the provably unprovable (or a form of "religion"), although COMP is itself a bet of this sort (existence of a 1p continuation).
Yet, we all make the bet that we will be subjectively conscious in our probable future, the bet that there will be a future observer moment, that the sun will still exist and so on. It also seems to me that given the time/space/structure indeterminacy that is shown in the UDA, the bet on a continuation is justified (if one admits a digital subst.), and almost magical.
As for your solution, again, I'm not entirely sure there would be any difference in the experienced reality (your objection seems to be the transition from UDA step 7 to UDA step 8/MGA?), although you now need a more complex theory to get the initial substrate (which we cannot even know anything about). Such an idea seems to lose the elegant solution to the "why something instead of nothing" question, which was solved rather nicely by assuming a Platonia (that some mathematical sentences have truth values, such as arithmetical ones). Such an approach also makes consciousness more mysterious again, and by MGA (or UDA step 8), we do know of the conflict between mechanism and materialism. All in all, it seems to make the theory more complex and at great cost, with many added problems, and the only benefit of making it more friendly to the intuitionist/constructivist.
Are you using a more general definition of machine? A machine always has a finite body (an integer), even though the grown itself may be unbounded, but the growth at each step is finite, and given finite time-steps, there is no way for the machine to become infinite (only in the "limit").If we are machines, then we can only experience finite amount of
information given some finite interval of time, some of this
information may be incompressible, due to 1p indeterminacy, thus we
could experience "reals" in the limit, despite there only being finite
computations at any given time. This essentially means that any
mathematical object which can be described in Tegmark's "Ultimate
Ensemble" and that can contain us, is already part of the 1p
experiences of those existing within the UD and we can look at 1p
experiences, as well as the UD* trace as being part of the greater
"arithmetical" truth (or any other theory with equivalent
computational power, by the Church-Turing Thesis).
Umm, we have to show that the finiteness of machines is necessary from
first principles, we cannot just assume that it is so.
I agree that theSo your beef is with the appearance of continuity in our 1p experience and our inferred 3p world?
"arithmetical truth" of the UD may be enough to "force" the 1p to have
content, but we still need to account for the appearance of interactions
or histories of interactions (ala Julian Barbour'sTime Capsule
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Barbour> idea). There reaches a
point, even if it is in the limit of infinitely many, that we cannot put
off the concurrency problem, we have to deal with interactions. An
option is to take the "running of the UD" as a primitive kind of dynamic
that at our local 1p emerges as time and notions of forces, fields, etc.
emerge from the algebras of interactions between the many distinct 1p.
The local 3p world may indeed to considered like a Block Universe (or similar extensions to MWI), although by COMP, that's just a valid model that we could be using, and a matter of epistemology. This is indeed a tricky problem, which I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the tentative answer I'm currently thinking for it. From the 1p, we can only be certain of the existence of the observer moment, this can lead someone to consider the ASSA (disconnected OM(observer moments)).
From the 3p or 1p's memories/knowledge, that is, at a higher level than just experience, we bet on the existence of the past and future, as a matter of self-consciousness and self-reference. We tend to identify with the (abstract) structure making this bet. This leads one to RSSA - OM's being relative to each other - that we will make our bets based only on expected continuations and past/journal/history. If consciousness is how some truths associated with a self-referential universal number feel from the inside, and given the bets that number is making, it wouldn't seem that strange that we will experience apparent continuity (even though we cannot prove to anyone that we actually experience such continuity - we cannot even show that to ourselves - if we just consider a few moments in the past).
I don't think the continuity problem gets solved by dismissing a Platonia and using something more "physical"(what is that though?). See: MGA for why.
But it doesn't have to be "arithmetic", it can be any system capable of universal computation. Take something less and nothing truly intelligent can exist (going less than computation). Take something more (concrete infinities) and I'm not sure that those structures would be conscious like you and me. I'm not that against the "more" possibility, just that I don't think we can ever know too much about them except by our mathematical theories, this being a consequence of COMP (if one is turing-emulable). In a way, while more "general" foundations can exist, it's unlikely we'll ever be able to truly know more about them than we can compute about them (that is, any theory we'll come up with will be limited to what a theorem prover can prove about it, and we cannot know more, although we could bet on more by adding more axioms, although we cannot know if some of those axioms are truly correct), and it's also unlikely that they can affect arithmetical/computational matters (if you think otherwise, you'll have to explain why or show a proof; I'm aware of Goodstein's theorem, but to prove it, we have to have stronger axioms, which we cannot know if they are correct or not! Similar stronger theories are needed for solving some other specific halting problem-related questions).
This is why I think "arithmetic" is as good as any for a neutral
foundation, and we cannot really distinguish (from the inside) between
these foundations by the CTT.
This does not address the neutrality problem though. How can the
foundation be neutral if it is biased toward a particular structure,
even if it is as elegant as arithmetic? My point is that whatever
foundation we take, within our ontological theories, it must be neutral
with respect to a basis, reference frame, grammar or any other structure
that would break its perfect symmetry. Nature does not respect any
privileged framing what so ever and thus there cannot be a privileged
observational stance. This stance toward neutrality may seem unusually
strong, but I don't see how it can be any other way, even allowing
arithmetic to be a primitive is to allow a bias against non-arithmetical
structures and any bias, however weak, is still a rupture of neutrality.
That's interesting, although my Category theory knowledge is rather incomplete, so I can't really comment on the specifics. In a way though, it seems that your idea is even more restricted than the UD*, in which case, it would fall to your generality objection, would it not?However, there might be other possible foundations, if you wish to
postulate concrete infinities, but even if they existed, how could we
tell them apart, it doesn't seem to be possible for someone admitting
a digital substitution, which has a finite mind (at any finite point
in time). If you can show that those other foundations are necessary
and they affect our measure/continuations, or that concrete infinities
are involved in the implementation of our brain, it could prove COMP
wrong.
The Dualism that follows the analogy of the Stone duality covers this
question. Boolean algebras have a specific kind of topological space as
their dual. It is forced and as such there is a direct and predictable
link between the behavior of the logic and the behavior of the dual
space. Is it a complete accident that the topological space that is the
dual to Boolean algebras looks like a collection of primitive atoms
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomism> in a void? I don't think so! So
if the logic that observers are limited to is required to be
representable in terms (up to isomorphism) with Boolean algebras, then
the physical world that those logical entities have as 1p must look like
"atoms in a void". No wonder our particle physics works so well!
There is more to add to this, such as the Pontryagin duality that
expands the class of dual spaces out to range between the discrete
spaces to the compact spaces, but that is for another conversation. :-)
There is another problem with taking a set theory as foundational
rather than arithmetic - some set theories have independent axioms and
they can be extended by adding either an axiom or its negation, and
they result in different set theoretical truths.
I didn't mean to take set theory per se as fundamental, I was thinking
of set theory as just a mereology - a schemata of sorts - of how we
define relations between parts and wholes. But as to your point about
set theory, does not the proven existence of non-standard Arithmetic
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-standard_model_of_arithmetic> argue
the other way? While the Tennenbaum Theorem
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennenbaum%27s_theorem> seems to make
standard (ala Peano) arithmetics "special" and "unique", I strongly
suspect that this is just an invariance property, similar to the
invariance of the speed of light in physics: any logical entity will see
its own Arithmetic model as being countable and recursive, it cannot see the
"constant" that would make it non-standard as such is its fixed point,
its "identity" if you will. I do not have any formal description of this
latter idea nor even a proof of it, so please just take this as a
conjecture. ;-)
Non-standard models no longer have computable addition and multiplication, thus they're not considered in COMP - where the observer's body is assumed to be computable (as an axiom). Your latter idea seems interesting, although for me to better understand what you mean, you'd have to elaborate on the details.
I am still learning the math. I am just a student and a slow one. I will try to sketch out more of this idea and I come to understand it better myself.
By absoluteness I mostly meant the very wide consequences that follow from the Church-Turing Thesis. In another way, the behavior of finite things to which we apply finite processes is always well-defined. Things are never as clear when we have infinitely-sized things or potentially infinite processes.This doesn't really happen with computation - if there's anything
absolute in math, it's computation (although different theories about
what arithmetic is will result in different things the theory can talk
about, but it won't make computation any less absolute).
I strongly suspect that your argument here about the "absoluteness" of
computation is a bit too strong or even misplaced. Restricting
information to only being a binary bit on mappings in the Integers is a
harsh regime, no wonder computation is so "well behaved", any deviation
of the bits from the tyranny of the integers at all is terminated with
extreme prejudice! I see computation, in general, as "the transformation
of representations" and thus do not see the by fiat confinement to the
integers as beneficial.
At least 'we' cannot know how they behave without adding some axioms and when we do add those axioms, we can also consider alternate theories where the negation of the axiom is considered and that results in different consequences. The "absoluteness" of computation is of this nature. If we can truly *know* more than arithmetic while still remaining correct, I do not know (assuming COMP).
Maybe we mean different things by the physical world. I think of it as an implementation substrate and thus I have no problem with it being a direct or indirect consequence of some abstract computations.
As a side-note, I don't see why the primitive physical world is
necessary, from the 1p, we can only know that we have senses and from
the senses we can infer the existence of the external world.
We have the problem of other minds to deal with! That is why, among
other things, we need the physical world albeit NOT primitive, the
physical world allows form an "external" differentiation of 1p that
would otherwise be identical by Leibniz' identity of indiscernibles. I
am just claiming that the abstrac
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_object>t and the concrete
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_object> are always co-present at
any level until we go to the limit of bare neutral existence. At that
point any differences that might make a difference vanish, thus logic
and spaces would cease being different yet isomorphic. Vaughn Pratt
shows how this works in terms of the directions of the Arrows of the
categorical representations of LOGIC and SPACE, they point in opposite
directions thus if we add them up their directions and scalars would
vanish. -> + <- = (see
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Laws_of_Form_-_double_cross.gif)
It's also not obvious at all to me why the 1p would be the same for any structure in Platonia (such as some computation running in the UD), but different for magical-physical-land (non-platonic, but still running an UD). 1p differences should exist if the contents of the mind's body/brain are different, regardless of the substrate that it's implemented on. I'd venture to guess that given 2 identical structures/universes/..., the observers in them will have identical experiences, or even identical 1p (in COMP it doesn't matter how many copies you make of a computation, there's only one 1p associated with it - the body just lets it manifest relatively to you).
Additionally, I see this conjecture as similar to Tegmark's MathematicalI'm not going to comment on the paper as my category theory knowledge is insufficient, instead I'll save reading it until I'm more familiar.
Universe Hypothesis
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis> except
that I do not see how the postulate "/All structures that exist
mathematically also exist physically."/ implies a mathematical monism as
the wiki article states. If for any structure that exists mathematically
there must exist a physical structure, there is the implication of a
duality between the mathematical and the physical. This is a different
sort of duality than that of Descartes as it does not assume distinct
"substances", it is a form of dual aspect theory
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-aspect_theory> where the dynamics
of each aspect run in opposite directions. Vaughn Pratt explains the
idea here: http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/dti.pdf
As for the MUH, I'm not even sure what the word 'physical' means anymore for it. If all the consistent mathematical structures do exist and you happen to find yourself in one, you call it 'physics', while you call the rest 'abstract', however that just makes the term 'physical' an indexical - "The time now is xx:xx", "I'm in structure y".
The UDA also shows that you can find yourself in a different structure at a different subjective time, and the only global "inescapable" one is the UD, but it's so limitless in its possibilities that it shouldn't particularly matter.
We can never know for sure what structure we're part of, but we can always make more and more accurate maps of the local one we're in.If consciousness is how some (possibly self-referential) arithmetical
(or computational) truth feels from the inside, it does not seem
impossible that there would not be computations representing some
physical (just not primitive) world and that world would contain us
and our bodies/brains, and the existence of such computations would be
a theorem in arithmetic.
I agree, but the representation of a thing is not the thing except in
very special cases, such as what we have when we say that the "best"
simulation of an object is the object itself.
<http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/physics/85-undecidability/2/text.html>
This takes us into a discussion of questions like "when might the map =>
the territory or, by duality,the territory => the map
<http://chorasimilarity.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/entering-chora-the-infinitesimal-place/>?
This is a subtle and important question! ;-)
One can call the global one the UD* if we happen to admit a digital substitution (by the UDA/MGA), or more generally some arithmetical Platonia. Just knowing how the UD works does not mean we have complete access to it. We just have a tool for generating the territory (or the "perfect" map), but we'll never be able to actually generate the full UD* (if we could, COMP would be false, and thus UD* itself wouldn't be our "global" territory), although we can generate any parts we have the resources/memory to compute.
Onward!
Stephen
Bruno Marchal
On 2/6/2012 1:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 05 Feb 2012, at 21:32, meekerdb wrote:
On 2/5/2012 8:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:No. All universal numbers can interpret a number as a function on quantities, or as properties on quantities, which are not quantities themselves. Universal numbers can also transform, or interpret numbers as transformation of transformation, properties of properties, up in the constructive transfinite, etc.
When the quantities can add and multiply, soon their attributes are beyond all quantities, and Löbian quantities are arguably already knowing that about themselves.
I don't understand this. Maybe I don't know what universal number is. I thought it was a number whose representation in digits was such that every number appeared in the representation. But I don't understand how such number does things: transform, interpret,...
Let phi_i be an enumeration of the (partial and total) computable functions from N to N.Let <x,y> be a bijection from NXN to N.
A universal number u is a number u such that, for all x and y, we have phi_u(<x,y>) = phi_x(y).The equality means that the LHS and RHS are either both defined and equal, or both undefined.
Thanks. So it is not literally that the number does things, it just picks out the function that is universal for a given bijection and a given enumeration of the functions.
Bruno Marchal
The branches comes from the superposition, and their linear contagion
which is unavoidable if we postulate that QM applies to the physical
in general. So the branches are not accessible through interaction,
but they are still accessible through the interferences, and
extrapolating QM on the observers. To avoid the parallel branches we
must add something to QM (like the collapse), and this can be made
only by assuming that something (measuring apparatus, macro-object,
consciousness?) does not obey to QM.
With comp, things are even more simple (conceptually): the (finite
pieces of) parallel computations exist like prime number or total
computable functions exist, in a weak common sense of mathematical
existence, and the statistical interferences comes from the first
person indeterminacy, and the shapes it has to take with the self-
referential correctness constraints.
Bruno
Bruno Marchal
On 07 Feb 2012, at 00:23, Craig Weinberg wrote:
> On Feb 6, 10:37 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>> On 05 Feb 2012, at 20:10, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>
>>> I'm not lowering subst level at all, I'm saying that subst level
>>> is an
>>> indexical.
>>
>> ?
>
> That's what you aren't getting about my position. Substitution level
> is not a scalar variable.
?
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> All of the quant descriptions in the universe
>>>>> do not add up to a single experienced quality.
>>
>>>> You don't know that. Is it an axiom?
>>
>>> I don't know it, but I clearly understand why it is the case.
>>
>> That's not an argument.
>
> Then you disqualify the possibility of understanding and force a 3p
> supervenience to all 1p experiences.
I was saying, at the meta level, that you cannot refer to your own
understanding of your own "argument" to convey it.
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> Quantites are only
>>>>> quantities.
>>
>>>> No. All universal numbers can interpret a number as a function on
>>>> quantities, or as properties on quantities, which are not
>>>> quantities
>>>> themselves.
>>
>>> Then what are they?
>>
>> Functions, relations, properties, modalities, qualities, etc.
>
> Quantitative relations, quantitative properties, logical
> (quantitative) modalities, quantitative qualities.
What are the quantities that you associate to modalities?
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>> I take this as another axiom. You postulate the existence of
>>>> something
>>>> vague. I think that something like that might make sense perhaps,
>>>> but
>>>> as I see it it would be a consequence of the comp meta-axiom.
>>
>>> That just gives a name to comp's lack of explanatory power. I can
>>> call
>>> comp a consequence of the ecumenical meta-axiom.
>>
>> comp *is* the meta-axiom. It is an axiom bearing on your own
>> consciousness property (of being invariant for some substitution at
>> some level).
>
> Then I can call the ecumenical a meta-meta axiom.
Then you lost me, and it looks like you just want have an answer.
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>> On the contrary. The semantics of machines explodes in the
>>>> infinities.
>>
>>> Explodes into what? What does it signify other than itself?
>>
>> Explodes into the number of possible different interpretation of
>> itself, which might impact on different decisions and futures, from
>> the machine's point of view.
>
> They all only signify different permutations of the emptiness of the
> machine. It doesn't signify anything, it's syntax only.
It is typically not syntax. Semantics of even simple machine are given
by infinite objects.
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> It's circular reasoning to say that physical underpinnings have no
>>>>> effect on our phenomenology when you are working from a theory
>>>>> which
>>>>> presupposes that phenomenology is detectable only by quantitative
>>>>> measurement in the first place. In our actual experience, we know
>>>>> that
>>>>> in fact all phenomenological systems without exception exist as a
>>>>> function of physical systems -
>>
>>>> We don't know that.
>>
>>> Are you talking about ghosts or NDEs? Even so, those phenomena are
>>> always experienced by a person with a body.
>>
>> I was not talking on NDE, but on the fact that primitive matter does
>> not exist.
>
> Primitive or not, all phenomenological systems that we have observed
> are associated with persons or animals who have bodies.
But that's what comp can explain without assuming materially primitive
bodies.
And given that we don't know what materially primitive bodies can be,
comp solves a problem here.
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>> Nor am I sure what it means exactly. Define "physical".
>>
>>> Phenomena whose properties include mass, density, volume and
>>> interact
>>> effectively with other phenomena bearing those properties.
>>
>> Define mass, density, volume, and interaction.
>
> I don't do definitions. The standard usage of these terms is adequate.
In fundamental inquiry, standard usage can't help. especially
discussing comp, given that the standard usage is based on billions
years of evolution and 1500 years of Aristotelianism.
Again, the standard usage might make sense if you were able to say
what you assume and what you derive.
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>> Here, in AUDA terms, you might be confusing the "intelligible",
>>>> with
>>>> the "intelligible matter"
>>>> (Bp with Bp & Dt). [] p with [] p & <> t.
>>
>>> I'm really not confused at all. You keep accusing me of that but I'm
>>> very clear on my distinctions.
>>
>> You are not. And you are not well place to judge this.
>
> You are saying that your opinions about me are facts.
I am saying that *anyone* who argue cannot refer to his own
understanding, or his own clarity.
You could as well say, like in the "hunting of the snark": "If you
were clever, and if I got the time, I could make it all clear to you,
but given that you are dumb, it is not worth the try". This is fun,
but not an argument.
> Fortunately I
> have other people who are familiar with my ideas who don't share your
> facts.
This is not an argument. Many people have been convinced by fake
argument (on the jews, on cannabis, on terrorism, etc.). Humans are
terribly prone to believe what other people make them wanting to
believe.
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> virtual servers do not fly off into the
>>>>> data center on their own virtual power grid - they are still
>>>>> only a
>>>>> complicated event of electrified semiconductors. Unplug the
>>>>> hardware
>>>>> node and all of the operating systems, be they first order
>>>>> software or
>>>>> second order virtual hardware or still only software, 100%
>>>>> dependent
>>>>> on the physical resources. It is generators burning diesel fuel
>>>>> fifty
>>>>> miles away that literally pushes the entire computation - not
>>>>> arithmetic.
>>
>>>> At first sight.
>>
>>> What happens at second sight?
>>
>> You realize that this might be the other way round. It is in the comp
>> theory. Cf UDA.
>
> What does it mean to be the other way around? That power companies are
> dependent on data centers?
Not locally, but, roughly speaking, yes. In the global big picture. I
know it is amazing.
You are naive. Anyone digging on those matter enters into a labyrinth
of difficulties. That's why science and philosophy exist. You are not
defending a new theory, you just propose the usual Aristotelian
metaphysics, with a new unintelligible rick to not evacuate
consciousness. But you are coherent, to keep such Aristotelianism you
have to abandon comp indeed (by UDA). It makes sad that you are not
willing to do the work for making your "theory" more precise.
> By splitting
> vernacular terms into infinities of linguistic formalism, you tip the
> scales to prejudice theory over practice.
That would be the case if I was a sort of comp practitioners, but I am
a theoretician.
> It's not necessary and adds
> nothing.
It makes comp refutable.
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> All computation can be impacted by changes to it's physical
>>>>> underpinning. Devices which are damaged or have low power
>>>>> supply, or
>>>>> brains which have physiological irregularities produce changes to
>>>>> their phenomenology independent of program logic. The physical
>>>>> topology, the materials and events that effect them can drive
>>>>> phenomenology as well.
>>
>>>> Obviously assuming comp. We have to bet on locally stable universal
>>>> number to say "yes" to a doctor.
>>>> The physical is not denied. On the contrary it is justified on a
>>>> conceptually deeper ground.
>>
>>> That's the problem. It is presumed that the physical needs our
>>> theoretical justification while hiding the fact that it is the
>>> theoretical justification itself that is more in need of tethering
>>> to
>>> the physical.
>>
>> You confuse level of explanation. You could say that we cannot
>> explain
>> how a chalkboard works because we need it to write the explanation on
>> the board.
>
> I'm not confused at all. A chalkboard 'works' in a lot of ways besides
> writing explanations, but no explanation has ever existed which was
> not associated with some physical body's activity.
You are confusing levels again and again. the proof of the
irrationality of sqrt(2) is not associated with any physical activity,
and that fact is independent of the fact that an explanation of this
from a human to another human require some physical activity, but not
at the relevant level.
That is a constant error you are doing all the time, and by making
more precise your theory, you will see this by yourself.
>
>>
>>>> You cannot invoke your own understanding. That's an argument per
>>>> authority (it proves nothing and augment the plausibility that you
>>>> are
>>>> crackpot in the interlocutor ear).
>>
>>> It's not an argument from authority, it's an argument from sense.
>>
>> An argument cannot refer to senses.
>
> All arguments refer only to senses.
Not at all. An argument is valid or not independently of sense or even
interpretation of the formula in the argument. That's what logic is
all about. You are doing some confusion of level again.
>
>>
>>> Just
>>> as your theory is contingent upon the acceptance of primitive
>>> arithmetic truth, my hypothesis comes out of a sense primitive. In
>>> order to understand the cosmos as a whole, including subjectivity,
>>> we
>>> must invoke our own understanding or mechanism will mislead us into
>>> disproving ourselves. Sense is the price of admission to the real
>>> world.
>>
>> Define cosmos, define sense. Only a wrong understanding of mechanism
>> can mislead us.
>
> Eliciting definition-fetching is a passive aggressive tactic. The
> common usage definitions of cosmos and sense will suffice.
Precisely not around the comp context.
>
>>
>>>>> It will
>>>>> only change according to what and how it's script allows it to
>>>>> change.
>>
>>>> The "allowing" is a universal machine dependent notion, and they
>>>> are
>>>> many.
>>
>>> But what is allowed can never exceed the range of possibilities of
>>> the
>>> script. Living organisms seem to be able to do that.
>>
>> There are no evidence for that.
>
> We are the evidence of that.
Humans can change the physical laws?
>
>> We cannot change the physical laws,
>> which are deterministic in all physical theories (except QM+collapse,
>> which is not really a theory).
>
> We don't need to change physical laws, we transcend them with
> psychological non-laws.
I see words only.
>
>>
>>>>> When you talk with them, do they answer the same way to the same
>>>>> question every time?
>>
>>>> The conversation is made in Platonia, and is not entangled to our
>>>> history, except for period where I implement it on some machines.
>>>> Even
>>>> in that case, they didn't dispose on short and long term memories,
>>>> except for their intrinsic basic arithmetical experiences (which
>>>> bifurcate up to you and me).
>>
>>> I can't really interpret that in any way other than an evasion of
>>> the
>>> question. You say there have been public dialogs at various times. I
>>> asked if the answers are the same every time. You answered in a way
>>> that sounds like 'talking to machines isn't anything like talking
>>> and
>>> it doesn't occur in time, but then somehow they become us and then
>>> talking becomes talking.'
>>
>> They become us when entangled in the long and deep computations
>> (which
>> belongs to arithmetic).
>
> sigh
That's not an argument either.
>
>>
>>>>> that all such machines remain silent
>>>>> on all of these questions every time tells me that they clearly
>>>>> possess no awareness.
>>
>>>> You have frightening telepathic power.
>>
>>> It's not telepathy, it's first hand knowledge that awareness entails
>>> natural variation in response. You cannot ask any question of any
>>> person over and over and expect to get the same response every time
>>> for every person.
>>
>> Because they have a good handling on short and among term memories.
>> The machine I interview are virgin of any sustained experience
>> related
>> to our environment. Your question just don't apply to them.
>
> How convenient.
Nor this.
>
>>
>>> That's because awareness is not mechanical.
>>
>> It is not entirely mechanical, but that is a theorem in the comp
>> theory. Not an argument against mechanism.
>
> Define mechanism, theorem, argument...
Read my posts or papers. Help yourself with standard introduction to
logic.
>
>>
>>> That's
>>> what makes a machine a machine, a lack of capacity to transcend
>>> recursive behavior or deviate from universal behavior.
>>
>> They don't lack that capacity, at their own high level.
>
> That seems entirely theoretical at this point.
Comp is a theory. That's the point.
>
>> They lack that
>> capacity on their lower levels, and below. So do we, very
>> plausibly. I
>> cannot change the local laws of physics.
>>
>>>> Because I limit myself to ideally self-referentially correct
>>>> machine.
>>>> They already know that it is insane to let the secret of their
>>>> identity slip.
>>
>>> So it's impossible for a machine to go insane? Seems like another
>>> fundamental difference between minds and machines.
>>
>> On the contrary all sane machine can know that they can become
>> insane,
>> and even that they cannot know if they are sane or not.
>> Of course any self-referentially correct entity, be it man or
>> machine,
>> is sane (by definition).
>
> If it's possible for a machine to go insane but not possible to give
> up their mysteries under questioning through that insanity, that puts
> an arbitrary limit on insanity.
Because I interview sane machines. So that remark is trivial.
> Humans don't have any kind of limit
> like that.
because they fall, like most machine, into insanity. But the goal is
to find an explanation of the correct laws of physics, and in that
case it is better to interview simple correct machines.
> They can answer any question they want, any way they want,
> sane or insane. If there is any limitation at all for machines, then
> they can never have fully human consciousness.
Now I understand how you function. You can indeed answer all
questions ...
>
>>
>>>> Not at all. When you ask them why they remain silent on some
>>>> question,
>>>> they can find answer and provide (theological) theories/hypothesis.
>>
>>> For example?
>>
>> Question: <>t ? (= ~[] f ? = Are you consistent. = "Will you prove
>> bulshit?")
>> Answer: <none> (= the machine remains silent)
>>
>> But later the machine asserts <> t -> ~[] <> t (If I am consistent
>> I will never tell you so).
>>
>> Note that <> t, [] f are used here as abbreviation of purely
>> arithmetical propositions, and I interview any sound (and rich
>> enough)
>> theorem prover of arithmetical proposition.
>
> I think all that tells you is about how logic works. If there were any
> awareness at all there, there would be variation in the answers
> locally from machine to machine. It can't have a personality if all of
> them tell you that they won't tell you if they are consistent.
Such difference are acquired in contextual deep computation. I
interview baby machines.
>
>>
>>>>> What about them makes them perceptible as opposed to
>>>>> computational?
>>
>>>> But they are perceptible, if the theory is correct.
>>
>>> Only because deciding that they are perceptible is the only way to
>>> preserve the possibility that the theory could be correct.
>>
>> Not just that. They verifies the usual property of qualia. (Having
>> qualitative attributes which are non communicable in a 3p-way,
>> obeying already given axiomatic for qualia, etc).
>
> You don't need to have qualia to have a property of 3p non
> communicability.
There are many non communicable 3p things indeed. I never said that
they are all qualia. Only the one which verify other axioms, and
appears related to truth. Z* minus Z is non communicable, but is not
qualia.
>
>>
>>>> I didn't say that. You confuse level. When you say that sense and
>>>> matter are self-explanatory, you just make no sense at all.
>>
>>> You're overthinking it. Sense is the ability to detect and
>>> incorporate
>>> what is detected into a larger coherence.
>>
>> That is a not to bad 3p-definition of sense. Note that machine have
>> that ability, although they have to assume locally the larger
>> coherence, and bet on some truth, and so they have to be a bit
>> mystical (conscious) for this. But they are indeed. Note that this
>> implicit inference allows us to connect the 1p-sense to the 3p-notion
>> that you describe.
>
> I think that the 1p-sense that the machine has is unrelated to the 3p-
> mechanism.
It is related to an infinity of 3p local representations.
> The real 1p- sense of any given machine reflects the
> experience of the substrate,
That makes anything more hard to understand.
> not the human code riding on top of that.
> The 1p we imagine behind the function of the program is 100%
> projection.
Not sure what you mean. Seems quite solipsistic to me.
>
>>
>>>> How? Given that sense are primitive, which makes no sense.
>>
>>> If sense is primitive, then it makes sense by definition.
>>
>> So the ability to detect and incorporate what is detected into a
>> larger coherence is a primitive operation?
>> That seems senseless to me.
>
> Why? Since arithmetic truth requires detection
A new axioms, and what could that mean? I suspect confusion of level
again.
> and integrative
> coherence, it cannot be as primitive as sense. Nothing more primitive
> than sense can make sense by definition, so it cannot be detected or
> integrated. This is what I'm telling you - sense is *the* primitive of
> the cosmos.
But you don't succeed in making sense for that. Except by constant
allusion to your experience. But this does not work, because machines
do the same ... until they realize exactly this.
It is not a proof that comp is true, but an argument showing the non
validity of your refutation of comp.
>
>>
>>>> A machine can say "17 is prime".
>>
>>> Can it? Or do we have to define what prime is for it in advance?
>>> Most
>>> machines don't know what 17 or prime is.
>>
>> Same for man. Of course we have to define the object we talk about if
>> we want argue for or against their existence. This does not
>> distinguish machine and man, unless you endow man with magical
>> abilities.
>
> Is the ability to participate in the world without having to define it
> arithmetically a magical ability?
No. It is natural for all machine. All correct machine have
difficulties to believe in comp. It is necessarily counter-intuitive.
It can, and if it don't refer to assertive truth, it can even be both
poetical and scientific. My point is that we don't pretend a truth in
science. Only hypothesis and arguments whose verifiability is quasi-
mechanical.
> Or are you saying there are no
> truths or that arithmetic is not poetic?
Truth exist, but we don't pretend to know them when we do science.
>
>>
>>>>> That's only half of reality, but it is only through that reality
>>>>> that
>>>>> we can know any part of the other half.
>>
>>>> Argument?
>>
>>> The argument is that all truths beyond our senses are known to us
>>> only
>>> through our senses. What is the argument against it?
>>
>> I asked an argument for the quantity 1/2.
>
> not sure what you mean. you want me to argue with myself about this?
I was ciricizing your idea that the universe split in halve. Sense and
matter. With comp it is more like sense is 99,999%, matter is the tip
of the iceberg, and primitive matter is a myth. The importance of
sense might explain why some machine want it primitive, at first sight.
>
>>
>>>> No problem with that. I wish only you try harder.
>>
>>> Try harder to be impartial, or try harder to stack the deck in favor
>>> of comp?
>>
>> Try harder to refute comp.
>
> Ohh. Comp can only be refuted outside of comp. It's a closed loop of
> tautology.
Comp, like any theory bearing on reality can only be refuted by
looking at that reality.
>
>>
>>> No, a machine cannot think because the only reason that we might be
>>> tempted to think it could can be explained through that example. You
>>> can make the piano more sensitive to bumps, and you can make the
>>> bumps
>>> more sophisticated to articulate the piano's mechanism better, but
>>> neither the truck, the piano, nor the bumps can play the piano, they
>>> are all parts of a recording made by humans trying to imitate their
>>> own playing of the piano.
>>
>> You beg the question.
>
> I'm showing that it's absurd. I guess if you actually believe that the
> truck is a pianist, you certainly are entitled to that view - and it's
> a logical view for figurative purposes, but if we apply it literally
> in public, it would be considered delusional, and not for no reason.
Todays truck are not person.
>
>>
>>>> The logical sense of coherence is in the "Dt", the tangible
>>>> detection
>>>> is in "p", and the machine's body and relative belief is in "Bp".
>>>> The
>>>> Bp & Dt & p is a variant of the self-reference logic. The non first
>>>> person communicable part of the logic of that variant (named X1* in
>>>> AUDA) is the qualia logic, or the sensible matter hypostasis. The
>>>> bootstrap law is given by p -> [] <> p, with []p defined roughly by
>>>> Bp
>>>> & Dt & p. Bp is Gödel probability applied on the arithmetical
>>>> sigma_1
>>>> sentence p. Dp is ~B~p. <> p is ~ [] ~, and t is "1=1".
>>
>>> The existence of variables like Dt and p already presupposes sense
>>> and
>>> detection of visual symbols.
>>
>> It does not. But it implies them.
>
> What are they without them?
They are like the natural numbers without the number 13. Nonsense.
>
>>
>>>>> It sounds like bones are ontologically less important than brains?
>>
>>>> I don't see why. Brains are also locally stable patterns obtained
>>>> by a
>>>> relative statistics on
>>>> infinities of (infinite) computations.
>>
>>> So why are brains more associated with human consciousness than
>>> bones?
>>
>> Because brains seems to be needed for a person to manifest his
>> consciousness relatively to another, one; where bones seem to be
>> needed only to stand up and make sports.
>
> That's begging the qwesch. I'm asking why brains over bones?
Because brains cells got the cable. Not bones cells.
No one can, by definition of deep secret.
>
>>
>>>> But here all the problem is in linking the easy 1p and the less
>>>> easy 3p.
>>
>>> It's not a problem when you realize they are linked in only in their
>>> anomalous symmetry with each other.
>>
>> That does not help.
>
> I don't quite understand why not.
Because I don't see the symmetry. You never show it. What is then an
anomalous symmetry. You seems to escape forwards by adding new
vocabulary, when you have not yet explain the one you are already using.
I might become tired to try to help you making sense for the others.
>
>>
>>>> We don't have to include it. Brains are the simplifier tools.
>>
>>> No, brains are just the meaty end of a simplifier tool which is
>>> semantic and experiential.
>>
>> Such brain does not exist in the comp theory. yet we can explain why
>> person will correctly believe in the observation of such brain, in
>> the
>> epistemology.
>
> I can explain why a person will correctly believe in the observation
> of comp too, even though the universe of comp is not real.
No machine can correctly believe she is some precise machine, and it
is hard for them to make the leap of faith.
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>>> Study the work of other people. Address their problem, with or
>>>>>> without
>>>>>> your "theory" as training.
>>
>>>>> That would be worthwhile I'm sure, but unfortunately it would be
>>>>> too
>>>>> much of a distraction.
>>
>>>> OK. That why I am not good in saucer. All those guy running after
>>>> the
>>>> ball distract me too much. But then I don't pretend marking the
>>>> goal.
>>
>>> This isn't a game though, it's the truth of reality.
>>
>> If you don't study the work of others, you will not succeed in making
>> your point "really" accessible to others.
>>
>
> It already is accessible to some others, I don't think that anyone can
> succeed in making any point to all others.
To all those interested. Yes that is possible, even if that can take
time for fashion and human reasons. That's the point of science and
rationalism.
>
>>
>>
>>> Why not? What about numbers suggests dreaming?
>>
>> The fact that they organize themselves, by just obeying their + and *
>> laws, into computations.
>
> That can happen through our pattern recognition. It's universal
> apophenia.
Elementary arithmetic can explain how pattern recognition works. You
don't need the concept of pattern recognition to explain elementary
arithmetic. Yes human need pattern recognition to communicate, but
that is at another level.
>
>> The, the fact that comp implies a mind-comp
>> supervenience thesis.
>
> It doesn't say anything dreamy to me.
?
>
>>
>>> Incompleteness says the opposite to me that it does to you. I see
>>> Gödel showing the limitation of arithmetic truth in the face of
>>> organic sense, not the omnipotence of it.
>>
>> Gödel's result show on the contrary that arithmetical truth is beyond
>> the grasp of any machine (and of any super-machine, super-super-
>> machine, etc.).
>
> That only means that it cannot be reconciled with our local reality,
> not that reality emerges from it.
Study UDA. Learn to reason in the comp theory, before trying to refute
it.
> Fantasy is the same way. It too is
> beyond the grasp of all real systems and arithmetic too.
>
>>
>>>> But it has, in the relevant sense, once you admit there is a
>>>> substitution level.
>>
>>> Substitution level is an indexical of perception.
>>
>> If this is true, then comp would lead to solipsism.
>
> No because there is no self there to anchor a solipsistic orientation.
> It leads to vacuous nihilism.
Self exists in comp by the Kleene second recursion theorem. I can
explain if you want, but your tone makes me think that whatever
explanations are provided you will refute it by confusing some levels,
or by referring to your experience.
>
>> But the evidences
>> are that first person plural makes sense, in the comp theory, and in
>> "reality" (thanks to the MWI which multiplies collection of
>> machines).
>
> There is no perception going on, so substitution level is fixed
> programmatically. Come to the light side Bruno...
You really talk like a priest.
>
>>
>>>> You are saying that you are superior, in some sense, to other
>>>> entities. You deny a soul to a class of individuals, by invoking
>>>> fuzzy
>>>> rhetorical trick reifying your own experience.
>>
>>> That is precisely why I am superior to a machine, because I can do
>>> that. A machine can't. It needs a reason to presume it's own
>>> existence. I don't. I can assert my primordial authority because I
>>> feel and know, and understand that I can. I don't need permission
>>> from
>>> a program or a script or a rule book. I embody the theory. We don't
>>> view the universe as impartial voyeurs, we are fully immersed within
>>> it. We define it and it defines us.
>>
>> What makes you sure that some machine cannot do that? This is still
>> an
>> example of your persistent question begging.
>
> If it could then I would not call it a machine.
?
> Since I know that I
> can do this, but I naturally define machines as not being able to do
> that, I would need to see or understand something that convinces me
> otherwise.
You really don't make give them any chance.
You continue to reiterate the only axiom of yours which makes sense:
comp is false. That's possible, but I don't hear any genuine argument.
>
>>
>>>> You confuse the script and the show, for the numbers. The universal
>>>> numbers plays the shows of the numbers.
>>
>>> Why would they play anything? For what audience?
>>
>> For the local UMs in their neighborhood, or for themselves.
>
> Why do they need a show?
They don't need it, but they take the habits and usually don't see the
big picture.
> Isn't the arithmetic truth enough?
It is. That one is responsible for the many-shows, in the comp theory.
>
>>
>>>> By having some disease in some part of the cortex inside. The
>>>> modalities can be stopped to be handled correctly, or self-
>>>> referentially correctly.
>>
>>> Why wouldn't the machine just route around the disease? If color is
>>> everywhere inside, I don't see why color blindness should be
>>> localized
>>> to some part of anything.
>>
>> That's a problem for your theory.
>
> It's explained in my theory as large organisms employ a division of
> labor among sense organs.
Which makes substrate sense even more weird.
>
>>
>>>>> That sounds to me like the song does the singing and songwriting.
>>
>>>> Yes. That's the magic of the universal numbers. They can do both.
>>
>>> Then the singers and songwriters are innocent bystanders?
>>
>> No. They are UMs too.
>
> That seems redundant.
?
Arithmetical truth and MW are redundant indeed. By they are not the
explanation, they are what we try to explain. Sands on the beach are
redundant too.
>
>>
>>>> I don't assume theory as primitive. Only numbers and +, *.
>>>> The existence of theories and machines is a theorem in N,+, *.
>>
>>> But +, * is already a theory of what can be done with numbers.
>>
>> No. They are symbol used in a theory.
>
> If they don't correspond to something they can't be symbols. A theory
> is required for their interpretation.
That's what I was saying.
>
>> The theory assumes some formula,
>> among which you will not find a formula assuming the existence of a
>> theory. You are confusing level of explanation. You could say that
>> the
>> big-bang theory assumes the existence of an alphabet, without which
>> we
>> cannot express "big-bang".
>
> The theory and formula are parts of the same thing. From an absolute
> perspective you cannot have a formula without a theory that it is part
> of.
That might be true or false, relevant or not, but is not precise enough.
>
>>
>>>>> Which would make sense if we lived in a
>>>>> world of disembodied theories settling into matter but it seems
>>>>> obvious that he opposite is the case.
>>
>>>> Because we are deluded by the fact that we participate to the drama
>>>> from inside.
>>
>>> Why does that prevent us from encountering disembodied theories from
>>> entering our drama?
>>
>> Nothing. The question is what do you mean by matter, and please don't
>> refer to physical notion, because this would beg the question.
>
> We should see formulas written in the sky then sometimes.
?
>
>>
>>>> Arithmetic emulate all histories.
>>
>>> Only if you believe in emulation.
>>
>> Emulations existence is a theorem in arithmetic (even without comp).
>
> That is why arithmetic separates from reality. It assumes generic
> interchangeability and discards the primacy of 1p unrepeatability.
Not at all. It can explain that, by indexicalness + deep linear
histories.
>
>>
>>>> Comp is not a truth. It is not an obligation either. But it is a
>>>> right.
>>
>>> Sure, it's a right. So are the other alternatives.
>>
>> Sure. But this does not make your argument against comp more valid.
>
> I'm only arguing that comp is no more or less valid than any other
> belief system, it just has different strengths and weaknesses. My
> argument is for a meta theory.
Comp is a meta-theory. I am still waiting your theory (as opposed to
your personal feelings).
>
>> you should study computer science. It could help you to understand
>> that comp is hard to be refuted.
>
> It's impossible to refute, because it defines how it can and cannot be
> refuted in it's own narrow terms which disqualify subjective authority
> a priori.
No. it is the most refutable of all theory given that it describes, or
not, physics.
It does not disqualify subjective authority for the 1p, on the
contrary it relies on it.
Of course, like everywhere in science, it disqualify the 1p discourse
when used in the theory (not when tackle by the theory).
If not is is called literature, and belongs to another genere (novel,
fiction, phenonomenology, etc.).
>
>> UDA itself comes from an attempt to
>> refute it, but computer science already explains how machines
>> themselves can debunk the anti-comp arguments.
>>
>> Judson Webb has already well understood the problem. Either your
>> argument if fuzzy and proves nothing, or your argument is precise and
>> technical, and machines can found them for themselves leading to
>> prove
>> correctly that their first person is not a machine (which is true) or
>> that their body are not Turing machine emulable (which is true), or
>> that comp is false (which makes no genuine sense when proved by a
>> correct machine).
>>
>> I don't think I will comment paragraph where you refer to truth,
>> reality, your personal understanding, nor will I comment paragraph
>> which I have already answered, nor will I comment the begging
>> question
>> trick. So you have to work a bit harder.
>
> I'm only doing this for your benefit and anyone else who might be
> interested. I'm not working to convince you
I can see that.
> of something that I
> already suspect you cannot be convinced of.
That's prejudices on yourself, but they have some foundations: mainly
that you seem not interested in studying the theory that you want to
refute. This makes your point rather weak.
Bruno
acw
as MWI can, although not in a 3p sharable way (just 1p sharable).
However, a lot of the interesting ones are not yet doable because we
obviously don't yet have a doctor to say "yes" to.
>> This sort of favoritism is similar to that of Copenhagen (or some
>> other single timeline versions) vs MWI - one offers a very complex
>> incomplete view to make it so the only thing it can talk about is what
>> we see,
>
> I don't see that it's complex or incomplete. It predicts probabilities.
> Some things happen and some don't in accord with the predicted
> probabilities. Is it really any simpler to say all those other
> possibilities happened too - we just can't access them?
>
predictive model, a "don't ask what's going on" model, thus while it
will give you correct results, it won't tell you what's really going on.
Some interesting writings on why MWI is preferable to CI:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/q6/collapse_postulates/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/q5/quantum_nonrealism/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/q7/if_manyworlds_had_come_first/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/q8/many_worlds_one_best_guess/
>> while the other gives you a simple view, but it also tells you that
>> there's more than you can see. Some people seem bothered about this
>> 'more' part, especially if it's not obviously accessible (although I'd
>> debate this being the case with COMP).
>
> I'm not bothered, but neither am I convinced. The branches of the MWI
> are not obviously accessible and in fact they are not accessible at all.
> I wouldn't say that rules them out - but it doesn't count in their favor.
>
with COMP, you can only see the structure you're in, not the full trace
of the UD. I did however describe a thought experiment (because we
obviously don't have a doctor to say "yes" to yet) on how someone could
access unusual, but tightly controlled continuations with completely
different "local universal laws" than our own in another thread in this
mailing list, which is yet another way of testing COMP's consequences
(I'm still awaiting Bruno's response to that thread, up to the point
that I'm considering writing a shorter version if writing a full answer
to it is too much effort.)
> Brent
>
acw
> On 2/6/2012 6:50 PM, acw wrote:
>> On 2/6/2012 06:25, Stephen P. King wrote:
>>> Hi ACW,
>>>
>>> On 2/4/2012 1:53 PM, acw wrote:
> snip
>>>> Before reading the UDA, I used to think that something like Tegmark's
>>>> solution would be general enough and sufficient, but now I think 'just
>>>> arithmetic' (or combinators, or lambda calculus, or ...) or is
>>>> sufficient. Why? By the Church-Turing Thesis, these systems posses the
>>>> same computability power, that is, they all can run the UD.
>>>
>>> I agree with this line of reasoning, but I see no upper bound on
>>> mathematics since I take Cantor's results as "real". There is not upper
>>> bound on the cardinality of Mathematics. I see this as an implication of
>>> the old dictum "Nature explores all possibilities."
>>>
>> The question is if transfinite extensions are considered as part of
>> the foundation, what different consequences will follow for COMP or
>> the new theory?
> [SPK]
> I am not sure, but they seem to be necessary for completeness.
>
put it in the ontology if it won't have any discernible effect on the
experienced sense data or measure.
>>>> Now, if we do admit a digital substitution, all that we can experience
>>>> is already contained within the UD, including the worlds where we find
>>>> a physical world with us having a physical body/brain (which exist
>>>> computationally, but let us not forget that random oracle that comes
>>>> with 1p indeterminacy).
>>>
>>> Not quite, admitting digital substitution does not necessarily admit to
>>> pre-specifiability as is assumed in the definition of the algorithms of
>>> Universal Turing machines, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm> it
>>> just assumes that we can substitute functionally equivalent components.
>> What do you mean by ``pre-specifiability''? Care to elaborate?
>
> The algorithm is a finite and specifiable list of computational steps or
> states. It only makes sense that the algorithm exists at least
> simultaneous or prior to its implementation by a physical system. It
> cannot come into existence after the implementation.
>
how some UD runs a copy of itself as well, I'm not entirely I see the
problem here with what I said. Unless, your issue is along the lines of
1p experience actually being some truth being temporally "created" or
merely what happens when some particular computations happens within
some timeframe, as opposed to existing platonically - I'm not sure I
can completely agree with this opinion although I've shared it a long
time ago, currently I prefer to think consciousness could work in
situations like this: consider a SIM(substrate independent mind),
consider computing parts of its mind in temporally disconnected or
random order (include some VR(Virtual Reality) environment with it, so
it's mostly self-contained, although it could get some input/sense-data
from the world doing the computation), possibly also implement spatial
or algorithmic disconnects, possibly even add some homomorphic
encryption such that no outside observer could understand the
computations that are actually happening (yet all the computations are
happening) - if COMP is correct, that SIM should be conscious, and this
consciousness won't be spatially or temporally connected, yet the SIM
will experience continuity! In a way, consciousness is like that inner
interpreter. In a more extreme form, you could consider someone running
some computation of a self-contained OS+VR+SIM(s) machine and stopping
computing that machine, and it should still have continuations, be it in
the UD or anywhere those future computations may be found (be they
physically or platonically), and possibly externally acausal (if
considering physics or MGA-like thought experiments), but internally
causal and continuous (from 1p(s)). Maybe my thought experiment is a bit
extreme, although I can't see any obvious refutation of it within the
context of COMP(well, some simulations may be very low measure or
unstable, compared to those which allow for more easier/cheaper locally
stable 1p indeterminacy, but this is a fixable problem by adding access
to undefined functionality/random oracles).
>>> Functional equivalence does not free us from the prison of the flesh, it
>>> merely frees us from the prison of just one particular body. ;-)
>> I'm not so sure to term ``body'' is as meaningful if we consider the
>> extremes which seem possible in COMP.
>
> My point about the "flesh" is that functional equivalence allows for
> computational universality but does not eliminate the necessity of the
> physical. My primary contention is that computation is a process that
> requires resources and is not just sum platonic free lunch.
>
finite, but unbounded in the limit (although the limit is never reached
for any observer)? If the physical always has some specific finite upper
bound, how do you justify such a stronger claim? (If it's not any
specific limit, it can be bypassed through some "mathematically
inductive jump", but this doesn't seem necessary as you already
mentioned an eternally running UD).
>> After a digital substitution, a body could very well be some software
>> running somewhere, on any kind of substrate, with an arbitrary
>> time-frame/ordering (as long as 1p coherent), it could even run
>> directly on some abstract machine which is not part of our universe
>> (such as some machine emulating another machine which is contained in
>> the UD) - the only thing that the mind would have in common is that
>> some program is being instantiated somewhere, somehow. In this more
>> extreme form, I'm not sure I can see any difference between a
>> substrate that has the label 'physical' and some UD running in
>> abstract Platonia.
>
>
> OK, but you seem to be taking the internal view of a single observer
> only in this analysis and following a reasoning similar to the
> brain-in-a-vat situation. How do you account for other observers that
> have similar bodies and the possibility that they are not mindless husks
> or zombies - which is the situation of the solipsist? The difficulty
> that I am seeing only manifests when we consider multiple observers, we
> have to account for separate entities each with their own 1p. The world
> we observe has multiple observers, each of them with a 1p. We have to
> associate an infinite number of computations with each one, if I follow
> Bruno's idea correctly, and yet each one has some kind of sense of
> continuity in time. Basically, we have to reproduce the general
> covariance of physical laws as we see codified in general relativity
> theory.
>
one: let's say we have a structure, not really computable in the limit,
although always computable in quantized ways (such as some form of
rational arithmetic, or with computable reals), it's whatever would
ideally represent the physical laws if we had perfect data and could
perform perfect induction on that data. You could imagine infinities of
ensembles of machines which compute quantized partials of such a world,
with each such ensemble belonging to some observer. In a way, locally it
would seem solipsistic, but globally, the other minds are always
present, in all their possible forms. Same would apply to a more local
digital physics (if that makes some sense), or even in cases where no
such "perfect structure" is to exist. We tend to intuit that other
people in the inferred 3p structure are conscious based on their
behavior and their apparent physical contents, thus this is also a bet
that an ensemble of machines which relate to their consciousness also
exists. I really don't see how COMP is solipsist here, especially if you
consider a Platonia which should hold the infinities of machines and the
arithmetical truth to make all the seemingly non-zombies actual
non-zombies.
Of course, extracting our local law from just the UD seems like a hard
challenge, and I'm not so sure how easy it would be given our limited
computational resources - we have to depend on clever reasoning greatly
informed by observed data to get better theories instead.
>> If you can show why the 'physical' version would be required or how
>> can someone even tell the difference between someone living in a
>> 'physical' world vs someone living in a purely mathematical (Platonic)
>> world which sees the world from within said structure in Platonia and
>> calls it 'physical'.
>
> Why bother having a physical world at all? Why is the illusion of matter
> even here in front of us? Where does the illusion of time obtain from?
> We cannot hand wave even silly versions of these questions away.
>
Illusion of matter is good for self-consciousness. It leads to embodied
intelligence and all the interesting stuff that follows from it. It's
also likely that simple physical universes have greater measure due to
being simpler computationally. Illusion of time - I used to like ASSA,
but after thinking harder on COMP, I very much prefer RSSA now. I
suspect that time is needed for self-consciousness/awareness (and it's
also what gives you the RSSA), can you imagine forming memories or
updating beliefs without some form of time? Or even doing computations?
This is not to say that time itself is a primitive, it's merely how we
relate states to each other in a computation, and such a relationship
can be encoded in a non-temporal manner, however due to how our
cognitive system is constructed, we can only move forward in time (most
embodied general intelligences capable of having short and longterm
memories should find themselves in similar situations). Either way, the
illusion of continuity is important for a self-conscious embodied
general intelligence, up to the point where we might as well consider it
real and use it to bet on what continuations we will have and what
consequences our actions will have and what futures we would prefer and
so on.
>> It seems that 'physical' is very much what we call the structure in
>> which we exist, but that's indexical, and if you claim that only one
>> such structure exists (such as this universe), then you think COMP is
>> false (that is, no digital substitution exists) or that arithmetic is
>> inconsistent (which we cannot really know, but we can hope)?
>
> I suspect that there are an infinite number of physical worlds to cover
> the need for symmetry between the abstract and the concrete. A postulate
> of my hypothesis is "that for every physical object there is at least
> one representation and for every representation there is at least one
> physical implementation of it." So for example, there is a class of
> physical instantiations of all numbers, even including patterns of
> pixels like this: 13. The previous pattern of pixels is a physical
> implementation of the number thirteen (as is this previous one!).
>
What are those pixels made of? ... What are those atoms or quantum
particles or strings or ... made of? Eventually it seems to get down to
math (if we're at least partially realist and reductionist about the
existence of physical law). If there is a mathematical object that
perfectly describes the territory of which I'm part of, I don't see any
reason why I should distinguish between the abstract and physical
version (or that I should choose to call it 'physical' merely on the
fact that I happen to be part of it). Maybe I'm blind to the difference,
but I just don't see it when looking at it in the limit/extremes.
>> If there's any difference between a physical and non-physical
>> implementation in the context of COMP, I'd like to know what it is and
>> what effect it has.
>
> A non-physical implementation is what Bruno writes about when he used
> the word "implementation".
>
>>> This idea goes back to my claim that the "Pre-established harmony
>>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-established_harmony>" idea of Leibniz
>>> is false because it requires the computation of an infinite NP-Complete
>>> problem to occur in zero steps. As we know, given even infinite
>>> resources a UTM must take at least one computational step to solve such
>>> a NP-Complete problem. My solution to this dilemma is to have an
>>> eternally running process at some primitive level. Bruno seems to
>>> identify this with the UD, but I claim that he goes too far and
>>> eliminates the "becoming" nature of the process.
>>>
>> I think the idea of Platonia is closer to the fact that if a sentence
>> has a truth-value, it will have that truth value, regardless if you
>> know it or not.
>
> Sure, but it is not just you to whom a given sentence may have the same
> exact truth value. This is like Einstein arguing with Bohr with the
> quip: "The moon is still there when I do not see it." My reply to
> Einstein would be: Sir, you are not the only observer of the moon! We
> have to look at the situation from the point of view of many observers
> or, in this case, truth detectors, that can interact and communicate
> consistently with each other. We cannot think is just solipsistic terms.
>
Sure, but what if nobody is looking at the moon? Or instead of moon,
pick something even less likely to be observed. To put it differently,
Riemann hypothesis or Goldbach's conjecture truth-value should not
depend on the observers thinking of it - they may eventually discover
it, and such a discovery would depend on many computational
consequences, of which the observers may not be aware of yet, but
doesn't mean that those consequences don't exist - when the computation
is locally performed, it will always give the same result which could be
said to exist timelessly.
>> In essence, Platonia might very well contain Chaitin's constant of
>> some machine, even if we cannot know it (although we can make guesses
>> at it by making stronger and stronger theories).
>
> Certainly, what can Platonia not contain? My problem is why is Platonia
> even a necessary concept? It smells of the mystical and irrational. We
> should justify its necessary existence before we wander off and ascribe
> all these nice properties to it that just so happen to solve all of our
> hard problems.
>
I'm not really requiring a full Platonia here, just consider it for
arithmetic, where the law of the excluded middle(LEM) should still
apply. It should be sufficient ontologically. It also seems much simpler
conceptually than positing a physical world with all the extra magical
quirks full-fledged physical worlds require. Another way to think of it
would be in the terms of the Church Turing Thesis, where you expect that
a computation (in the Turing sense) to have result and that result is
independent of all your implementations, such a result not being
changeable in any way or by anything - that's usually what I imagine by
Platonia. It is a bit mystical, but I find it less mystical than
requiring a magical physical substrate (even more after MGA) - to me the
platonic implementation seems to be the simplest possible explanation.
If you think it's a bad explanation that introduces some magic, I'll
respond that the primitively physical version introduces even more
magic. Making truth changeable or temporal seems to me to be a much
stronger, much more "magical" than what I'm considering: that
arithmetical sentences do have a truth value, regardless if we know it
or not.
>> Your objections seem intuitionist/constructivist at its core, that is,
>> that something does not have a truth value if we can't prove it.
>
> I am inviting you to consider exactly how it is that we work out a proof
> of a theorem or logical sentence. Can you prove it without thinking
> about it or witting it down somehow? I don't follow the intuitionist
> line per se, I just consider those theories among the possible theories
> that we can have of the world. They are much like different points of
> view, some more limited than others.
>
>> Some sentences may require infinite proofs ("this machine will never
>> halt"), thus we cannot say that they are true, even if they are (such
>> as the absence of proof of a contradiction in arithmetic). In another
>> way, this seems like a problem with the provably unprovable (or a form
>> of "religion"), although COMP is itself a bet of this sort (existence
>> of a 1p continuation).
>
> The "bet" idea is very clever. It is the most brilliant aspect of
> Bruno's result and I do admire his genius for seeing it. :-)
>
Yes, I like it quite a bit. It lets one be clear about one's assumptions
and which assumptions we select for basing our behavior on.
That's a hard question. Talk about the nature of such a something's
properties invites talk about what exactly we mean by property in
general, and then we need a neutral way of talking about properties. I'm
afraid that it's easy to either be too specific that it won't be neutral
enough or too general that it makes no difference...
I wonder though, why suppose a temporally evolving something? The notion
of time is in itself quite complex, and this is why I tend to prefer to
just use the CTT in a platonic manner (unchangeability of a result of
finite process being applied on finite recursive things).
>>
>>>> If we are machines, then we can only experience finite amount of
>>>> information given some finite interval of time, some of this
>>>> information may be incompressible, due to 1p indeterminacy, thus we
>>>> could experience "reals" in the limit, despite there only being finite
>>>> computations at any given time. This essentially means that any
>>>> mathematical object which can be described in Tegmark's "Ultimate
>>>> Ensemble" and that can contain us, is already part of the 1p
>>>> experiences of those existing within the UD and we can look at 1p
>>>> experiences, as well as the UD* trace as being part of the greater
>>>> "arithmetical" truth (or any other theory with equivalent
>>>> computational power, by the Church-Turing Thesis).
>>>
>>> Umm, we have to show that the finiteness of machines is necessary from
>>> first principles, we cannot just assume that it is so.
>> Are you using a more general definition of machine? A machine always
>> has a finite body (an integer), even though the grown itself may be
>> unbounded, but the growth at each step is finite, and given finite
>> time-steps, there is no way for the machine to become infinite (only
>> in the "limit").
>
> Yes, I am not limiting myself to the finite machine (as you sketched
> them here) as physics requires the use of Real and Complex numbers.
>
Oh. We should be careful about the meanings of the words we use, I
almost always meant Turing-equivalent machine (or weaker) when using the
term. A machine directly working on reals is already capable of way too
much infinitely detailed uncomputable magic (here's a cute short SF
story about this: http://qntm.org/responsibility ).
>>
>>> I agree that the
>>> "arithmetical truth" of the UD may be enough to "force" the 1p to have
>>> content, but we still need to account for the appearance of interactions
>>> or histories of interactions (ala Julian Barbour'sTime Capsule
>>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Barbour> idea). There reaches a
>>> point, even if it is in the limit of infinitely many, that we cannot put
>>> off the concurrency problem, we have to deal with interactions. An
>>> option is to take the "running of the UD" as a primitive kind of dynamic
>>> that at our local 1p emerges as time and notions of forces, fields, etc.
>>> emerge from the algebras of interactions between the many distinct 1p.
>>>
>> So your beef is with the appearance of continuity in our 1p experience
>> and our inferred 3p world?
>
> Not just with that appeare3nce of continuity. I am trying to be faithful
> to what I know of physics and working backwards toward Bruno's idea.
> Bruno claims that physics emerges from numbers, OK. Let us see how. How
> to we get general covariance and wave functions from COMP? At what point
> do the conservations laws emerge? Some of them require continuity!
>
As long as they don't require true uncomputability, it should be
possible (for example, if you consider computable reals). Still, any
such endeavor is likely to be quite a lot of work, and it's not obvious
to me that only our particular physics should be the most numerous out
of possible physics. I would consider the classic inductive approach to
be more likely to yield direct results, although COMP does have
consequences, so it should be possible to use it as a filter for local
theories.
>> The local 3p world may indeed to considered like a Block Universe (or
>> similar extensions to MWI), although by COMP, that's just a valid
>> model that we could be using, and a matter of epistemology. This is
>> indeed a tricky problem, which I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the
>> tentative answer I'm currently thinking for it. From the 1p, we can
>> only be certain of the existence of the observer moment, this can lead
>> someone to consider the ASSA (disconnected OM(observer moments)).
>
> Yes, I agree with that reasoning. I just go further and demand that our
> explanations cover multiple observers and the appearance that they are
> interacting with each other. Do you understand the Dining Philosophers
> Problem <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dining_philosophers_problem>? This
> is a well known problem in computer science!
>
I'm not entirely sure I see the problem. Are you assuming that there is
only one universal consciousness and it has only a single history (with
a lot of forgetting involved)? The problem would appear if you identify
the 1p time with the 3p time, which I don't do myself - 1p time is about
the internal time of a computational structure locally contained in the
brain, or about local computational steps. Many 1p's could correspond to
the same or very similar 3p's, thus the sharing of the world, but some
1p's having in common some generalized brain does not mean that their
experiences are literally occurring at the same time (although it's fine
and correct to assume that the 3p persons we see are non-zombies, which
is true due to the shared computations/histories). In that way,
consciousness isn't identified with some
(Universe,Position,Time,BranchId,...), it's related to (Program, Step)'s
arithmetical truth at different levels.
(Universe,Position,Time,BranchId,...) may be contained/shared in many
computations by different (Program, Step) corresponding to completely
separate 1p's. Now, the idea of single countably infinite universal
consciousness could make sense, except there is one problem: COMP
Immortality - there will always exist a continuation. Maybe some
continuations could very well merge with others, thus the problem would
be side-stepped, but what if they are actually unique countably infinite
potential futures for most observers? There could be some ways to still
allow for an universal consciousness in that case, but I think might it
might be best to just abandon the concept for now and just think of
different arithmetical truths corresponding to different 1p's, or if you
want, only consider it for histories, whatever they may be.
Unless, of course, I misunderstood your problem.
>> From the 3p or 1p's memories/knowledge, that is, at a higher level
>> than just experience, we bet on the existence of the past and future,
>> as a matter of self-consciousness and self-reference. We tend to
>> identify with the (abstract) structure making this bet. This leads one
>> to RSSA - OM's being relative to each other - that we will make our
>> bets based only on expected continuations and past/journal/history. If
>> consciousness is how some truths associated with a self-referential
>> universal number feel from the inside, and given the bets that number
>> is making, it wouldn't seem that strange that we will experience
>> apparent continuity (even though we cannot prove to anyone that we
>> actually experience such continuity - we cannot even show that to
>> ourselves - if we just consider a few moments in the past).
>
> I agree with all of this but you are only considering a single observer
> here. Think of what you just wrote as applicable to many observers
> interacting with each other. How does that work?
>
See before this. Shared computations.
>>
>> I don't think the continuity problem gets solved by dismissing a
>> Platonia and using something more "physical"(what is that though?).
>> See: MGA for why.
>
> I agree, but that is not the problem that I have with the ideal monism.
> My contention is that we are forced into some form of dualism to account
> for many separate minds capable of having some form of interaction with
> each other.
>
Dualism on what? How "arithmetical truth" feels from the inside seems to
be fairly monist to me. Interaction is just sharing some computations or
truths. When Bruno interviews some LUM, he simulates it and thus the
machine manifest relatively to him and he can see what that machine has
to say. You and me share a common universe (or computations representing
this universe), both of us have an "illusion" of matter of each other,
yet both of our computations are real and correspond to separate 1p's.
Can we even keep definitions and properties themselves neutral enough?
The UD* allows all kinds of continuations, such as our local high
measure ones, but also all kinds of unusual and weird ones which are
purely computational and hardly correspond to our physics with us being
directly embodied. The possibilities themselves are very numerous,
although I suspect most of them are low-measure. If your theory
presupposes only some particular physics being possible (and nothing
else), it's being more restrictive than the UD - although, if it can run
a robust UD, I'm not sure it would make a perceptible difference.
I'll keep an eye out for it, if you happen post it someday.
>>
>>>> This doesn't really happen with computation - if there's anything
>>>> absolute in math, it's computation (although different theories about
>>>> what arithmetic is will result in different things the theory can talk
>>>> about, but it won't make computation any less absolute).
>>>
>>> I strongly suspect that your argument here about the "absoluteness" of
>>> computation is a bit too strong or even misplaced. Restricting
>>> information to only being a binary bit on mappings in the Integers is a
>>> harsh regime, no wonder computation is so "well behaved", any deviation
>>> of the bits from the tyranny of the integers at all is terminated with
>>> extreme prejudice! I see computation, in general, as "the transformation
>>> of representations" and thus do not see the by fiat confinement to the
>>> integers as beneficial.
>>>
>>>
>> By absoluteness I mostly meant the very wide consequences that follow
>> from the Church-Turing Thesis. In another way, the behavior of finite
>> things to which we apply finite processes is always well-defined.
>> Things are never as clear when we have infinitely-sized things or
>> potentially infinite processes.
>
> I claim that it is impossible to observe infinite quantities as such
> cannot be exactly represented in a communicable way. This does not mean
> that infinities do not exist. It is just an inherent limitation on what
> observers can be.
>
If observers are finite, does that not directly lead to the COMP
assumption? Or do you allow implementation which involves concrete
infinities, yet nevertheless only processing finite sense data? Should
it be possible (in your theory) for an observer to contain infinite
processes which nevertheless finish in finite time?
Explained earlier in this post. Unless, you do mean something more
magical by interaction beyond shared computations?
>>
>>> Additionally, I see this conjecture as similar to Tegmark's Mathematical
>>> Universe Hypothesis
>>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis> except
>>> that I do not see how the postulate "/All structures that exist
>>> mathematically also exist physically."/ implies a mathematical monism as
>>> the wiki article states. If for any structure that exists mathematically
>>> there must exist a physical structure, there is the implication of a
>>> duality between the mathematical and the physical. This is a different
>>> sort of duality than that of Descartes as it does not assume distinct
>>> "substances", it is a form of dual aspect theory
>>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-aspect_theory> where the dynamics
>>> of each aspect run in opposite directions. Vaughn Pratt explains the
>>> idea here: http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/dti.pdf
>>>
>>>
>> I'm not going to comment on the paper as my category theory knowledge
>> is insufficient, instead I'll save reading it until I'm more familiar.
>
> Please do as it might help you understand some of the more complex
> aspect of this idea that I am studying.
>
As time allows.
>> As for the MUH, I'm not even sure what the word 'physical' means
>> anymore for it. If all the consistent mathematical structures do exist
>> and you happen to find yourself in one, you call it 'physics', while
>> you call the rest 'abstract', however that just makes the term
>> 'physical' an indexical - "The time now is xx:xx", "I'm in structure y".
>> The UDA also shows that you can find yourself in a different structure
>> at a different subjective time, and the only global "inescapable" one
>> is the UD, but it's so limitless in its possibilities that it
>> shouldn't particularly matter.
>
> OK, but, again, we have to have a theory that covers interactions
> between our minds not just theories of individual minds.
>
See earlier comments on this.
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return#Friedrich_Nietzsche>.;-)
>
UD's self-generating/autopoietic nature is quite nice/fascinating
indeed, although its a more general concept that occurs all over math,
nature, life(replicators), self-consciousness, computability, fractals, ...
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
>
meekerdb
Well, Copenhagen doesn't even describe an underlying model, it's just a predictive model, a "don't ask what's going on" model, thus while it will give you correct results, it won't tell you what's really going on.
That assumes that something is 'really going on'. If you take an instrumentalist view (c.f. Asher Peres or Leslie Ballentine) then all that's 'going on' is that your information changes and hence you change your model.
Brent
Craig Weinberg
> On 07 Feb 2012, at 00:23, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> >>> I'm not lowering subst level at all, I'm saying that subst level
> >>> is an
> >>> indexical.
>
> >> ?
>
> > That's what you aren't getting about my position. Substitution level
> > is not a scalar variable.
>
> ?
distinguished from a real plant. A person looking through binoculars
is on one level, an ant that crawls on it is on another, a molecule
within it is on another. There is no such thing as substitution level,
and there is no such thing as substitution in an absolute sense. There
is only relativistic imitation - which is subjective and indexical -
not scalar.
>
>
>
> >>>>> All of the quant descriptions in the universe
> >>>>> do not add up to a single experienced quality.
>
> >>>> You don't know that. Is it an axiom?
>
> >>> I don't know it, but I clearly understand why it is the case.
>
> >> That's not an argument.
>
> > Then you disqualify the possibility of understanding and force a 3p
> > supervenience to all 1p experiences.
>
> I was saying, at the meta level, that you cannot refer to your own
> understanding of your own "argument" to convey it.
subjects don't.
>
>
>
> >>>>> Quantites are only
> >>>>> quantities.
>
> >>>> No. All universal numbers can interpret a number as a function on
> >>>> quantities, or as properties on quantities, which are not
> >>>> quantities
> >>>> themselves.
>
> >>> Then what are they?
>
> >> Functions, relations, properties, modalities, qualities, etc.
>
> > Quantitative relations, quantitative properties, logical
> > (quantitative) modalities, quantitative qualities.
>
> What are the quantities that you associate to modalities?
quantitative representation.
>
>
>
> >>>> I take this as another axiom. You postulate the existence of
> >>>> something
> >>>> vague. I think that something like that might make sense perhaps,
> >>>> but
> >>>> as I see it it would be a consequence of the comp meta-axiom.
>
> >>> That just gives a name to comp's lack of explanatory power. I can
> >>> call
> >>> comp a consequence of the ecumenical meta-axiom.
>
> >> comp *is* the meta-axiom. It is an axiom bearing on your own
> >> consciousness property (of being invariant for some substitution at
> >> some level).
>
> > Then I can call the ecumenical a meta-meta axiom.
>
> Then you lost me, and it looks like you just want have an answer.
explained by comp. I'm saying that anyone can say that. Churches,
governments, corporations, courts.
>
>
>
> >>>> On the contrary. The semantics of machines explodes in the
> >>>> infinities.
>
> >>> Explodes into what? What does it signify other than itself?
>
> >> Explodes into the number of possible different interpretation of
> >> itself, which might impact on different decisions and futures, from
> >> the machine's point of view.
>
> > They all only signify different permutations of the emptiness of the
> > machine. It doesn't signify anything, it's syntax only.
>
> It is typically not syntax. Semantics of even simple machine are given
> by infinite objects.
can seem objectified subjectively.
>
>
>
> >>>>> It's circular reasoning to say that physical underpinnings have no
> >>>>> effect on our phenomenology when you are working from a theory
> >>>>> which
> >>>>> presupposes that phenomenology is detectable only by quantitative
> >>>>> measurement in the first place. In our actual experience, we know
> >>>>> that
> >>>>> in fact all phenomenological systems without exception exist as a
> >>>>> function of physical systems -
>
> >>>> We don't know that.
>
> >>> Are you talking about ghosts or NDEs? Even so, those phenomena are
> >>> always experienced by a person with a body.
>
> >> I was not talking on NDE, but on the fact that primitive matter does
> >> not exist.
>
> > Primitive or not, all phenomenological systems that we have observed
> > are associated with persons or animals who have bodies.
>
> But that's what comp can explain without assuming materially primitive
> bodies.
> And given that we don't know what materially primitive bodies can be,
> comp solves a problem here.
table over material primitives. To the contrary, it makes sense that
material should precipitate computational properties through mechanism
while disembodied mechanism shows no sign of logically precipitating
matter.
>
>
>
> >>>> Nor am I sure what it means exactly. Define "physical".
>
> >>> Phenomena whose properties include mass, density, volume and
> >>> interact
> >>> effectively with other phenomena bearing those properties.
>
> >> Define mass, density, volume, and interaction.
>
> > I don't do definitions. The standard usage of these terms is adequate.
>
> In fundamental inquiry, standard usage can't help.
better. That's the opposite of how subjectivity works though. We are
looking for simplicity and significance.
> especially
> discussing comp, given that the standard usage is based on billions
> years of evolution and 1500 years of Aristotelianism.
> Again, the standard usage might make sense if you were able to say
> what you assume and what you derive.
billions of years of evolution count. Besides, I think that even in
cultures where few have been influenced by Aristotelianism, matter and
weight are well understood.
>
>
>
> >>>> Here, in AUDA terms, you might be confusing the "intelligible",
> >>>> with
> >>>> the "intelligible matter"
> >>>> (Bp with Bp & Dt). [] p with [] p & <> t.
>
> >>> I'm really not confused at all. You keep accusing me of that but I'm
> >>> very clear on my distinctions.
>
> >> You are not. And you are not well place to judge this.
>
> > You are saying that your opinions about me are facts.
>
> I am saying that *anyone* who argue cannot refer to his own
> understanding, or his own clarity.
subjectivity is critically important, *not* referring to our own
understanding is a mistake - one which will be exploited by default by
comp. As long as you use comp to frame the argument, comp can't lose.
If you see the players only from the game's point of view, there is no
possibility of recovering the world of the players - everything is
described only as rules of the game.
> You could as well say, like in the "hunting of the snark": "If you
> were clever, and if I got the time, I could make it all clear to you,
> but given that you are dumb, it is not worth the try". This is fun,
> but not an argument.
directly draw upon your own experience of being a living person. Your
arguments are predicated on tying everything back to a specific kind
of logic, which I am telling you is a tautological trap. You are in
the trap, telling me that I have to give you something that forces you
to be freed from the trap, and I am telling you that you have to free
yourself. That's how it works. You have to care. You have to want to
understand the whole truth rather than just a numerical theory of
itself.
>
> > Fortunately I
> > have other people who are familiar with my ideas who don't share your
> > facts.
>
> This is not an argument. Many people have been convinced by fake
> argument (on the jews, on cannabis, on terrorism, etc.). Humans are
> terribly prone to believe what other people make them wanting to
> believe.
>
>
>
> >>>>> virtual servers do not fly off into the
> >>>>> data center on their own virtual power grid - they are still
> >>>>> only a
> >>>>> complicated event of electrified semiconductors. Unplug the
> >>>>> hardware
> >>>>> node and all of the operating systems, be they first order
> >>>>> software or
> >>>>> second order virtual hardware or still only software, 100%
> >>>>> dependent
> >>>>> on the physical resources. It is generators burning diesel fuel
> >>>>> fifty
> >>>>> miles away that literally pushes the entire computation - not
> >>>>> arithmetic.
>
> >>>> At first sight.
>
> >>> What happens at second sight?
>
> >> You realize that this might be the other way round. It is in the comp
> >> theory. Cf UDA.
>
> > What does it mean to be the other way around? That power companies are
> > dependent on data centers?
>
> Not locally, but, roughly speaking, yes. In the global big picture. I
> know it is amazing.
centers, it doesn't make much sense, and further cements the picture I
have of comp as the naked emperor.
literally and the literal figuratively, then it all makes sense.
>That's why science and philosophy exist. You are not
> defending a new theory, you just propose the usual Aristotelian
> metaphysics, with a new unintelligible rick to not evacuate
> consciousness. But you are coherent, to keep such Aristotelianism you
> have to abandon comp indeed (by UDA). It makes sad that you are not
> willing to do the work for making your "theory" more precise.
enough as it is, given that what is says is that half of the universe
is an imprecise 'seems like'.
>
> > By splitting
> > vernacular terms into infinities of linguistic formalism, you tip the
> > scales to prejudice theory over practice.
>
> That would be the case if I was a sort of comp practitioners, but I am
> a theoretician.
>
> > It's not necessary and adds
> > nothing.
>
> It makes comp refutable.
>
>
>
> >>>>> All computation can be impacted by changes to it's physical
> >>>>> underpinning. Devices which are damaged or have low power
> >>>>> supply, or
> >>>>> brains which have physiological irregularities produce changes to
> >>>>> their phenomenology independent of program logic. The physical
> >>>>> topology, the materials and events that effect them can drive
> >>>>> phenomenology as well.
>
> >>>> Obviously assuming comp. We have to bet on locally stable universal
> >>>> number to say "yes" to a doctor.
> >>>> The physical is not denied. On the contrary it is justified on a
> >>>> conceptually deeper ground.
>
> >>> That's the problem. It is presumed that the physical needs our
> >>> theoretical justification while hiding the fact that it is the
> >>> theoretical justification itself that is more in need of tethering
> >>> to
> >>> the physical.
>
> >> You confuse level of explanation. You could say that we cannot
> >> explain
> >> how a chalkboard works because we need it to write the explanation on
> >> the board.
>
> > I'm not confused at all. A chalkboard 'works' in a lot of ways besides
> > writing explanations, but no explanation has ever existed which was
> > not associated with some physical body's activity.
>
> You are confusing levels again and again.
>the proof of the
> irrationality of sqrt(2) is not associated with any physical activity,
derailed by fatigue, inebriation, mathematical illiteracy due to
organic deficiencies and malnutrition, etc. The proof is not a proof
unless something understands what is being proved and why it should
care. Sense and motive.
> and that fact is independent of the fact that an explanation of this
> from a human to another human require some physical activity, but not
> at the relevant level.
sensorimotive electromagnetism. It only seems objectively true to us
because it is a very low level sense which we share with physical
objects (counting arises from our motive to control what is outside of
us). There is no disembodied arithmetic truth, it is the truth of
bodies and space, not subjects and experience.
> That is a constant error you are doing all the time, and by making
> more precise your theory, you will see this by yourself.
demand for more obedience to the axioms of comp.
>
>
>
> >>>> You cannot invoke your own understanding. That's an argument per
> >>>> authority (it proves nothing and augment the plausibility that you
> >>>> are
> >>>> crackpot in the interlocutor ear).
>
> >>> It's not an argument from authority, it's an argument from sense.
>
> >> An argument cannot refer to senses.
>
> > All arguments refer only to senses.
>
> Not at all. An argument is valid or not independently of sense
> or even
> interpretation of the formula in the argument. That's what logic is
> all about. You are doing some confusion of level again.
that you are either not understanding my argument or are in denial
about it.
>
>
>
> >>> Just
> >>> as your theory is contingent upon the acceptance of primitive
> >>> arithmetic truth, my hypothesis comes out of a sense primitive. In
> >>> order to understand the cosmos as a whole, including subjectivity,
> >>> we
> >>> must invoke our own understanding or mechanism will mislead us into
> >>> disproving ourselves. Sense is the price of admission to the real
> >>> world.
>
> >> Define cosmos, define sense. Only a wrong understanding of mechanism
> >> can mislead us.
>
> > Eliciting definition-fetching is a passive aggressive tactic. The
> > common usage definitions of cosmos and sense will suffice.
>
> Precisely not around the comp context.
>
>
>
> >>>>> It will
> >>>>> only change according to what and how it's script allows it to
> >>>>> change.
>
> >>>> The "allowing" is a universal machine dependent notion, and they
> >>>> are
> >>>> many.
>
> >>> But what is allowed can never exceed the range of possibilities of
> >>> the
> >>> script. Living organisms seem to be able to do that.
>
> >> There are no evidence for that.
>
> > We are the evidence of that.
>
> Humans can change the physical laws?
planet and go to the Moon?
>
>
>
> >> We cannot change the physical laws,
> >> which are deterministic in all physical theories (except QM+collapse,
> >> which is not really a theory).
>
> > We don't need to change physical laws, we transcend them with
> > psychological non-laws.
>
> I see words only.
physical laws in the context of our subjectivity.
>
>
>
> >>>>> When you talk with them, do they answer the same way to the same
> >>>>> question every time?
>
> >>>> The conversation is made in Platonia, and is not entangled to our
> >>>> history, except for period where I implement it on some machines.
> >>>> Even
> >>>> in that case, they didn't dispose on short and long term memories,
> >>>> except for their intrinsic basic arithmetical experiences (which
> >>>> bifurcate up to you and me).
>
> >>> I can't really interpret that in any way other than an evasion of
> >>> the
> >>> question. You say there have been public dialogs at various times. I
> >>> asked if the answers are the same every time. You answered in a way
> >>> that sounds like 'talking to machines isn't anything like talking
> >>> and
> >>> it doesn't occur in time, but then somehow they become us and then
> >>> talking becomes talking.'
>
> >> They become us when entangled in the long and deep computations
> >> (which
> >> belongs to arithmetic).
>
> > sigh
>
> That's not an argument either.
computations which belongs to arithmetic. (Doesn't everything become
everything that way?)
>
>
>
> >>>>> that all such machines remain silent
> >>>>> on all of these questions every time tells me that they clearly
> >>>>> possess no awareness.
>
> >>>> You have frightening telepathic power.
>
> >>> It's not telepathy, it's first hand knowledge that awareness entails
> >>> natural variation in response. You cannot ask any question of any
> >>> person over and over and expect to get the same response every time
> >>> for every person.
>
> >> Because they have a good handling on short and among term memories.
> >> The machine I interview are virgin of any sustained experience
> >> related
> >> to our environment. Your question just don't apply to them.
>
> > How convenient.
>
> Nor this.
>
>
>
> >>> That's because awareness is not mechanical.
>
> >> It is not entirely mechanical, but that is a theorem in the comp
> >> theory. Not an argument against mechanism.
>
> > Define mechanism, theorem, argument...
>
> Read my posts or papers. Help yourself with standard introduction to
> logic.
>
>
>
> >>> That's
> >>> what makes a machine a machine, a lack of capacity to transcend
> >>> recursive behavior or deviate from universal behavior.
>
> >> They don't lack that capacity, at their own high level.
>
> > That seems entirely theoretical at this point.
>
> Comp is a theory. That's the point.
>
that capacity, not that the theory is correct. I can't argue with
that...yes there is a theory.
>
>
> >> They lack that
> >> capacity on their lower levels, and below. So do we, very
> >> plausibly. I
> >> cannot change the local laws of physics.
>
> >>>> Because I limit myself to ideally self-referentially correct
> >>>> machine.
> >>>> They already know that it is insane to let the secret of their
> >>>> identity slip.
>
> >>> So it's impossible for a machine to go insane? Seems like another
> >>> fundamental difference between minds and machines.
>
> >> On the contrary all sane machine can know that they can become
> >> insane,
> >> and even that they cannot know if they are sane or not.
> >> Of course any self-referentially correct entity, be it man or
> >> machine,
> >> is sane (by definition).
>
> > If it's possible for a machine to go insane but not possible to give
> > up their mysteries under questioning through that insanity, that puts
> > an arbitrary limit on insanity.
>
> Because I interview sane machines. So that remark is trivial.
can't go insane then you are postulating a primitive sanity dualism,
one which is not borne out in human machines.
>
> > Humans don't have any kind of limit
> > like that.
>
> because they fall, like most machine, into insanity. But the goal is
> to find an explanation of the correct laws of physics, and in that
> case it is better to interview simple correct machines.
erroneously presume the rest is disposable.
>
> > They can answer any question they want, any way they want,
> > sane or insane. If there is any limitation at all for machines, then
> > they can never have fully human consciousness.
>
> Now I understand how you function. You can indeed answer all
> questions ...
>
>
>
> >>>> Not at all. When you ask them why they remain silent on some
> >>>> question,
> >>>> they can find answer and provide (theological) theories/hypothesis.
>
> >>> For example?
>
> >> Question: <>t ? (= ~[] f ? = Are you consistent. = "Will you prove
> >> bulshit?")
> >> Answer: <none> (= the machine remains silent)
>
> >> But later the machine asserts <> t -> ~[] <> t (If I am consistent
> >> I will never tell you so).
>
> >> Note that <> t, [] f are used here as abbreviation of purely
> >> arithmetical propositions, and I interview any sound (and rich
> >> enough)
> >> theorem prover of arithmetical proposition.
>
> > I think all that tells you is about how logic works. If there were any
> > awareness at all there, there would be variation in the answers
> > locally from machine to machine. It can't have a personality if all of
> > them tell you that they won't tell you if they are consistent.
>
> Such difference are acquired in contextual deep computation. I
> interview baby machines.
dress them up with 'skins', GUIs and voices to tolerate their
monotonous automatism).
>
>
>
> >>>>> What about them makes them perceptible as opposed to
> >>>>> computational?
>
> >>>> But they are perceptible, if the theory is correct.
>
> >>> Only because deciding that they are perceptible is the only way to
> >>> preserve the possibility that the theory could be correct.
>
> >> Not just that. They verifies the usual property of qualia. (Having
> >> qualitative attributes which are non communicable in a 3p-way,
> >> obeying already given axiomatic for qualia, etc).
>
> > You don't need to have qualia to have a property of 3p non
> > communicability.
>
> There are many non communicable 3p things indeed. I never said that
> they are all qualia. Only the one which verify other axioms, and
> appears related to truth. Z* minus Z is non communicable, but is not
> qualia.
misrepresents qualia completely. Blue is a presentation in it's own
right, not a quantitative placeholder for luminosity vectors. I can
see or imagine blue without any verification of axioms. I can conjure
it directly in my mind's eye at any moment.
>
>
>
> >>>> I didn't say that. You confuse level. When you say that sense and
> >>>> matter are self-explanatory, you just make no sense at all.
>
> >>> You're overthinking it. Sense is the ability to detect and
> >>> incorporate
> >>> what is detected into a larger coherence.
>
> >> That is a not to bad 3p-definition of sense. Note that machine have
> >> that ability, although they have to assume locally the larger
> >> coherence, and bet on some truth, and so they have to be a bit
> >> mystical (conscious) for this. But they are indeed. Note that this
> >> implicit inference allows us to connect the 1p-sense to the 3p-notion
> >> that you describe.
>
> > I think that the 1p-sense that the machine has is unrelated to the 3p-
> > mechanism.
>
> It is related to an infinity of 3p local representations.
>
> > The real 1p- sense of any given machine reflects the
> > experience of the substrate,
>
> That makes anything more hard to understand.
understand. It frees you up to understand how to get out of it what
you want.
>
> > not the human code riding on top of that.
> > The 1p we imagine behind the function of the program is 100%
> > projection.
>
> Not sure what you mean. Seems quite solipsistic to me.
project a figurative personality on it but it's pure projection.
>
>
>
> >>>> How? Given that sense are primitive, which makes no sense.
>
> >>> If sense is primitive, then it makes sense by definition.
>
> >> So the ability to detect and incorporate what is detected into a
> >> larger coherence is a primitive operation?
> >> That seems senseless to me.
>
> > Why? Since arithmetic truth requires detection
>
> A new axioms, and what could that mean? I suspect confusion of level
> again.
assumptions of comp? Since we cannot detect anything without detecting
it, then we cannot assume that any truth can exist outside of
detection.
>
> > and integrative
> > coherence, it cannot be as primitive as sense. Nothing more primitive
> > than sense can make sense by definition, so it cannot be detected or
> > integrated. This is what I'm telling you - sense is *the* primitive of
> > the cosmos.
>
> But you don't succeed in making sense for that. Except by constant
> allusion to your experience. But this does not work, because machines
> do the same ... until they realize exactly this.
> It is not a proof that comp is true, but an argument showing the non
> validity of your refutation of comp.
demonstrating how sense is made. Pretend I am a machine you are
interviewing. Then maybe it will make more sense to you.
>
>
>
> >>>> A machine can say "17 is prime".
>
> >>> Can it? Or do we have to define what prime is for it in advance?
> >>> Most
> >>> machines don't know what 17 or prime is.
>
> >> Same for man. Of course we have to define the object we talk about if
> >> we want argue for or against their existence. This does not
> >> distinguish machine and man, unless you endow man with magical
> >> abilities.
>
> > Is the ability to participate in the world without having to define it
> > arithmetically a magical ability?
>
> No. It is natural for all machine. All correct machine have
> difficulties to believe in comp. It is necessarily counter-intuitive.
tradition. That tradition came out of Hermetic/alchemical forms of
epistemology. The frontier of science now, I think weaves the truths
of both approaches in order to study the full spectrum of
phenomenology and cosmology.
>
> > Or are you saying there are no
> > truths or that arithmetic is not poetic?
>
> Truth exist, but we don't pretend to know them when we do science.
that we aren't a form of truth that exists (or existence that is true)
for the sake of a science that is designed specifically to exclude our
truth.
>
>
>
> >>>>> That's only half of reality, but it is only through that reality
> >>>>> that
> >>>>> we can know any part of the other half.
>
> >>>> Argument?
>
> >>> The argument is that all truths beyond our senses are known to us
> >>> only
> >>> through our senses. What is the argument against it?
>
> >> I asked an argument for the quantity 1/2.
>
> > not sure what you mean. you want me to argue with myself about this?
>
> I was ciricizing your idea that the universe split in halve. Sense and
> matter.
the split and the split is sense.
> With comp it is more like sense is 99,999%, matter is the tip
> of the iceberg, and primitive matter is a myth. The importance of
> sense might explain why some machine want it primitive, at first sight.
>
>
>
> >>>> No problem with that. I wish only you try harder.
>
> >>> Try harder to be impartial, or try harder to stack the deck in favor
> >>> of comp?
>
> >> Try harder to refute comp.
>
> > Ohh. Comp can only be refuted outside of comp. It's a closed loop of
> > tautology.
>
> Comp, like any theory bearing on reality can only be refuted by
> looking at that reality.
reality in which comp is elevated to the level of the modeled reality.
>
>
>
> >>> No, a machine cannot think because the only reason that we might be
> >>> tempted to think it could can be explained through that example. You
> >>> can make the piano more sensitive to bumps, and you can make the
> >>> bumps
> >>> more sophisticated to articulate the piano's mechanism better, but
> >>> neither the truck, the piano, nor the bumps can play the piano, they
> >>> are all parts of a recording made by humans trying to imitate their
> >>> own playing of the piano.
>
> >> You beg the question.
>
> > I'm showing that it's absurd. I guess if you actually believe that the
> > truck is a pianist, you certainly are entitled to that view - and it's
> > a logical view for figurative purposes, but if we apply it literally
> > in public, it would be considered delusional, and not for no reason.
>
> Todays truck are not person.
simple person. Comp seems to say there is no line, therefore all
trucks are simple persons.
>
>
>
> >>>> The logical sense of coherence is in the "Dt", the tangible
> >>>> detection
> >>>> is in "p", and the machine's body and relative belief is in "Bp".
> >>>> The
> >>>> Bp & Dt & p is a variant of the self-reference logic. The non first
> >>>> person communicable part of the logic of that variant (named X1* in
> >>>> AUDA) is the qualia logic, or the sensible matter hypostasis. The
> >>>> bootstrap law is given by p -> [] <> p, with []p defined roughly by
> >>>> Bp
> >>>> & Dt & p. Bp is Gödel probability applied on the arithmetical
> >>>> sigma_1
> >>>> sentence p. Dp is ~B~p. <> p is ~ [] ~, and t is "1=1".
>
> >>> The existence of variables like Dt and p already presupposes sense
> >>> and
> >>> detection of visual symbols.
>
> >> It does not. But it implies them.
>
> > What are they without them?
>
> They are like the natural numbers without the number 13. Nonsense.
thought are nonsense.
>
>
>
> >>>>> It sounds like bones are ontologically less important than brains?
>
> >>>> I don't see why. Brains are also locally stable patterns obtained
> >>>> by a
> >>>> relative statistics on
> >>>> infinities of (infinite) computations.
>
> >>> So why are brains more associated with human consciousness than
> >>> bones?
>
> >> Because brains seems to be needed for a person to manifest his
> >> consciousness relatively to another, one; where bones seem to be
> >> needed only to stand up and make sports.
>
> > That's begging the qwesch. I'm asking why brains over bones?
>
> Because brains cells got the cable. Not bones cells.
born with an intelligent exoskeleton and an inert space filling organ
for a brain?
keeping a deep secret.
>
>
>
> >>>> But here all the problem is in linking the easy 1p and the less
> >>>> easy 3p.
>
> >>> It's not a problem when you realize they are linked in only in their
> >>> anomalous symmetry with each other.
>
> >> That does not help.
>
> > I don't quite understand why not.
>
> Because I don't see the symmetry. You never show it.
space and subjects through time? matter and energy? generic and
proprietary? significance and entropy?
> What is then an
> anomalous symmetry.
like the content of perceptions with the neurological activity of the
nervous system. They are symmetrical in that perceptions present a
particular moment in the life of a person as an event in a story,
while the neurological activity presents the same moment in exactly
the opposite way (as a many synchronized but mechanical (non-
experienced) events across the brain). They are anomalous in that the
narrative of the biography cannot be deduced by analyzing the
mechanics of the brain alone, and the mechanics of the brain cannot be
deduced by experiencing them from the inside. It's an anomalous
>You seems to escape forwards by adding new
> vocabulary, when you have not yet explain the one you are already using.
> I might become tired to try to help you making sense for the others.
underlying concepts.
>
>
>
> >>>> We don't have to include it. Brains are the simplifier tools.
>
> >>> No, brains are just the meaty end of a simplifier tool which is
> >>> semantic and experiential.
>
> >> Such brain does not exist in the comp theory. yet we can explain why
> >> person will correctly believe in the observation of such brain, in
> >> the
> >> epistemology.
>
> > I can explain why a person will correctly believe in the observation
> > of comp too, even though the universe of comp is not real.
>
> No machine can correctly believe she is some precise machine, and it
> is hard for them to make the leap of faith.
>
>
>
> >>>>>> Study the work of other people. Address their problem, with or
> >>>>>> without
> >>>>>> your "theory" as training.
>
> >>>>> That would be worthwhile I'm sure, but unfortunately it would be
> >>>>> too
> >>>>> much of a distraction.
>
> >>>> OK. That why I am not good in saucer. All those guy running after
> >>>> the
> >>>> ball distract me too much. But then I don't pretend marking the
> >>>> goal.
>
> >>> This isn't a game though, it's the truth of reality.
>
> >> If you don't study the work of others, you will not succeed in making
> >> your point "really" accessible to others.
>
> > It already is accessible to some others, I don't think that anyone can
> > succeed in making any point to all others.
>
> To all those interested. Yes that is possible, even if that can take
> time for fashion and human reasons. That's the point of science and
> rationalism.
>
>
>
> >>> Why not? What about numbers suggests dreaming?
>
> >> The fact that they organize themselves, by just obeying their + and *
> >> laws, into computations.
>
> > That can happen through our pattern recognition. It's universal
> > apophenia.
>
> Elementary arithmetic can explain how pattern recognition works.
Sense is always primary.
> You
> don't need the concept of pattern recognition to explain elementary
> arithmetic.
recognition. You need that to have any concept at all.
>Yes human need pattern recognition to communicate, but
> that is at another level.
are the same thing.
>
>
>
> >> The, the fact that comp implies a mind-comp
> >> supervenience thesis.
>
> > It doesn't say anything dreamy to me.
>
> ?
>
>
>
> >>> Incompleteness says the opposite to me that it does to you. I see
> >>> Gödel showing the limitation of arithmetic truth in the face of
> >>> organic sense, not the omnipotence of it.
>
> >> Gödel's result show on the contrary that arithmetical truth is beyond
> >> the grasp of any machine (and of any super-machine, super-super-
> >> machine, etc.).
>
> > That only means that it cannot be reconciled with our local reality,
> > not that reality emerges from it.
>
> Study UDA. Learn to reason in the comp theory, before trying to refute
> it.
before you refute it.
>
> > Fantasy is the same way. It too is
> > beyond the grasp of all real systems and arithmetic too.
>
> >>>> But it has, in the relevant sense, once you admit there is a
> >>>> substitution level.
>
> >>> Substitution level is an indexical of perception.
>
> >> If this is true, then comp would lead to solipsism.
>
> > No because there is no self there to anchor a solipsistic orientation.
> > It leads to vacuous nihilism.
>
> Self exists in comp by the Kleene second recursion theorem. I can
> explain if you want, but your tone makes me think that whatever
> explanations are provided you will refute it by confusing some levels,
> or by referring to your experience.
Then sure, I'm interested in understanding what it's about.
>
>
>
> >> But the evidences
> >> are that first person plural makes sense, in the comp theory, and in
> >> "reality" (thanks to the MWI which multiplies collection of
> >> machines).
>
> > There is no perception going on, so substitution level is fixed
> > programmatically. Come to the light side Bruno...
>
> You really talk like a priest.
>
>
>
> >>>> You are saying that you are superior, in some sense, to other
> >>>> entities. You deny a soul to a class of individuals, by invoking
> >>>> fuzzy
> >>>> rhetorical trick reifying your own experience.
>
> >>> That is precisely why I am superior to a machine, because I can do
> >>> that. A machine can't. It needs a reason to presume it's own
> >>> existence. I don't. I can assert my primordial authority because I
> >>> feel and know, and understand that I can. I don't need permission
> >>> from
> >>> a program or a script or a rule book. I embody the theory. We don't
> >>> view the universe as impartial voyeurs, we are fully immersed within
> >>> it. We define it and it defines us.
>
> >> What makes you sure that some machine cannot do that? This is still
> >> an
> >> example of your persistent question begging.
>
> > If it could then I would not call it a machine.
>
> ?
would not call a machine.
>
> > Since I know that I
> > can do this, but I naturally define machines as not being able to do
> > that, I would need to see or understand something that convinces me
> > otherwise.
>
> You really don't make give them any chance.
> You continue to reiterate the only axiom of yours which makes sense:
> comp is false. That's possible, but I don't hear any genuine argument.
epistemological supremacy outside of sense itself being false in the
sense of not being absolutely and universally true. Sense is the only
bridge between quantity and quality. All other theories are constructs
within sense channels, and as such are true in some sense, false in
some sense, true and false in some sense, neither true and false in
some sense. Sense itself however, is that very symmetry of truth
modulation. The primordial possibility of perspective and distinction
which is simultaneously unified and divided.
>
>
>
> >>>> You confuse the script and the show, for the numbers. The universal
> >>>> numbers plays the shows of the numbers.
>
> >>> Why would they play anything? For what audience?
>
> >> For the local UMs in their neighborhood, or for themselves.
>
> > Why do they need a show?
>
> They don't need it, but they take the habits and usually don't see the
> big picture.
>
> > Isn't the arithmetic truth enough?
>
> It is. That one is responsible for the many-shows, in the comp theory.
>
>
>
> >>>> By having some disease in some part of the cortex inside. The
> >>>> modalities can be stopped to be handled correctly, or self-
> >>>> referentially correctly.
>
> >>> Why wouldn't the machine just route around the disease? If color is
> >>> everywhere inside, I don't see why color blindness should be
> >>> localized
> >>> to some part of anything.
>
> >> That's a problem for your theory.
>
> > It's explained in my theory as large organisms employ a division of
> > labor among sense organs.
>
> Which makes substrate sense even more weird.
different senses and motives up to the top level organism.
>
>
>
> >>>>> That sounds to me like the song does the singing and songwriting.
>
> >>>> Yes. That's the magic of the universal numbers. They can do both.
>
> >>> Then the singers and songwriters are innocent bystanders?
>
> >> No. They are UMs too.
>
> > That seems redundant.
>
> ?
> Arithmetical truth and MW are redundant indeed. By they are not the
> explanation, they are what we try to explain. Sands on the beach are
> redundant too.
>
>
>
> >>>> I don't assume theory as primitive. Only numbers and +, *.
> >>>> The existence of theories and machines is a theorem in N,+, *.
>
> >>> But +, * is already a theory of what can be done with numbers.
>
> >> No. They are symbol used in a theory.
>
> > If they don't correspond to something they can't be symbols. A theory
> > is required for their interpretation.
>
> That's what I was saying.
theories are part of the same thing, so that it's disingenuous to say
that + and * are primitive without admitting that they supervene on an
arithmetic theory. Therefore you do assume that theory is primitive.
You can't create theory-ness from + and * alone, because they don't
mean anything without theory in the first place.
>
>
>
> >> The theory assumes some formula,
> >> among which you will not find a formula assuming the existence of a
> >> theory. You are confusing level of explanation. You could say that
> >> the
> >> big-bang theory assumes the existence of an alphabet, without which
> >> we
> >> cannot express "big-bang".
>
> > The theory and formula are parts of the same thing. From an absolute
> > perspective you cannot have a formula without a theory that it is part
> > of.
>
> That might be true or false, relevant or not, but is not precise enough.
>
>
>
> >>>>> Which would make sense if we lived in a
> >>>>> world of disembodied theories settling into matter but it seems
> >>>>> obvious that he opposite is the case.
>
> >>>> Because we are deluded by the fact that we participate to the drama
> >>>> from inside.
>
> >>> Why does that prevent us from encountering disembodied theories from
> >>> entering our drama?
>
> >> Nothing. The question is what do you mean by matter, and please don't
> >> refer to physical notion, because this would beg the question.
>
> > We should see formulas written in the sky then sometimes.
>
> ?
form, then we should be able to observe them appearing in space or
under the couch or online. The internet should be haunted by
innumerable autonomous entities that appear and disappear at will.
It's not though. No sentient activity on the internet has been
observed not attributable to human efforts.
>
>
>
> >>>> Arithmetic emulate all histories.
>
> >>> Only if you believe in emulation.
>
> >> Emulations existence is a theorem in arithmetic (even without comp).
>
> > That is why arithmetic separates from reality. It assumes generic
> > interchangeability and discards the primacy of 1p unrepeatability.
>
> Not at all. It can explain that, by indexicalness + deep linear
> histories.
subjectivity in multisense realism as well - only I call them
orientation + cumulative entanglement. + and * can be extracted from
significance and perceptual inertia but my terms are whole grain, full
spectrum concepts, while comp's have all of the important nutrients
refined out of them.
>
>
>
> >>>> Comp is not a truth. It is not an obligation either. But it is a
> >>>> right.
>
> >>> Sure, it's a right. So are the other alternatives.
>
> >> Sure. But this does not make your argument against comp more valid.
>
> > I'm only arguing that comp is no more or less valid than any other
> > belief system, it just has different strengths and weaknesses. My
> > argument is for a meta theory.
>
> Comp is a meta-theory. I am still waiting your theory (as opposed to
> your personal feelings).
http://multisenserealism.com/thesis
>
>
>
> >> you should study computer science. It could help you to understand
> >> that comp is hard to be refuted.
>
> > It's impossible to refute, because it defines how it can and cannot be
> > refuted in it's own narrow terms which disqualify subjective authority
> > a priori.
>
> No. it is the most refutable of all theory given that it describes, or
> not, physics.
> It does not disqualify subjective authority for the 1p, on the
> contrary it relies on it.
> Of course, like everywhere in science, it disqualify the 1p discourse
> when used in the theory (not when tackle by the theory)
> If not is is called literature, and belongs to another genere (novel,
> fiction, phenonomenology, etc.).
>
>
>
> >> UDA itself comes from an attempt to
> >> refute it, but computer science already explains how machines
> >> themselves can debunk the anti-comp arguments.
>
> >> Judson Webb has already well understood the problem. Either your
> >> argument if fuzzy and proves nothing, or your argument is precise and
> >> technical, and machines can found them for themselves leading to
> >> prove
> >> correctly that their first person is not a machine (which is true) or
> >> that their body are not Turing machine emulable (which is true), or
> >> that comp is false (which makes no genuine sense when proved by a
> >> correct machine).
>
> >> I don't think I will comment paragraph where you refer to truth,
> >> reality, your personal understanding, nor will I comment paragraph
> >> which I have already answered, nor will I comment the begging
> >> question
> >> trick. So you have to work a bit harder.
>
> > I'm only doing this for your benefit and anyone else who might be
> > interested. I'm not working to convince you
>
> I can see that.
>
> > of something that I
> > already suspect you cannot be convinced of.
>
> That's prejudices on yourself, but they have some foundations: mainly
> that you seem not interested in studying the theory that you want to
> refute. This makes your point rather weak.
the idea. It used to be my worldview. I only see now that the symmetry
of the entire collection of universal perspectives makes more sense
than any one of them. Any of them can make a strong point if you study
them. Any of them make the other points seem weak. That's how the
symmetry works. You focus on one thing by marginalizing the other
things.
Craig
Stephen P. King
I apologize for the length of this post, but I think that if I snipped text that context would be lost that is necessary. Let us slow down a bit. I think we are decohering a bit. ;-)
On 2/7/2012 9:02 AM, acw wrote:
On 2/7/2012 06:15, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 2/6/2012 6:50 PM, acw wrote:Maybe, although it's also questionable if it makes that much sense to put it in the ontology if it won't have any discernible effect on the experienced sense data or measure.
On 2/6/2012 06:25, Stephen P. King wrote:snip
Hi ACW,
On 2/4/2012 1:53 PM, acw wrote:
[SPK]The question is if transfinite extensions are considered as part ofBefore reading the UDA, I used to think that something like Tegmark's
solution would be general enough and sufficient, but now I think 'just
arithmetic' (or combinators, or lambda calculus, or ...) or is
sufficient. Why? By the Church-Turing Thesis, these systems posses the
same computability power, that is, they all can run the UD.
I agree with this line of reasoning, but I see no upper bound on
mathematics since I take Cantor's results as "real". There is not upper
bound on the cardinality of Mathematics. I see this as an implication of
the old dictum "Nature explores all possibilities."
the foundation, what different consequences will follow for COMP or
the new theory?
I am not sure, but they seem to be necessary for completeness.
It does have a discernible effect! My reasoning follows from the fact that physics has variables (such as position, momentum, spin angle, etc.) what are continuous in the sense of being infinitely differentiable, so we have to include at least the Real Numbers (or a means to generate them or some equivalent) in our ontology .
It comes into the existence after the implementation?What do you mean by ``pre-specifiability''? Care to elaborate?Now, if we do admit a digital substitution, all that we can experience
is already contained within the UD, including the worlds where we find
a physical world with us having a physical body/brain (which exist
computationally, but let us not forget that random oracle that comes
with 1p indeterminacy).
Not quite, admitting digital substitution does not necessarily admit to
pre-specifiability as is assumed in the definition of the algorithms of
Universal Turing machines, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm> it
just assumes that we can substitute functionally equivalent components.
The algorithm is a finite and specifiable list of computational steps or
states. It only makes sense that the algorithm exists at least
simultaneous or prior to its implementation by a physical system. It
cannot come into existence after the implementation.
Umm, what? Please re-read what I wrote. I was discussing the basic idea of what an algorithm is and point out that one of its defining properties is that it must be specifiable. Like a cake recipe, all of its steps either have to be define prior to or simultaneously with the use of the recipe to produce the cake. It is because of this that I think that identifying the cake itself, which is an analogue of an Observer Moment, with the recipe, the computational string, is a mistake. We have to be careful that we do not take the special way that representation and object are isomorphic as spanning the entire range of possible equivalent representations and objects. Each of these has its own Category and they have a natural transformation between them, but they are still separate Categories. Vaughan Pratt discusses this at length in his papers.
While I can see how some UD runs a copy of itself as well, I'm not entirely I see the problem here with what I said.
Is the UD an algorithm? I think that it is! Please disabuse me if I am in error here.
Unless, your issue is along the lines of 1p experience actually being some truth being temporally "created"or merely what happens when some particular computations happens within some timeframe, as opposed to existing platonically - I'm not sure I can completely agree with this opinion although I've shared it a long time ago, currently I prefer to think consciousness could work in situations like this: consider a SIM(substrate independent mind), consider computing parts of its mind in temporally disconnected or random order (include some VR(Virtual Reality) environment with it, so it's mostly self-contained, although it could get some input/sense-data from the world doing the computation), possibly also implement spatial or algorithmic disconnects, possibly even add some homomorphic encryption such that no outside observer could understand the computations that are actually happening (yet all the computations are happening) - if COMP is correct, that SIM should be conscious, and this consciousness won't be spatially or temporally connected, yet the SIM will experience continuity!
One idea that I have, following the reasoning in Hitoshi Kitada's papers, is that all of the 1p's already "exist", it is their truth value that oscillates. In other words, when the Bp&p is true for some set of relations between some p and some other q, then it is false for some ~q. The visual idea of this is like a flashlight beam shining on objects in a vast dark cave; what ever happen to be illuminated at the moment is "true" all the rest is false or ~true (not-true). The idea is that there is a continuous motion of the beam from one object to another.
In a way, consciousness is like that inner interpreter. In a more extreme form, you could consider someone running some computation of a self-contained OS+VR+SIM(s) machine and stopping computing that machine, and it should still have continuations, be it in the UD or anywhere those future computations may be found (be they physically or platonically), and possibly externally acausal (if considering physics or MGA-like thought experiments), but internally causal and continuous (from 1p(s)). Maybe my thought experiment is a bit extreme, although I can't see any obvious refutation of it within the context of COMP(well, some simulations may be very low measure or unstable, compared to those which allow for more easier/cheaper locally stable 1p indeterminacy, but this is a fixable problem by adding access to undefined functionality/random oracles).
I think we have a similar idea here. I am making an argument that we cannot use words that imply or even require the existence of a substrate upon which one set of contents of an computation (or the "internal P.O.V." of the computation) is implied to impact upon the content of another without the substrate existing. We have to consider exactly what interaction means and how it is defined in COMP.
What is the limit on those resources?Functional equivalence does not free us from the prison of the flesh, itI'm not so sure to term ``body'' is as meaningful if we consider the
merely frees us from the prison of just one particular body. ;-)
extremes which seem possible in COMP.
My point about the "flesh" is that functional equivalence allows for
computational universality but does not eliminate the necessity of the
physical. My primary contention is that computation is a process that
requires resources and is not just sum platonic free lunch.
Allow me to quote from: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0304083
"...no matter how a quantum computation is packaged, we can identify one
universal prerequisite: the computer must have a Hilbert space large enough to accommodate
the computations. If the computer is to be a general-purpose computer, able in principle to solve
problems of arbitrary size, it must have a Hilbert space whose dimension is capable in principle of
growing exponentially with problem size. Hilbert space is essential for quantum computation, and
the primary resource is Hilbert-space dimension.
Hilbert spaces of the same dimension are fungible. What can be done in one can be done in
principle in any other of the same dimension: simply map one Hilbert space onto the other, including
all the subsystems, operations, and measurements. Which Hilbert space is used to represent and
process quantum information only becomes important when further physical considerations are
introduced. What is important at the outset is that a system have “quantum information inside,”
i.e., that there be information stored as arbitrary states in the system’s Hilbert space.
Though Hilbert spaces are fungible, the physical systems described by those Hilbert spaces are
not, because we don’t live in Hilbert space, or as Asher Peres puts it [20], “Quantum phenomena
do not occur in Hilbert space. They occur in a laboratory.” A Hilbert space gets its connection to
the world we live in through the physical quantities—position, linear momentum, energy, angular
momentum—of the system that is described by that Hilbert space. These physical quantities
arise naturally from spacetime symmetries and the system Hamiltonian, and they are the physical
resources that must be supplied to access various parts of the system Hilbert space. The crucial
physical question for quantum computation is the following: how much of these resources is required
to achieve a Hilbert-space dimension sufficient for a computation?"
"Quantum mechanics—and its generalization to quantum fields—constrains our description of
physical systems sufficiently that we can formulate the question of physical-resource demands in
a general way. We find that to avoid supplying an amount of some physical resource that grows
exponentially with problem size, the computer must be made up of parts—degrees of freedom in
the simplest analysis, particles and field modes acting as effective degrees of freedom in the case
of quantum fields—whose number grows nearly linearly with the number of qubits required in an
equivalent quantum computer. This thus becomes a fundamental requirement for a system to be a
scalable quantum computer."
...
"The analysis of resource demands is particularly simple for systems of particles described by
ordinary quantum mechanics, i.e., not requiring the more general description in terms of quantum
fields. For these systems, the subsystems can be identified with the degrees of freedom of the
particles. The quantum state of such a computer is described in a Hilbert space that is a tensor
product of the Hilbert spaces of the degrees of freedom.
A degree of freedom corresponds to a pair of (generalized) canonical co¨ordinates, position q and
momentum p. The physical resources are the ranges of positions and momenta, ∆q and ∆p, used
by the computation. The physically relevant measure of these resources is the corresponding phase-
space area or action, A = ∆q∆p. For a degree of freedom that is an intrinsic angular momentum J,
we can use ∆q = 2π and ∆p = ∆J, thus giving A = 2π∆J. The connection to Hilbert space comes
from the fact that a quantum state occupies an area in phase space given by Planck’s constant
h ; orthogonal states correspond roughly to nonoverlapping areas, each of area h [22]. Thus the
available dimension of the Hilbert space for a single degree of freedom is given approximately by
A/h. The goal of scalability is to avoid having to supply an action resource A for any degree of
freedom that grows exponentially with problem size."
I prefer the discussion in terms of quantum computers because our physical universe is quantum mechanical not classical.
What if the machine is always finite, but unbounded in the limit (although the limit is never reached for any observer)? If the physical always has some specific finite upper bound, how do you justify such a stronger claim? (If it's not any specific limit, it can be bypassed through some "mathematically inductive jump", but this doesn't seem necessary as you already mentioned an eternally running UD).
We must consider the entire range of possible observers and technological abilities. We cannot limit ourselves to humans with their current technological abilities. Therefore we cannot put a pre-set limit on the upper bound. I agree that the machine must be finite, but my reasoning follows from mathematical considerations. My conjecture is that the content of experience - the sequence of OMs - of a generic observer is constrained to be representable by a sequence of Boolean Algebras of propositions or "Free Boolean Algebras". This restriction ties the contraints that exist on Boolean Algebras to being countable (and the compactness of the topological spaces that are their dual) to the finiteness of what can be observed by an observer. So we do not have to postulate finiteness separately iff we take the Stone duality as it has finiteness built in.
To explain this reasoning further, I would like to point out that for a large number of entities to be able to communicate with each other, it is necessary that whatever the means of communication might be, it must be such that what is true for one will be true for all otherwise we get a situation where "The Tree is tall" is true for some observers pointing at a giant redwood while it is false for some other observers pointing at the same giant redwoods. Communication requires mutual consistency of propositions and this can only happen if the logic of their means of communication is bivalent with respect to truth values. Now we can quibble about this and discuss how in Special Relativistic situations we can indeed have situations there "X caused Y" is true for some frames of reference and "Y caused X" for some other frame of reference, but this dilemma can be resolved by considering the effect of a finite speed of light whose "speed" is an invariant for all observers, e.g. general covariance.
There's many ways to handle this, and I'll try to describe one possible one: let's say we have a structure, not really computable in the limit, although always computable in quantized ways (such as some form of rational arithmetic, or with computable reals), it's whatever would ideally represent the physical laws if we had perfect data and could perform perfect induction on that data. You could imagine infinities of ensembles of machines which compute quantized partials of such a world, with each such ensemble belonging to some observer. In a way, locally it would seem solipsistic, but globally, the other minds are always present, in all their possible forms. Same would apply to a more local digital physics (if that makes some sense), or even in cases where no such "perfect structure" is to exist. We tend to intuit that other people in the inferred 3p structure are conscious based on their behavior and their apparent physical contents, thus this is also a bet that an ensemble of machines which relate to their consciousness also exists. I really don't see how COMP is solipsist here, especially if you consider a Platonia which should hold the infinities of machines and the arithmetical truth to make all the seemingly non-zombies actual non-zombies.After a digital substitution, a body could very well be some software
running somewhere, on any kind of substrate, with an arbitrary
time-frame/ordering (as long as 1p coherent), it could even run
directly on some abstract machine which is not part of our universe
(such as some machine emulating another machine which is contained in
the UD) - the only thing that the mind would have in common is that
some program is being instantiated somewhere, somehow. In this more
extreme form, I'm not sure I can see any difference between a
substrate that has the label 'physical' and some UD running in
abstract Platonia.
OK, but you seem to be taking the internal view of a single observer
only in this analysis and following a reasoning similar to the
brain-in-a-vat situation. How do you account for other observers that
have similar bodies and the possibility that they are not mindless husks
or zombies - which is the situation of the solipsist? The difficulty
that I am seeing only manifests when we consider multiple observers, we
have to account for separate entities each with their own 1p. The world
we observe has multiple observers, each of them with a 1p. We have to
associate an infinite number of computations with each one, if I follow
Bruno's idea correctly, and yet each one has some kind of sense of
continuity in time. Basically, we have to reproduce the general
covariance of physical laws as we see codified in general relativity
theory.
I do not see how this deals effectively with the concurrency problem! :-( Using the Platonia idea is a cheat as it is explicitly unphysical. It has no constraints of thermodynamics, no limits on speeds of signals, no explanation as to how an Ideal Form is defined, e.g. what is the standard of its perfection, ect. It is no different from the Realm of God in religious mythos, so what is it doing here in our rational considerations? Forgive me but I was raised by parents that where Fundamentalists "Believers", so please understand that I have an allergy to ideas that remind me of the mental prison that I had to work so hard to escape.
The structure that you propose has to have, at least, the basic properties of a space-time in the sense that we can associate identical properties to different space-time coordinates so that we can have a coherent notion of an moving object A at position X, X', X'', ... interacting with a moving object B at position Y, Y', Y'', .... We also have to deal with the effect of having a notion of time that can be represented as a infinitely divisible ordered sequence. Furthermore, we have to consider that whatever we might intuit about those intuitions of other people cannot be such that their truth value is not restricted to a particular frame of reference or drop we would have to the idea that there must be a global truth valuation and only use a local truth valuation and then find a different way to achieve the requirement of mutual consistency in communications.
GR tells us that there is not a global measure of time as we cannot define physical clocks within infinitesimal Minkowski spaces that GR operates on nor a way to globally synchronize the clocks, so we have to use something else as our "clock" and a different way to achieve the appearance of synchronization. Hitoshi Kitada, in his papers, describes how to define a "clock" using the Hamiltonian of a QM system that bypasses this problem of GR, but this solution to the problem of time requires that GR and QM have an "orthogonal relation" or, in other words, that GR is a theory of Observations and QM is a theory of Observers. We cannot collapse them into each other.
Of course, extracting our local law from just the UD seems like a hard challenge, and I'm not so sure how easy it would be given our limited computational resources - we have to depend on clever reasoning greatly informed by observed data to get better theories instead.
We have to extract local laws for each and every observer in a way that we end up with what we actually have in our world of experience. This is what I mean by our COMP theory has to yield the appearance of physical world that has physical laws that are invariant with respect to coordinate system, aka "general covariance".
Illusion of matter is good for self-consciousness. It leads to embodied intelligence and all the interesting stuff that follows from it. It's also likely that simple physical universes have greater measure due to being simpler computationally. Illusion of time - I used to like ASSA, but after thinking harder on COMP, I very much prefer RSSA now. I suspect that time is needed for self-consciousness/awareness (and it's also what gives you the RSSA), can you imagine forming memories or updating beliefs without some form of time? Or even doing computations? This is not to say that time itself is a primitive, it's merely how we relate states to each other in a computation, and such a relationship can be encoded in a non-temporal manner, however due to how our cognitive system is constructed, we can only move forward in time (most embodied general intelligences capable of having short and longterm memories should find themselves in similar situations). Either way, the illusion of continuity is important for a self-conscious embodied general intelligence, up to the point where we might as well consider it real and use it to bet on what continuations we will have and what consequences our actions will have and what futures we would prefer and so on.If you can show why the 'physical' version would be required or how
can someone even tell the difference between someone living in a
'physical' world vs someone living in a purely mathematical (Platonic)
world which sees the world from within said structure in Platonia and
calls it 'physical'.
Why bother having a physical world at all? Why is the illusion of matter
even here in front of us? Where does the illusion of time obtain from?
We cannot hand wave even silly versions of these questions away.
I agree with all of that but that is a reasoning that applies to only a single of entity with consciousness. My problem lies in situations where we have multiple observers, each with their own "self-consiousness". How does COMP deal with multiple interacting observers? We have to show how the computations that generate or "are" the internal experiences of those observers work out so that we have an explanation of the "illusion" (if it is such!) of a much of entities that are sapient living in a common universe.
What are those pixels made of? ... What are those atoms or quantum particles or strings or ... made of? Eventually it seems to get down to math (if we're at least partially realist and reductionist about the existence of physical law).It seems that 'physical' is very much what we call the structure in
which we exist, but that's indexical, and if you claim that only one
such structure exists (such as this universe), then you think COMP is
false (that is, no digital substitution exists) or that arithmetic is
inconsistent (which we cannot really know, but we can hope)?
I suspect that there are an infinite number of physical worlds to cover
the need for symmetry between the abstract and the concrete. A postulate
of my hypothesis is "that for every physical object there is at least
one representation and for every representation there is at least one
physical implementation of it." So for example, there is a class of
physical instantiations of all numbers, even including patterns of
pixels like this: 13. The previous pattern of pixels is a physical
implementation of the number thirteen (as is this previous one!).
At what point does a description of a physical system become the physical system itself? Stephen Wolfram discussed this in a article on Computational Intractability found here: http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/physics/85-undecidability/2/text.html
Here is the "money quote" from the article: "...many physical systems are computationally irreducible, so that their own evolution is effectively the most efficient procedure for determining their future."
There is a situation where we can obtain something like this transition from "what are pixels made of" to "eventually it gets down to math" in a sort of "from It to bit" transition, but I argue that it does not allow a smooth transformation from the concreteness of a physical object existing in a physical universe with universal and invariant physical laws into a abstract representations of that object that is invariant with respect to variations of the computational string that could "run" it, unless there is some level where the difference between the physical and the mental vanishes and an opposite "pole"exists where the similarities match up exactly. These two "poles" have to be considered as equally existing and to toss out the pole where we have the concrete physical object as somehow unreal - as Platonism is want to do - is incorrect. This is a topological feature that must be dealt with. One cannot have a sphere with only one pole and the sphere is relevant here since the symmetry group associated with observations is that of the sphere. (The Complex Projective plane or Riemann sphere actually!)
The level where differences vanish is the level where we have neutral monism. I am identifying this level with the notion of Existence in-itself, as opposed to some kind of primitive "substance" whose only reason to exist is to act as a "bearer of properties", and thereby has a "property". Existence in-itself has *all possible* properties simultaneously and thus cannot to just have one set to the exclusion of any other, thus we cannot say that Numbers are fundamental and neutral as they have a particular property to the exclusion of all other properties.
But we might disagree with this reasoning because we could say that all possible properties have a representation in mathematics and so we can indeed take mathematics as our fundamental primitive. That line of reasoning is examined in that paper by Hitoshi Kitada and he shows that it implies that mathematics as a whole must be inconsistent and thus incapable of having a constant global truth valuation, which is a problem for Platonism. OTOH, he shows how this can give a notion of an oscillating truth valuation IFF we can associate a physical Hamiltonian to the structure. Thus the dualism remains in force.
If there is a mathematical object that perfectly describes the territory of which I'm part of, I don't see any reason why I should distinguish between the abstract and physical version (or that I should choose to call it 'physical' merely on the fact that I happen to be part of it). Maybe I'm blind to the difference, but I just don't see it when looking at it in the limit/extremes.
Certainly, but the point at which the mathematical version and the concrete physical version match up is in the physical object itself in the 3p sense. The fact that we can all agree that there is a Jaguar XKE in the driveway next door, for example, is because the statement that "a Jaguar XKE is located in the driveway at 104 Cedar Lane" is True for any observer that might care to make the observation and report her finding to others, thus even if our experiences are the result of computations, they all consistently agree on the truth value of that physical instantiation. This is why I claim that a 3p is defined as the logically consistent intersection of more than one 1p.
My point is that any one or thing that could be affected by the truth value of "the moon has X, Y, Z properties" will, in effect, be an observer of the moon since it is has a definite set of properties as "knowledge". The key here is causal efficacy, if a different state of affairs would result if some part of the world is changed then the conditions of that part of the world are "observed". The same thing holds for the truth value Riemann hypothesis or Goldbach's conjecture, since there would be different worlds for each of their truth values. My point is that while the truth value or reality of the moon does not depend on the observation by any one observer, it does depend for its definiteness on the possibility that it could be observed by some observer. It is the possibility that makes the difference. A object that cannot be observer by any means, including these arcane versions that I just laid out, cannot be said to have a definite set of properties or truth value, to say the opposite is equivalent to making a truth claim about a mathematical object for whom no set of equations or representation can be made.
I'm not really requiring a full Platonia here, just consider it for arithmetic, where the law of the excluded middle(LEM) should still apply. It should be sufficient ontologically. It also seems much simpler conceptually than positing a physical world with all the extra magical quirks full-fledged physical worlds require.In essence, Platonia might very well contain Chaitin's constant of
some machine, even if we cannot know it (although we can make guesses
at it by making stronger and stronger theories).
Certainly, what can Platonia not contain? My problem is why is Platonia
even a necessary concept? It smells of the mystical and irrational. We
should justify its necessary existence before we wander off and ascribe
all these nice properties to it that just so happen to solve all of our
hard problems.
Why is it allowed for any reason? Seriously, what purpose does it serve? If it is only to serve as a magical realm where things that are otherwise impossible can occur, are we doing ourselves any favors? We have the evidence of our senses and verifiable reports from all over the universe that the physical world is "real", so why dump that concreteness for the unverifiable?
Another way to think of it would be in the terms of the Church Turing Thesis, where you expect that a computation (in the Turing sense) to have result and that result is independent of all your implementations, such a result not being changeable in any way or by anything - that's usually what I imagine by Platonia. It is a bit mystical, but I find it less mystical than requiring a magical physical substrate (even more after MGA) - to me the platonic implementation seems to be the simplest possible explanation. If you think it's a bad explanation that introduces some magic, I'll respond that the primitively physical version introduces even more magic. Making truth changeable or temporal seems to me to be a much stronger, much more "magical" than what I'm considering: that arithmetical sentences do have a truth value, regardless if we know it or not.
I am only asking that we put the abstract world of mathematics on an even footing with the physical world, I am not asking for a "primitive" physical world. I will say again, just because a computation is independent for any particular implementation that I, you or any one else is capable of creating does not eliminate the necessity that somehow it must be implemented physically. Universality of computation is NOT the severing of computation from its physical implementability. This is not the same kind of claim as we see of the ultrafinitist and/or constructivist; it is just a realistic demand that ideas cannot be free floating entities. We cannot believe in free floating numbers any more than we can believe in disembodies spirits and ghosts.
Yes, I like it quite a bit. It lets one be clear about one's assumptions and which assumptions we select for basing our behavior on.Your objections seem intuitionist/constructivist at its core, that is,
that something does not have a truth value if we can't prove it.
I am inviting you to consider exactly how it is that we work out a proof
of a theorem or logical sentence. Can you prove it without thinking
about it or witting it down somehow? I don't follow the intuitionist
line per se, I just consider those theories among the possible theories
that we can have of the world. They are much like different points of
view, some more limited than others.
Some sentences may require infinite proofs ("this machine will never
halt"), thus we cannot say that they are true, even if they are (such
as the absence of proof of a contradiction in arithmetic). In another
way, this seems like a problem with the provably unprovable (or a form
of "religion"), although COMP is itself a bet of this sort (existence
of a 1p continuation).
The "bet" idea is very clever. It is the most brilliant aspect of
Bruno's result and I do admire his genius for seeing it. :-)
I agree.
I agree 100% and I think that it would be a good exercise to discuss what properties are. This article http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance/ could serve as a reference. It discusses the notion of properties in the context of the philosophical notion of "substance", a concept which I strongly ague against.
I wonder though, why suppose a temporally evolving something? The notion of time is in itself quite complex, and this is why I tend to prefer to just use the CTT in a platonic manner (unchangeability of a result of finite process being applied on finite recursive things).
We can use the concept of invariance and symmetries as we use them in math to deal with properties so that I don't have to paint myself into a corner and only consider the computational view.
Oh. We should be careful about the meanings of the words we use, I almost always meant Turing-equivalent machine (or weaker) when using the term. A machine directly working on reals is already capable of way too much infinitely detailed uncomputable magic (here's a cute short SF story about this: http://qntm.org/responsibility ).
Are you using a more general definition of machine? A machine alwaysIf we are machines, then we can only experience finite amount of
information given some finite interval of time, some of this
information may be incompressible, due to 1p indeterminacy, thus we
could experience "reals" in the limit, despite there only being finite
computations at any given time. This essentially means that any
mathematical object which can be described in Tegmark's "Ultimate
Ensemble" and that can contain us, is already part of the 1p
experiences of those existing within the UD and we can look at 1p
experiences, as well as the UD* trace as being part of the greater
"arithmetical" truth (or any other theory with equivalent
computational power, by the Church-Turing Thesis).
Umm, we have to show that the finiteness of machines is necessary from
first principles, we cannot just assume that it is so.
has a finite body (an integer), even though the grown itself may be
unbounded, but the growth at each step is finite, and given finite
time-steps, there is no way for the machine to become infinite (only
in the "limit").
Yes, I am not limiting myself to the finite machine (as you sketched
them here) as physics requires the use of Real and Complex numbers.
Check out the book by Blum, Cucker, Shub and Smale: http://www.springer.com/mathematics/book/978-0-387-98281-6 with regard to computation on the Reals.
I agree that theSo your beef is with the appearance of continuity in our 1p experience
"arithmetical truth" of the UD may be enough to "force" the 1p to have
content, but we still need to account for the appearance of interactions
or histories of interactions (ala Julian Barbour'sTime Capsule
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Barbour> idea). There reaches a
point, even if it is in the limit of infinitely many, that we cannot put
off the concurrency problem, we have to deal with interactions. An
option is to take the "running of the UD" as a primitive kind of dynamic
that at our local 1p emerges as time and notions of forces, fields, etc.
emerge from the algebras of interactions between the many distinct 1p.
and our inferred 3p world?
Not just with that appearence of continuity. I am trying to be faithful
to what I know of physics and working backwards toward Bruno's idea.
Bruno claims that physics emerges from numbers, OK. Let us see how. How
to we get general covariance and wave functions from COMP? At what point
do the conservations laws emerge? Some of them require continuity!
As long as they don't require true uncomputability, it should be possible (for example, if you consider computable reals). Still, any such endeavor is likely to be quite a lot of work, and it's not obvious to me that only our particular physics should be the most numerous out of possible physics. I would consider the classic inductive approach to be more likely to yield direct results, although COMP does have consequences, so it should be possible to use it as a filter for local theories.
AFAIK, we cannot observe anything that is not computable, which is part of my conjecture about Boolean representability, but this is a different thing than continuity of motion. The fact is that we have very good reasons to believe that the physical world is not granular or discrete in the spatial-temporal sense even though our interactions and those of everything else are limited by the quantization of action.... The Stone duality gives us this exact situation, discrete "particles" making up matter moving in a continuous space (which would be the set complement of the Stone space).
I'm not entirely sure I see the problem. Are you assuming that there is only one universal consciousness and it has only a single history (with a lot of forgetting involved)?The local 3p world may indeed to considered like a Block Universe (or
similar extensions to MWI), although by COMP, that's just a valid
model that we could be using, and a matter of epistemology. This is
indeed a tricky problem, which I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the
tentative answer I'm currently thinking for it. From the 1p, we can
only be certain of the existence of the observer moment, this can lead
someone to consider the ASSA (disconnected OM(observer moments)).
Yes, I agree with that reasoning. I just go further and demand that our
explanations cover multiple observers and the appearance that they are
interacting with each other. Do you understand the Dining Philosophers
Problem <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dining_philosophers_problem>? This
is a well known problem in computer science!
No, I am claiming that that cannot be the case! It is the Platonic theory that would have us believe in a single universal consciousness and I am arguing against that idea. Are you dyslexic? I am, but I have the memory and output type of dyslexia... So I have a hard time remembering sequences of letters and numbers and writing is difficult, but I never see letters or ideas reversed as I read them....
The problem would appear if you identify the 1p time with the 3p time, which I don't do myself - 1p time is about the internal time of a computational structure locally contained in the brain, or about local computational steps.
There is no such thing as 3p time! There is only 1p time. That is what Hitoshi Kitada shows in his work... But your point is well taken.
Many 1p's could correspond to the same or very similar 3p's, thus the sharing of the world, but some 1p's having in common some generalized brain does not mean that their experiences are literally occurring at the same time (although it's fine and correct to assume that the 3p persons we see are non-zombies, which is true due to the shared computations/histories).
OK, but the way you are using 3p is not what I consider as the logically consistent set intersection of many 1ps. I don't see how a real 3p, as you describe here, can exist as it would be like the superposition of many points of view, a situation which cannot be represented by a Boolean algebra. "Occurring at the same time" by whose clock? That is the concurrency problem! I have tried to see how the idea that you have sketched might work before I came across Pratt's papers, I never worked for me so I kept looking for an alternative and I found one. :-)
In that way, consciousness isn't identified with some (Universe,Position,Time,BranchId,...), it's related to (Program, Step)'s arithmetical truth at different levels. (Universe,Position,Time,BranchId,...) may be contained/shared in many computations by different (Program, Step) corresponding to completely separate 1p's.
Yes, but this is simply an inversion of the situation that we have in Material monism, where a single 3p world determines everything that is "real" and our minds are some kind of causally ineffective epiphenomena that suffers from the delusion that it is moving along a trajectory that already exists frozen in the amber of a 3,1 space-time "block". This way of thinking fails because it cannot account for the very real sense of "being in the world and qualia, blah blah blah, that we experience.
Now, the idea of single countably infinite universal consciousness could make sense, except there is one problem: COMP Immortality - there will always exist a continuation.
That is interesting but it is something unreportable even if true. But many spiritualist are convinced of it. Could this be a hint that COMP is hiding some fantasies? Are we just constructing a secular version of Heaven with Platonia? We need to ask ourselves this question in all seriousness!
Maybe some continuations could very well merge with others, thus the problem would be side-stepped, but what if they are actually unique countably infinite potential futures for most observers?
The idea that I am considering does not allow for disembodied minds so "life-after-death" is not supported. OTOH, there might be a way around this with the continuation argument from MWI of QM, but there would still be a body for each mind and a mind for each body in any case.
There could be some ways to still allow for an universal consciousness in that case, but I think might it might be best to just abandon the concept for now and just think of different arithmetical truths corresponding to different 1p's, or if you want, only consider it for histories, whatever they may be.
Unless, of course, I misunderstood your problem.
The problem that I see is that COMP, as it is being considered, does not explain how multiple separate minds can interact.
See before this. Shared computations.From the 3p or 1p's memories/knowledge, that is, at a higher level
than just experience, we bet on the existence of the past and future,
as a matter of self-consciousness and self-reference. We tend to
identify with the (abstract) structure making this bet. This leads one
to RSSA - OM's being relative to each other - that we will make our
bets based only on expected continuations and past/journal/history. If
consciousness is how some truths associated with a self-referential
universal number feel from the inside, and given the bets that number
is making, it wouldn't seem that strange that we will experience
apparent continuity (even though we cannot prove to anyone that we
actually experience such continuity - we cannot even show that to
ourselves - if we just consider a few moments in the past).
I agree with all of this but you are only considering a single observer
here. Think of what you just wrote as applicable to many observers
interacting with each other. How does that work?
Shared how? If a pair of computations happen to output the same string and follow the COMP logic, they are instantiating one and the same mind, not two different by a 4-diffeomorphism pair of minds. But I might be missing something in this. There is the Leibniz Equivalence to consider! From http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-holearg/index.html#PriSpaSub we read: "If two distributions of fields are related by a smooth transformation, then they represent the same physical systems." But how do we get this to work consistently with the unique sense of self that each of us has? If our "unique sense of self" is just an illusion caused by our incorrect association of self with a physical body then.... But why have an illusion of a unique physical body for each mind? The Stone duality seems to explain that but I could be operating under a misunderstanding of the applicability of the Stone duality...
I need to think about this some more!
Dualism on what? How "arithmetical truth" feels from the inside seems to be fairly monist to me.
I don't think the continuity problem gets solved by dismissing a
Platonia and using something more "physical"(what is that though?).
See: MGA for why.
I agree, but that is not the problem that I have with the ideal monism.
My contention is that we are forced into some form of dualism to account
for many separate minds capable of having some form of interaction with
each other.
What does the sentence "Dualism on what?" mean? That arithmetic truth feels from the inside does have a monism sense to it until you think about how that Arithmetic truth that you feel as "you" is interacting with the Arithmetic Truth that feels from the inside as me. What is the interface between us? I am saying that the interface between all possible Arithmetic truths *is* the physical world and as such is dual to Arithmetic truth. That kind of duality. I am not considering Descartes form of dualism! It is "not even wrong"! ;-)
Interaction is just sharing some computations or truths.
No, it is more than just "sharing" there are other conditions involved. We have all of physics to reproduce including the general non-commutativity of observables of QM and the general covariance of GR. Neglecting those gets us nowhere.
When Bruno interviews some LUM, he simulates it and thus the machine manifest relatively to him and he can see what that machine has to say. You and me share a common universe (or computations representing this universe), both of us have an "illusion" of matter of each other, yet both of our computations are real and correspond to separate 1p's.
I agree but my claim is that is not all of the story, we cannot eliminate the physical and still have the necessary interfacing action that the physical allows.
How?
We need to go over what exactly are the requirements of this measure that we are considering here.
Honestly, I am getting older, slower and dumber. Maybe some bright youngster will figure it out for us.
If observers are finite, does that not directly lead to the COMP assumption?
By absoluteness I mostly meant the very wide consequences that followThis doesn't really happen with computation - if there's anything
absolute in math, it's computation (although different theories about
what arithmetic is will result in different things the theory can talk
about, but it won't make computation any less absolute).
I strongly suspect that your argument here about the "absoluteness" of
computation is a bit too strong or even misplaced. Restricting
information to only being a binary bit on mappings in the Integers is a
harsh regime, no wonder computation is so "well behaved", any deviation
of the bits from the tyranny of the integers at all is terminated with
extreme prejudice! I see computation, in general, as "the transformation
of representations" and thus do not see the by fiat confinement to the
integers as beneficial.
from the Church-Turing Thesis. In another way, the behavior of finite
things to which we apply finite processes is always well-defined.
Things are never as clear when we have infinitely-sized things or
potentially infinite processes.
I claim that it is impossible to observe infinite quantities as such
cannot be exactly represented in a communicable way. This does not mean
that infinities do not exist. It is just an inherent limitation on what
observers can be.
Umm, observers per se might not be finite, but the observations, their 1p's, would have to be finite. This is the same kind of situation as we have in QM, observables can be continuous and even infinite but absorption and emission events are discrete in the action involved. This, ironically, is what Einstein won his Nobel prize for proving.
Or do you allow implementation which involves concrete infinities, yet nevertheless only processing finite sense data? Should it be possible (in your theory) for an observer to contain infinite processes which nevertheless finish in finite time?
We could not observe concrete infinities... we can only infer them...
Bruno Marchal
On Feb 7, 6:06 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:On 07 Feb 2012, at 00:23, Craig Weinberg wrote:I'm not lowering subst level at all, I'm saying that subst levelis anindexical.?That's what you aren't getting about my position. Substitution levelis not a scalar variable.?
There is no fixed level at which a plastic plant cannot be
distinguished from a real plant. A person looking through binoculars
is on one level, an ant that crawls on it is on another, a molecule
within it is on another. There is no such thing as substitution level,
and there is no such thing as substitution in an absolute sense. There
is only relativistic imitation - which is subjective and indexical -
not scalar.
I was saying, at the meta level, that you cannot refer to your ownunderstanding of your own "argument" to convey it.
You can when the argument is about subjectivity. I get a vote, non-
subjects don't.
What are the quantities that you associate to modalities?
The only modalities you refer to are those associated with
quantitative representation.
Then I can call the ecumenical a meta-meta axiom.Then you lost me, and it looks like you just want have an answer.
You are saying that anything that comp can't explain can still be
explained by comp.
But that's what comp can explain without assuming materially primitivebodies.And given that we don't know what materially primitive bodies can be,comp solves a problem here.
I don't see any advantage that computational primitives bring to the
table over material primitives.
I'm not discussing comp, I'm discussing comp's lack of realism. Those
billions of years of evolution count.
Besides, I think that even in
cultures where few have been influenced by Aristotelianism, matter and
weight are well understood.
I'm really not confused at all. You keep accusing me of that but I'mvery clear on my distinctions.You are not. And you are not well place to judge this.You are saying that your opinions about me are facts.I am saying that *anyone* who argue cannot refer to his ownunderstanding, or his own clarity.
It depends on what you are arguing about.
In this case, where
subjectivity is critically important, *not* referring to our own
understanding is a mistake - one which will be exploited by default by
comp.
As long as you use comp to frame the argument, comp can't lose.
If you see the players only from the game's point of view, there is no
possibility of recovering the world of the players - everything is
described only as rules of the game.
You could as well say, like in the "hunting of the snark": "If youwere clever, and if I got the time, I could make it all clear to you,but given that you are dumb, it is not worth the try". This is fun,but not an argument.
The point is that you have to make it clear to yourself. You have to
directly draw upon your own experience of being a living person. Your
arguments are predicated on tying everything back to a specific kind
of logic, which I am telling you is a tautological trap. You are in
the trap, telling me that I have to give you something that forces you
to be freed from the trap, and I am telling you that you have to free
yourself. That's how it works. You have to care. You have to want to
understand the whole truth rather than just a numerical theory of
itself.
That's why science and philosophy exist. You are notdefending a new theory, you just propose the usual Aristotelianmetaphysics, with a new unintelligible rick to not evacuateconsciousness. But you are coherent, to keep such Aristotelianism youhave to abandon comp indeed (by UDA). It makes sad that you are notwilling to do the work for making your "theory" more precise.
I'm not opposed to making it more precise, but it may be precise
enough as it is, given that what is says is that half of the universe
is an imprecise 'seems like'.
It's not necessary and addsnothing.It makes comp refutable.
Or maybe it gives an illusion of refutability to comp?
There is no error, I promise you.
The appeal to more 'precision' is a
demand for more obedience to the axioms of comp.
You cannot invoke your own understanding. That's an argument perauthority (it proves nothing and augment the plausibility that youarecrackpot in the interlocutor ear).It's not an argument from authority, it's an argument from sense.An argument cannot refer to senses.All arguments refer only to senses.Not at all. An argument is valid or not independently of sense
Valid to whom? For what purpose?
or eveninterpretation of the formula in the argument. That's what logic isall about. You are doing some confusion of level again.
It's an accusation that doesn't mean anything to me, because I know
that you are either not understanding my argument or are in denial
about it.
Precisely not around the comp context.
That's how comp is used to cheat common sense.
We are the evidence of that.Humans can change the physical laws?
Is there a physical law that says humans should be able to leave the
planet and go to the Moon?
We don't need to change physical laws, we transcend them withpsychological non-laws.I see words only.
Thinking, feeling, imagining.. these give us the power to transcend
physical laws in the context of our subjectivity.
My argument becomes you when entangled in the long and deep
computations which belongs to arithmetic. (Doesn't everything become
everything that way?)
Comp is a theory. That's the point.
So you are really saying that there is a theory that they don't lack
that capacity, not that the theory is correct. I can't argue with
that...yes there is a theory.
Because I interview sane machines. So that remark is trivial.
There you go putting an arbitrary limit on insanity. If sane machines
can't go insane
then you are postulating a primitive sanity dualism,
one which is not borne out in human machines.
Humans don't have any kind of limitlike that.because they fall, like most machine, into insanity. But the goal isto find an explanation of the correct laws of physics, and in thatcase it is better to interview simple correct machines.
Then you can only find the answers that you already agree with
and
erroneously presume the rest is disposable.
Such difference are acquired in contextual deep computation. Iinterview baby machines.
Babies have personalities too. Machines don't
(which is why we need to
dress them up with 'skins', GUIs and voices to tolerate their
monotonous automatism).
You don't need to have qualia to have a property of 3p noncommunicability.There are many non communicable 3p things indeed. I never said thatthey are all qualia. Only the one which verify other axioms, andappears related to truth. Z* minus Z is non communicable, but is notqualia.
That definition conflates qualia with representation though, which
misrepresents qualia completely. Blue is a presentation in it's own
right, not a quantitative placeholder for luminosity vectors. I can
see or imagine blue without any verification of axioms. I can conjure
it directly in my mind's eye at any moment.
I think that the 1p-sense that the machine has is unrelated to the 3p-mechanism.It is related to an infinity of 3p local representations.
What makes it anything other than that?
The real 1p- sense of any given machine reflects theexperience of the substrate,That makes anything more hard to understand.
I think it makes it easier because you understand that you can't
understand. It frees you up to understand how to get out of it what
you want.
not the human code riding on top of that.The 1p we imagine behind the function of the program is 100%projection.Not sure what you mean. Seems quite solipsistic to me.
I mean that it's no different from a puppet or a cartoon. We can
project a figurative personality on it but it's pure projection.
How? Given that sense are primitive, which makes no sense.If sense is primitive, then it makes sense by definition.So the ability to detect and incorporate what is detected into alarger coherence is a primitive operation?That seems senseless to me.Why? Since arithmetic truth requires detectionA new axioms, and what could that mean? I suspect confusion of levelagain.
Why am I put on the defensive for exposing the metaphysical
assumptions of comp? Since we cannot detect anything without detecting
it, then we cannot assume that any truth can exist outside of
detection.
and integrativecoherence, it cannot be as primitive as sense. Nothing more primitivethan sense can make sense by definition, so it cannot be detected orintegrated. This is what I'm telling you - sense is *the* primitive ofthe cosmos.But you don't succeed in making sense for that. Except by constantallusion to your experience. But this does not work, because machinesdo the same ... until they realize exactly this.It is not a proof that comp is true, but an argument showing the nonvalidity of your refutation of comp.
Sense is constant allusion to experience. I make sense by
demonstrating how sense is made.
Pretend I am a machine you are
interviewing. Then maybe it will make more sense to you.
A machine can say "17 is prime".Can it? Or do we have to define what prime is for it in advance?Mostmachines don't know what 17 or prime is.Same for man. Of course we have to define the object we talk about ifwe want argue for or against their existence. This does notdistinguish machine and man, unless you endow man with magicalabilities.Is the ability to participate in the world without having to define itarithmetically a magical ability?No. It is natural for all machine. All correct machine havedifficulties to believe in comp. It is necessarily counter-intuitive.
What machine does not define its world arithmetically?
There is no scientific truth. There is only scientific beliefs."scientific truth" is a term used by journalist in bad popularjournal. Or by old scientists having brain problems, or byepistemologists working at a higher non assertive level. In sciencewenever use the word truth, nor should we do in religion, except whenitis the subject matter, but again, we will not pretend that we aretrue, or that we propose scientific truth. Science is only beliefs,even when true (by chance, for example).I'm ok with that, but even more reason to say that scientific beliefscan be expressed in a poetic form.It can, and if it don't refer to assertive truth, it can even be bothpoetical and scientific. My point is that we don't pretend a truth inscience. Only hypothesis and arguments whose verifiability is quasi-mechanical.
That is indeed appropriate for the science of the Western empirical
tradition. That tradition came out of Hermetic/alchemical forms of
epistemology. The frontier of science now, I think weaves the truths
of both approaches in order to study the full spectrum of
phenomenology and cosmology.
Or are you saying there are notruths or that arithmetic is not poetic?Truth exist, but we don't pretend to know them when we do science.
That's fine, but we aren't that. We can no longer afford to pretend
that we aren't a form of truth that exists (or existence that is true)
for the sake of a science that is designed specifically to exclude our
truth.
That's only half of reality, but it is only through that realitythatwe can know any part of the other half.Argument?The argument is that all truths beyond our senses are known to usonlythrough our senses. What is the argument against it?I asked an argument for the quantity 1/2.not sure what you mean. you want me to argue with myself about this?I was ciricizing your idea that the universe split in halve. Sense andmatter.
It's really Experience and matter. Both of them are sense. Sense is
the split and the split is sense.
Comp refuses to look at the reality though. It looks at a straw man of
reality in which comp is elevated to the level of the modeled reality.
Todays truck are not person.
It's not clear where the line is between a sophisticated truck and a
simple person. Comp seems to say there is no line, therefore all
trucks are simple persons.
The logical sense of coherence is in the "Dt", the tangibledetectionis in "p", and the machine's body and relative belief is in "Bp".TheBp & Dt & p is a variant of the self-reference logic. The non firstperson communicable part of the logic of that variant (named X1* inAUDA) is the qualia logic, or the sensible matter hypostasis. Thebootstrap law is given by p -> [] <> p, with []p defined roughly byBp& Dt & p. Bp is Gödel probability applied on the arithmeticalsigma_1sentence p. Dp is ~B~p. <> p is ~ [] ~, and t is "1=1".The existence of variables like Dt and p already presupposes senseanddetection of visual symbols.It does not. But it implies them.What are they without them?They are like the natural numbers without the number 13. Nonsense.
That's what I'm saying. Visual symbols without vision and symbolic
thought are nonsense.
Because I don't see the symmetry. You never show it.
You don't see a symmetry between public and private? objects across
space and subjects through time? matter and energy? generic and
proprietary? significance and entropy?
What is then ananomalous symmetry.
An anomalous symmetry is a way of describing the relation of something
like the content of perceptions with the neurological activity of the
nervous system. They are symmetrical in that perceptions present a
particular moment in the life of a person as an event in a story,
while the neurological activity presents the same moment in exactly
the opposite way (as a many synchronized but mechanical (non-
experienced) events across the brain). They are anomalous in that the
narrative of the biography cannot be deduced by analyzing the
mechanics of the brain alone, and the mechanics of the brain cannot be
deduced by experiencing them from the inside. It's an anomalous
symmetry.
You seems to escape forwards by adding newvocabulary, when you have not yet explain the one you are already using.I might become tired to try to help you making sense for the others.
The words aren't important. They are interchangeable pointers to the
underlying concepts.
No machine can correctly believe she is some precise machine, and itis hard for them to make the leap of faith.
How do you know this?
Study the work of other people. Address their problem, with orwithoutyour "theory" as training.That would be worthwhile I'm sure, but unfortunately it would betoomuch of a distraction.OK. That why I am not good in saucer. All those guy running aftertheball distract me too much. But then I don't pretend marking thegoal.This isn't a game though, it's the truth of reality.If you don't study the work of others, you will not succeed in makingyour point "really" accessible to others.It already is accessible to some others, I don't think that anyone cansucceed in making any point to all others.To all those interested. Yes that is possible, even if that can taketime for fashion and human reasons. That's the point of science andrationalism.
That may be the point, but that doesn't mean it succeeds.
Study UDA. Learn to reason in the comp theory, before trying to refuteit.
That's the same as the fundamentalist who says to read the Bible
before you refute it.
Fantasy is the same way. It too isbeyond the grasp of all real systems and arithmetic too.But it has, in the relevant sense, once you admit there is asubstitution level.Substitution level is an indexical of perception.If this is true, then comp would lead to solipsism.No because there is no self there to anchor a solipsistic orientation.It leads to vacuous nihilism.Self exists in comp by the Kleene second recursion theorem. I canexplain if you want, but your tone makes me think that whateverexplanations are provided you will refute it by confusing some levels,or by referring to your experience.
Only if you can explain Kleene without using any variables at all.
Then sure, I'm interested in understanding what it's about.
But the evidencesare that first person plural makes sense, in the comp theory, and in"reality" (thanks to the MWI which multiplies collection ofmachines).There is no perception going on, so substitution level is fixedprogrammatically. Come to the light side Bruno...You really talk like a priest.
I was going for Jedi.
You are saying that you are superior, in some sense, to otherentities. You deny a soul to a class of individuals, by invokingfuzzyrhetorical trick reifying your own experience.That is precisely why I am superior to a machine, because I can dothat. A machine can't. It needs a reason to presume it's ownexistence. I don't. I can assert my primordial authority because Ifeel and know, and understand that I can. I don't need permissionfroma program or a script or a rule book. I embody the theory. We don'tview the universe as impartial voyeurs, we are fully immersed withinit. We define it and it defines us.What makes you sure that some machine cannot do that? This is stillanexample of your persistent question begging.If it could then I would not call it a machine.?
A machine that can exercise a personal preference over it's program I
would not call a machine.
Since I know that Ican do this, but I naturally define machines as not being able to dothat, I would need to see or understand something that convinces meotherwise.You really don't make give them any chance.You continue to reiterate the only axiom of yours which makes sense:comp is false. That's possible, but I don't hear any genuine argument.
Comp being false is only an incidental consequence of all forms of
epistemological supremacy outside of sense itself being false in the
sense of not being absolutely and universally true.
Sense is the only
bridge between quantity and quality.
All other theories are constructs
within sense channels, and as such are true in some sense, false in
some sense, true and false in some sense, neither true and false in
some sense.
Sense itself however, is that very symmetry of truth
modulation. The primordial possibility of perspective and distinction
which is simultaneously unified and divided.
Which makes substrate sense even more weird.
Why? Different variations on the substrate specialize in amplifying
different senses and motives up to the top level organism.
That sounds to me like the song does the singing and songwriting.Yes. That's the magic of the universal numbers. They can do both.Then the singers and songwriters are innocent bystanders?No. They are UMs too.That seems redundant.?Arithmetical truth and MW are redundant indeed. By they are not theexplanation, they are what we try to explain. Sands on the beach areredundant too.
MW?
I don't assume theory as primitive. Only numbers and +, *.The existence of theories and machines is a theorem in N,+, *.But +, * is already a theory of what can be done with numbers.No. They are symbol used in a theory.If they don't correspond to something they can't be symbols. A theoryis required for their interpretation.That's what I was saying.
You were saying + and * aren't a theory. I'm saying that symbols and
theories are part of the same thing, so that it's disingenuous to say
that + and * are primitive without admitting that they supervene on an
arithmetic theory.
Therefore you do assume that theory is primitive.
You can't create theory-ness from + and * alone, because they don't
mean anything without theory in the first place.
The theory assumes some formula,among which you will not find a formula assuming the existence of atheory. You are confusing level of explanation. You could say thatthebig-bang theory assumes the existence of an alphabet, without whichwecannot express "big-bang".The theory and formula are parts of the same thing. From an absoluteperspective you cannot have a formula without a theory that it is partof.That might be true or false, relevant or not, but is not precise enough.
What determines whether a proposition is precise enough?
Which would make sense if we lived in aworld of disembodied theories settling into matter but it seemsobvious that he opposite is the case.Because we are deluded by the fact that we participate to the dramafrom inside.Why does that prevent us from encountering disembodied theories fromentering our drama?Nothing. The question is what do you mean by matter, and please don'trefer to physical notion, because this would beg the question.We should see formulas written in the sky then sometimes.?
If nothing prevents theories from existing independently of physical
form, then we should be able to observe them appearing in space or
under the couch or online.
The internet should be haunted by
innumerable autonomous entities that appear and disappear at will.
It's not though. No sentient activity on the internet has been
observed not attributable to human efforts.
Arithmetic emulate all histories.Only if you believe in emulation.Emulations existence is a theorem in arithmetic (even without comp).That is why arithmetic separates from reality. It assumes genericinterchangeability and discards the primacy of 1p unrepeatability.Not at all. It can explain that, by indexicalness + deep linearhistories.
Indexicalness + deep linear histories are two key factors for
subjectivity in multisense realism as well - only I call them
orientation + cumulative entanglement.
+ and * can be extracted from
significance
and perceptual inertia but my terms are whole grain, full
spectrum concepts, while comp's have all of the important nutrients
refined out of them.
you should study computer science. It could help you to understandthat comp is hard to be refuted.It's impossible to refute, because it defines how it can and cannot berefuted in it's own narrow terms which disqualify subjective authoritya priori.No. it is the most refutable of all theory given that it describes, ornot, physics.
I can describe physics or not too. Why does that make me refutable?
It does not disqualify subjective authority for the 1p, on thecontrary it relies on it.Of course, like everywhere in science, it disqualify the 1p discoursewhen used in the theory (not when tackle by the theory)
That's why it is ultimately false. 1p is primary in reality.
If not is is called literature, and belongs to another genere (novel,fiction, phenonomenology, etc.).
Then the cosmos belongs to that genre as well.
That's prejudices on yourself, but they have some foundations: mainlythat you seem not interested in studying the theory that you want torefute. This makes your point rather weak.
I don't feel that there is anything important that I'm missing. I get
the idea. It used to be my worldview. I only see now that the symmetry
of the entire collection of universal perspectives makes more sense
than any one of them.
Any of them can make a strong point if you study
them.
Any of them make the other points seem weak. That's how the
symmetry works. You focus on one thing by marginalizing the other
things.
Bruno Marchal
Sorry, I answered a paragraph to quickly. You raised a key question
which is at the crux of the mind-body problem, and its comp
reformulation.
On 09 Feb 2012, at 10:49, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> On 07 Feb 2012, at 23:05, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>>> I think that the 1p-sense that the machine has is unrelated to
>>>> the 3p-
>>>> mechanism.
>>>
>>> It is related to an infinity of 3p local representations.
>>
>> What makes it anything other than that?
>
> Nothing.
That "nothing" is not correct.
A better answer is computer science and truth.
I might say comp, by definition. But I guess you are arguing against
comp, so I have to explain more.
But for this you have to be able to assume comp, if only temporarily.
With comp, we are duplicable. I can be "cut" in Brussels, and pasted
in two places, W and M, says. In that simple local case, we get the
two 3p local representations of 3-me (my body at the right comp
level): one is W and one in M.
The one in M will observe his environment, and conclude that he feels,
subjectively, to be in M, and not to be in W. (And similarly for the
one in W). OK?
Now, even without using comp, nor even strong AI, but just the much
weaker behavioral-comp (which allows zombie and accept that machines
can at least imitate humans behavior), you should be able to
understand the explanations that the zombie in M (say) will give to
your question, and which is that computer science will make one
machine (betting on comp and surviving or pretending surviving) that
she knows the difference between the objective collection of 3-me in M
and 3-me in W, and what she personally feel when looking where she is.
This is a point which, I think, has already been made by Gunderson,
which is the fact that men, or machines, when individuated are
individuals, and that it entails a natural asymmetry between your body
and the body of others. For example you can see the back of the neck
of anybody else more directly than yours. That kind of obvious truth
is truth for the machine as for the man. A machine can understand that
an objective description of the existing 3ps will not allow a
selection of one particular 1ps. So what can do that? The machine can
understand the zombie machine in M, who will just say that she looked
around and recognize M, making her understand the difference between
her 1p and the "objective" 3p.
Formally, this will be the difference between the Gödel Bp, which
asserts only that the machine (conceive in a 3p body or code, or
number) believes (asserts) p, and (Bp & p) the machine believes p, and
"God agree" (say), I mean "p is true".
You are saying that all the 3ps together cannot create the sense. I am
saying that we can interview the individuated machines, and that for
them a sort of miracle occurs, they know perfectly well the difference
between them and the others. And they can make that difference
relative to their probable computations.
In that context, you can describe a "free-will" choice, as of form of
self-killing, for example by duplicating you in W and M, but
annihilating you in W, or in M, according to your will before. Or in
deciding to not reconstitute yourself in some place. A free-choice is
a form of premeditated suicide. A local pruning of possibilities.
The distinction between 1p and collection of 3p will be natural for
the machine points of view, and is indeed a difference of points of
view.
Bruno
acw
> Hi ACW,
>
> text that context would be lost that is necessary. Let us slow down a
> bit. I think we are decohering a bit. ;-)
>
while to write.
required and observable. If the (true, actual) laws of physics only
include computable reals, or just dovetail on reals somehow, it will
only require including reals in the epistemology.
as the numeral '1' being used to represent the number S0, where S is the
successor function and numeral 0 stands for the abstract number 'zero',
which when used within the theory of arithmetic has a specific meaning
and so on). I don't think I was making that error myself, but I suppose
my original sentence could have been read like that. A description of
the UD is not what causes the 1p experience, of course, MGA shows that
(certain ensemble of truths of the abstract computations going on in the
UD tend to be identified with the experience of consciousness instead).
>> While I can see how some UD runs a copy of itself as well, I'm not
>> entirely I see the problem here with what I said.
> [SPK]
> Is the UD an algorithm? I think that it is! Please disabuse me if I am
> in error here.
>
+ and an universal machine (interpreter). Eventually at some step, it
will reach the godel number of itself and thus it will start running
'itself', at a certain step (it will run step 0 of itself at step
Godel_number("UD within the language of UD")). This shouldn't be taken
to mean that UD's running of itself means UD caused its own existence or
anything like that - in UDA step 8, the UD is ran platonically (in the
sense that each of its steps are encoded in verifiable arithmetical
truths), along with all other programs that the UD would eventually run.
it makes sense globally (such as when applied to arithmetic or various
other axiomatic theories). It does make sense for indexicals though,
such as "the time now is xx:xx". Your idea seems to be that there is
only one Universal Observer (UO) which experiences the OM's in linear
time. There's a few problems with this within COMP or MWI. We don't
notice the splits obviously. In COMP, a lot of forgetting has to happen
to allow for UO's linearity of experience. With MWI, it seems even more
troublesome as each history is assumed infinite and there are more than
2 splits at each step, thus the time/step length becomes uncountable.
The problem seems to exist for both MWI-immortality and
COMP-immortality, although with forgetting, it might be possible to
somehow "dovetail" on all these experiences. While forgetting seems like
an interesting case to consider, I tend to favor RSSA myself, so I'm
mostly interested in the subjective future 1p experiences relative to
the current 'me', which usually means that I tend to favor the view that
an infinity of them exists (one for each mind), although if you have a
reason why I should consider only a single one existing, I'd like to
know why and how it handles all the splits/merges.
>> In a way, consciousness is like that inner interpreter. In a more
>> extreme form, you could consider someone running some computation of a
>> self-contained OS+VR+SIM(s) machine and stopping computing that
>> machine, and it should still have continuations, be it in the UD or
>> anywhere those future computations may be found (be they physically or
>> platonically), and possibly externally acausal (if considering physics
>> or MGA-like thought experiments), but internally causal and continuous
>> (from 1p(s)). Maybe my thought experiment is a bit extreme, although I
>> can't see any obvious refutation of it within the context of
>> COMP(well, some simulations may be very low measure or unstable,
>> compared to those which allow for more easier/cheaper locally stable
>> 1p indeterminacy, but this is a fixable problem by adding access to
>> undefined functionality/random oracles).
> [SPK]
> I think we have a similar idea here. I am making an argument that we
> cannot use words that imply or even require the existence of a substrate
> upon which one set of contents of an computation (or the "internal
> P.O.V." of the computation) is implied to impact upon the content of
> another without the substrate existing. We have to consider exactly what
> interaction means and how it is defined in COMP.
>
>
problem with more 'abstract' substrates such as an arithmetical
Platonia, as it seems to have almost all the required properties.
Picking a random "physical" implementation for the UD as the only thing
that exists leaves you with the problem of zombies and consciousness as
shown by the MGA. As for interaction, I consider that as sharing
computations between observers, as explained later in my previous post.
> the world we live in through the physical quantities---position, linear
> momentum, energy, angular
> momentum---of the system that is described by that Hilbert space. These
> physical quantities
> arise naturally from spacetime symmetries and the system Hamiltonian,
> and they are the physical
> resources that must be supplied to access various parts of the system
> Hilbert space. The crucial
> physical question for quantum computation is the following: how much of
> these resources is required
> to achieve a Hilbert-space dimension sufficient for a computation?"
> "Quantum mechanics---and its generalization to quantum
> fields---constrains our description of
> physical systems sufficiently that we can formulate the question of
> physical-resource demands in
> a general way. We find that to avoid supplying an amount of some
> physical resource that grows
> exponentially with problem size, the computer must be made up of
> parts---degrees of freedom in
> the simplest analysis, particles and field modes acting as effective
> degrees of freedom in the case
> of quantum fields---whose number grows nearly linearly with the number
> of qubits required in an
> equivalent quantum computer. This thus becomes a fundamental requirement
> for a system to be a
> scalable quantum computer."
> ...
> "The analysis of resource demands is particularly simple for systems of
> particles described by
> ordinary quantum mechanics, i.e., not requiring the more general
> description in terms of quantum
> fields. For these systems, the subsystems can be identified with the
> degrees of freedom of the
> particles. The quantum state of such a computer is described in a
> Hilbert space that is a tensor
> product of the Hilbert spaces of the degrees of freedom.
> A degree of freedom corresponds to a pair of (generalized) canonical
> co�ordinates, position q and
> momentum p. The physical resources are the ranges of positions and
> momenta, ?q and ?p, used
> by the computation. The physically relevant measure of these resources
> is the corresponding phase-
> space area or action, A = ?q?p. For a degree of freedom that is an
> intrinsic angular momentum J,
> we can use ?q = 2? and ?p = ?J, thus giving A = 2??J. The connection to
> Hilbert space comes
> from the fact that a quantum state occupies an area in phase space given
> by Planck's constant
> h ; orthogonal states correspond roughly to nonoverlapping areas, each
> of area h [22]. Thus the
> available dimension of the Hilbert space for a single degree of freedom
> is given approximately by
> A/h. The goal of scalability is to avoid having to supply an action
> resource A for any degree of
> freedom that grows exponentially with problem size."
>
> I prefer the discussion in terms of quantum computers because our
> physical universe is quantum mechanical not classical.
>
>
Okay, quantum computations can be emulated by dovetailing, and
experienced as we do through the 1p-indeterminacy. The natural numbers
seem to be a sufficient platform (of countably infinite "resources"),
although if they are not, one would have to show why.
>> What if the machine is always finite, but unbounded in the limit
>> (although the limit is never reached for any observer)? If the
>> physical always has some specific finite upper bound, how do you
>> justify such a stronger claim? (If it's not any specific limit, it can
>> be bypassed through some "mathematically inductive jump", but this
>> doesn't seem necessary as you already mentioned an eternally running UD).
> [SPK]
> We must consider the entire range of possible observers and
> technological abilities. We cannot limit ourselves to humans with their
> current technological abilities. Therefore we cannot put a pre-set limit
> on the upper bound. I agree that the machine must be finite, but my
> reasoning follows from mathematical considerations. My conjecture is
> that the content of experience - the sequence of OMs - of a generic
> observer is constrained to be representable by a sequence of Boolean
> Algebras of propositions or "Free Boolean Algebras
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Boolean_algebra>". This restriction
> ties the contraints that exist on Boolean Algebras to being countable
> (and the compactness of the topological spaces that are their dual) to
> the finiteness of what can be observed by an observer. So we do not have
> to postulate finiteness separately iff we take the Stone duality as it
> has finiteness built in.
> To explain this reasoning further, I would like to point out that for a
> large number of entities to be able to communicate with each other, it
> is necessary that whatever the means of communication might be, it must
> be such that what is true for one will be true for all otherwise we get
> a situation where "The Tree is tall" is true for some observers pointing
> at a giant redwood while it is false for some other observers pointing
> at the same giant redwoods. Communication requires mutual consistency of
> propositions and this can only happen if the logic of their means of
> communication is bivalent with respect to truth values. Now we can
> quibble about this and discuss how in Special Relativistic situations we
> can indeed have situations there "X caused Y" is true for some frames of
> reference and "Y caused X" for some other frame of reference, but this
> dilemma can be resolved by considering the effect of a finite speed of
> light whose "speed" is an invariant for all observers, e.g. general
> covariance.
>
>
Mostly agreed, although my category theory knowledge is limited, so I
don't know what intuitions led you to that particular Boolean Algebgra
conjecture about the OMs. One thing that might be worth considering is
the machine which keeps expanding: consider an AI running on an actual
Turing Machine (unbounded memory), the actual implementation shouldn't
matter (be it running directly in some UD or actually living in a
physical universe where it constantly harvests resources to increase its
memory), how does your FBA conjecture deal with such self-modifying,
self-improving, self-extending observers (humans are not yet there,
obviously we're very good at working with limited resources and finite
bounded memory at the cost of forgetting).
But physics by itself does not explain consciousness either (as shown by
MGA). Maybe I just don't see what the concurrency problem is.
> It has no constraints of thermodynamics, no limits on speeds of signals,
> no explanation as to how an Ideal Form is defined, e.g. what is the
> standard of its perfection, ect. It is no different from the Realm of
> God in religious mythos, so what is it doing here in our rational
> considerations? Forgive me but I was raised by parents that where
> Fundamentalists "Believers", so please understand that I have an allergy
> to ideas that remind me of the mental prison that I had to work so hard
> to escape.
I'm not asking you to share all of Plato's beliefs here. It's merely a
minimal amount of "magic", not unlike the "magic" you have to accept by
positing a 3p world. The amount is basically this: arithmetical (or
computational) sentences have truth values independent of anything
physical and consciousness/qualia may be how some such arithmetical
truth feels from the inside. Without at least some axioms, one cannot
get anywhere, you can't reduce arithmetic to only logic and so on. Why
would Platonia have to have the same constraints as our physical realms
- it need only obey to constraints of logic and math, which usually
means stuff that is contained within the Church Turing Thesis and its
implications. Speed of signals? If some theory is inconsistent, it's
only there as part of the reasoning of some other machine. Ideal Form?
How do you define an integer or the axioms that talk about arithmetic?
Popular religious mythos tend to be troublesome because they involve
*logically impossible* properties being attributed to Gods and other
beings - things which are inconsistent. It's not like one doesn't assume
some axioms in any theory - they are there in almost any scientific
theory. Yet, unlike popular religions, you're free to evaluate your
hypotheses and use evidence and meta-reasoning to decide which one is
more likely to be true and then try to use the results of such theories
to predict how stuff will behave or bet on various things.
Of course, it's not hard to get trapped in a bad epistemology, and I can
see why you'd be extra skeptical of bad theories, however nobody is
telling you to believe a theory is true or false, instead it asks you to
work out the consequences of each theory's axioms (as well as using
meta-reasoning skills to weed down overly complex theories, if you
prefer using Occam's) and then either choose to use or not use that
particular theory depending if the results match your
observations/expectations/standards/... (if expectations are broken, one
would either have to update beliefs or theories or both).
> The structure that you propose has to have, at least, the basic
> properties of a space-time in the sense that we can associate identical
> properties to different space-time coordinates so that we can have a
> coherent notion of an moving object A at position X, X', X'', ...
> interacting with a moving object B at position Y, Y', Y'', .... We also
> have to deal with the effect of having a notion of time that can be
> represented as a infinitely divisible ordered sequence. Furthermore, we
> have to consider that whatever we might intuit about those intuitions of
> other people cannot be such that their truth value is not restricted to
> a particular frame of reference or drop we would have to the idea that
> there must be a global truth valuation and only use a local truth
> valuation and then find a different way to achieve the requirement of
> mutual consistency in communications.
>
> GR tells us that there is not a global measure of time as we cannot
> define physical clocks within infinitesimal Minkowski spaces that GR
> operates on nor a way to globally synchronize the clocks, so we have to
> use something else as our "clock" and a different way to achieve the
> appearance of synchronization. Hitoshi Kitada, in his papers, describes
> how to define a "clock" using the Hamiltonian of a QM system that
> bypasses this problem of GR, but this solution to the problem of time
> requires that GR and QM have an "orthogonal relation" or, in other
> words, that GR is a theory of Observations and QM is a theory of
> Observers. We cannot collapse them into each other.
>
Okay, so your goal is to find out the local structure that is being
roughly represented by some infinite ensemble of computations. I don't
see why local physics has to be primitive (why does it have to belong in
the ontology). This is a good challenge to take on, although it might
indeed be quite hard to get a satisfactory solution. Also, I'm not
entirely sure that we really need truly infinitely divisible time and
not just a quantized version which might divisible by some unbounded
amount (when observed).
>>
>> Of course, extracting our local law from just the UD seems like a hard
>> challenge, and I'm not so sure how easy it would be given our limited
>> computational resources - we have to depend on clever reasoning
>> greatly informed by observed data to get better theories instead.
> [SPK]
> We have to extract local laws for each and every observer in a way that
> we end up with what we actually have in our world of experience. This is
> what I mean by our COMP theory has to yield the appearance of physical
> world that has physical laws that are invariant with respect to
> coordinate system, aka "general covariance".
>
>
Agreed. Maybe a continuation to the previous part of the response: an
observer's partial implementation could calculate the states up to some
granularity/divisibility limit, another partial implementation could do
the same for a larger divisor and so on. I'd probably need to give this
more thought.
It's not that observers' bodies are not contained within your current
general brain (and vice-versa). For practical purposes we can consider
the shared computations 3p (including the bodies corresponding to 1p's).
An "inner" computation may very well be contained (shared) in infinities
of other computations.
>>>> It seems that 'physical' is very much what we call the structure in
>>>> which we exist, but that's indexical, and if you claim that only one
>>>> such structure exists (such as this universe), then you think COMP is
>>>> false (that is, no digital substitution exists) or that arithmetic is
>>>> inconsistent (which we cannot really know, but we can hope)?
>>>
>>> I suspect that there are an infinite number of physical worlds to cover
>>> the need for symmetry between the abstract and the concrete. A postulate
>>> of my hypothesis is "that for every physical object there is at least
>>> one representation and for every representation there is at least one
>>> physical implementation of it." So for example, there is a class of
>>> physical instantiations of all numbers, even including patterns of
>>> pixels like this: 13. The previous pattern of pixels is a physical
>>> implementation of the number thirteen (as is this previous one!).
>>>
>> What are those pixels made of? ... What are those atoms or quantum
>> particles or strings or ... made of? Eventually it seems to get down
>> to math (if we're at least partially realist and reductionist about
>> the existence of physical law).
> [SPK]
> At what point does a description of a physical system become the
> physical system itself? Stephen Wolfram discussed this in a article on
> Computational Intractability found here:
> http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/physics/85-undecidability/2/text.html
>
>
I haven't had the time to read the article yet, but my guess is that
when it computes some physical-looking structure in enough detail and
when that structure contains observers within it. The observers and
their beliefs is what makes something worthy of the name 'physics'.
> Here is the "money quote" from the article: "...many physical systems
> are computationally irreducible, so that their own evolution is
> effectively the most efficient procedure for determining their future."
>
Of course, you can't compute a physical system's next state (in full
detail) faster than the system itself, it would make no sense to be able
to do that. Although, it might be possible to predict the "system within
the system" - such as planetary motion or how some particular computer
software will behave. It's unlikely a general solution can be found
(unless you got a Halting Oracle handy or have proven that P=NP in a
constructive manner). Hmm, now that I did read the article, it makes me
think about our measure and 1p-indeterminacy - it can be used to find
answers to problems which are computationally intractable and possibly
also why local apparent non-digital physics can be possible.
> There is a situation where we can obtain something like this transition
> from "what are pixels made of" to "eventually it gets down to math" in a
> sort of "from It to bit" transition, but I argue that it does not allow
> a smooth transformation from the concreteness of a physical object
> existing in a physical universe with universal and invariant physical
> laws *into* a abstract representations of that object that is invariant
> with respect to variations of the computational string that could "run"
> it, *unless* t_here is some level where the difference between the
> physical and the mental vanishes and an opposite "pole"exists where the
> similarities match up exactly_. These two "poles" have to be considered
> as equally existing and to toss out the pole where we have the concrete
> physical object as somehow unreal - as Platonism is want to do - is
> incorrect. This is a topological feature that must be dealt with. One
> cannot have a sphere with only one pole and the sphere is relevant here
> since the symmetry group associated with observations is that of the
> sphere. (The Complex Projective plane or Riemann sphere
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_sphere> actually!)
> The level where differences vanish is the level where we have neutral
> monism. I am identifying this level with the notion of Existence
> in-itself, as opposed to some kind of primitive "substance" whose only
> reason to exist is to act as a "bearer of properties", and thereby has a
> "property".
You will have to show that to be the case. Personally, I find it
unconvincing, but if you can put it into a proof or argument as to why
it has to be so, I'll be interested to read it. Some restricted forms of
Platonism (for example restricted to arithmetic or CTT) allow for a base
foundation and if you think they don't you'd have to show where the
contradiction lies.
> Existence in-itself has *all possible* properties
> simultaneously and thus cannot to just have one set to the exclusion of
> any other, thus we cannot say that Numbers are fundamental and neutral
> as they have a particular property to the exclusion of all other
> properties.
All properties or no properties at all? Some properties are not
compatible with each other, thus something like that cannot 'exist' due
to inconsistency. Numbers (or better yet, equivalent arithmetical or
various other finite computation truths) constitute a good foundation
for the basis of "finite" things (although infinite in amount). There
might be more general foundations, but if they cannot affect our
generalized observer class (not matter what we could possibly do), why
bother?
> But we might disagree with this reasoning because we could say that all
> possible properties have a representation in mathematics and so we can
> indeed take mathematics as our fundamental primitive. That line of
> reasoning is examined in that paper
> <http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0212092> by Hitoshi Kitada and he shows
> that it implies that mathematics as a whole must be inconsistent and
> thus incapable of having a constant global truth valuation, which is a
> problem for Platonism. OTOH, he shows how this can give a notion of an
> oscillating truth valuation IFF we can associate a physical Hamiltonian
> to the structure. Thus the dualism remains in force.
>
>
Yet, I wasn't asking for the Ensemble of all of mathematics, just the
relevant bit on which we can all agree on (standard model of arithmetic
and CTT). You could ask for more, but then we'd have to decide the
undecidable. That paper you linked is interesting, although I'll need
more time to grasp it.
>> If there is a mathematical object that perfectly describes the
>> territory of which I'm part of, I don't see any reason why I should
>> distinguish between the abstract and physical version (or that I
>> should choose to call it 'physical' merely on the fact that I happen
>> to be part of it). Maybe I'm blind to the difference, but I just don't
>> see it when looking at it in the limit/extremes.
> [SPK]
> Certainly, but the point at which the mathematical version and the
> concrete physical version match up is in the physical object itself in
> the 3p sense. The fact that we can all agree that there is a Jaguar XKE
> in the driveway next door, for example, is because the statement that "a
> Jaguar XKE is located in the driveway at 104 Cedar Lane" is True for any
> observer that might care to make the observation and report her finding
> to others, thus even if our experiences are the result of computations,
> they all consistently agree on the truth value of that physical
> instantiation. This is why I claim that a 3p is defined as the logically
> consistent intersection of more than one 1p.
>
Why not 3p not exist with only one observer? It might be quite lonely,
but I don't see why not.
Also, we could have a short description for the 3p from which it could
be generated, but that doesn't mean we see that 3p, unless we're part of
it (or unless we simulate it, but then we'd have a different type of
view than the observer within it).
> depend on the observation by any _one_ observer, it does depend for its
> definiteness on the possibility that it could be observed by some
> observer. It is the possibility that makes the difference. A object that
> cannot be observer by any means, including these arcane versions that I
> just laid out, cannot be said to have a definite set of properties or
> truth value, to say the opposite is equivalent to making a truth claim
> about a mathematical object for whom no set of equations or
> representation can be made.
>
You're conjecturing here that there were worlds where Riemann hypothesis
or Goldbach's conjecture have different truth values. I don't think
arithmetical truths which happen to have proofs have indexical truth
values, this is due to CTT. Although most physical truths are indexical
(or depend on the axioms chosen).
We could limit ourselves to decidable arithmetical truths only, but
you'd bump into the problem of consistency of arithmetic or the halting
problem. It makes no sense to me that a machine which is defined to
either halt or not halt would not do either. We might not know if a
machine halts or not, but that doesn't mean that if when ran in any
possible world it would behave differently. Arithmetical truth should be
the same in all possible worlds. An observer can find out a truth value,
but it cannot "alter" it, unless it is an indexical (context-dependent
truth, such as "what time it is now" or "where do you live").
Of course, we cannot talk about the truth value of undefined stuff, that
would be non-sense. However, we can talk about the truth value of what
cannot be observed - "this machine never halts" is only true if no
observation of the machine halting can ever be made, in virtue of how
the machine is defined, yet someone could use various meta-reasoning to
reach the conclusion that the machine will never halt (consistency of
arithmetic is very much similar to the halting problem - it's only
consistent if a machine which enumerates proofs never finds a proof of
"0=1"; of course, this is not provable within arithmetic itself, thus
it's a provably unprovable statement for any consistent machine, thus
can only be a matter of "theology" as Bruno calls it).
>>>> In essence, Platonia might very well contain Chaitin's constant of
>>>> some machine, even if we cannot know it (although we can make guesses
>>>> at it by making stronger and stronger theories).
>>>
>>> Certainly, what can Platonia not contain? My problem is why is Platonia
>>> even a necessary concept? It smells of the mystical and irrational. We
>>> should justify its necessary existence before we wander off and ascribe
>>> all these nice properties to it that just so happen to solve all of our
>>> hard problems.
>>>
>> I'm not really requiring a full Platonia here, just consider it for
>> arithmetic, where the law of the excluded middle(LEM) should still
>> apply. It should be sufficient ontologically. It also seems much
>> simpler conceptually than positing a physical world with all the extra
>> magical quirks full-fledged physical worlds require.
> [SPK]
> Why is it allowed for any reason? Seriously, what purpose does it serve?
> If it is only to serve as a magical realm where things that are
> otherwise impossible can occur, are we doing ourselves any favors? We
> have the evidence of our senses and verifiable reports from all over the
> universe that the physical world is "real", so why dump that
> concreteness for the unverifiable?
>
First, we can only infer the existence of the 3p world using our own
senses, we cannot infer it being primitive in any way or form. Second,
if we don't take a non-eliminativist stance regarding the mind and
assume that a substitution level exists (for our brain) then it follows
that it's necessary (by UDA+MGA). Thirdly, it's an incredibly simple (by
Occam) theory compared to most current physical theories, it also gives
a good hint on solving the mind-body problem (which current physical
theories don't even attempt to solve). If we take the material world as
the only thing existing, we'll be instantly forced to give up the
existence of the mind as an illusion. By the UDA+MGA, one has to either
give up the mind or primitive matter. Given that primitive matter is
only hinted at through (mental) observation, it's easier for me to give
up on the 'primitive' part, especially since the neutral monism
(although you'd disagree about neutrality) of COMP does provide answers
to a lot of other questions which other theories fail to while not
having any obvious inconsistencies (of course, many beliefs have to be
updated if one accepts it as a likely possibility).
>> Another way to think of it would be in the terms of the Church Turing
>> Thesis, where you expect that a computation (in the Turing sense) to
>> have result and that result is independent of all your
>> implementations, such a result not being changeable in any way or by
>> anything - that's usually what I imagine by Platonia. It is a bit
>> mystical, but I find it less mystical than requiring a magical
>> physical substrate (even more after MGA) - to me the platonic
>> implementation seems to be the simplest possible explanation. If you
>> think it's a bad explanation that introduces some magic, I'll respond
>> that the primitively physical version introduces even more magic.
>> Making truth changeable or temporal seems to me to be a much stronger,
>> much more "magical" than what I'm considering: that arithmetical
>> sentences do have a truth value, regardless if we know it or not.
> [SPK]
> I am only asking that we put the abstract world of mathematics on an
> even footing with the physical world, I am _not_ asking for a
> "primitive" physical world. I will say again, just because a computation
> is independent for any particular implementation that I, you or any one
> else is capable of creating does not eliminate the necessity that
> somehow it must be implemented physically. Universality of computation
> is NOT the severing of computation from its physical implementability.
> This is not the same kind of claim as we see of the ultrafinitist and/or
> constructivist; it is just a realistic demand that ideas cannot be free
> floating entities. We cannot believe in free floating numbers any more
> than we can believe in disembodies spirits and ghosts.
>
What is a non-primitive physical world, what is it based on?
'Existence'? What is that, sounds primitive to me. If we accept
'existence' as primitive, how does math and physical arise out of it? It
seems so general to me that I can't imagine anything at all about it, to
the point of being a God-like non-theory (although I can sympathize with
it, just that it cannot be used as a theory because it's too general.
We'll probably have to settle with something which we can discuss, such
as a part of math.)
Why is 'physical' implementation so important? Those "free floating"
numbers could very well represent the structures that we and our
universe happen to be and their truths may very well sometimes be this
thing we call 'consciousness'. As for 'spirits' - how does this
'consciousness' thing know which body to follow and observe? How does it
correlate that it must correlate to the physical states present in the
brain? How does it know to appear in a robotic body or VR environment if
someone decides to "upload" their mind (sometime in the far future)?
What's this continuity of consciousness thing?
Granted that some particular mathematical structure could represent the
physical, I'm not sure it makes sense gran the physical any more meaning
than "that which we(our bodies) observe as being part of".
Such a discussion would probably be quite long. I also think that since
computationalism and other forms of mathematical realism are common
here, an Aristotelian foundation is usually something that will be
argued against here (my obvious working hypothesis is computationalism
for now). I'm not entirely sure what you argue for, your beliefs seem to
be compatible with computationalism, but you either argue for matter
(even though MGA shows that primitive matter cannot be used as an
explanation for for consciousness if computationalism is true) or for a
more general foundation (which cannot defined because it's too general).
>> I wonder though, why suppose a temporally evolving something? The
>> notion of time is in itself quite complex, and this is why I tend to
>> prefer to just use the CTT in a platonic manner (unchangeability of a
>> result of finite process being applied on finite recursive things).
> [SPK]
> We can use the concept of invariance and symmetries as we use them in
> math to deal with properties so that I don't have to paint myself into a
> corner and only consider the computational view.
>
I suppose category theory could be more general, unfortunately my
knowledge of it is limited (but I don't plan on keeping it so in the
future). That said, as long as you don't go operating on transfinite
stuff (and even then, not always, as shown in the UDA), the
computational view seems sufficient.
Will do. I've seen that book mentioned before, although I've not had
time to acquire a copy yet. As a side-note, a TM can work with
computable reals of course, just not when you want it to decide the
halting problem or various other cases of convergence. 1p indeterminacy
(and the selection of consistent continuations) can let you go a bit
beyond what a TM can do by itself though, which is also why COMP physics
(of an 1p observer) are itself uncomputable (although they should be
locally computable, and the UD is of course globally computable). Also,
according to current theoretical physics, it doesn't seem like unlimited
precision real computation is possible:
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0502072 ( due to Bekenstein bound and the
Holographic principle ).
Some theories will of course tend to compress our local physics much
better than whatever actual representation the ensemble of TMs would
have, but that's not an argument against COMP (although it might hint at
some important things we did miss).
>>>> The local 3p world may indeed to considered like a Block Universe (or
>>>> similar extensions to MWI), although by COMP, that's just a valid
>>>> model that we could be using, and a matter of epistemology. This is
>>>> indeed a tricky problem, which I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the
>>>> tentative answer I'm currently thinking for it. From the 1p, we can
>>>> only be certain of the existence of the observer moment, this can lead
>>>> someone to consider the ASSA (disconnected OM(observer moments)).
>>>
>>> Yes, I agree with that reasoning. I just go further and demand that our
>>> explanations cover multiple observers and the appearance that they are
>>> interacting with each other. Do you understand the Dining Philosophers
>>> Problem <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dining_philosophers_problem>? This
>>> is a well known problem in computer science!
>>>
>> I'm not entirely sure I see the problem. Are you assuming that there
>> is only one universal consciousness and it has only a single history
>> (with a lot of forgetting involved)?
> [SPK]
> No, I am claiming that that cannot be the case! It is the Platonic
> theory that would have us believe in a single universal consciousness
> and I am arguing against that idea. Are you dyslexic? I am, but I have
> the memory and output type of dyslexia... So I have a hard time
> remembering sequences of letters and numbers and writing is difficult,
> but I never see letters or ideas reversed as I read them....
>
Why would the Platonic theory require that? I really don't see why -
each mind can be its own. You were upset earlier that the Platonic
theory is too abstract and truths are too disembodied. Of course, I'm
only considering a restricted version of it, and I'm personally agnostic
on the concept of Universal Mind as I haven't thought nearly enough
about it - I can conceive some abstract machines as being "conscious"
which are far too different from our human OM's, and I do wonder if
there's countably many or uncountably many OM's - there seems to be
uncountably long histories (with COMP-immortality), which is why I'm not
too keen on the combination of RSSA and Univeral Mind, but ASSA+UM might
be okay (ASSA should only be used for the initial observer selection, as
in babies, but not after memories are formed).
I don't think I'm dyslexic, but I do make a few typos when I type too
fast, although probably not nearly enough of them to matter. I do
sometimes forget the context of a discussion if it's too long and many
threads deep.
>> The problem would appear if you identify the 1p time with the 3p time,
>> which I don't do myself - 1p time is about the internal time of a
>> computational structure locally contained in the brain, or about local
>> computational steps.
> [SPK]
> There is no such thing as 3p time! There is only 1p time. That is what
> Hitoshi Kitada shows in his work... But your point is well taken.
>
3p time is usually what we take as steps of a computation, or the time
as we define it in our theories and use it in our everyday lives (such
as seconds, milliseconds, plank time, ...). 1p time is non-communicable
and non-accessible, but it's utterly important, for each observer, it
tends to have much higher granularity compared to 3p one (for example,
200 neuron spikes per second could be a rough approximation of an OM's
duration relative to some 3p time; we experience coherent sequences of
OMs, continuously; the OM contents itself appears continuous, but it
should not be able to contain more information than that contained in
the body(ies) state, there are some ways to explain how this works by
considering our cognitive architecture, but that would go even more
wildly off-topic).
>> Many 1p's could correspond to the same or very similar 3p's, thus the
>> sharing of the world, but some 1p's having in common some generalized
>> brain does not mean that their experiences are literally occurring at
>> the same time (although it's fine and correct to assume that the 3p
>> persons we see are non-zombies, which is true due to the shared
>> computations/histories).
> [SPK]
> OK, but the way you are using 3p is not what I consider as the logically
> consistent set intersection of many 1ps. I don't see how a real 3p, as
> you describe here, can exist as it would be like the superposition of
> many points of view, a situation which cannot be represented by a
> Boolean algebra. "Occurring at the same time" by whose clock? That is
> the concurrency problem! I have tried to see how the idea that you have
> sketched might work before I came across Pratt's papers, I never worked
> for me so I kept looking for an alternative and I found one. :-)
>
What is logically inconsistent about it? I don't give a structure more
than one 1p, the communication is "indirect" so to say, but it's still
there. An "objective" 3p corresponds to no 1p views, but it may contain
many bodies which relate to 1p views, the actual 1p view is related to
the ensemble of computations that implement a particular abstract
structure (at the substitution level), and the consciousness itself
corresponds to the (arithmetical) truth of that particular mental
structure. So, I don't see any superposition here, I'm guessing we're
identifying minds in a different matter somehow.
Many things occur at the same time at the 3p, but consciousness itself
is not located in the shared 3p, not even in a local non-shared 3p
machine implementing the brain - MGA shows why it cannot be.
>> In that way, consciousness isn't identified with some
>> (Universe,Position,Time,BranchId,...), it's related to (Program,
>> Step)'s arithmetical truth at different levels.
>> (Universe,Position,Time,BranchId,...) may be contained/shared in many
>> computations by different (Program, Step) corresponding to completely
>> separate 1p's.
> [SPK]
> Yes, but this is simply an inversion of the situation that we have in
> Material monism, where a single 3p world determines everything that is
> "real" and our minds are some kind of causally ineffective epiphenomena
> that suffers from the delusion that it is moving along a trajectory that
> already exists frozen in the amber of a 3,1 space-time "block". This way
> of thinking fails because it cannot account for the very real sense of
> "being in the world and qualia, blah blah blah, that we experience.
>
Why cannot it account of that? I'd say there's a lot more freedom than
in the 4D block universe, due to 1p indeterminacy, but even if I were to
ignore the 1p indeterminacy and consider the case of one 3+1D block
universe, I still don't see where the contradiction lies - qualia is by
itself ineffable, although some properties can be communicated and the
reason we do what we do and the states of our thoughts are indeed
contained within our bodies (and if one were to grant such a material
universe primitive existence, they would indeed be epiphenomena; in
COMP though, there's only arithmetical truth and one has to consider
where the appearance of physical laws comes from - and there are ways of
approaching that problem, for example by Bruno's AUDA).
>> Now, the idea of single countably infinite universal consciousness
>> could make sense, except there is one problem: COMP Immortality -
>> there will always exist a continuation.
> [SPK]
> That is interesting but it is something unreportable even if true.
Of course.
> But many spiritualist are convinced of it.
It's sort of an inductive bet based on the fact that we've had non-empty
past OMs, thus we come to expect a next OM.
> Could this be a hint that COMP is hiding some fantasies?
Bruno has always said that COMP is a matter of theology (or religion),
that is, the provably unprovable, and I agree with this. However, let's
try and see why that is and why someone would take COMP as an assumption:
- The main assumption of COMP is that you admit, at some level, a
digital substitution, and the stronger assumption that if you were to
implement/run such a Turing-emulable program, it would be conscious and
you would have a continuation in it. Isn't that a strong theological
assumption? I think it is, but at the same time, it has solid
consequences and a belief in it can be justified for a number of reasons:
a) Fading qualia thought experiment, which shows that consciousness is
utterly fickle if it doesn't follow a principle of functional /
organizational invariance. Most of our sense data tends to point that
such a principle makes sense. Avoiding it means consciousness does not
correspond to brain states and p. zombies.
b) Neuroscience and physics suggests that we do indeed admit such a
substitution level, or that the functions of the brain are
Turing-emulable (although obviously the architecture is massively
parallel and running it on a TM is not optimal, but then, neither is
running physics, either way, this is unimportant due to
specific(provable) instances of the CTT(Church Turing Thesis)).
c) a and b do not directly suggest the continuity part, although we
can't really guarantee continuity that much ourselves. Given that we can
never experience a moment past our death, we would always experience
being alive, that is, the Anthropic Principle where the laws of physics
happen to be that which support or is compatible with us (trivial
statement, maybe even too general). The continuity bet is a matter of
past observations, although it's utterly unprovable, on the other hand,
we usually expect a next OM and that we will wake up in the morning,
that the sun will "rise" and so on (by induction, regardless if
consciously realized or not). That one could continue their existence in
a different machine body which is functionally equivalent is not utterly
preposterous to me, at least not much more than when one considers how
strange it must be that their consciousness follows their body/senses
even when the body moves through space and time, sometimes even with
discontinuities (sleep, etc).
This assumption is almost magical, but not really: it's a consequence of
some strong "no magic" assumptions in the nature of reality, but as we
can see, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic and sufficiently strong "no magic" assumptions can also be quite
indistinguishable from magic (more on this later).
d) The UDA paints a picture which seems to include an explanation for
QM/MWI, thus confirming some current physical theories. Your objection
to COMP immortality applies to MWI as well - there is MWI immortality as
well, just a bit more limited in fancifulness. Yet, MWI is one of the
simplest possible realist interpretations of QM (by various Occam's
Razor formalizations). COMP itself scores high on the simplicity
score - easy to describe ontology (after reasoning is done), although
very rich, it also gives reasonably satisfactory (partial or full)
answers/hints to some ancient questions (such as "why something instead
of nothing", "what is matter", "what is mind" along with some more
concrete questions...)
- Another assumption of COMP is the Church Turing Thesis. Very strong
mathematical evidence is for it being true, and we can show it for just
about any finite (but unbounded) machine following finite rules. It's a
hypothesis/assumption because in the general form it's not provable
because it's too general, but we can prove any individual case we care
to try, there's also many strong intuitions for why it has to be true. I
don't think there are many computer scientists who don't believe in it,
but usually those that don't just try to define CTT in wider scope than
it is (such as hypercomputation, which it obviously doesn't include),
such issues are a matter of definition and shouldn't be considered to be
included in this assumption.
- Consistency of arithmetic (existence of the standard model of
arithmetic), existence of truth value of arithmetical sentences.
The consistency belief is both intuitive as well as one about a certain
Turing Machine never halting (which can be made in stronger theories,
but cannot be believed any more than you can believe that arithmetic is
consistent). A belief in a sentence being either true or false
independent of anything is not much different from the belief that a
machine either halts or doesn't halt (and no other choice exists).
This is again a matter of theology - of the provably unprovable stuff.
Although, again, it's a strong "no magic" assumption, that given a
finite self-contained set of rules (addition, multiplication) applied on
finite self-contained objects (numbers), it will always yield the same
result and nothing whatsoever can change that.
- A hidden assumption: we have minds/are conscious/experience qualia.
This is a bit magical, but it's hidden in the first assumption that I
listed. The thing is - the only thing we can be certain of, but cannot
communicate is having a mind. From our observations we can infer the
existence of the external world and that our bodies are part of it, we
can also observe that the states of our brain correlate very well with
our conscious experience. A different computationalist theory
(eliminative materialism) takes this hidden assumption and posts its
negation as an axiom. The problem with that is that the external world
is only inferred by using observation, thus it cannot really be accepted
by most conscious observers (who are delusional in such a theory),
however such a theory is not inconsistent if consciousness is ignored.
If you ignore the mind assumption, you can completely ignore almost all
of COMP's strange conclusions because none of them would matter, but the
existence of primitive matter would be saved in such a theory.
All of these are assumptions which are not uncommon for most
secular-minded people: the first is widely considered by the "no magic"
camp, it also is required if you don't want consciousness to be utterly
strange and magic current evidence, the second is widely considered true
by anyone who studied computability/math/comp sci, the third is usually
considered true, if it's false, pretty much all math we know is false,
and there are many intuitions why it's likely true. Given these
assumptions, COMP is a fairly rational theory with a few unprovable, but
widely accepted "no magic" assumptions. However, even with these
assumptions, you can't really avoid some really unusual magic (given
only the first assumption). The strange conclusion is hidden in the
assumptions, just most people don't see it (strangely it's not uncommon
for people to hold those assumptions and still not see that primitive
matter is utterly incompatible with a non-eliminative form of
computationalism).
> Are we just constructing a secular version of
> Heaven with Platonia? We need to ask ourselves this question in all
> seriousness!
>
You mean that arithmetical sentences have truth values?
In all seriousness, if we do happen to admit a digital substitution
level, the consequences are clear and we should understand them, no
matter how strange they are. If we don't admit a digital substitution
level, we need a different theory (likely a lot more magical and arbitrary).
As for "Heaven", do you mean that you find that arithmetical truth could
correspond to consciousness/senses strange?
In a less serious matter, COMP does seem to imply that a more literal
"Heaven" is attainable if you do happen to admit a digital substitution,
consider reading Greg Egan' "Permutation City" novel or this thought
experiment http://www.paul-almond.com/ManyWorldsAssistedMindUploading.htm
The novel idea Permutation City (spoiler: don't read this sentence if
you plan on reading the book) is that a SIM (Substrate Independent Mind)
could encode itself in some digital physics-like structure, run it for a
while, stop running it and have that structure continue computing, thus
the SIMs encoded in such a world could very well get to have unlimited
computing resources beyond anything accessible in our universe (I don't
think the idea presented in PC would result in a stable high-measure
world within COMP, but it can be made stable with a few modifications,
I've talked about how in my first post in this list, so read that/write
a response to it if you want).
The thing though is that unusual continuations are very low measure, so
they are not usually accessible, unless one performs some quantum
suicide/anthropic conditioning-like experiment that reduces measure or
selects specifically for those unusual continuations. If one can show
that such continuations are high-measure (outside such specific
selection experiments), then you have the White Rabbit problem and COMP
would turn out to be false, because it would be impossible to have
stable conscious experiences.
In the end, it's a matter of taking the assumptions seriously and
accepting the conclusions those assumptions imply. If you think some
assumptions are false, you have to reject them and thus also reject COMP
(or make a different theory). So far COMPs' conclusions have been
unusual, strange, theological, but they don't seem to contradict reality
and they come from mostly innocent seeming assumptions that are not
uncommon beliefs among those that cared to think about such issues
(digital mechanism, computation, arithmetic).
>> Maybe some continuations could very well merge with others, thus the
>> problem would be side-stepped, but what if they are actually unique
>> countably infinite potential futures for most observers?
> [SPK]
> The idea that I am considering does not allow for disembodied minds so
> "life-after-death" is not supported. OTOH, there might be a way around
> this with the continuation argument from MWI of QM, but there would
> still be a body for each mind and a mind for each body in any case.
>
If you allow an eternal running of the UD, you cannot avoid it. The 1p
would find itself in the UD*, or a MWI dovetail, or ... See previous
response for those 2 thought experiments (the experiment in Permutation
City or the MWI-assisted mind uploads or just classical MWI
immortality). You don't actually lack a body in any of these
continuations, even in COMP, just the body itself is encoded in
arithmetic. Encoding it in a concrete UD avoids a solution to the
mind-body problem, but you still can't avoid COMP immortality that
easily. It could be partially avoided in some ultrafinitist version with
a specified upper bound, but not completely. It's also avoidable in a
single-universe eliminative materialism, but then you can't talk about
consciousness, qualia, etc, as those are fantasy/delusions in that
theory (although single-universe theories are quite suspect by Occam as
they tend to be high-complexity)
>> There could be some ways to still allow for an universal consciousness
>> in that case, but I think might it might be best to just abandon the
>> concept for now and just think of different arithmetical truths
>> corresponding to different 1p's, or if you want, only consider it for
>> histories, whatever they may be.
>> Unless, of course, I misunderstood your problem.
> [SPK]
> The problem that I see is that COMP, as it is being considered, does not
> explain how multiple separate minds can interact.
>
Bodies interact just fine in the 3p (shared "generalized brain"/physical
computations). Minds correlate to bodies. Bodies are encoded in
arithmetic, and minds/chain of OMs are how some arithmetic truth feels
from the inside.
>>
>>>> From the 3p or 1p's memories/knowledge, that is, at a higher level
>>>> than just experience, we bet on the existence of the past and future,
>>>> as a matter of self-consciousness and self-reference. We tend to
>>>> identify with the (abstract) structure making this bet. This leads one
>>>> to RSSA - OM's being relative to each other - that we will make our
>>>> bets based only on expected continuations and past/journal/history. If
>>>> consciousness is how some truths associated with a self-referential
>>>> universal number feel from the inside, and given the bets that number
>>>> is making, it wouldn't seem that strange that we will experience
>>>> apparent continuity (even though we cannot prove to anyone that we
>>>> actually experience such continuity - we cannot even show that to
>>>> ourselves - if we just consider a few moments in the past).
>>>
>>> I agree with all of this but you are only considering a single observer
>>> here. Think of what you just wrote as applicable to many observers
>>> interacting with each other. How does that work?
>>>
>> See before this. Shared computations.
> [SPK]
> Shared how? If a pair of computations happen to output the same string
> and follow the COMP logic, they are instantiating one and the same mind,
> not two different by a 4-diffeomorphism pair of minds. But I might be
> missing something in this. There is theLeibniz Equivalence
> <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-holearg/Leibniz_Equivalence.html>
> to consider! From
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-holearg/index.html#PriSpaSub
> we read: "If two distributions of fields are related by a smooth
> transformation, then they represent the same physical systems." But how
> do we get this to work consistently with the unique sense of self that
> each of us has? If our "unique sense of self" is just an illusion caused
> by our incorrect association of self with a physical body then.... But
> why have an illusion of a unique physical body for each mind? The Stone
> duality seems to explain that but I could be operating under a
> misunderstanding of the applicability of the Stone duality...
> I need to think about this some more!
>
The mind doesn't correspond to the body, it corresponds to an abstract
structure (at subst. level) encoded in the brain. The mind manifests
relatively to that 3p world because that particular (mental) structure
is contained in a larger physical structure. If the mind is something
that exists, it's an abstract construct, that's basically a hidden comp
assumption (subst. level). What you're considering seems more closer to
panpsychism or panexperientialism, where matter literally corresponds to
consciousness. In modern cognitive neuroscience, what we consider the
mind is an abstract construct, encoded within our brain through our
neural networks (possibly at a higher level than just neurons, although
lower levels can affect it, thus it's quasi-deterministic; a particular
view that I like is that found in "On Intelligence" which considers the
level of the neocortical minicolumn doing statistical/probabilistic
pattern recognition, among other things), there's ample evidence that we
don't literally perceive our world directly, but what we perceive are
more closer to this abstract structure's internal beliefs (which could
correspond in COMP to arithmetical truth seen from the inside).
>>>>
>>>> I don't think the continuity problem gets solved by dismissing a
>>>> Platonia and using something more "physical"(what is that though?).
>>>> See: MGA for why.
>>>
>>> I agree, but that is not the problem that I have with the ideal monism.
>>> My contention is that we are forced into some form of dualism to account
>>> for many separate minds capable of having some form of interaction with
>>> each other.
>>>
>> Dualism on what? How "arithmetical truth" feels from the inside seems
>> to be fairly monist to me.
> [SPK]
> What does the sentence "Dualism on what?" mean? That arithmetic truth
> feels from the inside does have a monism sense to it until you think
> about how that Arithmetic truth that you feel as "you" is interacting
> with the Arithmetic Truth that feels from the inside as me. What is the
> interface between us? I am saying that the interface between all
> possible Arithmetic truths *is* the physical world and as such is dual
> to Arithmetic truth. That kind of duality. I am not considering
> Descartes form of dualism! It is "not even wrong"! ;-)
>
That truth that is interacting with you is part of the "generalized
brain", basically shared computations, it is not part of abstract
structure which can be considered to correspond to our mind. If a 'mind'
corresponds to this "generalized brain", it's unlikely to have any
conscious experience like our own. I do agree on one thing though: the
definition of observer within COMP does not seem exact enough to me (I
did mention this in my first post, still awaiting Bruno's answer), but
for now, I'm leaving it a bit vague until I'm completely content with my
understanding of the AUDA.
The "generalized brain" could very well be changed (for example replaced
by a VR environment), without changing the "you". Changing that abstract
structure contained at some level in our brain would result in a
different "you", thus that is usually what one considers the observer.
Then one needs to consider the infinite set of machines implementing
variants of the observer and see how one decides a measure on that - it
should give the next possible observer moments/states. My main issue
here is that the observer itself is changing and self-modifying, so any
exact attempts at the measure problem need to take that into account
when trying to reason about this relative measure.
>> Interaction is just sharing some computations or truths.
> [SPK]
> No, it is more than just "sharing" there are other conditions involved.
> We have all of physics to reproduce including the general
> non-commutativity of observables of QM and the general covariance of GR.
> Neglecting those gets us nowhere.
>
To derive accurate local physics from COMP, we do indeed need to take
those into account, however we shouldn't assume GR as applying
throughout the whole of UD(it doesn't), however some consequences of QM
are likely to apply almost everywhere there is an 1p and it's not a
brain-in-a-vat version (even there it would apply, just not as
obviously). If we can find that our world is probable given some ASSA
measure (that is, for initial selection), it would be positive evidence
for COMP (on the other hand, if we find that we live in a very
low-measure, high-complexity world, it would mean COMP is less likely to
be true).
>> When Bruno interviews some LUM, he simulates it and thus the machine
>> manifest relatively to him and he can see what that machine has to
>> say. You and me share a common universe (or computations representing
>> this universe), both of us have an "illusion" of matter of each other,
>> yet both of our computations are real and correspond to separate 1p's.
> [SPK]
> I agree but my claim is that is not all of the story, we cannot
> eliminate the physical and still have the necessary interfacing action
> that the physical allows.
>
If you can show that (interfacing), sure. COMP in itself is a young
theory, you can't expect it to give you the entire local physics (unless
you happen to have some unlimited computational capacity, which we
obviously don't have in this universe), although AUDA does seem to
provide some hints as to how one could try to derive our physics in a
less computationally prohibitive way.
I don't know, it's not obvious to me we can achieve any neutrality
outside of computation (Turing-emulable), even with higher math. If we
can, I'm looking forward to the proof.
What I'm considering is mostly a ASSA for initial selection and RSSA for
all future observer moments. This is just a tentative guess for now.
This means someone is more likely to be born in a computationally simple
world, a natural one like ours, likely with an openly accessible quantum
mechanical layer like ours (in COMP quantum foam are just machines
competing fiercely to implement us). RSSA means that we should look at
all our future moments relatively to our current implementation, that
is, we don't care about all possible machines implementing all possible
observer moments, but only those which implement our mind's expected
future states and keep our mind consistent(this needs to be made more
exact). If taking 3^^^^^3 continuations at random, we find that
(3^^^^^3)-1 represent our current MW world, we can say that those
continuations are high-measure. If that one extra continuation is some
weird non-physical one (here's a highly unusual example: imagine some
other mind existing within a different world/physics/... within the UD
decided to suddenly simulate you in their world, like Bruno is
interviewing his Lobian machines, then you could very well have an
unusual continuation which does not correspond to our physics; although
technically, you don't need a mind to do that, just see that
MWI-assisted mind uploading example for a random process which could
very well result in that), we can say that it's a low-measure one, in
the sense of being rare and representing too different/unusual physics
than our own. However, since the measure is relative, if a low-measure
continuation does occur, it should stay stable and thus become
relatively high-measure to that observer(dividing a countable infinity
by a finite amount still yields a countable infinity).
This is how I usually think of the measure, but Bruno likely has a more
exact version in the AUDA, unfortunately I don't know any *tractable*
way of calculating it (one can for example decide to fix a computational
structure as a "mind", then decide to see what machines would implement
it while maintaining the mind's computations invariant - unfortunately
that is not really computable, the best one could do would be some
heuristics and that only if they had a lot of computational power to
spare, and we most certainly don't have it for now). If we find that
unusual continuations are more common (unstable, physics/generalized
brain changes too often), then COMP is false.
Ah, so it's a bit lesser assumption than COMP (finite subst. level).
Quantum entanglement still works fine in MWI (and thus also in QM
dovetailers).
Stephen P. King
> On 2/8/2012 06:29, Stephen P. King wrote:
>> Hi ACW,
>>
>> I apologize for the length of this post, but I think that if I snipped
>> text that context would be lost that is necessary. Let us slow down a
>> bit. I think we are decohering a bit. ;-)
>>
> I should probably apologize as well, my answer is quite long and took
> a while to write.
snip
Hi ACW,
I think we are making progress here. I am learning a lot from it. I
will write up a response in detail asap. Meanwhile, could you take a
look at this paper: http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/ratmech.pdf It is the
basis of my dualism hypothesis.
Onward!
Stephen
Stephen P. King
Hi ACW,
I have to break the "Ontological Problems of COMP" up into pieces
to respond to your important questions. Please remember that this is
just an embryo of a theory. It has not yet made it to the "half-baked"
stage. ;-)
My thought is that the FBAs are not restricted in the number of
prepositions that they include thus can grow to include new data. It is
the means by which they are modified that goes to the answer of your
question. This is conversed by the process of "residuation" explained in
http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/ratmech.pdf It is important to note the
way that dynamics are treated by Pratt.
What I am trying to do is to explicitly deal with the problem of
time within the conjecture. I will try to explain more of this in
subsequent mails.
Onward!
Stephen
Stephen P. King
[SPK]But physics by itself does not explain consciousness either (as shown by MGA). Maybe I just don't see what the concurrency problem is.
I do not see how this deals effectively with the concurrency problem!
:-( Using the Platonia idea is a cheat as it is explicitly unphysical.
It has no constraints of thermodynamics, no limits on speeds of signals,I'm not asking you to share all of Plato's beliefs here. It's merely a minimal amount of "magic", not unlike the "magic" you have to accept by positing a 3p world. The amount is basically this: arithmetical (or computational) sentences have truth values independent of anything physical and consciousness/qualia may be how some such arithmetical truth feels from the inside. Without at least some axioms, one cannot get anywhere, you can't reduce arithmetic to only logic and so on. Why would Platonia have to have the same constraints as our physical realms - it need only obey to constraints of logic and math, which usually means stuff that is contained within the Church Turing Thesis and its implications. Speed of signals? If some theory is inconsistent, it's only there as part of the reasoning of some other machine. Ideal Form? How do you define an integer or the axioms that talk about arithmetic?
no explanation as to how an Ideal Form is defined, e.g. what is the
standard of its perfection, ect. It is no different from the Realm of
God in religious mythos, so what is it doing here in our rational
considerations? Forgive me but I was raised by parents that where
Fundamentalists "Believers", so please understand that I have an allergy
to ideas that remind me of the mental prison that I had to work so hard
to escape.
Popular religious mythos tend to be troublesome because they involve *logically impossible* properties being attributed to Gods and other beings - things which are inconsistent. It's not like one doesn't assume some axioms in any theory - they are there in almost any scientific theory. Yet, unlike popular religions, you're free to evaluate your hypotheses and use evidence and meta-reasoning to decide which one is more likely to be true and then try to use the results of such theories to predict how stuff will behave or bet on various things.
Of course, it's not hard to get trapped in a bad epistemology, and I can see why you'd be extra skeptical of bad theories, however nobody is telling you to believe a theory is true or false, instead it asks you to work out the consequences of each theory's axioms (as well as using meta-reasoning skills to weed down overly complex theories, if you prefer using Occam's) and then either choose to use or not use that particular theory depending if the results match your observations/expectations/standards/... (if expectations are broken, one would either have to update beliefs or theories or both).
What ever the global structure that we use to relate our ideas and provide explanations, it makes sense that we do not ignore problems that are inconvenient. A big problem that I have with Platonia is that it does not address the appearance of change that we finite semi-autonomous beings observe. The problem of time is just a corollary to this. I would prefer to toss out any postulates that require *any* "magic". "Magic" is like Arsenic poison, every little bit doubles the harmful effects. Why do we even need a notion of 3p except as a pedagogical tool? What we need, at least, is a stratification scheme that allows us to represent these differences, but we need to understand that in doing this we are sneaking in the notion of a 3p that is equivalent to some kind of agent whose only mission is to observe differences and that is a fallacy since we are trying to explain observers in the first place.
Unless we have some way to handle a fundamental notion of change, there is no way to deal with questions of change and time. Please notice how many instances we are using verbs in our considerations of COMP ideas. Where and how does the change implicit in the verb, as like "running the UD", obtain? We cannot ignore this. I am highlighting the concurrency problem b/c it shows how this problem cannot be ignored. The Platonic Realm, especially the Arithmetic Realist one, is by definition fixed and static, nothing changes in it at all! How do we get the appearance of time from it? It is possible to show how, but the proponents of COMP need to explain this, IMHO. It is incoherent at best to make statements like "the UD is running on the walls of Platonia". How is that even a meaningful claim?
Another problem is the problem of space as we see in the way that 1p indeterminacy is defined in UDA. We read of a notion of "cutting and pasting". Cut 'from" where and pasted "to" where? How is the difference in "position" of say, Washington and Moscow, obtain in a Realm that has nothing like "space"? Unless we have a substrate of some kind that transformations can act upon and yet the transformations and the substrate are not distinguished, there is no "cut and pasting" possible. What makes the difference between the substrate and the transformation? Bruno et al seems to consider this in terms of Godel numbering schemes but what distinguishes a Godel number of a program from a program?
Onward!
Stephen
Stephen P. King
A "non-primitive world" would be a world that is defined by a set of communications between observers, however the observers are defined. The notion of a "cyclical gossiping" as used in graph theory gives a nice model of how this would work and it even shows a nice toy model of thermodynamic entropy. See #58 here for a statement of this idea. Also see http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Gossiping.html
Onward!
Stephen
David Nyman
Hi acw
Thanks for all the interesting posts, which I'm currently perusing. I
have a question for you about your comments on ASSA/RSSA/UM. You
said, I think, that you could see how ASSA+UM might work, but not
RSSA+UM. But if one assumes (a big assumption, I know, but one I'm
making explicit) that it is the internal structure of an OM, and
nothing else, that links it experientially to other OMs in a
particular relative history, wouldn't this be compatible with a
blanket assumption of ASSA+RSSA+UM for any OM? IOW, finding oneself
in any particular OM would be the consequence of an absolute
association of the UM with some OM from the class of all OMs; relative
orientation to a particular personal history would then be the natural
outcome of the internal structure of that OM.
Of course, much (almost everything) then turns on issues of relative
measure of OMs, but no proposal of this sort can escape that
requirement. The curious thing is that no relative history, so to
speak, would have any way of disabusing itself of the delusion of
being stuck in a particular solipsistic cul-de-sac. From the
perspective of the UM, it would be equivalent, as you have implied, to
a particularly bad case of episodic amnesia, or multiple personality
syndrome!
David