An analogy for Qualia

[alexalex]

Hello, Everythinglisters!

The below text is a philosophical essay on what qualia may represent.
I doubt you'll manage to finish reading it (it's kind of long, and
translated from anoter language), but if you do I'll be happy to hear
your opinion about what it says.

Thanks!

<<<A simpler model of the world with different points of view>>>

It can often get quite amusing watching qualophiles' self-confidence,
mutual assurance and agreement when they talk about something a priori
defined as inherently private and un-accessible to third-party
analysis (i.e. qualia), so they say, but they somehow agree on what
they're discussing about even though as far as I've been able to
understand they don't display the slightest scant of evidence which
would show that they believe there will ever be a theory that could
bridge the gap between the ineffable what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of
personal experience and the scientific, objective descriptions of
reality. They don’t even try to brainstorm ideas about such a theory.
How are we to explain this what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) if we can't
subject it to what science has been and will always be? Third-party
analysis. So, here it is: Qualia, one of the last remaining unresolved
quandaries for us to splinter and rise on the pedestals of science,
but we must stop, qualophiles say, because, .... “Because what?” I
ask. “Because the what-it-is-likeness of qualia” most of them will
respond. And believe me that is the whole argument from which they
sprout all of the other awkward deductions and misconstrued axioms if
we are to succinctly resume their rigorous, inner-gut, “aprioristic
analysis”. I'll try to expose the absurdity of their stance by making
some analogies while telling the story of how architects and designers
build 3D models of reality with the help of 3D modeling software.

The 1s and 0s that make the large variety of 3D design software on the
market today are all we need in order to bring to virtual-reality
whatever model of our real world we desire. Those 1s and 0s, which are
by the way as physical as the neurons in your brain though not of the
same assortment (see below), are further arranged into sub-modules
that are further integrated into other different parts and subsystems
of the computer onto which the software they are part of is running
on, so their arrangement is obviously far from aleatory. One needs to
adopt the intentional stance in order to understand the intricacies,
details and roles that these specific particular modules play in this
large and complex computer programs.

If you had the desire you could bring to virtual reality any city of
the world you want. Let's for example take the city of Rome. Every
monument, restaurant, hospital, park, mall and police department can
be accounted for in a detailed, virtual replica which we can model
using one of these 3D modeling programs. Every car, plane and boat,
even the people and their biomechanics are so well represented that we
could easily mistake the computer model for the real thing. Here we
are looking at the monitor screen from our God-like-point-of-view. All
the points, lines, 2D-planes and 3D objects in this digital
presentation have their properties and behavior ruled by simulated
laws of physics which are identical to the laws encountered in our
real world. These objects and the laws that govern them are 100%
traceable to the 1s and 0s, that is, to the voltages and transistors
on the silica chips that make up the computer onto which the software
is runs on. We have a 100% description of the city of Rome in our
computer in the sense that there is no object in that model that we
can't say all there is to say about it and the movement of the points,
lines and planes which compose it because they're all accounted for in
the 0s and 1s saved on the hard-drive and then loaded into the RAM and
video-RAM of our state of the art video graphics card. Let's call that
perspective, the perspective of knowing all there is to know about the
3D-model, the third-person perspective (the perspective described by
using only third-party objective data). What's interesting is that all
of these 3D design programs have the option to add cameras to whatever
world model you are currently developing. Cameras present a scene from
a particular point-of-view (POV – or point of reference, call it how
you will). Camera objects simulate still-image, motion picture, or
video cameras in the real world and have the same usage here. The
benefit of cameras is that you can position them anywhere within a
scene to offer a custom view. You can imagine that camera not only as
a point of view but also as an area point of view (all the light
reflected from the objects in your particular world model enter the
lens of the camera), but for our particular mental exercise this
doesn't matter. What you need to know is that our virtual cameras can
perfectly simulate real world cameras and all the optical science of
the lens is integrated in the program making the simulated models
similar to the ones that are found real life. We’ll use POVs and CPOVs
interchangeably from now on; they mean the same thing in the logic of
our argumentation.

The point-of-view (POV) of the camera is obviously completely
traceable and mathematically deducible from the third-person
perspective of the current model we are simulating and from the
physical characteristics of the virtual lens built into the camera
through which the light reflected of the objects in the model is
projected (Bare in mind that the physical properties and optics of the
lens are also simulated by the computer model). Of course, the
software does all that calculation and drawing for you. But if you had
the ambition you could practically do all that work for yourself by
taking the 3D-model’s mathematical and geometric data from the saved
computer file containing your particular model description and
calculate on sheets of paper how objects from it would look and behave
from a particular CPOV, and more to that, you could literally draw
those objects yourself by using the widely known techniques of
descriptive geometry (the same as the ones used by the 3D modeling
software). But what point would that make when we already have
computers that achieve this arduous task for us? Maybe living in a
period of time without computers would make this easily relentless
task one worth considering.


So, we can basically take a virtual trip to whatever part of Rome we
want by just jumping inside a CPOV provided to us by the software. We
can see, experience what it is like to be in Rome by adopting whatever
CPOV which will be calculated and drawn to us by this complex but 100%
describable and understandable computer program. The software would be
no mystery to us if we were sufficiently trained programmers,
architects and mathematicians. The WIIL of experiencing Rome will
never be a mystery to us also if we’ll let the 3D design software do
the job of calculating and drawing the CPOV for us. Of course, as said
above, we can achieve the same WIIL by making strenuous calculations
and draw ourselves on sheets of paper exactly the same POV “painted”
to us by the computer program. Whatever our choice one thing stands to
pure reason: We will achieve to experience the what-it-is-likeness
(WIIL) of Rome by deducing it from objective, third-party data that we
can all share by accessing the program file that contains the 3D-model
third-person description; so there is nothing special about it. The
whole point is that the experience of the WIIL can be achieved and
built by/for us using third-person data). The WIIL only seems to be
some kind of metaphysical thing because of its circumstantial
relatedness with the idiosyncrasies of the POV. No need to squander
energy contriving not-worth-considering meanings because of this
relatedness. The WIIL is the intentional interpretation of the
mathematical description of the physical objects' properties and
relationships to each other which the POV describes; it is the
richness and detail of the description of the POV taken as a whole by
whatever is on the other side of the lens. On the other hand the POV
can be accounted for by its mathematical and geometrical description;
it’s all data, 0s and 1s. The WIIL and the POV represent the same
thing but each are different interpretations of a specific slice of
the 3D model: one is a reducible, mathematical and geometric
description of a set of objects and how their would appear from a
certain vantage point (i.e. the POV), the other one is the non-
reducible, intentional, apparently immediate interpretation of all
that data contained in the POV taken as a whole. The WIIL is all
accounted for, we know all about it: how it comes to existence, how it
is 100% physical but non-reducible because of its intentionality, and
how the circumstantial relation to its POV makes it seem as if it’s
something separate from it but that's an illusion.


The what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of points-of-view (POVs) in our model
of Rome are unique in the sense that they each have idiosyncrasies in
the arrangement of points, lines, planes, colors and light reflectance
that make up the objects in the model, idiosyncrasies caused by the
perspective that we randomly chose to be a point or a certain area
(lens of the camera) on the map of our 3D model onto which the light
reflected by some of the objects contained in it is projected through.
The WIIL is 100% mathematically, geometrically described and accounted
for by the calculations and drawings done in order to design the POV
that we experience the WIIL through. To make it more clearly lets
describe the relationship between the WIIL and the POV a little more.
The WIIL is not something separate from the POV in one important sense
and here sits the crux of my argumentation: The POV which was inferred
and created from the objective, third-person perspective of the
computer model is the WIIL in the sense that all we need to know if we
are to describe the WIIL is the mathematical description of the POV
and that is all. For someone (or something) to experience objects
contained in the city model through a specific CPOV that is how WIILs
come into existence. The sole act of accessing that POV (i.e, its
mathematical description) is the WIIL. The question "And then what
happens?" has no meaning here because nothing happens next. As I've
said above you can think of POVs as reducible in the sense that they
can be accounted for mathematically by knowing each coordinate of
every point belonging to every object in its description, and you can
think at WIIL as a non-reducible, intentional representation of the
objects described by that POV taken as a whole by the observer sitting
on the other side of the lens. The sole act of acknowledging the
mathematical and geometric descriptive richness of a piece of the
world through the lens of the camera-point-of-view (CPOV) by whatever
remains on the other side of the lens is the WIIL and nothing more is
there to be said; the story is complete. Acknowledging the richness in
description of the mathematical and geometric data does not mean that
the observer needs to understand all the intricate equations,
elaborate calculations and geometric deductions; all there needs to be
done is for that observer is to be hit with all that idiosyncratic
data ". “Can you describe this WIIL?" Of course, by providing you with
all the mathematical relations between all the points, planes and
surface properties that describe the POV through which this wholeness
of experience (WIIL) comes to reality. How did i get those points and
planes and their properties? Again, I got them from the third-party,
objective data contained in the 3D-model of the city located on the 1s
and 0s hardwired on the hard-drive of the computer.


Something on privateness now. The WILL is only private in the sense
that only something which experiences a certain POV can experience its
WIIL but that is all. Can this POV be shared with others? Of course.
After we create that CPOV in the computer program we can save it to a
file and send it via email to whatever part of the globe you want for
someone else to experience its WIIL. So, the possibility of sharing it
with others makes it a not very good candidate for privateness. POVs
are only unique, but hardly private so let's not confuse the terms.

The same reasons as above I should say go for the qualia of color,
smells, etc. So, I doubt there is any difference with these types of
experiences. What it is like to see a color is just experiencing the
complete model from a slice of the world from a certain POV. Why can't
that POV be deduced and inferred from the widely agreed-upon,
sufficient, scientific data as qualophiles’ plea for metaphysics
suggest eludes me so far as i can see, so that's why the they haven't
proved anything yet. I doubt they'll ever will. If we knew almost
everything there is to know about the particles and forces that make
up our world we could be able to build models of whatever brains we'd
like that could experience all there is to be possible designable as
an experience.

Daniel Dennett's RoboMarry shouldn't have a hard job at building color
into herself without access to the already build in color-modules that
are part of her 100% silica made brain. And that's our next story.

<<<RoboMarry has a busy afternoon>>>
In one of his more recent books, Daniel Dennett answered critics whom
do not share his position on the possibility that John Searle's color-
bereft Mary, recently liberated from the black&white, grey-shaded
Chinese room which she inhabited in the course of her lifetime, could
not be fooled into believing that a blue-colored banana shown to her
by her masters is in fact yellow. Even though Mary did not experience
any colors in her lifetime she somehow managed to put herself into the
dispositional states of yellowness and blueness with the help of
scientific data she gathered and made sense of in her black&white
room. Mary would not be at all fooled by the cheap trick her masters
tried on her, but Dan's critics said Mary wouldn't be able to pull
this task off. So, Dennett devised another but more ingenious
intuition pump: Locked RoboMary. From now on my story will differ a
bit from Dennett's in order to make my point clearer (You can check
the original story in Dan’s 2006 book, Sweet Dreams).


Let's replace Mary with RoboMary: a robot just as adroit in cognitive
skills as any other human being but much more rapid in thinking and
with a greater bandwidth for information acquiring than any of us
could ever imagine would be possible in the future even by today's
standards of technological advancement. Even if she's a standard Mark
19 model, RoboMary was stripped of her HD Color Cameras and was
equipped with bulk black&white CCDs that have the same performance and
resolution but cannot compute colors. Also, RoboMary had been
restricted access to her color-experience modules that were part of
her silica-made brain using some set of plug-ins installed into her by
her masters before her brain’s conscious capabilities were activated.
So, RoboMary has no experience of colors in her memory, and could
neither experience them through her black&white electronic eyes
because they can't render color, nor would she ever be able to put
herself into the state of experiencing them because she was denied
access to the color memory stack that was accessible by her color-
experience modules now blocked by the plug-ins. So, Locked-RoboMary,
trapped in her black&white room, with her black&white CCDs, without
her color rendering parts of her mechanized brain could apparently
never be able to experience colors. Or would she?

Even though her electronic color-experience brain modules were blocked
by the plug-ins installed at birth into her kernel software, the
design plans for that part of her electronic brain could be accessed
by her if she was trained enough to hack into the servers of the
corporation that happens to hold the patents for Mark 19 robots. Being
trapped in a room that has non-stop general-level access into the
network of the corporation and having access to the Internet this
makes her task so much easier. More to that she can converse with
other Mark 19 and Mark 20 robots. Low and behold, RoboMary managed to
hack into one of her robotic friends' computer some months ago by
installing a version of a Trojan horse that she managed to program in
her spare time; the fun part is that his friend which is now part of
the developing team for Mark 21 models thanks to the months of
training and million-dollar software installed into him has two levels
higher network access to the complete design files for Mark 19 robots.
That's how RoboMary managed to educate herself about the hardware and
software that makes up her brain, about her robot mechanics and the
design of the electronics from which her currently missing HD Color
Cameras are build. She now completely understands the functionality of
all the subsystems that make her color-experiencing modules even
though she still cannot access them directly. Having access to Moogle,
which is now the greatest and most used search engine on the Internet
network, she can easily access all information having to do with
vision and vision systems. By accessing the web she understands the
physics and chemistry of color, acquires vast knowledge about the
biomechanics of vision in humans with all the details on how their
color detection systems are wired into their brains, etc. Nothing
about vision and the world of physics, biology, artificial-
intelligence and bio-technology is un-known to her. She has an almost
complete third-person perspective on everything there is to know from
the world (also on everything there is to know from the design of Mark
19 robots) that has anything to do with colors. But how could she
build into herself the phenomenal, personal, ineffable experience of
colors having only third-party data about these phenomena? How could
she do that when, in the first place, one needs to have been in that
state of first-person experiencing sometime in the past, privilege she
was denied off at birth?

So, on Sunday afternoon, having some hours off because her training
has ended prematurely due to failure of all the Design and Development
server farms in the building complex she happened to be installed,
RoboMary put herself onto the task of building into herself the
experience of colors which were described by her robotic friends as
very awkward and unusual tools used to study the surface properties of
objects. She was now ready to do this because she gathered all the
data which was needed in order achieve this task. All she lacked up
until now was the computing power from the supercomputer located in
her building and which she now had access to because its processors
are not as stressed in this afternoon "thanks" to the cessation in
normal operation of the server clusters; she could now use that those
extra flops for herself in order to see what's so special about these
colors.

Being locked inside her room RoboMary had no colored object she could
study. Nothing colored ever touched her senses so she had to make use
of the ingenuity which always made her the adroitful robot she proved
to be. Having access to the higher level network though the trojan
virus she installed in her robotic friend's computer she could
replicate and simulate a complete digital model of her brain (and the
original HD Color Cameras that usually equip Mark 19 robots) inside
the currently laid-off supercomputer located in her building; that
would be no problem to her because she managed to steal all the Mark
19 design files; all she needed now was a few hours in order to built
the replica model into the system of the supercomputer and to make a
few thousand simulations on it using as input the few terabytes of
video-data gathered from all the security cameras spread inside the
corporation building complex she was living in (all those stolen video
recordings were in color format but that was no use to her because the
LCD screen inside her room was black&white) plus the gigabytes of
scientific information on vision systems, optics, colors, etc. But how
was she going to put herself into the state of experiencing colors if
there were no color that tickled her senses? All was black& white
around her.

Well, if you remember the story of how architects create specific
camera-points-of-view (CPOVs) inside their 3D modeling software in
order to experience a certain point-of-view (POV) of whatever model of
reality or of their imagination they are designing, maybe building
color experience inside oneself without ever having experienced colors
may not seem that unbelievable after all. Remember that RoboMary knows
everything about the physical world there is to be known. Couldn't she
simulate (that is by a third-person perspective of course) what the
brain state of a Mark 19 robot would be upon experiencing colors using
a computer model of this type of robot and subjecting it to a
completely digital replica of a LCD monitor screen onto which the
stolen colorized security videos would be projected onto? The CAD/CAM
software for integration of optical and electronic mechanics in 2050
is highly advanced so this wouldn’t be at all an impossible task; it's
would be quite ordinary in fact. Having access to the brain states
(i.e. the color-experiencing modules) of the simulated Mark 19 brain
while its mind experiences colors that would mean RoboMary could
easily make some print-screens of those brain states and then put
herself into the specific mental point-of-view (POV – or mental point
of reference) that would allow her to experience what-it-is-likeness
of colors by building into her RAM a complete replica of those color-
experiencing modules and setting them up with the data captures in the
print-screens. Also, having a complete list of all the belongings of
the corporation, their GPS position, their colors, that means she
could easily deduce from their position in the stolen videos how a
specific object's color is named so that she could easily build into
herself the color-verbal associations that every other Mark 19 robot
and human being has already built in. So, when the "playful"
scientists release RoboMary from here color bereft room and give her a
blue banana they will be the ones amazed by the lack of non-
astonishment in her behavior; RoboMary will completely call their
spoof. Many will deny that the above story could ever be true or, more
interestingly, some will retort that what RoboMary did was cheating.
But would that be true in any sense of the word? Is it failure of
imagination on the side of the party-popper philosophers perhaps?

Some may retort that what may be a true fact for architecture and 3D
computer modeling is not even close at explaining special phenomenal
qualities like colors, pains, etc. But then again, why would that be a
possibility worth taking into consideration? What qualia is, this what-
it-is-likeness, is not something metaphysical (at least that is what
we should a priori consider it if we ever wish to explain it),
indescribable by third-party objective data; it is in fact just the
intentional interpretation of the apparent immediateness in
understanding of the sumptuousness (which is 100% accountable) of
whatever particular POV’s description we are acknowledging at the
moment. The richness in the description of the POV and its
acknowledgement is the what-it-is-likeness; there is nothing
metaphysical about it. By using only third-party, objective data
RoboMary built into herself the experience of color so how could she
be cheating? How was she able to put herself into experiencing the so-
called ineffable, private phenomenal qualities of colors by only using
data provided by science? Would that be because colors are from this
world, not so ineffable, not so private qualities after all?
Qualophiles may retort by further stating that the POV's description
doesn't explain the specialness of the WIIL because my explanation
misses the enjoyer, the analyzer, but, as I've stated above, that is
just an illusion because there is an analyzer: the virtual machine in
the brain takes care of all those tasks of acknowledging and
discrimination. So, there should be no mystery about who the enjoyer
is and the means by which it achieves the acknowledgement of POV’s
mathematical description.

Others think otherwise. Consider what Torin Alter has to say about
Dennett's Locked RoboMary intution pump:

"Why does putting herself in state B enable RoboMary to know what it’s
like to see red? B is a dispositional and (let us assume)
nonphenomenal
state; there is nothing it’s like to be in B. Nevertheless, B involves
color phenomenology in that it contains the relevant phenomenal
information. Therein lies the problem for Dennett’s argument. By
putting herself in a state that involves color phenomenology, RoboMary
cheats. Pre-release
Mary should be no less puzzled about B than she is about seeing red.
If she lacks phenomenal information about seeing red, then she lacks
the phenomenal information that B contains. If there are open
epistemic possibilities about the nature of phenomenal redness that
she cannot eliminate, then there are open epistemic possibilities
about the content of B that she cannot eliminate. RoboMary comes by
her phenomenal knowledge of color experience not by a priori deduction
from physical information but rather by putting herself in a
nonphenomenal dispositional state that contains the relevant
phenomenal information. (The case for Qualia, p252-253)"

So Torin Alter's argumentation goes like this: "Why would architects
that adopt certain camera-points-of-view (CPOVs) in their 3D model of
Rome come to experience the what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of Rome? There
is nothing like experiencing something that would be born from a point-
of-view (POV), is it? POVs are from-this-world, non-phenomenal (not-
metaphysical) descriptions of reality so how can they account for the
WIIL of Rome? By accessing the POV and practically acknowledging its
"sudden" mathematical and geometrical description architects cheat
because even though they've accepted and recognized all the above they
are missing something important. There is more to the WIIL of the POV
than the intentional interpretation of its mathematical description."
That's nonsense of course! The arguments don't line up and are
obviously self-contradictory. Saying that the specialness of POVs
could not be accounted for by their mathematical description only, but
also by the fact that they possess something special, out of this
world is just plain old unmotivated fantasy and sky-hook anchoring of
an illusion as old as debates about brain an mind. A brain only needs
its virtual machine and its specialized intentional discrimination
devices in order to process the description of the POV and that
discrimination done by the brain is the WIIL. So, to finish my
deductive reasoning, what Alter is actually saying is that if color-
bereft RoboMary could manage to achieve the task of putting herself
into the state of experiencing colors only by using third-party,
scientific data that would mean qualia is just a messed-up term
invented by science-deprived, imagination-bereft philosophers, and
that would make the mystery go away! Quales would be from-this-world,
100% explainable, non-magical tools used by the brain to discriminate
different properties from their external world. The magic of
phenomenal experience would fade away like the blink of an eye, at
least that's what qualophiles fear. How else could RoboMary build into
herself the experience of colors she now enjoys, only by using
objective data, if this so-called "color quales" weren't completely
accountable and traceable by that data? So, RoboMary has got to cheat,
Alter says, otherwise color quales wouldn't be out of this world.
Alter's got an agenda all right but I doubt it is finding out the
truth if he keeps postulating things out of this world which will, by
definition, always defy scientific explanation. Let's not confuse
failures in imagination with truths about reality.

To take the analogy with 3D computer modeling a little farther we can
say that just like an architect enjoys objects from a computer model
through the custom CPOV (having whatever custom properties its
designer want it to have) created by its 3D modeling software, by the
same line of reasoning we could say that Mark 19 robots are given
“immediate” representations of color experiences through the HD color
cameras they posses and are able to acknowledge that richness of
information through their color-experiencing modules (there are
another sort of CPOV). In the case of RoboMary that couldn’t be
possible because she was bereft of the HD color cameras and her color-
experience modules. But she managed to get around this problem by
building a complete digital replica of a Mark 19 robot and calculating
how her color discriminating systems would functionally look and
behave from third-person perspective; just like architects that can
calculate and draw camera-points-of-view (CPOVs) without the help of
computers RoboMary managed to "calculate" and "draw" to herself the
WIIL of colors. If was just that it took a lot more time, but it was
worth it: she could now appreciate the mechanisms that bring colors to
reality; and oddly enough, colors are so much more interesting because
she now knows that what brings them to reality are just physical
subsystems build onto bigger modules that are further arranged into
intricate discrimination systems of which's functionality is all that
matters.

[Craig Weinberg]

On Dec 22, 7:18 am, alexalex <alexmka...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello, Everythinglisters!
>
> The below text is a philosophical essay on what qualia may represent.
> I doubt you'll manage to finish reading it (it's kind of long, and
> translated from anoter language), but if you do I'll be happy to hear
> your opinion about what it says.
>
> Thanks!
>
> <<<A simpler model of the world with different points of view>>>
>
> It can often get quite amusing watching qualophiles' self-confidence,
> mutual assurance and agreement when they talk about something a priori
> defined as inherently private and un-accessible to third-party
> analysis (i.e. qualia), so they say, but they somehow agree on what
> they're discussing

I feel the same way about quantophiles' confidence in theoretical
abstraction and endless capacity to deny the existence of the very
subjectivity that they use to deny it with. Agreement is not a
contradiction to the privacy of qualia because the privacy of qualia
is specific to groups of subjects as well as individuals. Human beings
experience universal levels of qualia (physics, chemistry), organic
levels (biology, zoology, neurology), anthropomorphic levels
(psychology, sociology), and individual levels which are relatively
unique or idiosyncratic. We are both human so we share the broader
levels, but begin to diverge in the biochemical level as we have
different DNA. That divergence grows as the scope of the qualia
narrows and deepens toward individuality.

>about even though as far as I've been able to
> understand they don't display the slightest scant of evidence which
> would show that they believe there will ever be a theory that could
> bridge the gap between the ineffable what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of
> personal experience and the scientific, objective descriptions of
> reality. They don’t even try to brainstorm ideas about such a theory.

My hypothesis tries to do exactly that. Check it out sometime if you
have a chance: http://s33light.org/SEEES

> How are we to explain this what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) if we can't
> subject it to what science has been and will always be?

By expanding science so that it is more scientific and not shivering
in a cave of pseudo-certainty and throwing rocks at people who ask
about subjectivity.

>Third-party analysis.

If science will always be limited to third-party analysis, then it
will never be possible for it to address subjectivity, since it is by
definition subjective. Since the nature of subjectivity cannot change,
science must adapt to fit the reality of the universe.

> So, here it is: Qualia, one of the last remaining unresolved
> quandaries for us to splinter and rise on the pedestals of science,
> but we must stop, qualophiles say, because, .... “Because what?”

It's not qualia that must rise to the challenge of science, it is the
other way around.

> I ask. “Because the what-it-is-likeness of qualia” most of them will
> respond. And believe me that is the whole argument from which they
> sprout all of the other awkward deductions and misconstrued axioms if
> we are to succinctly resume their rigorous, inner-gut, “aprioristic
> analysis”. I'll try to expose the absurdity of their stance by making
> some analogies while telling the story of how architects and designers
> build 3D models of reality with the help of 3D modeling software.
>
> The 1s and 0s that make the large variety of 3D design software on the
> market today are all we need in order to bring to virtual-reality
> whatever model of our real world we desire. Those 1s and 0s, which are
> by the way as physical as the neurons in your brain

Yes and no. 1s and 0s are not physical in the way that neurons are.
They have no temperature or specific gravity. They are abstractions we
use to understand how we can manipulate semiconductors to act as
computation devices for us.The only physicality that 1s and 0s have
are as sensotimotive significators in the human mind. In a computer
they are not 1s and 0s, but concrete events experienced by doped
semiconductors of holding and releasing 'charge' (feeling or proto-
feeling or sensorimotive detection-reaction which we consider
'electromagnetic').

> though not of the
> same assortment (see below), are further arranged into sub-modules
> that are further integrated into other different parts and subsystems
> of the computer onto which the software they are part of is running
> on, so their arrangement is obviously far from aleatory. One needs to
> adopt the intentional stance in order to understand the intricacies,
> details and roles that these specific particular modules play in this
> large and complex computer programs.
>
> If you had the desire you could bring to virtual reality any city of
> the world you want. Let's for example take the city of Rome. Every
> monument, restaurant, hospital, park, mall and police department can
> be accounted for in a detailed, virtual replica which we can model
> using one of these 3D modeling programs. Every car, plane and boat,
> even the people and their biomechanics are so well represented that we
> could easily mistake the computer model for the real thing.

We modern humans could mistake the model for the real thing, but
nothing else in the universe would. Try to grow some real grapes in a
virtual Rome and it won't work. 3D models are an aid for human
visualization. They have no coherence independent of our usage of
them. Rome is a city made of tons of concrete, wood, ceramic, etc.
It's located in Italy and filled with living people who are constantly
changing the city, etc. A 3D model is an image in our eyes and mind
produced by a computer and a graphic display.

> Here we
> are looking at the monitor screen from our God-like-point-of-view. All
> the points, lines, 2D-planes and 3D objects in this digital
> presentation have their properties and behavior ruled by simulated
> laws of physics which are identical to the laws encountered in our
> real world.

Not at all. If you throw a virtual stone at your virtual Colosseum, it
makes no sound. A picture of a city is not a city. The map is not the
territory, even a really good map.

>These objects and the laws that govern them are 100%
> traceable to the 1s and 0s, that is, to the voltages and transistors
> on the silica chips that make up the computer onto which the software
> is runs on. We have a 100% description of the city of Rome in our
> computer in the sense that there is no object in that model that we
> can't say all there is to say about it and the movement of the points,
> lines and planes which compose it because they're all accounted for in
> the 0s and 1s saved on the hard-drive and then loaded into the RAM and
> video-RAM of our state of the art video graphics card.

A city isn't made of just points, lines, and planes. That's just one
aspect of a human visual representation. It is to say that an
accounting spreadsheet is 100% traceable to a factory and it's
employees.

Imagine how absurd that would sound to someone who is blind and lives
in Rome. Do they have no WIIL of experiencing Rome?

> Of course, as said
> above, we can achieve the same WIIL by making strenuous calculations
> and draw ourselves on sheets of paper exactly the same POV “painted”
> to us by the computer program. Whatever our choice one thing stands to
> pure reason: We will achieve to experience the what-it-is-likeness
> (WIIL) of Rome by deducing it from objective, third-party data that we
> can all share by accessing the program file that contains the 3D-model
> third-person description; so there is nothing special about it.

My WIIL is almost completely different as an American visitor from
what it was like for people who live there. This thought experiment is
based on a strawman of qualia, with no resemblance to actual
subjective experience. It is to say that by producing a perfect copy
of a book written in Chinese, whoever reads it will automatically be
able to read Chinese.

> The
> whole point is that the experience of the WIIL can be achieved and
> built by/for us using third-person data).

Of course. We have already achieved that: Movies, TV, radio,
photographs. All of which are far superior qualitatively at enabling
WIIL experiences than anything that computers have achieved separately
from those media.

> The WIIL only seems to be
> some kind of metaphysical thing because of its circumstantial
> relatedness with the idiosyncrasies of the POV.

It doesn't seem metaphysical to me at all. It is as physical as a
quark or a galaxy, it just 'insists' and 'persists' through time
rather than exists across space. What is metaphysical is the idea that
subjective perception spontaneously emerges from computation.

> No need to squander
> energy contriving not-worth-considering meanings because of this
> relatedness. The WIIL is the intentional interpretation of the
> mathematical description of the physical objects' properties and
> relationships to each other which the POV describes; it is the
> richness and detail of the description of the POV taken as a whole by
> whatever is on the other side of the lens. On the other hand the POV
> can be accounted for by its mathematical and geometrical description;
> it’s all data, 0s and 1s.

Then why do you need a lens? Why is there a 'side'? If it's all data,
at what point do 0s and 1s start to feel like they are on a side of
which intentionally interprets rather than one which performs generic
a-signifying data manipulations?

>The WIIL and the POV represent the same
> thing but each are different interpretations of a specific slice of
> the 3D model: one is a reducible, mathematical and geometric
> description of a set of objects and how their would appear from a
> certain vantage point (i.e. the POV), the other one is the non-
> reducible, intentional, apparently immediate interpretation of all
> that data contained in the POV taken as a whole.

Yes! They are two different (symmetrically opposite to be exact)
presentations of the same underlying ontology. The problem is that
your view arbitrarily privileges one view as real and the other as
'illusion' or 'metaphysical'. Both are real is some sense, unreal in
another, both real and unreal in another, and neither real nor unreal
in another. The underlying ontology is in fact the gap which separates
and the sense which infers the wholeness underneath the gap.

>The WIIL is all
> accounted for, we know all about it: how it comes to existence, how it

Oh? Like what? What do we know about green that we can explain to a
blind person to give them a precise accounting of green?

> is 100% physical but non-reducible because of its intentionality, and
> how the circumstantial relation to its POV makes it seem as if it’s
> something separate from it but that's an illusion.

Illusion? Intentionality? Are these things made of 1s and 0s?

> The what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of points-of-view (POVs) in our model
> of Rome are unique in the sense that they each have idiosyncrasies in
> the arrangement of points, lines, planes, colors and light reflectance
> that make up the objects in the model, idiosyncrasies caused by the
> perspective that we randomly chose to be a point or a certain area
> (lens of the camera) on the map of our 3D model onto which the light
> reflected by some of the objects contained in it is projected through.
> The WIIL is 100% mathematically, geometrically described and accounted
> for by the calculations and drawings done in order to design the POV
> that we experience the WIIL through. To make it more clearly lets
> describe the relationship between the WIIL and the POV a little more.
> The WIIL is not something separate from the POV in one important sense
> and here sits the crux of my argumentation: The POV which was inferred
> and created from the objective, third-person perspective of the
> computer model is the WIIL in the sense that all we need to know if we
> are to describe the WIIL is the mathematical description of the POV
> and that is all. For someone (or something) to experience objects
> contained in the city model through a specific CPOV that is how WIILs
> come into existence. The sole act of accessing that POV (i.e, its
> mathematical description) is the WIIL.

The POV has no WIIL. The WIIL is inferred as an extension of our
individual perception. Without a graphic display and eyes to see it,
there is no POV.

The question "And then what
> happens?" has no meaning here because nothing happens next. As I've
> said above you can think of POVs as reducible in the sense that they
> can be accounted for mathematically by knowing each coordinate of
> every point belonging to every object in its description, and you can
> think at WIIL as a non-reducible, intentional representation of the
> objects described by that POV taken as a whole by the observer sitting
> on the other side of the lens. The sole act of acknowledging the
> mathematical and geometric descriptive richness of a piece of the
> world through the lens of the camera-point-of-view (CPOV) by whatever
> remains on the other side of the lens is the WIIL and nothing more is
> there to be said; the story is complete.

The story has not even begun. There is no such thing as mathematical
and geometric descriptive richness, only precision and resolution.
There is no world-making quality of perception oozing out of abstract
coordinates and points.

> Acknowledging the richness in
> description of the mathematical and geometric data does not mean that
> the observer needs to understand all the intricate equations,
> elaborate calculations and geometric deductions; all there needs to be
> done is for that observer is to be hit with all that idiosyncratic
> data ". “Can you describe this WIIL?" Of course, by providing you with
> all the mathematical relations between all the points, planes and
> surface properties that describe the POV through which this wholeness
> of experience (WIIL) comes to reality. How did i get those points and
> planes and their properties? Again, I got them from the third-party,
> objective data contained in the 3D-model of the city located on the 1s
> and 0s hardwired on the hard-drive of the computer.

What do 3-D models have to do with the smell of cheese or the memory
of feeling in one's teeth, the blueness of blue. Those are examples of
qualia, not a CGI interactive map of Rome.

>
> Something on privateness now. The WILL is only private in the sense
> that only something which experiences a certain POV can experience its
> WIIL but that is all. Can this POV be shared with others? Of course.
> After we create that CPOV in the computer program we can save it to a
> file and send it via email to whatever part of the globe you want for
> someone else to experience its WIIL. So, the possibility of sharing it
> with others makes it a not very good candidate for privateness. POVs
> are only unique, but hardly private so let's not confuse the terms.

Sharing the POV still generates individual, private WIILs. I can give
you an mp3 but my WILL of that song is that it is a great song but
yours may be a boring song.

>
> The same reasons as above I should say go for the qualia of color,
> smells, etc. So, I doubt there is any difference with these types of
> experiences. What it is like to see a color is just experiencing the
> complete model from a slice of the world from a certain POV.

Then it's existence would be redundant and irrelevant. Why should we
need more than one sense? What it's like to hear music is nothing like
seeing something, even in synesthesia where the sense 'data' is
presumably directly translated from one sense modality to another. The
data is the same, but the qualia *cannot be translated* even if the
end result from a functional perspective might seem the same to an
outside observer (ie if I am seeing a base drum sound instead of
hearing it, I can produce accurate estimates of the timing, intensity,
rhythm, etc of the drum, but I cannot hear it).

> Why can't
> that POV be deduced and inferred from the widely agreed-upon,
> sufficient, scientific data as qualophiles’ plea for metaphysics
> suggest eludes me so far as i can see,

That's because you don't seem to have given any consideration to what
they are actually talking about. I agree that qualia are not
metaphysical though, unless you are talking about physics only in
terms of material objects as seen from the outside. Qualia is physical
alright, which is why they are altered with a molecule like LSD, but
there is nothing about the molecule LSD which is significant or
interesting without a human nervous system to experience it.

> so that's why the they haven't
> proved anything yet. I doubt they'll ever will. If we knew almost
> everything there is to know about the particles and forces that make
> up our world we could be able to build models of whatever brains we'd
> like that could experience all there is to be possible designable as
> an experience.

We can't even bring a dead ant back to life. We should know enough
about particles and forces already to do that.

>
> Daniel Dennett's RoboMarry shouldn't have a hard job at building color
> into herself without access to the already build in color-modules that
> are part of her 100% silica made brain. And that's our next story.

Here's where I de-bunk Dennett's views if you're interested:

http://s33light.org/post/14618926856

I'm not familiar with RoboMarry, but I'll debunk that for you if you
like another time. Dennett's worldview is obsolete. Mine is superior.

Craig

[Craig Weinberg]

>On 24 dec., 00:37, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Thanks for taking the time to read about my analogy!

Sure, thanks for reading my responses!

>
>> On Dec 22, 7:18 am, alexalex <alexmka...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>

>> > Hello, Everythinglisters!
>>
>> > The below text is a philosophical essay on what qualia may represent.
>> > I doubt you'll manage to finish reading it (it's kind of long, and
>> > translated from anoter language), but if you do I'll be happy to hear
>> > your opinion about what it says.
>>
>> > Thanks!
>>
>> > <<<A simpler model of the world with different points of view>>>
>>
>> > It can often get quite amusing watching qualophiles' self-confidence,
>> > mutual assurance and agreement when they talk about something a priori
>> > defined as inherently private and un-accessible to third-party
>> > analysis (i.e. qualia), so they say, but they somehow agree on what
>> > they're discussing
>>

>> I feel the same way about quantophiles' confidence in theoretical
>> abstraction and endless capacity to deny the existence of the very
>> subjectivity that they use to deny it with. Agreement is not a
>> contradiction to the privacy of qualia because the privacy of qualia
>> is specific to groups of subjects as well as individuals. Human beings
>> experience universal levels of qualia (physics, chemistry), organic
>> levels (biology, zoology, neurology), anthropomorphic levels
>> (psychology, sociology), and individual levels which are relatively
>> unique or idiosyncratic. We are both human so we share the broader
>> levels, but begin to diverge in the biochemical level as we have
>> different DNA. That divergence grows as the scope of the qualia
>> narrows and deepens toward individuality.
>

>I don't deny the subjectivity at all, and i think that even hard
>materialists like Dennett don't deny it if i understand them corectly.
>I don't see what is stoping us from describing subjectivity in a way
>that makes possible theories about qualia testable. How are we going
>to achieve an explanation if the very quandary we're trying to explain
>is forlorn to another realm?

It's not another realm, it's right here, it just the opposite
ontological paradigm. It can be tested and explained, it's just that
the technology is a little problematic. We're probably going to need
volunteers to make their brain into a laboratory so that we can
integrate external appliances into the subjective scope. Only then
will we know what other organisms and ultimately inorganic matter
might experience so that we can begin to map the evolution of
sensorimotive significance.

>
>> >about even though as far as I've been able to
>> > understand they don't display the slightest scant of evidence which
>> > would show that they believe there will ever be a theory that could
>> > bridge the gap between the ineffable what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of
>> > personal experience and the scientific, objective descriptions of
>> > reality. They don’t even try to brainstorm ideas about such a theory.
>>

>> My hypothesis tries to do exactly that. Check it out sometime if you
>> have a chance:http://s33light.org/SEEES
>

>I will!

Thanks. It's a work in progress for sure, but hopefully it gets some
of the major points across.

>
>
>> >Third-party analysis.
>>
>> If science will always be limited to third-party analysis, then it
>> will never be possible for it to address subjectivity, since it is by
>> definition subjective. Since the nature of subjectivity cannot change,
>> science must adapt to fit the reality of the universe.
>>
>

>I wonder what on earth you could possibly mean by "subjectivity is by
>definition subjective so it cannot be explained by third-party
>scientific data" other than a cry for dualism or for the metaphysical?

I just mean that to say third-party is already a distinction from
first person, which is what subjective means. You are saying in effect
"Science will always be only about dehydration, so it's silly to say
that we will never have dehydrated water".

It's not dualism, it's an involuted monism which is multisense at one
end, monosense at the other. Think of how specular reflection works.
You see the sky in a puddle of water from one angle, but from another
you see the water. In one sense the puddle is what is literally real,
in another it's merely a generic reflector to display the sky for you.
That's what the universe is. Not dumb particles that magically become
smart just because there is an especially large quantity of them, but
events which are particulate in one sense and sensorimotive
experiences in another.

>It is just like saying: Vitalism contains by its definition "elan
>vital" so science must adapt in order to explain this special sauce,
>that must, a priori - by your postulates -, be out of this world.

It's not metaphysical, in fact it's so concrete and obvious that we
miss it. It's the 'elephant in every room'. You are reading this by
looking through your eyes, are you not? Where is that happening? Right
here. It's actually the materialist position which banishes
consciousness to a metaphysical never-never land of representation or
computation...some magical dimension in which quintillions of 1s and
0s come to believe that they are loaves of bread and hydrogen bombs.

The 'real world' imagined by computationalism is a completely
different sense of reality than direct subjectivity based on indirect
observations and measurements (of other perceptual inertial frames).
It is to interpret ourselves in the eyes of inanimate instruments that
have no capacity to make sense of who and why we are, only what our
bodies are and how they work.

>
>
>
>
>> > So, here it is: Qualia, one of the last remaining unresolved
>> > quandaries for us to splinter and rise on the pedestals of science,
>> > but we must stop, qualophiles say, because, .... “Because what?”
>>

>> It's not qualia that must rise to the challenge of science, it is the
>> other way around.
>>
>

>So science can't explain this special Qualia of yours - and mine. Ok,
>game over then. You've got your story right there.

Is science so pathetic and feeble that it cannot stretch and expand
it's intelligence to accommodate ordianry reality? An infant
understands subjectivity, an insect. Subjectivity isn't complicated,
it's just hard to work with because of the problems of ubiquity,
disorientation, etc. (it's in my multisense intro)

>
>> > I ask. “Because the what-it-is-likeness of qualia” most of them will
>> > respond. And believe me that is the whole argument from which they
>> > sprout all of the other awkward deductions and misconstrued axioms if
>> > we are to succinctly resume their rigorous, inner-gut, “aprioristic
>> > analysis”. I'll try to expose the absurdity of their stance by making
>> > some analogies while telling the story of how architects and designers
>> > build 3D models of reality with the help of 3D modeling software.
>>
>> > The 1s and 0s that make the large variety of 3D design software on the
>> > market today are all we need in order to bring to virtual-reality
>> > whatever model of our real world we desire. Those 1s and 0s, which are
>> > by the way as physical as the neurons in your brain
>>

>> Yes and no. 1s and 0s are not physical in the way that neurons are.
>> They have no temperature or specific gravity. They are abstractions we
>> use to understand how we can manipulate semiconductors to act as
>> computation devices for us.The only physicality that 1s and 0s have
>> are as sensotimotive significators in the human mind. In a computer
>> they are not 1s and 0s, but concrete events experienced by doped
>> semiconductors of holding and releasing 'charge' (feeling or proto-
>> feeling or sensorimotive detection-reaction which we consider
>> 'electromagnetic').
>>
>

>Well, the functional architecture of the physical ones and zeros is
>all that matters.

What's a physical one or zero? What function do they have?

>Their dance, which is as dynamical as the dance of
>the ions in your neurons, is as real as the chemistry in your brain.

Nothing is made of 1s or 0s, except maybe an artwork or computer data
viewed through a binary editor. They don't exist any more than A's and
E's.

>So I don't see your point here. You're maybe saying that you can't
>make buildings out of steel and dry wall, but only from masonry and
>concrete; I flatly deny it, even though you may reject my analogy.

No I'm saying that you can't make real buildings out of *pictures* of
steel and drywall (or anything else).

>
>The statement that zeros and ones are somehow abstract and
>disconnected from physical reality deserves its place on the shrine-of-
>fail near concepts like epiphenomenalism and quales. The zeros and
>ones that make up our computers are as physical as physical can get:

There *are no* zeros and ones that make up our computers at all. There
are semiconducting microelectronic assemblies which we stimulate with
electromotive power, causing the doped silicon crystals to be
precisely controlled to alternate between states of conductivity and
resistance. You could call them anything, yin and yang, stop and go,
Apollonian and Dionysian, whatever. There is nothing about them that
is literally one or zero. We use binary math to bridge the gap between
our human intellect and the primitive sense of semiconductor
technology, that's all.

>there’s in the voltages on your network wire, in the logical gates of
>almost all of your computer’s integrated circuits, in you hard-disk
>stored as magnetic patterns, on your processor stored in micro-
>circuits with the width of only a few tens of atoms.

No 1s or 0s anywhere in there at all. No more than there are dogs and
cats. Not literally. Figuratively, yes, 1s and 0s are an excellent way
for us to make sense of how these technologies work together. We
design them to be that way specifically, going to great lengths to
research and refine materials to behave in this way. Not so easy to
run the internet on a cheeseburger.

> If zeros and ones
>are real, physical things,

They aren't real in the sense that I assume you mean - that physics
would mean. To be real in that sense they would have to be found on
the periodic table of elements, the electromagnetic spectrum, or in
field equations for quantum physics. They aren't though. They are real
in the sense that color and odor are real but at the opposite end of
the sensorimotive continuum. They are thought-feelings which are
intended to represent 'information' evacuated of feeling.

> then in what sense would you use the term
>“abstract” when referring to Turing machines?

In the sense that a Turing machine is an ideal mechanism that can be
enacted in any physical substance which supports mechanical physics -
i.e. you probably need something that is solid at room temperature,
some source of mechanical energy, etc. You could probably enact a
Turing machine in Coke bottles or foam rubber as well as
microelectronics, but it wouldn't be easy. The machine itself though
is conceptual. The Coke bottles don't know that they are acting like a
Turing machine, and neither does an electronic computer, despite
appearances to the contrary.

>I don’t know, but
>whatever you mean is bound to failure because between Turing machines
>and computer programs, on the one hand, and brains and minds on the
>other hand there is absolutely no difference in how their prowess come
>to existence, at least we have no reason to believe otherwise if we a
>priori consider that their systemic architecture, their functionality
>is all that matters; that’s what gives off their talent.

That's not the case at all. The brain and mind absolutely do use
computation, but only in the service of the user. Computer programs
have no user of their own. They have no need for a presentation layer
within their logic. It's actually functionalism that is a dead end
since everything that the consciousness does would be better served by
unconscious processes (like digestion or immune response). There is no
purely functional explanation for the existence of any kind of
experience or awareness. Function matters, but it wouldn't if not for
the more primitive reality of sense making.

>For one to
>say that there is another story to be told besides the story of how
>the bigger parts of the brain are build upon its most bottom parts and
>how those sub-modules are integrated to each other is to fail at
>Science; why should you possible want to postulate another mystery
>that also needs an explanation when you’re trying to explain all there
>is to explain about a phenomenon?

Because that story is utterly meaningless if not for the other half of
the story of how owners of the brain use it to make sense of
themselves and the universe and to participate in them significantly.
It needs no explanation. 'I' only need to be what and who I am. What
needs to be explained is why the rest of the universe is not me, which
is relatively straightforward.

>
>My belief is that deniers of the strong AI thesis fail in two regards.
>On the one hand their mistake the physical states of 1s and 0s with
>the arbitrary tokens of 0 and 1 that we apply to them. The fact that 1
>and 0 are what we call numbers this doesn’t mean that what they really
>represent is abstract.

What is it that you imagine they represent? I understand exactly what
you are saying that you think AI critics mistake the symbolic
abstractions of 0 and 1 with the referents that those glyphs are
associated with, but I'm not mistaking your meaning at all. I'm
asserting positively that there is nothing about what 0 and 1 point to
that is common to all physical phenomena. By contrast, all phenomena
in the universe is describable in terms of sense.

>So, going a bit further, computer programs,
>even though they present themselves to thinkers like Searle as being
>just randomly-jazzed, non-understandable sets of ones and zeros are in
>fact the recipes for the dynamics of the functionalistic architecture
>of all the sub-modules that control the movement of electrons inside
>the PC that runs the software. The dance of the electrons on the
>silica chips that up your personal computer is all dynamical,
>physical, complex, functional, and can only be understood if one
>adopts the intentional stance.

The key words are 'understandable' and 'recipes'. The ones and zeros
are not the dance of electrons, they are a command and control
language or logos which are powerless to do anything unless they are
articulated through a physical technology (including our own
neurology).

>
>The second mistake deniers make is to a priori postulate that only
>certain kind of physical parts can build up a brain that has what we
>would call a mind.

It's not a mistake. No mind has every been observed to exist
independently of a brain, anywhere in the universe. You can't water a
sunflower with acetic acid or build a computer out of live hamsters,
so there is no reason to assume that the feelings of a living human
nervous system can be emulated in another physical environment. It's
possible, but I doubt it could work on silicon. I think you need
living cells to feel what an animal feels.

>They somehow excluded from this set of peculiar
>physical fragments of reality all the physical implementations of
>zeros and ones even though they didn’t provide any reason for it. So,
>for some reason, unbeknownst to some of the thinkers that brainstormed
>all of these issues in detail, we can apparently have a mind build out
>of ion pumps, synapses and axon hillocks but we cannot have one made
>out of CMOS gate arrays, emitter-coupled logic (ECL) gate arrays,
>index registers, and pad transceiver circuits.

You can't build a human mind out of orange peels and catalytic
converters either. We don't even know how to reconnect a severed
spinal cord to itself much make a motherboard feel romantic. Your
reasoning is sound, but your assumptions are exactly antithetical to
concrete reality. They are perfectly suited to developing technology
and information theory, but they take us in exactly the wrong
direction to understanding subjectivity and qualia.

>Of course I don’t
>believe that at all because there is no reason to. Again, as I’ve said
>above, why should you possible want to presuppose, for no scientific
>reason at all, that the micro-parts that make the meat of your brain
>have some extra stuff (mindality perhaps?)

They don't need any extra stuff. Human consciousness is just orders of
magnitude more elaborate than the sense that inorganic molecules make,
but it's essentially the same thing. What you don't realize is that if
you say that the mind is nothing but ones and zeros, then ones and
zeros *must* inherently have the potential to develop feeling and
thinking, in which case calling them ones and zeros would be
profoundly misleading.

> that will also need an
>explanation if we are to follow the rules of science, whereas the
>chunks of silicon, silver, plastics, etc that make up your computer
>don’t posses it, when all you’ve got as an argument is your intuition
>about the specialness of subjectivity?

It's not subjectivity that is special, it's human subjectivity that is
special to humans (and maybe on some more objective scale). The
silicon, silver, plastics, etc all have subjectivity, just it's
presumably very primitive - like a trillion times more primitive. We
don't know how it is though. Maybe all silver is a single subjective
entity or something, who knows. If anything other than human DNA could
make a human mind though, it seems like we would see some indication
of that. Surely some pattern of melting snowflakes would have begun to
self-replicate by now if it could. The recipe for DNA is quite
specific, as is the recipe for human consciousness. I wouldn't count
on it being possible to export to something much different than our
native hardware. I'm not ruling it out, but it's the height of naivety
to toss out a billion years of biological evolution because we are
impressed with the specialness of our own computer programs designed
to simulate our own human logic.

>
>> > though not of the
>> > same assortment (see below), are further arranged into sub-modules
>> > that are further integrated into other different parts and subsystems
>> > of the computer onto which the software they are part of is running
>> > on, so their arrangement is obviously far from aleatory. One needs to
>> > adopt the intentional stance in order to understand the intricacies,
>> > details and roles that these specific particular modules play in this
>> > large and complex computer programs.
>>
>> > If you had the desire you could bring to virtual reality any city of
>> > the world you want. Let's for example take the city of Rome. Every
>> > monument, restaurant, hospital, park, mall and police department can
>> > be accounted for in a detailed, virtual replica which we can model
>> > using one of these 3D modeling programs. Every car, plane and boat,
>> > even the people and their biomechanics are so well represented that we
>> > could easily mistake the computer model for the real thing.
>>

>> We modern humans could mistake the model for the real thing, but
>> nothing else in the universe would. Try to grow some real grapes in a
>> virtual Rome and it won't work. 3D models are an aid for human
>> visualization. They have no coherence independent of our usage of
>> them. Rome is a city made of tons of concrete, wood, ceramic, etc.
>> It's located in Italy and filled with living people who are constantly
>> changing the city, etc. A 3D model is an image in our eyes and mind
>> produced by a computer and a graphic display.
>

>Ok fine, take some grapes and model them as the ones from your real
>world and you get your story right there.

Obviously, but then your 3D model has to model biology and agriculture
as well as physics. Even then it's still only a silhouette of grapes.
Nothing more than a cartoon with an encyclopedia plugged into it.

>Do you deny that there could
>ever be a computer simulated program that simulated grapes from the
>real world almost exactly?

I deny that simulation exists. It's a subjective interpretation. Is a
plastic plant almost exactly a real plant? To who? Aphids? No. Your
sense of smell or taste? No. For a computer program to simulate grapes
almost exactly, I would have to be able to drink their juice and
recognize it as grape juice. Real yeast would have to be able to turn
it into real wine. A computer simulation is just a cartoon. It has no
universal realism, only human visual-cognitive pseudo-realism.

>If you knew everything about the world
>(objective data) you could know everything about grapes from your
>computer simulation.

Objective data is not a real thing. Grapes have no objective data.
They are nothing but quantum entanglements or ephemeral specks of
fruiting vine processes on a tiny planet. To a colony of yeast they
are a world to conquer. To a grape vine they may be an embodiment of
botanical destiny, self-actualization. A five year old child knows
more about grapes than any computer simulation ever could.

>
>> > Here we
>> > are looking at the monitor screen from our God-like-point-of-view. All
>> > the points, lines, 2D-planes and 3D objects in this digital
>> > presentation have their properties and behavior ruled by simulated
>> > laws of physics which are identical to the laws encountered in our
>> > real world.
>>

>> Not at all. If you throw a virtual stone at your virtual Colosseum, it
>> makes no sound. A picture of a city is not a city. The map is not the
>> territory, even a really good map.
>

>Consider my city of Rome a complete, exact, 3d model of all the
>objects and their physics, chemistry ,etc. You deny that there ever
>could be such a simulation?

No I just deny that it's anything more than expensive puppetry. It's a
nice map, nothing more.

>
>> >These objects and the laws that govern them are 100%
>> > traceable to the 1s and 0s, that is, to the voltages and transistors
>> > on the silica chips that make up the computer onto which the software
>> > is runs on. We have a 100% description of the city of Rome in our
>> > computer in the sense that there is no object in that model that we
>> > can't say all there is to say about it and the movement of the points,
>> > lines and planes which compose it because they're all accounted for in
>> > the 0s and 1s saved on the hard-drive and then loaded into the RAM and
>> > video-RAM of our state of the art video graphics card.
>>

>> A city isn't made of just points, lines, and planes. That's just one
>> aspect of a human visual representation. It is to say that an
>> accounting spreadsheet is 100% traceable to a factory and it's
>> employees.
>

>Ok, imagine a complete model. Anyway , the point that my argumentation
>tried to make din't need a perfect simulation, exact representation of
>the real world. I was trying to prove something else. Merely, that
>subjectivity can be derived from 3rd-party data. I don't see where i
>failed.

Because if we found a human brain without having our own subjective
experience to correlate it with, we could not in a trillion years
guess that there was a such thing as subjectivity. Everything that can
be derived from 3rd party data relates only to other 3rd part function
and gives no hint whatsoever of any significant experience going on.
Therefore, any model derived purely from 3rd party data would be
catastrophic to subjectivity - a complete amputation of qualia and
sentience.

>> Imagine how absurd that would sound to someone who is blind and lives
>> in Rome. Do they have no WIIL of experiencing Rome?
>

>Again, this does not refute what i was trying to prove.

I'm just pointing out how narrow it is to conceive of 3D computer
graphics as a viable thought experiment for virtualizing subjectivity.

>
>>
>> > No need to squander
>> > energy contriving not-worth-considering meanings because of this
>> > relatedness. The WIIL is the intentional interpretation of the
>> > mathematical description of the physical objects' properties and
>> > relationships to each other which the POV describes; it is the
>> > richness and detail of the description of the POV taken as a whole by
>> > whatever is on the other side of the lens. On the other hand the POV
>> > can be accounted for by its mathematical and geometrical description;
>> > it’s all data, 0s and 1s.
>>

>> Then why do you need a lens? Why is there a 'side'? If it's all data,
>> at what point do 0s and 1s start to feel like they are on a side of
>> which intentionally interprets rather than one which performs generic
>> a-signifying data manipulations?
>

>Well, the virtual machine of the brain interprets all those zeros and
>ones.

Why would it do a pointless and non-functional thing like that? Even
if there were a point, how could that be possible mechanically? We use
a GUI and computer languages for human convenience, but a computer
doesn't need a monitor to do it's computing.

>The mental-lens that separates your qualia - presented to you by
>your joycean virtual machine - is the analogue of the lens in my 3d
>model simulation.

But what would be the point of any lens? Why and how would ones and
zeros ever seem to be anything other than exactly what they are? What
needs 'interpreting'?

>
>> >The WIIL and the POV represent the same
>> > thing but each are different interpretations of a specific slice of
>> > the 3D model: one is a reducible, mathematical and geometric
>> > description of a set of objects and how their would appear from a
>> > certain vantage point (i.e. the POV), the other one is the non-
>> > reducible, intentional, apparently immediate interpretation of all
>> > that data contained in the POV taken as a whole.
>>

>> Yes! They are two different (symmetrically opposite to be exact)
>> presentations of the same underlying ontology. The problem is that
>> your view arbitrarily privileges one view as real and the other as
>> 'illusion' or 'metaphysical'. Both are real is some sense, unreal in
>> another, both real and unreal in another, and neither real nor unreal
>> in another. The underlying ontology is in fact the gap which separates
>> and the sense which infers the wholeness underneath the gap.
>

>I don't deny subjectivity. I just say it can be arrived at using third-
>party data.

Like how? An equation which will make a blind person see green when
they hear it spoken aloud?

>
>> >The WIIL is all
>> > accounted for, we know all about it: how it comes to existence, how it
>>

>> Oh? Like what? What do we know about green that we can explain to a
>> blind person to give them a precise accounting of green?
>

>In the same way in which you can explain to that blind person the
>concept of the triangle, but of course for colors it would take a hell
>of a lot more time.

Haha, like eternity? It's a category error. Color is a visual
experience which is either experienced directly or not at all. It
cannot be described in any other terms no matter how long you take to
try to conceptualize it.

>
>> The question "And then what
>>
>> > happens?" has no meaning here because nothing happens next. As I've
>> > said above you can think of POVs as reducible in the sense that they
>> > can be accounted for mathematically by knowing each coordinate of
>> > every point belonging to every object in its description, and you can
>> > think at WIIL as a non-reducible, intentional representation of the
>> > objects described by that POV taken as a whole by the observer sitting
>> > on the other side of the lens. The sole act of acknowledging the
>> > mathematical and geometric descriptive richness of a piece of the
>> > world through the lens of the camera-point-of-view (CPOV) by whatever
>> > remains on the other side of the lens is the WIIL and nothing more is
>> > there to be said; the story is complete.
>>

>> The story has not even begun. There is no such thing as mathematical
>> and geometric descriptive richness, only precision and resolution.
>> There is no world-making quality of perception oozing out of abstract
>> coordinates and points.
>

>Well, if that were true then there wouldn't be a what-it-is-likeness
>of experiencing triangles either.

The difference is that you can feel a triangular shape with your skin,
so you could conceive of a triangle if you can feel it that way. You
can't feel color that way though.

>I don't see the difference with
>colors - other than the one consisting in how they achieve their
>functionalities.

Colors have no functionalites. Blindsignt proves that visual qualia is
not necessary for visual function.

>
>
>
>> Here's where I de-bunk Dennett's views if you're interested:
>>
>> http://s33light.org/post/14618926856
>>
>> I'm not familiar with RoboMarry, but I'll debunk that for you if you
>> like another time. Dennett's worldview is obsolete. Mine is superior.

>

>Thanks for the link! I'll check!

Cool. Have a good night.

Craig

[Stephen P. King]

Hi,

Forgive my .o2$ but is this not a discussion of the non-bijection
of that representations and referents? We forget that what we think of
as real and objective comes to use from the filter of our senses,
reality is not presented raw to us.

Onward!

Stephen

>>>> reality. They don�t even try to brainstorm ideas about such a theory.

>>>> but we must stop, qualophiles say, because, .... �Because what?�

>>> It's not qualia that must rise to the challenge of science, it is the
>>> other way around.
>>>
>> So science can't explain this special Qualia of yours - and mine. Ok,
>> game over then. You've got your story right there.
> Is science so pathetic and feeble that it cannot stretch and expand
> it's intelligence to accommodate ordianry reality? An infant
> understands subjectivity, an insect. Subjectivity isn't complicated,
> it's just hard to work with because of the problems of ubiquity,
> disorientation, etc. (it's in my multisense intro)
>

>>>> I ask. �Because the what-it-is-likeness of qualia� most of them will

>>>> respond. And believe me that is the whole argument from which they
>>>> sprout all of the other awkward deductions and misconstrued axioms if

>>>> we are to succinctly resume their rigorous, inner-gut, �aprioristic
>>>> analysis�. I'll try to expose the absurdity of their stance by making

>> there�s in the voltages on your network wire, in the logical gates of
>> almost all of your computer�s integrated circuits, in you hard-disk

>> stored as magnetic patterns, on your processor stored in micro-
>> circuits with the width of only a few tens of atoms.
> No 1s or 0s anywhere in there at all. No more than there are dogs and
> cats. Not literally. Figuratively, yes, 1s and 0s are an excellent way
> for us to make sense of how these technologies work together. We
> design them to be that way specifically, going to great lengths to
> research and refine materials to behave in this way. Not so easy to
> run the internet on a cheeseburger.
>
>> If zeros and ones
>> are real, physical things,
> They aren't real in the sense that I assume you mean - that physics
> would mean. To be real in that sense they would have to be found on
> the periodic table of elements, the electromagnetic spectrum, or in
> field equations for quantum physics. They aren't though. They are real
> in the sense that color and odor are real but at the opposite end of
> the sensorimotive continuum. They are thought-feelings which are
> intended to represent 'information' evacuated of feeling.
>
>> then in what sense would you use the term

>> �abstract� when referring to Turing machines?

> In the sense that a Turing machine is an ideal mechanism that can be
> enacted in any physical substance which supports mechanical physics -
> i.e. you probably need something that is solid at room temperature,
> some source of mechanical energy, etc. You could probably enact a
> Turing machine in Coke bottles or foam rubber as well as
> microelectronics, but it wouldn't be easy. The machine itself though
> is conceptual. The Coke bottles don't know that they are acting like a
> Turing machine, and neither does an electronic computer, despite
> appearances to the contrary.
>

>> I don�t know, but

>> whatever you mean is bound to failure because between Turing machines
>> and computer programs, on the one hand, and brains and minds on the
>> other hand there is absolutely no difference in how their prowess come
>> to existence, at least we have no reason to believe otherwise if we a
>> priori consider that their systemic architecture, their functionality

>> is all that matters; that�s what gives off their talent.

> That's not the case at all. The brain and mind absolutely do use
> computation, but only in the service of the user. Computer programs
> have no user of their own. They have no need for a presentation layer
> within their logic. It's actually functionalism that is a dead end
> since everything that the consciousness does would be better served by
> unconscious processes (like digestion or immune response). There is no
> purely functional explanation for the existence of any kind of
> experience or awareness. Function matters, but it wouldn't if not for
> the more primitive reality of sense making.
>
>> For one to
>> say that there is another story to be told besides the story of how
>> the bigger parts of the brain are build upon its most bottom parts and
>> how those sub-modules are integrated to each other is to fail at
>> Science; why should you possible want to postulate another mystery

>> that also needs an explanation when you�re trying to explain all there

>> is to explain about a phenomenon?
> Because that story is utterly meaningless if not for the other half of
> the story of how owners of the brain use it to make sense of
> themselves and the universe and to participate in them significantly.
> It needs no explanation. 'I' only need to be what and who I am. What
> needs to be explained is why the rest of the universe is not me, which
> is relatively straightforward.
>
>> My belief is that deniers of the strong AI thesis fail in two regards.
>> On the one hand their mistake the physical states of 1s and 0s with
>> the arbitrary tokens of 0 and 1 that we apply to them. The fact that 1

>> and 0 are what we call numbers this doesn�t mean that what they really

>> zeros and ones even though they didn�t provide any reason for it. So,

>> for some reason, unbeknownst to some of the thinkers that brainstormed
>> all of these issues in detail, we can apparently have a mind build out
>> of ion pumps, synapses and axon hillocks but we cannot have one made
>> out of CMOS gate arrays, emitter-coupled logic (ECL) gate arrays,
>> index registers, and pad transceiver circuits.
> You can't build a human mind out of orange peels and catalytic
> converters either. We don't even know how to reconnect a severed
> spinal cord to itself much make a motherboard feel romantic. Your
> reasoning is sound, but your assumptions are exactly antithetical to
> concrete reality. They are perfectly suited to developing technology
> and information theory, but they take us in exactly the wrong
> direction to understanding subjectivity and qualia.
>

>> Of course I don�t
>> believe that at all because there is no reason to. Again, as I�ve said

>> above, why should you possible want to presuppose, for no scientific
>> reason at all, that the micro-parts that make the meat of your brain
>> have some extra stuff (mindality perhaps?)
> They don't need any extra stuff. Human consciousness is just orders of
> magnitude more elaborate than the sense that inorganic molecules make,
> but it's essentially the same thing. What you don't realize is that if
> you say that the mind is nothing but ones and zeros, then ones and
> zeros *must* inherently have the potential to develop feeling and
> thinking, in which case calling them ones and zeros would be
> profoundly misleading.
>
>> that will also need an
>> explanation if we are to follow the rules of science, whereas the
>> chunks of silicon, silver, plastics, etc that make up your computer

>> don�t posses it, when all you�ve got as an argument is your intuition

>>>> a particular point-of-view (POV � or point of reference, call it how

>>>> you will). Camera objects simulate still-image, motion picture, or
>>>> video cameras in the real world and have the same usage here. The
>>>> benefit of cameras is that you can position them anywhere within a
>>>> scene to offer a custom view. You can imagine that camera not only as
>>>> a point of view but also as an area point of view (all the light
>>>> reflected from the objects in your particular world model enter the
>>>> lens of the camera), but for our particular mental exercise this
>>>> doesn't matter. What you need to know is that our virtual cameras can
>>>> perfectly simulate real world cameras and all the optical science of
>>>> the lens is integrated in the program making the simulated models

>>>> similar to the ones that are found real life. We�ll use POVs and CPOVs

>>>> interchangeably from now on; they mean the same thing in the logic of
>>>> our argumentation.
>>>> The point-of-view (POV) of the camera is obviously completely
>>>> traceable and mathematically deducible from the third-person
>>>> perspective of the current model we are simulating and from the
>>>> physical characteristics of the virtual lens built into the camera
>>>> through which the light reflected of the objects in the model is
>>>> projected (Bare in mind that the physical properties and optics of the
>>>> lens are also simulated by the computer model). Of course, the
>>>> software does all that calculation and drawing for you. But if you had
>>>> the ambition you could practically do all that work for yourself by

>>>> taking the 3D-model�s mathematical and geometric data from the saved

>>>> computer file containing your particular model description and
>>>> calculate on sheets of paper how objects from it would look and behave
>>>> from a particular CPOV, and more to that, you could literally draw
>>>> those objects yourself by using the widely known techniques of
>>>> descriptive geometry (the same as the ones used by the 3D modeling
>>>> software). But what point would that make when we already have
>>>> computers that achieve this arduous task for us? Maybe living in a
>>>> period of time without computers would make this easily relentless
>>>> task one worth considering.
>>>> So, we can basically take a virtual trip to whatever part of Rome we
>>>> want by just jumping inside a CPOV provided to us by the software. We
>>>> can see, experience what it is like to be in Rome by adopting whatever
>>>> CPOV which will be calculated and drawn to us by this complex but 100%
>>>> describable and understandable computer program. The software would be
>>>> no mystery to us if we were sufficiently trained programmers,
>>>> architects and mathematicians. The WIIL of experiencing Rome will

>>>> never be a mystery to us also if we�ll let the 3D design software do

>>>> the job of calculating and drawing the CPOV for us.
>>> Imagine how absurd that would sound to someone who is blind and lives
>>> in Rome. Do they have no WIIL of experiencing Rome?
>> Again, this does not refute what i was trying to prove.
> I'm just pointing out how narrow it is to conceive of 3D computer
> graphics as a viable thought experiment for virtualizing subjectivity.
>
>>>> No need to squander
>>>> energy contriving not-worth-considering meanings because of this
>>>> relatedness. The WIIL is the intentional interpretation of the
>>>> mathematical description of the physical objects' properties and
>>>> relationships to each other which the POV describes; it is the
>>>> richness and detail of the description of the POV taken as a whole by
>>>> whatever is on the other side of the lens. On the other hand the POV
>>>> can be accounted for by its mathematical and geometrical description;

>>>> it�s all data, 0s and 1s.

[Craig Weinberg]

On Dec 23, 11:40 pm, "Stephen P. King" <stephe...@charter.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>      Forgive my .o2$ but is this not a discussion of the non-bijection
> of that representations and referents? We forget that what we think of
> as real and objective comes to use from the filter of our senses,
> reality is not presented raw to us.
>

Hi Stephen,

Sure, that's part of it. We always have to start by being skeptical of
both objectivity, subjectivity, and our own skepticism (since
skepticism is a personal experience of cognitive sense making) as
well. To understand qualia is to realize that although they function
to represent, they themselves are referents as well, while the literal
objects in the universe can only ultimately be representations of
second-hand experiential referents which we share with other proto-
subjects. Objects are our verbal-cognitive abstractions of how matter
perceives matter. Subjects are our first hand perceptions as human
individuals. My hypothesis is that it is the symmetrical bijection and
non-bijection of the two that gives rise to realism on every level.

Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 23 Dec 2011, at 23:37, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> On Dec 22, 7:18 am, alexalex <alexmka...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Hello, Everythinglisters!
>>
>> The below text is a philosophical essay on what qualia may represent.
>> I doubt you'll manage to finish reading it (it's kind of long, and
>> translated from anoter language), but if you do I'll be happy to hear
>> your opinion about what it says.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> <<<A simpler model of the world with different points of view>>>
>>
>> It can often get quite amusing watching qualophiles' self-confidence,
>> mutual assurance and agreement when they talk about something a
>> priori
>> defined as inherently private and un-accessible to third-party
>> analysis (i.e. qualia), so they say, but they somehow agree on what
>> they're discussing
>
> I feel the same way about quantophiles' confidence in theoretical
> abstraction and endless capacity to deny the existence of the very
> subjectivity that they use to deny it with.

You are quite unfair. the whole point of the UDA (and MGA) consists in
taking as important, and even fundamental (in the sense of "key", not
in the sense of "primary") the first person experience, and thus
consciousness.

> Agreement is not a
> contradiction to the privacy of qualia because the privacy of qualia
> is specific to groups of subjects as well as individuals. Human beings
> experience universal levels of qualia (physics, chemistry), organic
> levels (biology, zoology, neurology), anthropomorphic levels
> (psychology, sociology), and individual levels which are relatively
> unique or idiosyncratic.

But this, on the contrary, is only a succession of Aristotelian dogma.
In my opinion biology is more universal than physics. psychology (of
numbers) is more universal than biology. The picture is rational and
almost upside down with aristotle ontology.

> We are both human so we share the broader
> levels, but begin to diverge in the biochemical level as we have
> different DNA. That divergence grows as the scope of the qualia
> narrows and deepens toward individuality.
>
>> about even though as far as I've been able to
>> understand they don't display the slightest scant of evidence which
>> would show that they believe there will ever be a theory that could
>> bridge the gap between the ineffable what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of
>> personal experience and the scientific, objective descriptions of
>> reality. They don’t even try to brainstorm ideas about such a theory.
>
> My hypothesis tries to do exactly that. Check it out sometime if you
> have a chance: http://s33light.org/SEEES
>
>> How are we to explain this what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) if we can't
>> subject it to what science has been and will always be?
>
> By expanding science so that it is more scientific and not shivering
> in a cave of pseudo-certainty and throwing rocks at people who ask
> about subjectivity.
>
>> Third-party analysis.
>
> If science will always be limited to third-party analysis, then it
> will never be possible for it to address subjectivity, since it is by
> definition subjective.

This is wrong.
The discourse of science is methodologically (and wisely so, I would
add) limited to third person parties.
But the object of science is everything including consciousness,
qualia, private lives, hallucination, angel, gods, etc.
It is up to us to find proposition on which we agree, use them as
axioms of some sort, and derive propositions from them.
We can use our person stuff as data, not as argument.

> Since the nature of subjectivity cannot change,
> science must adapt to fit the reality of the universe.

Science is born doing that, a long time ago. Current practice, since
about 1500 years put the mind-body problem under the rug. There are
reason for that. It will still take time before theology, the science,
will come back to academy and peer reviewed literature (real peers,
not member of some club).

Bruno

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

[Craig Weinberg]

On Dec 24, 11:00 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> On 23 Dec 2011, at 23:37, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> > On Dec 22, 7:18 am, alexalex <alexmka...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> Hello, Everythinglisters!
>
> >> The below text is a philosophical essay on what qualia may represent.
> >> I doubt you'll manage to finish reading it (it's kind of long, and
> >> translated from anoter language), but if you do I'll be happy to hear
> >> your opinion about what it says.
>
> >> Thanks!
>
> >> <<<A simpler model of the world with different points of view>>>
>
> >> It can often get quite amusing watching qualophiles' self-confidence,
> >> mutual assurance and agreement when they talk about something a
> >> priori
> >> defined as inherently private and un-accessible to third-party
> >> analysis (i.e. qualia), so they say, but they somehow agree on what
> >> they're discussing
>
> > I feel the same way about quantophiles' confidence in theoretical
> > abstraction and endless capacity to deny the existence of the very
> > subjectivity that they use to deny it with.
>
> You are quite unfair. the whole point of the UDA (and MGA) consists in
> taking as important, and even fundamental (in the sense of "key", not
> in the sense of "primary") the first person experience, and thus
> consciousness.

That's true, although UDA is not typical of computationalism. I
actually wasn't thinking of your work here which to me is more of a
arithmetic theology than a Dennett style quantitative mechanism.

>
> > Agreement is not a
> > contradiction to the privacy of qualia because the privacy of qualia
> > is specific to groups of subjects as well as individuals. Human beings
> > experience universal levels of qualia (physics, chemistry), organic
> > levels (biology, zoology, neurology), anthropomorphic levels
> > (psychology, sociology), and individual levels which are relatively
> > unique or idiosyncratic.
>
> But this, on the contrary, is only a succession of Aristotelian dogma.
> In my opinion biology is more universal than physics.

Interesting. How so? If something dies, it still survives as a
physical process. Certainly the universe is filled with inorganic
matter while biological cells represent a small fraction of it.
Physics seems to predate biology, at least on Earth by four billion
years, right?

> psychology (of
> numbers) is more universal than biology.

I was talking specifically about the extensive elaboration of
vertebrate cognition in hominids. I would call the qualia of numbers
an aspect of psychology while that which numbers represent are
quantitative archetypes that have no agency, psychology, or qualia of
their own (just as Bugs Bunny is a cartoon celebrity who has
experiences independently of the audience's projected qualia).

It is wise for science to employ third person methodologies of course,
I'm just pointing out that there is no such thing as third person
subjectivity. The only way we can address consciousness scientifically
is, as you say, to find agreements based on first person accounts, or,
I think even better, by figuring out how to join multiple nervous
systems experimentally. That way first person accounts can become as
discrete and unambiguous as third person data but without being
flattened by externalization.

>
> > Since the nature of subjectivity cannot change,
> > science must adapt to fit the reality of the universe.
>
> Science is born doing that, a long time ago. Current practice, since
> about 1500 years put the mind-body problem under the rug. There are
> reason for that. It will still take time before theology, the science,
> will come back to academy and peer reviewed literature (real peers,
> not member of some club).
>

We agree. It's surprising though that people's main criticism of my
ideas are that 'science doesn't work that way'. They seem to have no
opinion about whether or not my view correctly redefines cosmology,
physics, biology, and consciousness, but strenuously oppose any
suggestion that the way I'm trying to do it could be called science.
It's ironic since so many of the greatest scientific revelations are
born out of thought experiments and not academic training.

Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

The UD argument is an argument based on the weaker version of
mechanism (and this makes its consequences valid for all stronger form
of mechanism).

> I
> actually wasn't thinking of your work here which to me is more of a
> arithmetic theology than a Dennett style quantitative mechanism.

Dennett uses the same comp hypothesis. Being rather rigorous, and
because he want to keep materialism, he is literally condemned to
eliminate consciousness away. I think most here (me and you in
particular) agree that it forget the most key data on consciousness,
that we cannot doubt it without lying to oneself.

>
>>
>>> Agreement is not a
>>> contradiction to the privacy of qualia because the privacy of qualia
>>> is specific to groups of subjects as well as individuals. Human
>>> beings
>>> experience universal levels of qualia (physics, chemistry), organic
>>> levels (biology, zoology, neurology), anthropomorphic levels
>>> (psychology, sociology), and individual levels which are relatively
>>> unique or idiosyncratic.
>>
>> But this, on the contrary, is only a succession of Aristotelian
>> dogma.
>> In my opinion biology is more universal than physics.
>
> Interesting. How so? If something dies, it still survives as a
> physical process.

In the dream of some numbers. Physical process, including time,
belongs to number's imagination (and this is not necessarily true, but
is a theorem in the comp theory).

> Certainly the universe is filled with inorganic
> matter while biological cells represent a small fraction of it.
> Physics seems to predate biology, at least on Earth by four billion
> years, right?

Locally. Not in the big picture, which with comp is much more simple,
both conceptually and technically.

>
>> psychology (of
>> numbers) is more universal than biology.
>
> I was talking specifically about the extensive elaboration of
> vertebrate cognition in hominids. I would call the qualia of numbers
> an aspect of psychology while that which numbers represent are
> quantitative archetypes that have no agency, psychology, or qualia of
> their own (just as Bugs Bunny is a cartoon celebrity who has
> experiences independently of the audience's projected qualia).

You miss the difference between a computation (as it exists in
arithmetic, and in some local physics) and a description of a
computation (as can appear in a cartoon).

That's ambiguous. We can have third person discourses on the first
person discourses.

> The only way we can address consciousness scientifically
> is, as you say, to find agreements based on first person accounts, or,
> I think even better, by figuring out how to join multiple nervous
> systems experimentally. That way first person accounts can become as
> discrete and unambiguous as third person data but without being
> flattened by externalization.

By joining the nervous system, you take the risk of blurring the
notion of person, and besides, of leaving the subject of other minds
and different persons.

>
>>
>>> Since the nature of subjectivity cannot change,
>>> science must adapt to fit the reality of the universe.
>>
>> Science is born doing that, a long time ago. Current practice, since
>> about 1500 years put the mind-body problem under the rug. There are
>> reason for that. It will still take time before theology, the
>> science,
>> will come back to academy and peer reviewed literature (real peers,
>> not member of some club).
>>
>
> We agree. It's surprising though that people's main criticism of my
> ideas are that 'science doesn't work that way'.

I can disagree with them. there is no way to normalize science in a
way or another. We just find some argument irresistible, or
compelling, etc.
You are, at least coherent. You clearly believe in some primitive
matter, and abandon mechanism. I am still not convinced by the
argument you put against mechanism, because a lot of your intuition
already belongs to the subjectivity (or the discourse made by) of the
universal machines. In fact your problem is that your theory is
unclear. You really seems to reify both primitive matter (like
electromagnetism) and primitive mind, that you materialize in some
hard to understand ways.

> They seem to have no
> opinion about whether or not my view correctly redefines cosmology,
> physics, biology, and consciousness, but strenuously oppose any
> suggestion that the way I'm trying to do it could be called science.
> It's ironic since so many of the greatest scientific revelations are
> born out of thought experiments and not academic training.

Academy is the worst ... except for the others institutions. Some
academies are even worst. And they are always late in evolution.
The publish and perish rules should be made illegal, because it is non
sense, and it hides the real honest researches.

Bruno

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

[Craig Weinberg]

Does that mean that you consider numbers biological?

>
> > Certainly the universe is filled with inorganic
> > matter while biological cells represent a small fraction of it.
> > Physics seems to predate biology, at least on Earth by four billion
> > years, right?
>
> Locally. Not in the big picture, which with comp is much more simple,
> both conceptually and technically.

How does comp explain the predominance of non-biological matter
locally?

>
>
>
> >> psychology (of
> >> numbers) is more universal than biology.
>
> > I was talking specifically about the extensive elaboration of
> > vertebrate cognition in hominids. I would call the qualia of numbers
> > an aspect of psychology while that which numbers represent are
> > quantitative archetypes that have no agency, psychology, or qualia of
> > their own (just as Bugs Bunny is a cartoon celebrity who has
> > experiences independently of the audience's projected qualia).
>
> You miss the difference between a computation (as it exists in
> arithmetic, and in some local physics) and a description of a
> computation (as can appear in a cartoon).

I don't think that computation does exist in arithmetic or physics,
any more than shadows exist in trees or light bulbs. Computation is
felt directly as a sensorimotive experience, or it is inferred in a
physical system, but I doubt it can appear anywhere unless something
physical thinks it appears. The universe is not haunted by arithmetic
spirits, it discovers and elaborates arithmetic as a new territory
through sense and motive. Sense and motive may well be guided by non-
local, non-temporal influences, but that guidance can only be
manifested through physical description and it's not only to do with
arithmetic but morphology, language, emotion, personality, etc. Many
kinds of strange attractors and archetypes for sense and motive.
Numbers have no independent realism.

Only because our first person discourses overlap. You can't talk to a
congenitally blind person about green. Partial intersubjective
agreement isn't the same thing as objective definition (or what we
consider objective, even if it's only intersubjectivity more
universally scoped).

>
> > The only way we can address consciousness scientifically
> > is, as you say, to find agreements based on first person accounts, or,
> > I think even better, by figuring out how to join multiple nervous
> > systems experimentally. That way first person accounts can become as
> > discrete and unambiguous as third person data but without being
> > flattened by externalization.
>
> By joining the nervous system, you take the risk of blurring the
> notion of person, and besides, of leaving the subject of other minds
> and different persons.

What's wrong with blurring the notion of person? I think that would be
the way to understand how the subselves blur together to identify as a
person in the first place. Once you can join nervous systems, then you
could make appliances that could step down the process to any level so
that you could plug in other kinds of cells into the brain and feel
how it is to be them, then plug large molecules into the cells to see
what is experienced there, etc. Build giant arrays to try to feel on
an interstellar scale even.

>
>
>
> >>> Since the nature of subjectivity cannot change,
> >>> science must adapt to fit the reality of the universe.
>
> >> Science is born doing that, a long time ago. Current practice, since
> >> about 1500 years put the mind-body problem under the rug. There are
> >> reason for that. It will still take time before theology, the
> >> science,
> >> will come back to academy and peer reviewed literature (real peers,
> >> not member of some club).
>
> > We agree. It's surprising though that people's main criticism of my
> > ideas are that 'science doesn't work that way'.
>
> I can disagree with them. there is no way to normalize science in a
> way or another. We just find some argument irresistible, or
> compelling, etc.
> You are, at least coherent. You clearly believe in some primitive
> matter, and abandon mechanism. I am still not convinced by the
> argument you put against mechanism, because a lot of your intuition
> already belongs to the subjectivity (or the discourse made by) of the
> universal machines. In fact your problem is that your theory is
> unclear. You really seems to reify both primitive matter (like
> electromagnetism) and primitive mind, that you materialize in some
> hard to understand ways.

That's what multisense realism is all about - the perspective that
both electromagnetic and sensorimotive phenomenology are primitive but
their realism is modulated by perspective. Both are real in some
sense, unreal in some sense, both real and unreal and neither real nor
unreal in some sense. The realism arises from the symmetry - the very
sense of being literally only one thing in one sense and many
figuratively many things in another. I think mechanism is a monosense
view of that symmetry which necessarily de-presents realism it to make
it into one generic universal computation (how or why does UD create
'now'?) - which is great and true in some ways, terrible and false in
others, both and neither in others.

My view is that your view is a particular region of a symmetrical
continuum of sense. The continuum is such that subjective feeling is
experienced here and now, objective unfeeling is inferred then and
there. Look at subjectivity through the lens of objectivity and we get
determinism. Look at objectivity through subjectivity and we get
superstition. If we take these perspectives too literally, we get
pathological de-presentation (http://s33light.org/post/14722448115) in
the form of fundamentalism or materialism. Computationalism too if
taken to it's literal extreme. If we take these profound perspectives
too figuratively, we over-privilege the mundane perspective and
neurotically attached to the minutiae of the everyday.

Bruno's perspective I would characterize as straddling the profound
meridian - the least involuted region at which the highest and lowest
ideal monosense blur into each other. This is where monastic
contemplation of divinity meets arithmetic puzzle solving. I Ching
meets Boolean algebra. Eschewing both the florid presentations of
hypertrophied subjectivity and the dull representations of material
objects, this region of the continuum is about the poetry of the anti-
poetic. Purity and universality, an arid and masculine clarity. When
you look at the rest of the continuum from this perspective, some
powerful truths are revealed and others are concealed, just like any
other perspective along the continuum, but unlike any other place
along the continuum, this profound region relates specifically to
universality and truth as an abstract essence. My only problem with it
is that I think it diminishes the realism of concrete experience, and
then defensively denies it. That's what all sufficiently progressed
points of view do, otherwise they lose their integrity and progress.
My view doesn't have to be for everyone, and it could certainly have
it's own pathological extremism (after all, my method makes
subjectivity more generic and literal while revealing the
sensorimotive multiplicity of objects, so that I'm even further
removed from realism by abstracting the whole thing as language) but I
think that is is the biggest big picture that can make sense to us,
which is really all that I'm after.

>
> > They seem to have no
> > opinion about whether or not my view correctly redefines cosmology,
> > physics, biology, and consciousness, but strenuously oppose any
> > suggestion that the way I'm trying to do it could be called science.
> > It's ironic since so many of the greatest scientific revelations are
> > born out of thought experiments and not academic training.
>
> Academy is the worst ... except for the others institutions. Some
> academies are even worst. And they are always late in evolution.
> The publish and perish rules should be made illegal, because it is non
> sense, and it hides the real honest researches.

I agree. What's a non-academic to do though? How to get my hypothesis
out there? Want to help underwrite my ideas with your academic
cred? ;)

Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

I consider that some relations between some numbers are biological.
Some are theological, some physical, etc, from their (the numbers, the
programs, the digital machines, )

I consider Kleene recursion theorem as the fundamental theorem of
biology. It solves conceptually and practically the problem of self-
reproduction, self-regeneration, embryo, etc.

>
>>
>>> Certainly the universe is filled with inorganic
>>> matter while biological cells represent a small fraction of it.
>>> Physics seems to predate biology, at least on Earth by four billion
>>> years, right?
>>
>> Locally. Not in the big picture, which with comp is much more simple,
>> both conceptually and technically.
>
> How does comp explain the predominance of non-biological matter
> locally?

Although there are infinitely biological number relations, most of the
relations are not biological.
But all that local non biological matter is only the reflect of the
infinitely many computations which our minds does not depend on.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>> psychology (of
>>>> numbers) is more universal than biology.
>>
>>> I was talking specifically about the extensive elaboration of
>>> vertebrate cognition in hominids. I would call the qualia of numbers
>>> an aspect of psychology while that which numbers represent are
>>> quantitative archetypes that have no agency, psychology, or qualia
>>> of
>>> their own (just as Bugs Bunny is a cartoon celebrity who has
>>> experiences independently of the audience's projected qualia).
>>
>> You miss the difference between a computation (as it exists in
>> arithmetic, and in some local physics) and a description of a
>> computation (as can appear in a cartoon).
>
> I don't think that computation does exist in arithmetic

This is not a matter of choice. Computations have indeed be discovered
in arithmetic. The question of the existence of computations in nature
is more delicate. It is just *assumed* in the comp hypothesis.

> or physics,
> any more than shadows exist in trees or light bulbs.

Shadows exist in trees or light bulb in the sense that observable
exists.

> Computation is
> felt directly as a sensorimotive experience,

I am not sure of the meaning "computation can be felt" (it hurts a bit
my categorization). Neither computation nor brain activity can be
felt. Pain and pleasure, smell and taste, touch and vision can be
felt, but not the underlying software and hardware (if that exists).
Now an expression like "felt directly as a sensorimotive experience"
has no meaning for me. Sorry.

> or it is inferred in a
> physical system, but I doubt it can appear anywhere unless something
> physical thinks it appears.

Why?
I think this view is a gross extrapolation from our animal instinct to
reify the indexicals. I belief that here and now and "I" and this and
that is more real than beyond.
Where does any place and time come from?

As I said, it is easier to explain the illusion of matter to a person,
than the illusion of person to matter.

We don't see a physical primitive universe. Layman and babies do
instinctively what physicist do all the time: they measure numbers and
they infer relations between numbers, themselves compactified in
numbers.

Consciousness and other ineffable things comes from the fact that
those numbers are related to theoretical number truth which are far
beyond, of what they can proof or justified, as the numbers can
justified in some conditional way already by themselves,

> The universe is not haunted by arithmetic
> spirits,

It is the arithmetical realm which is haunted by universal numbers, of
many sorts.

> it discovers and elaborates arithmetic as a new territory
> through sense and motive.

All universal numbers discover and elaborate arithmetic as new

territory through sense and motive.

> Sense and motive may well be guided by non-
> local, non-temporal influences, but that guidance can only be
> manifested through physical description and it's not only to do with
> arithmetic but morphology, language, emotion, personality, etc. Many
> kinds of strange attractors and archetypes for sense and motive.
> Numbers have no independent realism.

In that case your theory might be just not interesting, in the sense
that for most humans, numbers are the most possibly independent thing
they can conceive of. It needs only the common part to classical
(Plato, Hilbert) and constructive (Aristotle, Brouwer) philosophy. But
just can't dispense of them or their recursive equivalent in any theory.
We need numbers (or equivalent) to give sense to the word "theory",
"proof", "deduction", "valid", etc. All civilisation discovered
surprising property of numbers.

Notably on numbers.

> You can't talk to a
> congenitally blind person about green. Partial intersubjective
> agreement isn't the same thing as objective definition (or what we
> consider objective, even if it's only intersubjectivity more
> universally scoped).

I agree. That's even why I do not take a physical universe for
granted. Yet, physical realities will reappear as partial first person
plural agreement. This involves indirectly many universe, something
confirmed by the literal interpretation of Everett's formulation of QM.

>
>>
>>> The only way we can address consciousness scientifically
>>> is, as you say, to find agreements based on first person accounts,
>>> or,
>>> I think even better, by figuring out how to join multiple nervous
>>> systems experimentally. That way first person accounts can become as
>>> discrete and unambiguous as third person data but without being
>>> flattened by externalization.
>>
>> By joining the nervous system, you take the risk of blurring the
>> notion of person, and besides, of leaving the subject of other minds
>> and different persons.
>
> What's wrong with blurring the notion of person?

Nothing wrong, but you are fusing two persons into ine persons. One
day this will be a practice, and nature already does that when
building brain, which are really two UMs in front of each other, or
two brains in front of each others. Dissociative drugs permit self-
experimentation of that kind.

> I think that would be
> the way to understand how the subselves blur together to identify as a
> person in the first place.

Yes. That's interesting.

> Once you can join nervous systems, then you
> could make appliances that could step down the process to any level so
> that you could plug in other kinds of cells into the brain and feel
> how it is to be them,

No, you can't. You would diffract yourself. Only by chance can you
have less wrong feelings about that.

> then plug large molecules into the cells to see
> what is experienced there, etc. Build giant arrays to try to feel on
> an interstellar scale even.

Interstellar is already infinitesimal compared to the arithmetical
scale on which our consciousness already supervene on.
But this does not diminish the interest of fusing and duplicating in
the quest for truth.

Then the 8 hypostases can be seen as multisense realism, except that
the primitive are given by the laws of addition and multiplication on
numbers, and that the theory is testable by the fact that physics is
given by such hypostase-modality-modulation.

> Both are real in some
> sense, unreal in some sense, both real and unreal and neither real nor
> unreal in some sense.

"it exists" and "for all" has indeed different meaning according to
each hypostases.

> The realism arises from the symmetry - the very
> sense of being literally only one thing in one sense and many
> figuratively many things in another. I think mechanism is a monosense
> view of that symmetry which necessarily de-presents realism it to make
> it into one generic universal computation (how or why does UD create
> 'now'?)

Because the modality Bp & p defines an arithmetical indexical knower.
Bp is the usual self-referential ideally correct assertive mode of the
machine. "Bp & p" provides an innefable, unnameable self, which plays
the role of the subject building its personal mental mindscape.
But to get this you should read the second part of the sane04 paper,
at least (and ask question).

> - which is great and true in some ways, terrible and false in
> others, both and neither in others.
>
> My view is that your view is a particular region of a symmetrical
> continuum of sense. The continuum is such that subjective feeling is
> experienced here and now, objective unfeeling is inferred then and
> there. Look at subjectivity through the lens of objectivity and we get
> determinism.

Hmm... I would say we get the indeterminism. Like in the UD, where we
look indeed at the subjective through the lens of the objective.

> Look at objectivity through subjectivity and we get
> superstition.

Superstition, but also "the boss is right" and the ten thousand
possible wounds we do to ourselves.

> If we take these perspectives too literally, we get
> pathological de-presentation (http://s33light.org/post/14722448115) in
> the form of fundamentalism or materialism. Computationalism too if
> taken to it's literal extreme.

Less sure. Computationalism is a vaccine against reductionism. There,
we can quickly see reductionism cannot work.

> If we take these profound perspectives
> too figuratively, we over-privilege the mundane perspective and
> neurotically attached to the minutiae of the everyday.
>
> Bruno's perspective I would characterize as straddling the profound
> meridian - the least involuted region at which the highest and lowest
> ideal monosense blur into each other. This is where monastic
> contemplation of divinity meets arithmetic puzzle solving. I Ching
> meets Boolean algebra. Eschewing both the florid presentations of
> hypertrophied subjectivity and the dull representations of material
> objects, this region of the continuum is about the poetry of the anti-
> poetic. Purity and universality, an arid and masculine clarity.

Hmm... That's very well said, but I feel it as rather feminine :)

> When
> you look at the rest of the continuum from this perspective, some
> powerful truths are revealed and others are concealed, just like any
> other perspective along the continuum, but unlike any other place
> along the continuum, this profound region relates specifically to
> universality and truth as an abstract essence. My only problem with it
> is that I think it diminishes the realism of concrete experience, and
> then defensively denies it.

It does not. On the contrary, I am the one who say "looks the numbers
are already dreaming, and not only that, they chat in their sleep, and
we can listen to what they say.
You are the one who seems to dismiss their many concrete experiences.

> That's what all sufficiently progressed
> points of view do, otherwise they lose their integrity and progress.
> My view doesn't have to be for everyone, and it could certainly have
> it's own pathological extremism (after all, my method makes
> subjectivity more generic and literal while revealing the
> sensorimotive multiplicity of objects, so that I'm even further
> removed from realism by abstracting the whole thing as language) but I
> think that is is the biggest big picture that can make sense to us,
> which is really all that I'm after.

We might be closer than you think, except that for some unknown reason
you don't want the machines to be part of it.
You might have good reasons, but you don't succeed in communicating
them, and, I am not sure, you might just wasting your time with that
position (to be frank).

>
>>
>>> They seem to have no
>>> opinion about whether or not my view correctly redefines cosmology,
>>> physics, biology, and consciousness, but strenuously oppose any
>>> suggestion that the way I'm trying to do it could be called science.
>>> It's ironic since so many of the greatest scientific revelations are
>>> born out of thought experiments and not academic training.
>>
>> Academy is the worst ... except for the others institutions. Some
>> academies are even worst. And they are always late in evolution.
>> The publish and perish rules should be made illegal, because it is
>> non
>> sense, and it hides the real honest researches.
>
> I agree. What's a non-academic to do though? How to get my hypothesis
> out there?

By writing text to convince other people, academic or not.

> Want to help underwrite my ideas with your academic
> cred? ;)

Not sure this would really help you, to be honest.
Also, I should first understand what you say, and all my work starts
from the fact that I am interested in explaining the physical, and the
spiritual, without assuming them at the start.
I buy everything in Aristotle, except his metaphysics. Plotinus and
many mystics got it right, I think.

We might depart greatly on mechanism: my real test for a theory is
"try to explain you theory to a universal machine, and if she can
explain it to me after, I will be convinced". Put in another way, you
have to convince me that you can formalize you theory in PA, or ZF, or
any not to complex or eccentric Löbian machine language. Or, (but it
is more complex) explain it to a Löbian non-machine entity, if you
really believe that you are not Turing emulable. I doubt this will add
any new observable effects, though.
You might try to explain to younger people, but the idea of explaining
does consists in explaining new notion from older one. It is always
relative. All what I know about "sensorimotive" is that it is non
Turing emulable, which is close to being magical, when seen as an
explanation.

I might be more incline to help you when you will accept to give some
food, in your restaurant, to my sun-in-law, you know, the one who
lost its biological brain ...

Bruno

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

[Craig Weinberg]

On Dec 25, 12:01 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> On 25 Dec 2011, at 16:16, Craig Weinberg wrote:

>
> > Does that mean that you consider numbers biological?
>
> I consider that some relations between some numbers are biological.
> Some are theological, some physical, etc, from their (the numbers, the
> programs, the digital machines, )

Why would numbers differ in quality when they already differ precisely
in quantity? Seems superfluous.

>
> I consider Kleene recursion theorem as the fundamental theorem of
> biology. It solves conceptually and practically the problem of self-
> reproduction, self-regeneration, embryo, etc.

I see recursion as just one defining exterior behavior of biology. I
don't see pain and pleasure being an inevitable arithmetic product of
recursion but they are an equally definitive biological quality.

>
>
>
> >>> Certainly the universe is filled with inorganic
> >>> matter while biological cells represent a small fraction of it.
> >>> Physics seems to predate biology, at least on Earth by four billion
> >>> years, right?
>
> >> Locally. Not in the big picture, which with comp is much more simple,
> >> both conceptually and technically.
>
> > How does comp explain the predominance of non-biological matter
> > locally?
>
> Although there are infinitely biological number relations, most of the
> relations are not biological.
> But all that local non biological matter is only the reflect of the
> infinitely many computations which our minds does not depend on.

Would you say that the infinity of biological number relations is as
large as the infinity of physical relations?

>
>
>
> >>>> psychology (of
> >>>> numbers) is more universal than biology.
>
> >>> I was talking specifically about the extensive elaboration of
> >>> vertebrate cognition in hominids. I would call the qualia of numbers
> >>> an aspect of psychology while that which numbers represent are
> >>> quantitative archetypes that have no agency, psychology, or qualia
> >>> of
> >>> their own (just as Bugs Bunny is a cartoon celebrity who has
> >>> experiences independently of the audience's projected qualia).
>
> >> You miss the difference between a computation (as it exists in
> >> arithmetic, and in some local physics) and a description of a
> >> computation (as can appear in a cartoon).
>
> > I don't think that computation does exist in arithmetic
>
> This is not a matter of choice. Computations have indeed be discovered
> in arithmetic.

Discovered by mathematicians, but does arithmetic itself know whether
or not it is discovering computation?

> The question of the existence of computations in nature
> is more delicate. It is just *assumed* in the comp hypothesis.
>
> > or physics,
> > any more than shadows exist in trees or light bulbs.
>
> Shadows exist in trees or light bulb in the sense that observable
> exists.

How so? If all you have is a tree but no light source, you can't have
a shadow. If all you have is a light bulb but no surfaces to
illuminate, you can't have a shadow either. The realism of a shadow is
in the the visual sense relation between light source, obstacle, and
space.

>
> > Computation is
> > felt directly as a sensorimotive experience,
>
> I am not sure of the meaning "computation can be felt" (it hurts a bit
> my categorization). Neither computation nor brain activity can be
> felt.

If you are trying to solve an equation, you are feeling computation.
You have a sense of what the problem is, what outcome you intend, and
this provides a motive which propels your enactment of the
computation.

> Pain and pleasure, smell and taste, touch and vision can be
> felt, but not the underlying software and hardware (if that exists).

It's not underlying, it's symmetrical. The native sensation we
experience begins and ends on a human scale.

> Now an expression like "felt directly as a sensorimotive experience"
> has no meaning for me. Sorry.

It means that counting or solving a math problem is something that you
participate in as a person. You don't just look at a math problem and
have no choice but to solve it, you have to choose to engage in this
tangible puzzling out of the thing. You have to try, maybe struggle,
to wonder, to feel 'aha!'. These are journeys of sense making
motivation on the human scale.

>
> > or it is inferred in a
> > physical system, but I doubt it can appear anywhere unless something
> > physical thinks it appears.
>
> Why?

Because I think that counting is a sensorimotive experience which is
associated with the interior of the physical universe. We don't see
any examples of phenomena with no physical association. Empty space
literally 'doesn't count'.

> I think this view is a gross extrapolation from our animal instinct to
> reify the indexicals. I belief that here and now and "I" and this and
> that is more real than beyond.

That's where the multisense realism comes in. In one sense we *must*
believe that the here and now and I is more real than everything else,
that is literally what subjectivity is. That's what I mean when I say
that subjectivity is about orientation and significance. What and who
is close to us, literally in space and time or figuratively in any
number of qualities and affinities, is what matters to us. The more
distant it is, the less it 'matters' and the more it is just
'matter' (or noise or illusion, etc). This is a universal truth of
subjectivity. No person has ever felt that their own survival was less
important than the survival of a distant star, even though that star's
destruction may destroy countless lives. Both views are real in a
sense and unreal in another.

> Where does any place and time come from?

They come from the involuted subjective-objective singularity
involuting itself further as spatiotemporal multiplicity.

>
> As I said, it is easier to explain the illusion of matter to a person,
> than the illusion of person to matter.
>
> We don't see a physical primitive universe. Layman and babies do
> instinctively what physicist do all the time: they measure numbers and
> they infer relations between numbers, themselves compactified in
> numbers.
>
> Consciousness and other ineffable things comes from the fact that
> those numbers are related to theoretical number truth which are far
> beyond, of what they can proof or justified, as the numbers can
> justified in some conditional way already by themselves,
>
> > The universe is not haunted by arithmetic
> > spirits,
>
> It is the arithmetical realm which is haunted by universal numbers, of
> many sorts.

How does the arithmetic realm influence the physical realm, and why
don't we see any examples of that? I need physical energy to run a
computer or a machine. Why is that?

>
> > it discovers and elaborates arithmetic as a new territory
> > through sense and motive.
>
> All universal numbers discover and elaborate arithmetic as new
> territory through sense and motive.

Only if we, or some physical interpreter does the interpreting of that
elaboration. As far as we know.

>
> > Sense and motive may well be guided by non-
> > local, non-temporal influences, but that guidance can only be
> > manifested through physical description and it's not only to do with
> > arithmetic but morphology, language, emotion, personality, etc. Many
> > kinds of strange attractors and archetypes for sense and motive.
> > Numbers have no independent realism.
>
> In that case your theory might be just not interesting, in the sense
> that for most humans, numbers are the most possibly independent thing
> they can conceive of. It needs only the common part to classical
> (Plato, Hilbert) and constructive (Aristotle, Brouwer) philosophy. But
> just can't dispense of them or their recursive equivalent in any theory.
> We need numbers (or equivalent) to give sense to the word "theory",
> "proof", "deduction", "valid", etc. All civilisation discovered
> surprising property of numbers.

Oh I wouldn't dispense with numbers at all. Arithmetic sensemaking is
a critical link between subjectivity and objectivity. I'm just saying
they present us with a framework which we can elaborate on forever
without ever making sense of biological feeling.

Yes and no. I can only overlap minimally with your discourse because I
don't have an adequate sense of numbers. We overlap much more in other
areas and opinions. But yes, if we did overlap, the level of precision
and dis-ambiguity is absolute. That is the purpose of enumeration.
That's why I call it the exoskeleton of sense, just as it could be
said that law is the exoskeleton of motive.

>
> > You can't talk to a
> > congenitally blind person about green. Partial intersubjective
> > agreement isn't the same thing as objective definition (or what we
> > consider objective, even if it's only intersubjectivity more
> > universally scoped).
>
> I agree. That's even why I do not take a physical universe for
> granted. Yet, physical realities will reappear as partial first person
> plural agreement. This involves indirectly many universe, something
> confirmed by the literal interpretation of Everett's formulation of QM.

I think many universe is what you get when you turn sensorimotive
agency inside out.

Maybe but not necessarily. The brain-conjoined twins aren't
diffracted. Why can't I have a crab or a bag of algae instead of a
left hand?

>
> > then plug large molecules into the cells to see
> > what is experienced there, etc. Build giant arrays to try to feel on
> > an interstellar scale even.
>
> Interstellar is already infinitesimal compared to the arithmetical
> scale on which our consciousness already supervene on.
> But this does not diminish the interest of fusing and duplicating in
> the quest for truth.

How can arithmetic have a scale? Compared to what?

The 8 hypostases are just eight distinctions within a single sense,
like the eight trigrams of the I Ching. There is deep and universal
truth there, but deep universality is ultimately a privileged semantic
awareness. Most of what our lives are about is not deep, universal, or
true. Multisense realism embraces this as an ontological reality.

>
> > Both are real in some
> > sense, unreal in some sense, both real and unreal and neither real nor
> > unreal in some sense.
>
> "it exists" and "for all" has indeed different meaning according to
> each hypostases.

But hypostases in general only exist in a specific and rarefied sense.

>
> > The realism arises from the symmetry - the very
> > sense of being literally only one thing in one sense and many
> > figuratively many things in another. I think mechanism is a monosense
> > view of that symmetry which necessarily de-presents realism it to make
> > it into one generic universal computation (how or why does UD create
> > 'now'?)
>
> Because the modality Bp & p defines an arithmetical indexical knower.
> Bp is the usual self-referential ideally correct assertive mode of the
> machine. "Bp & p" provides an innefable, unnameable self, which plays
> the role of the subject building its personal mental mindscape.
> But to get this you should read the second part of the sane04 paper,
> at least (and ask question).

Being able to describe mathematically that the self-like functions
exist isn't the same thing as being the self. A picture of an apple is
not an apple.

>
> > - which is great and true in some ways, terrible and false in
> > others, both and neither in others.
>
> > My view is that your view is a particular region of a symmetrical
> > continuum of sense. The continuum is such that subjective feeling is
> > experienced here and now, objective unfeeling is inferred then and
> > there. Look at subjectivity through the lens of objectivity and we get
> > determinism.
>
> Hmm... I would say we get the indeterminism. Like in the UD, where we
> look indeed at the subjective through the lens of the objective.

Indeterminism in the sense of not being sure which of the available
deterministic paths will be chosen statistically, not in the sense of
genuine creativity,novelty, and intention.

>
> > Look at objectivity through subjectivity and we get
> > superstition.
>
> Superstition, but also "the boss is right" and the ten thousand
> possible wounds we do to ourselves.

Sure, yes. Abuse of power. Escalation of intolerance to supernatural
levels.

>
> > If we take these perspectives too literally, we get
> > pathological de-presentation (http://s33light.org/post/14722448115) in
> > the form of fundamentalism or materialism. Computationalism too if
> > taken to it's literal extreme.
>
> Less sure. Computationalism is a vaccine against reductionism. There,
> we can quickly see reductionism cannot work.

Dennett seems pretty reductionistic. The vaccine seems not to have
kicked in yet?

>
> > If we take these profound perspectives
> > too figuratively, we over-privilege the mundane perspective and
> > neurotically attached to the minutiae of the everyday.
>
> > Bruno's perspective I would characterize as straddling the profound
> > meridian - the least involuted region at which the highest and lowest
> > ideal monosense blur into each other. This is where monastic
> > contemplation of divinity meets arithmetic puzzle solving. I Ching
> > meets Boolean algebra. Eschewing both the florid presentations of
> > hypertrophied subjectivity and the dull representations of material
> > objects, this region of the continuum is about the poetry of the anti-
> > poetic. Purity and universality, an arid and masculine clarity.
>
> Hmm... That's very well said, but I feel it as rather feminine :)

Excellent point. I should have said that it appeals to masculine minds
instead of being masculine itself. It's more of a Hermetic priesthood
that is rooted in non-anthropomorphic sentience. You're right, it
could be rather feminine in the sense of being receptive and oracular,
full of secrets.

>
> > When
> > you look at the rest of the continuum from this perspective, some
> > powerful truths are revealed and others are concealed, just like any
> > other perspective along the continuum, but unlike any other place
> > along the continuum, this profound region relates specifically to
> > universality and truth as an abstract essence. My only problem with it
> > is that I think it diminishes the realism of concrete experience, and
> > then defensively denies it.
>
> It does not. On the contrary, I am the one who say "looks the numbers
> are already dreaming, and not only that, they chat in their sleep, and
> we can listen to what they say.
> You are the one who seems to dismiss their many concrete experiences.

It's circular reasoning because you are a priori assuming that our
experiences are the experiences of numbers. How can you be so sure
that numbers exist or have experiences independently of physical
entities making sense of themselves and their world that way?

>
> > That's what all sufficiently progressed
> > points of view do, otherwise they lose their integrity and progress.
> > My view doesn't have to be for everyone, and it could certainly have
> > it's own pathological extremism (after all, my method makes
> > subjectivity more generic and literal while revealing the
> > sensorimotive multiplicity of objects, so that I'm even further
> > removed from realism by abstracting the whole thing as language) but I
> > think that is is the biggest big picture that can make sense to us,
> > which is really all that I'm after.
>
> We might be closer than you think, except that for some unknown reason
> you don't want the machines to be part of it.
> You might have good reasons, but you don't succeed in communicating
> them, and, I am not sure, you might just wasting your time with that
> position (to be frank).

Because machines only become real through material enactments. The
abstraction of machines is only half of the story.

>
>
>
> >>> They seem to have no
> >>> opinion about whether or not my view correctly redefines cosmology,
> >>> physics, biology, and consciousness, but strenuously oppose any
> >>> suggestion that the way I'm trying to do it could be called science.
> >>> It's ironic since so many of the greatest scientific revelations are
> >>> born out of thought experiments and not academic training.
>
> >> Academy is the worst ... except for the others institutions. Some
> >> academies are even worst. And they are always late in evolution.
> >> The publish and perish rules should be made illegal, because it is
> >> non
> >> sense, and it hides the real honest researches.
>
> > I agree. What's a non-academic to do though? How to get my hypothesis
> > out there?
>
> By writing text to convince other people, academic or not.

Unfortunately the people who would care are already convinced of the
existing monosense fundamentalisms.

>
> > Want to help underwrite my ideas with your academic
> > cred? ;)
>
> Not sure this would really help you, to be honest.
> Also, I should first understand what you say, and all my work starts
> from the fact that I am interested in explaining the physical, and the
> spiritual, without assuming them at the start.
> I buy everything in Aristotle, except his metaphysics. Plotinus and
> many mystics got it right, I think.
>
> We might depart greatly on mechanism: my real test for a theory is
> "try to explain you theory to a universal machine, and if she can
> explain it to me after, I will be convinced". Put in another way, you
> have to convince me that you can formalize you theory in PA, or ZF, or
> any not to complex or eccentric Löbian machine language. Or, (but it
> is more complex) explain it to a Löbian non-machine entity, if you
> really believe that you are not Turing emulable.

It's not just me, I don't think that anything is actually Turing
emulable to it's native substitution level, we just don't care that it
isn't real when it's something other than ourselves. We can fool one
or more channels of our own sense into accepting the 'emulation', but
there is no literal emulation happening except through the tolerance
of subjective pattern recognition. Pixels do not literally emulate
images, we just read image and emulated perceptual referents through
the pixels by pinching out the discontinuity.

What makes me even more suspect of emulation when it comes to human
subjectivity is that since we are participants in a narrative which is
temporal, and temporality is a continuous accumulation of entangled
events, it is not clear that we can be divorced from our temporal
context. I do not exist in any other timeframe but my own. An exact
duplicate of me still comes into being at a different time than I did,
so his orientation to the present is different than mine. His memories
are my memories. We both remember the other one being created in a lab
but one of us is objectively correct. If I stand on a red square and
he materializes on a blue square, his memory is tangibly false of
himself being on a red square and seeing me materialize on a blue
square. There is not necessarily an absolute substitution level for
anything as each thing bears a specific potential relation to all
other events.

> I doubt this will add
> any new observable effects, though.
> You might try to explain to younger people, but the idea of explaining
> does consists in explaining new notion from older one. It is always
> relative. All what I know about "sensorimotive" is that it is non
> Turing emulable, which is close to being magical, when seen as an
> explanation.

Feeling and imagination is pretty close to being magical. If we could
project it outside of our heads or bring everyone else inside our
minds, then how much more magic would magic really be?

>
> I might be more incline to help you when you will accept to give some
> food, in your restaurant, to my sun-in-law, you know, the one who
> lost its biological brain ...

How about I will put both virtualized and biological entrees on the
menu an he can choose his preference?

Craig

[alexalex]

> Being able to describe mathematically that the self-like functions
> exist isn't the same thing as being the self. A picture of an apple is
> not an apple.

Why are you interpreting sentences? A picture of an apple is, to put
it simply, a picture of an apple and nothing more. On the other hand a
complete simulated apple, with all the physics, biochemistry, etc is
exactly an apple just like a simulated self, with all its details 100%
functionally replicated, would really be a self. So your analogy with
the picture of an apple being the same as a simulated, complete
representation of a self is pretty far-fetched; they are not the same:
a picture of an apple only partially tells the story of what it is
like to be an apple; a simulated self with all its functional systems
working exactly in the same way as a real self concoted in a wet brain
completelly tells the story of what it is like to be a self.

AlexAlex.

[Craig Weinberg]

On Dec 25, 6:58 pm, alexalex <alexmka...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Being able to describe mathematically that the self-like functions
> > exist isn't the same thing as being the self. A picture of an apple is
> > not an apple.
>
> Why are you interpreting sentences? A picture of an apple is, to put
> it simply, a picture of an apple and nothing more.

A picture is a complete visual simulation. It is nothing less than
what you would get with a digital simulation except that the digital
simulation provides you with interactive realism on whatever levels
you know how to simulate.

> On the other hand a
> complete simulated apple, with all the physics, biochemistry, etc is
> exactly an apple just like a simulated self, with all its details 100%
> functionally replicated, would really be a self.

Not at all. A 'simulated apple' is just several pictures superimposed.
You are mistaking a visual representation of physics and biochemistry
for actual physics and biochemistry. An apple isn't an apple unless an
*actual* worm can live in it. Anything that could be represented by a
digital computer on a monitor is not that. If you are talking about
some kind of nanotech impersonation of an apple, then it's not a
simulation but an artificially produced fruit which may or may not be
an apple depending on the recipe and materials used.

> So your analogy with
> the picture of an apple being the same as a simulated, complete
> representation of a self is pretty far-fetched; they are not the same:

Simulation is in the eye of the beholder. It isn't possible for one
thing to literally be another thing so that there is no such thing as
a complete representation. You're not accepting that a picture is in
fact a visual simulation. A movie would be a more complete simulation.
What you're talking about is more or less an interactive holographic
movie and nothing more.

> a picture of an apple only partially tells the story of what it is
> like to be an apple; a simulated self with all its functional systems
> working exactly in the same way as a real self concoted in a wet brain
> completelly tells the story of what it is like to be a self.

A simulated self only partially tells the story of what it is like to
be a self - the irrelevant part. The chemistry and biology of a living
brain could be modeled in a computer program which would satisfy any
neurologist or biologist or chemist but it need not have any internal
experience at all. The program is a model of the outside of the
brain's behavior with nobody inside to actually experience the world
through that brain. A model of the self which is reverse engineered
from brain function is just a model of brain function and has no more
capacity to feel than a CAD drawing of a column can support a marble
roof.

I understand that it's irritating to think of things this way, but you
have to if you want to understand awareness. We have to break the
habit of conflating abstractions with concrete realities and concrete
realities which we are familiar with and consider important right now
in the 21st century with the unknowable totality of all possible
realities. It's one thing to simulate a game of billiards in Java, but
quite another to simulate "I".

Craig

[alexalex]

> Not at all. A 'simulated apple' is just several pictures superimposed.
> You are mistaking a visual representation of physics and biochemistry
> for actual physics and biochemistry.

Then, I hereby declare that what your retina projects only images
superimposed from a simulated world and all your experiences are
illusions.

[alexalex]

> Not at all. A 'simulated apple' is just several pictures superimposed.
> You are mistaking a visual representation of physics and biochemistry
> for actual physics and biochemistry.

Then, I hereby declare that what your retina projects is only images

[Bruno Marchal]

On 25 Dec 2011, at 21:29, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> On Dec 25, 12:01 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>> On 25 Dec 2011, at 16:16, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>>
>>> Does that mean that you consider numbers biological?
>>
>> I consider that some relations between some numbers are biological.
>> Some are theological, some physical, etc, from their (the numbers,
>> the
>> programs, the digital machines, )
>
> Why would numbers differ in quality when they already differ precisely
> in quantity? Seems superfluous.

It is not a matter of choice. Relatively to each other universal
number does discover those quality, and develop all the mind-body
problem discourses. You can call them zombie, but you can also do that
with humans. After all emiminativist does talk about consciousness as
been causally superfluous. But in the case of nulbers, at least we can
show that those who begins to bet on their nown consistency/
consciousness develop self-speeding up ability relatively to their
most probable universal number/environment, so it is not superfluous.
A number, when seen relatively to some universal number is really a
machine or a program.

>
>>
>> I consider Kleene recursion theorem as the fundamental theorem of
>> biology. It solves conceptually and practically the problem of self-
>> reproduction, self-regeneration, embryo, etc.
>
> I see recursion as just one defining exterior behavior of biology. I
> don't see pain and pleasure being an inevitable arithmetic product of
> recursion but they are an equally definitive biological quality.

This is because we are forbidden to do that. If we could access the
functional level of pain and pleasure, we would no more evolved and
disappear. Our "not seeing pain and pleasure being inevitably
arithmetic (or even physics)" is programmed at the start. Indeed some
people fears "drugs" because they believe it can gives us such an
access, but such an idea is a myth. It can only be superficially true
(and at that level, the brain already is a big "drug dealer").

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> Certainly the universe is filled with inorganic
>>>>> matter while biological cells represent a small fraction of it.
>>>>> Physics seems to predate biology, at least on Earth by four
>>>>> billion
>>>>> years, right?
>>
>>>> Locally. Not in the big picture, which with comp is much more
>>>> simple,
>>>> both conceptually and technically.
>>
>>> How does comp explain the predominance of non-biological matter
>>> locally?
>>
>> Although there are infinitely biological number relations, most of
>> the
>> relations are not biological.
>> But all that local non biological matter is only the reflect of the
>> infinitely many computations which our minds does not depend on.
>
> Would you say that the infinity of biological number relations is as
> large as the infinity of physical relations?

I would say, without thinking too much, that the biological relations
are far more numerous. The physical relations are first person
constructs of the Löbian machines relations, most plausibly related to
deep (necessary long) computations, and which are relatively rare,
despite their continuum of consistent extensions.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>>> psychology (of
>>>>>> numbers) is more universal than biology.
>>
>>>>> I was talking specifically about the extensive elaboration of
>>>>> vertebrate cognition in hominids. I would call the qualia of
>>>>> numbers
>>>>> an aspect of psychology while that which numbers represent are
>>>>> quantitative archetypes that have no agency, psychology, or qualia
>>>>> of
>>>>> their own (just as Bugs Bunny is a cartoon celebrity who has
>>>>> experiences independently of the audience's projected qualia).
>>
>>>> You miss the difference between a computation (as it exists in
>>>> arithmetic, and in some local physics) and a description of a
>>>> computation (as can appear in a cartoon).
>>
>>> I don't think that computation does exist in arithmetic
>>
>> This is not a matter of choice. Computations have indeed be
>> discovered
>> in arithmetic.
>
> Discovered by mathematicians, but does arithmetic itself know whether
> or not it is discovering computation?

Some numbers can know that. Arithmetic (arithmetical truth) is
plausibly not a person (or only in some non Löbian weak sense). But
its "inhabitants" can make the discovery, and indeed do it. Machines
can discover their own hypostases. Correct machines cannot miss them
eventually.

>
>> The question of the existence of computations in nature
>> is more delicate. It is just *assumed* in the comp hypothesis.
>>
>>> or physics,
>>> any more than shadows exist in trees or light bulbs.
>>
>> Shadows exist in trees or light bulb in the sense that observable
>> exists.
>
> How so? If all you have is a tree but no light source, you can't have
> a shadow. If all you have is a light bulb but no surfaces to
> illuminate, you can't have a shadow either. The realism of a shadow is
> in the the visual sense relation between light source, obstacle, and
> space.

I agree. But those things exist in the relevant relative sense.
Likewise with the numbers.

>
>>
>>> Computation is
>>> felt directly as a sensorimotive experience,
>>
>> I am not sure of the meaning "computation can be felt" (it hurts a
>> bit
>> my categorization). Neither computation nor brain activity can be
>> felt.
>
> If you are trying to solve an equation, you are feeling computation.

In a weak superficial sense. I am not feeling the computation done by
my brain for me to be aware that I am solving an equation, and that's
what I meant. If not you are confusing level of descriptions. I don't
feel my neurons either.

> You have a sense of what the problem is, what outcome you intend, and
> this provides a motive which propels your enactment of the
> computation.
>
>> Pain and pleasure, smell and taste, touch and vision can be
>> felt, but not the underlying software and hardware (if that exists).
>
> It's not underlying, it's symmetrical.

You have to prove this. In the comp theory, mind and matter are not
symmetrical. matter is the border of something much greater (if only
the mindscape of the universal numbers).

> The native sensation we
> experience begins and ends on a human scale.

You say so. I don't believe this is necessary.

>
>> Now an expression like "felt directly as a sensorimotive experience"
>> has no meaning for me. Sorry.
>
> It means that counting or solving a math problem is something that you
> participate in as a person. You don't just look at a math problem and
> have no choice but to solve it, you have to choose to engage in this
> tangible puzzling out of the thing. You have to try, maybe struggle,
> to wonder, to feel 'aha!'. These are journeys of sense making
> motivation on the human scale.

Notably. OK. It could work with the universal larger scale too.

>
>>
>>> or it is inferred in a
>>> physical system, but I doubt it can appear anywhere unless something
>>> physical thinks it appears.
>>
>> Why?
>
> Because I think that counting is a sensorimotive experience which is
> associated with the interior of the physical universe. We don't see
> any examples of phenomena with no physical association. Empty space
> literally 'doesn't count'.

I have no problem with this.

>
>> I think this view is a gross extrapolation from our animal instinct
>> to
>> reify the indexicals. I belief that here and now and "I" and this and
>> that is more real than beyond.
>
> That's where the multisense realism comes in. In one sense we *must*
> believe that the here and now and I is more real than everything else,
> that is literally what subjectivity is.

OK.

> That's what I mean when I say
> that subjectivity is about orientation and significance. What and who
> is close to us, literally in space and time or figuratively in any
> number of qualities and affinities, is what matters to us. The more
> distant it is, the less it 'matters' and the more it is just
> 'matter' (or noise or illusion, etc). This is a universal truth of
> subjectivity. No person has ever felt that their own survival was less
> important than the survival of a distant star, even though that star's
> destruction may destroy countless lives. Both views are real in a
> sense and unreal in another.

OK.

>
>> Where does any place and time come from?
>
> They come from the involuted subjective-objective singularity
> involuting itself further as spatiotemporal multiplicity.

?

>
>>
>> As I said, it is easier to explain the illusion of matter to a
>> person,
>> than the illusion of person to matter.
>>
>> We don't see a physical primitive universe. Layman and babies do
>> instinctively what physicist do all the time: they measure numbers
>> and
>> they infer relations between numbers, themselves compactified in
>> numbers.
>>
>> Consciousness and other ineffable things comes from the fact that
>> those numbers are related to theoretical number truth which are far
>> beyond, of what they can proof or justified, as the numbers can
>> justified in some conditional way already by themselves,
>>
>>> The universe is not haunted by arithmetic
>>> spirits,
>>
>> It is the arithmetical realm which is haunted by universal numbers,
>> of
>> many sorts.
>
> How does the arithmetic realm influence the physical realm, and why
> don't we see any examples of that?

We see this all the time, and since Descartes we makes this explicit,
by inferring that natural phenomena obeys to computable number
relations.

> I need physical energy to run a
> computer or a machine. Why is that?

Because the material hypostases leads necessarily to a quantization of
physics which is symmetrical on the state accessed to the UD. Because
the physics of numbers is symmetrical on its bottom propositional
tautologies (unlike classical tautologies). That's not obvious, but
can be proved in comp + classical theory of knowledge.

>
>>
>>> it discovers and elaborates arithmetic as a new territory
>>> through sense and motive.
>>
>> All universal numbers discover and elaborate arithmetic as new
>> territory through sense and motive.
>
> Only if we, or some physical interpreter does the interpreting of that
> elaboration. As far as we know.

The universal numbers do the interpretations very well.

>
>>
>>> Sense and motive may well be guided by non-
>>> local, non-temporal influences, but that guidance can only be
>>> manifested through physical description and it's not only to do with
>>> arithmetic but morphology, language, emotion, personality, etc. Many
>>> kinds of strange attractors and archetypes for sense and motive.
>>> Numbers have no independent realism.
>>
>> In that case your theory might be just not interesting, in the sense
>> that for most humans, numbers are the most possibly independent thing
>> they can conceive of. It needs only the common part to classical
>> (Plato, Hilbert) and constructive (Aristotle, Brouwer) philosophy.
>> But
>> just can't dispense of them or their recursive equivalent in any
>> theory.
>> We need numbers (or equivalent) to give sense to the word "theory",
>> "proof", "deduction", "valid", etc. All civilisation discovered
>> surprising property of numbers.
>
> Oh I wouldn't dispense with numbers at all. Arithmetic sensemaking is
> a critical link between subjectivity and objectivity. I'm just saying
> they present us with a framework which we can elaborate on forever
> without ever making sense of biological feeling.

The hypostases just contradict this.

You need only to accept some principle, like those taught in high
school. No need of complex philosophy. If you believe that 0 + x = x,
and that (x + (y + 1)) = (x + y) + 1, that's almost good enough.

> We overlap much more in other
> areas and opinions.

Not so sure.

> But yes, if we did overlap, the level of precision
> and dis-ambiguity is absolute. That is the purpose of enumeration.
> That's why I call it the exoskeleton of sense, just as it could be
> said that law is the exoskeleton of motive.
>
>>
>>> You can't talk to a
>>> congenitally blind person about green. Partial intersubjective
>>> agreement isn't the same thing as objective definition (or what we
>>> consider objective, even if it's only intersubjectivity more
>>> universally scoped).
>>
>> I agree. That's even why I do not take a physical universe for
>> granted. Yet, physical realities will reappear as partial first
>> person
>> plural agreement. This involves indirectly many universe, something
>> confirmed by the literal interpretation of Everett's formulation of
>> QM.
>
> I think many universe is what you get when you turn sensorimotive
> agency inside out.

UDA1-7 gives some comp sense to this, OK. (thanks comp!).

Compared to the observable or inferable physical universe.
Arithmetical truth is *very big*.

That's would be only a vocabulary move. With comp, almost everything
(consciousness and matter) are epistemological distinctions.

>
>>
>>> Both are real in some
>>> sense, unreal in some sense, both real and unreal and neither real
>>> nor
>>> unreal in some sense.
>>
>> "it exists" and "for all" has indeed different meaning according to
>> each hypostases.
>
> But hypostases in general only exist in a specific and rarefied sense.

All correct universal machines have them.

>
>>
>>> The realism arises from the symmetry - the very
>>> sense of being literally only one thing in one sense and many
>>> figuratively many things in another. I think mechanism is a
>>> monosense
>>> view of that symmetry which necessarily de-presents realism it to
>>> make
>>> it into one generic universal computation (how or why does UD create
>>> 'now'?)
>>
>> Because the modality Bp & p defines an arithmetical indexical knower.
>> Bp is the usual self-referential ideally correct assertive mode of
>> the
>> machine. "Bp & p" provides an innefable, unnameable self, which plays
>> the role of the subject building its personal mental mindscape.
>> But to get this you should read the second part of the sane04 paper,
>> at least (and ask question).
>
> Being able to describe mathematically that the self-like functions
> exist isn't the same thing as being the self. A picture of an apple is
> not an apple.

Sure. But math is not just description. It relates to truth.
Conventionalism in math is dead.

>
>>
>>> - which is great and true in some ways, terrible and false in
>>> others, both and neither in others.
>>
>>> My view is that your view is a particular region of a symmetrical
>>> continuum of sense. The continuum is such that subjective feeling is
>>> experienced here and now, objective unfeeling is inferred then and
>>> there. Look at subjectivity through the lens of objectivity and we
>>> get
>>> determinism.
>>
>> Hmm... I would say we get the indeterminism. Like in the UD, where we
>> look indeed at the subjective through the lens of the objective.
>
> Indeterminism in the sense of not being sure which of the available
> deterministic paths will be chosen statistically, not in the sense of
> genuine creativity,novelty, and intention.

In the UD? OK. In the first person hypostases? I am not sure.

>
>>
>>> Look at objectivity through subjectivity and we get
>>> superstition.
>>
>> Superstition, but also "the boss is right" and the ten thousand
>> possible wounds we do to ourselves.
>
> Sure, yes. Abuse of power. Escalation of intolerance to supernatural
> levels.
>
>>
>>> If we take these perspectives too literally, we get
>>> pathological de-presentation (http://s33light.org/post/
>>> 14722448115) in
>>> the form of fundamentalism or materialism. Computationalism too if
>>> taken to it's literal extreme.
>>
>> Less sure. Computationalism is a vaccine against reductionism. There,
>> we can quickly see reductionism cannot work.
>
> Dennett seems pretty reductionistic. The vaccine seems not to have
> kicked in yet?

Sure. That's not the problem of comp. That's the problem of its
physical reductionism. Dennett assume both comp and math, making him
epistemologically inconsistent.

>
>>
>>> If we take these profound perspectives
>>> too figuratively, we over-privilege the mundane perspective and
>>> neurotically attached to the minutiae of the everyday.
>>
>>> Bruno's perspective I would characterize as straddling the profound
>>> meridian - the least involuted region at which the highest and
>>> lowest
>>> ideal monosense blur into each other. This is where monastic
>>> contemplation of divinity meets arithmetic puzzle solving. I Ching
>>> meets Boolean algebra. Eschewing both the florid presentations of
>>> hypertrophied subjectivity and the dull representations of material
>>> objects, this region of the continuum is about the poetry of the
>>> anti-
>>> poetic. Purity and universality, an arid and masculine clarity.
>>
>> Hmm... That's very well said, but I feel it as rather feminine :)
>
> Excellent point. I should have said that it appeals to masculine minds
> instead of being masculine itself. It's more of a Hermetic priesthood
> that is rooted in non-anthropomorphic sentience. You're right, it
> could be rather feminine in the sense of being receptive and oracular,
> full of secrets.

OK :)

>
>>
>>> When
>>> you look at the rest of the continuum from this perspective, some
>>> powerful truths are revealed and others are concealed, just like any
>>> other perspective along the continuum, but unlike any other place
>>> along the continuum, this profound region relates specifically to
>>> universality and truth as an abstract essence. My only problem
>>> with it
>>> is that I think it diminishes the realism of concrete experience,
>>> and
>>> then defensively denies it.
>>
>> It does not. On the contrary, I am the one who say "looks the numbers
>> are already dreaming, and not only that, they chat in their sleep,
>> and
>> we can listen to what they say.
>> You are the one who seems to dismiss their many concrete experiences.
>
> It's circular reasoning because you are a priori assuming that our
> experiences are the experiences of numbers. How can you be so sure
> that numbers exist or have experiences independently of physical
> entities making sense of themselves and their world that way?

I am sure of nothing. Comp is just empirically plausible, and is based
on a very solid notion, by Church thesis.
You are the one who seems sure that numbers (in their relative
relations with each other) cannot have experience.

>
>>
>>> That's what all sufficiently progressed
>>> points of view do, otherwise they lose their integrity and progress.
>>> My view doesn't have to be for everyone, and it could certainly have
>>> it's own pathological extremism (after all, my method makes
>>> subjectivity more generic and literal while revealing the
>>> sensorimotive multiplicity of objects, so that I'm even further
>>> removed from realism by abstracting the whole thing as language)
>>> but I
>>> think that is is the biggest big picture that can make sense to us,
>>> which is really all that I'm after.
>>
>> We might be closer than you think, except that for some unknown
>> reason
>> you don't want the machines to be part of it.
>> You might have good reasons, but you don't succeed in communicating
>> them, and, I am not sure, you might just wasting your time with that
>> position (to be frank).
>
> Because machines only become real through material enactments. The
> abstraction of machines is only half of the story.

Matter become perceivable when a machine looks to itself and
environment near its subst comp level, and this without assuming it.
So comp explains something you need to assume. So it is simpler.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> They seem to have no
>>>>> opinion about whether or not my view correctly redefines
>>>>> cosmology,
>>>>> physics, biology, and consciousness, but strenuously oppose any
>>>>> suggestion that the way I'm trying to do it could be called
>>>>> science.
>>>>> It's ironic since so many of the greatest scientific revelations
>>>>> are
>>>>> born out of thought experiments and not academic training.
>>
>>>> Academy is the worst ... except for the others institutions. Some
>>>> academies are even worst. And they are always late in evolution.
>>>> The publish and perish rules should be made illegal, because it is
>>>> non
>>>> sense, and it hides the real honest researches.
>>
>>> I agree. What's a non-academic to do though? How to get my
>>> hypothesis
>>> out there?
>>
>> By writing text to convince other people, academic or not.
>
> Unfortunately the people who would care are already convinced of the
> existing monosense fundamentalisms.

That's why research is an hard endeavor. But you have no choice, if
you want share your ideas.
Science is intrinsically a fight against fundamentalism, including the
one which crops is scientific circles all the time.

>
>>
>>> Want to help underwrite my ideas with your academic
>>> cred? ;)
>>
>> Not sure this would really help you, to be honest.
>> Also, I should first understand what you say, and all my work starts
>> from the fact that I am interested in explaining the physical, and
>> the
>> spiritual, without assuming them at the start.
>> I buy everything in Aristotle, except his metaphysics. Plotinus and
>> many mystics got it right, I think.
>>
>> We might depart greatly on mechanism: my real test for a theory is
>> "try to explain you theory to a universal machine, and if she can
>> explain it to me after, I will be convinced". Put in another way, you
>> have to convince me that you can formalize you theory in PA, or ZF,
>> or
>> any not to complex or eccentric Löbian machine language. Or, (but it
>> is more complex) explain it to a Löbian non-machine entity, if you
>> really believe that you are not Turing emulable.
>
> It's not just me, I don't think that anything is actually Turing
> emulable to it's native substitution level,

This does not make sense. If something is not Turing emulable: there
are just no substitution levels, by definition of the comp subst-level.

> we just don't care that it
> isn't real when it's something other than ourselves. We can fool one
> or more channels of our own sense into accepting the 'emulation', but
> there is no literal emulation happening except through the tolerance
> of subjective pattern recognition. Pixels do not literally emulate
> images, we just read image and emulated perceptual referents through
> the pixels by pinching out the discontinuity.

Pixels don't. Logical gates do.

>
> What makes me even more suspect of emulation when it comes to human
> subjectivity is that since we are participants in a narrative which is
> temporal,

Locally.

> and temporality is a continuous accumulation of entangled
> events, it is not clear that we can be divorced from our temporal
> context. I do not exist in any other timeframe but my own. An exact
> duplicate of me still comes into being at a different time than I did,
> so his orientation to the present is different than mine. His memories
> are my memories. We both remember the other one being created in a lab
> but one of us is objectively correct. If I stand on a red square and
> he materializes on a blue square, his memory is tangibly false of
> himself being on a red square and seeing me materialize on a blue
> square. There is not necessarily an absolute substitution level for
> anything as each thing bears a specific potential relation to all
> other events.

That begs the question. If you decide that the copy is no more a human
and send it to a camp, then I might say no to the doctor just by fear
of persecution.
This is like saying that cannabis can destroy your life, because
indeed, it can send you to jail.
saying that there is no subst-level is the same as saying that comp is
false. It is not an argument: you are just putting some infinities
explicitly in the working of the mind.

>
>> I doubt this will add
>> any new observable effects, though.
>> You might try to explain to younger people, but the idea of
>> explaining
>> does consists in explaining new notion from older one. It is always
>> relative. All what I know about "sensorimotive" is that it is non
>> Turing emulable, which is close to being magical, when seen as an
>> explanation.
>
> Feeling and imagination is pretty close to being magical. If we could
> project it outside of our heads or bring everyone else inside our
> minds, then how much more magic would magic really be?

It is easier to start from the simple, and if it does not work, to
correct it and find something else. But yoiu can decide in advance
that something is magical, and search for a magical explanation. that
leads to god-gap (or primitive matter-gap) sort of explanation, which
leads to the "shut-up and compute" form of reductionism.

>
>>
>> I might be more incline to help you when you will accept to give some
>> food, in your restaurant, to my sun-in-law, you know, the one who
>> lost its biological brain ...
>
> How about I will put both virtualized and biological entrees on the
> menu an he can choose his preference?

Nice. you progress! I know my sun in law, the brain is digital but the
stomach is biogical: he will choose the biological, (unless you make
him sleepy, and make him dream eating, but we have not yet that
technology). Thanks for him.

Bruno

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

[Craig Weinberg]

Just because my experiences are not the same as a consensus of
external instrumental measurements doesn't mean that my sense is an
illusion. What we see is not a solipsistic simulation or illusion,
although it can have those qualities because it is semantic rather
than literal, it is as direct a presentation of human awareness of the
human-significant features of our environment (interior and exterior)
as possible. Of course our vision has limitations, in distance,
resolution, etc, but also in pattern recognition. We have many layers
of sense contributing to our image production and sometimes (like in
the case of so called optical illusions) they are in conflict. Our
visual system is not a way for us to detect everything in the universe
from every perspective, it is only for us to see what is relevant to
the human perspective, which is a complex and idiosyncratic
perspective. Illusion cannot literally exist in the universe, only
misinterpretation of phenomenological reality.

[Craig Weinberg]

On Dec 26, 6:43 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> On 25 Dec 2011, at 21:29, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> > On Dec 25, 12:01 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> >> On 25 Dec 2011, at 16:16, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> >>> Does that mean that you consider numbers biological?
>
> >> I consider that some relations between some numbers are biological.
> >> Some are theological, some physical, etc, from their (the numbers,
> >> the
> >> programs, the digital machines, )
>
> > Why would numbers differ in quality when they already differ precisely
> > in quantity? Seems superfluous.
>
> It is not a matter of choice. Relatively to each other universal
> number does discover those quality, and develop all the mind-body
> problem discourses.

Why would they though? By what logic would quantities develop
qualities?

> You can call them zombie, but you can also do that
> with humans. After all emiminativist does talk about consciousness as
> been causally superfluous. But in the case of nulbers, at least we can
> show that those who begins to bet on their nown consistency/
> consciousness develop self-speeding up ability relatively to their
> most probable universal number/environment, so it is not superfluous.
> A number, when seen relatively to some universal number is really a
> machine or a program.

Why couldn't they just speed themselves up without developing any
magical dimensions of quality? Why would numbers care about speeding
themselves up in the first place?

>
>
>
> >> I consider Kleene recursion theorem as the fundamental theorem of
> >> biology. It solves conceptually and practically the problem of self-
> >> reproduction, self-regeneration, embryo, etc.
>
> > I see recursion as just one defining exterior behavior of biology. I
> > don't see pain and pleasure being an inevitable arithmetic product of
> > recursion but they are an equally definitive biological quality.
>
> This is because we are forbidden to do that. If we could access the
> functional level of pain and pleasure, we would no more evolved and
> disappear. Our "not seeing pain and pleasure being inevitably
> arithmetic (or even physics)" is programmed at the start. Indeed some
> people fears "drugs" because they believe it can gives us such an
> access, but such an idea is a myth. It can only be superficially true
> (and at that level, the brain already is a big "drug dealer").

I'm not talking about the function of pain though, I'm talking about
the experience. It would not be necessary from any arithmetic or
physical axiom or elaboration. All functions of pain could and would
be accomplished programmatically without any experience at all. If
stove > hot, then immediately remove hand from stove and minimize
damage with cold water. I understand what you are saying about the
inaccessibility of certain truths being maybe written in to our code
from the start but it sounds like you are saying that if we could see
arithmetic as it actually is, we would feel that there is pain and
pleasure in certain numbers. I don't think that's true because pain
and pleasure are too variable and idiosyncratic to be connected with
universal numbers. All numbers have pleasurable and painful
associations.

>
>
>
> >>>>> Certainly the universe is filled with inorganic
> >>>>> matter while biological cells represent a small fraction of it.
> >>>>> Physics seems to predate biology, at least on Earth by four
> >>>>> billion
> >>>>> years, right?
>
> >>>> Locally. Not in the big picture, which with comp is much more
> >>>> simple,
> >>>> both conceptually and technically.
>
> >>> How does comp explain the predominance of non-biological matter
> >>> locally?
>
> >> Although there are infinitely biological number relations, most of
> >> the
> >> relations are not biological.
> >> But all that local non biological matter is only the reflect of the
> >> infinitely many computations which our minds does not depend on.
>
> > Would you say that the infinity of biological number relations is as
> > large as the infinity of physical relations?
>
> I would say, without thinking too much, that the biological relations
> are far more numerous. The physical relations are first person
> constructs of the Löbian machines relations, most plausibly related to
> deep (necessary long) computations, and which are relatively rare,
> despite their continuum of consistent extensions.

Interesting. Why are there so many more inorganic particles than
organisms locally though? Why are the long computations so much more
prolific when biology is more closely tied with reproduction?

>
>
>
> >>>>>> psychology (of
> >>>>>> numbers) is more universal than biology.
>
> >>>>> I was talking specifically about the extensive elaboration of
> >>>>> vertebrate cognition in hominids. I would call the qualia of
> >>>>> numbers
> >>>>> an aspect of psychology while that which numbers represent are
> >>>>> quantitative archetypes that have no agency, psychology, or qualia
> >>>>> of
> >>>>> their own (just as Bugs Bunny is a cartoon celebrity who has
> >>>>> experiences independently of the audience's projected qualia).
>
> >>>> You miss the difference between a computation (as it exists in
> >>>> arithmetic, and in some local physics) and a description of a
> >>>> computation (as can appear in a cartoon).
>
> >>> I don't think that computation does exist in arithmetic
>
> >> This is not a matter of choice. Computations have indeed be
> >> discovered
> >> in arithmetic.
>
> > Discovered by mathematicians, but does arithmetic itself know whether
> > or not it is discovering computation?
>
> Some numbers can know that. Arithmetic (arithmetical truth) is
> plausibly not a person (or only in some non Löbian weak sense). But
> its "inhabitants" can make the discovery, and indeed do it. Machines
> can discover their own hypostases. Correct machines cannot miss them
> eventually.

I would have to understand more about how you come to that conclusion.
It seems speculative and anthropomorphic to me.

>
>
>
> >> The question of the existence of computations in nature
> >> is more delicate. It is just *assumed* in the comp hypothesis.
>
> >>> or physics,
> >>> any more than shadows exist in trees or light bulbs.
>
> >> Shadows exist in trees or light bulb in the sense that observable
> >> exists.
>
> > How so? If all you have is a tree but no light source, you can't have
> > a shadow. If all you have is a light bulb but no surfaces to
> > illuminate, you can't have a shadow either. The realism of a shadow is
> > in the the visual sense relation between light source, obstacle, and
> > space.
>
> I agree. But those things exist in the relevant relative sense.
> Likewise with the numbers.

With numbers you have to define the possibilities explicitly though. I
can make a photoshop image of a tree in the dark with a purple shadow.
It has no realism.

>
>
>
> >>> Computation is
> >>> felt directly as a sensorimotive experience,
>
> >> I am not sure of the meaning "computation can be felt" (it hurts a
> >> bit
> >> my categorization). Neither computation nor brain activity can be
> >> felt.
>
> > If you are trying to solve an equation, you are feeling computation.
>
> In a weak superficial sense. I am not feeling the computation done by
> my brain for me to be aware that I am solving an equation, and that's
> what I meant. If not you are confusing level of descriptions. I don't
> feel my neurons either.

You don't feel the outside of your neurons, but everything you feel is
the awareness of the all of your relevant neurons at once, including
their awareness of your body's awareness of it's environment and the
environment's awareness of itself, etc. It's all sense making. We
don't see our retina cells firing, but what we see through our eyes is
the interior energy-time-significance topology of that matter-space-
relativity architecture.

>
> > You have a sense of what the problem is, what outcome you intend, and
> > this provides a motive which propels your enactment of the
> > computation.
>
> >> Pain and pleasure, smell and taste, touch and vision can be
> >> felt, but not the underlying software and hardware (if that exists).
>
> > It's not underlying, it's symmetrical.
>
> You have to prove this. In the comp theory, mind and matter are not
> symmetrical. matter is the border of something much greater (if only
> the mindscape of the universal numbers).

I think comp theory has to be proved. I have no reason to doubt my own
experience that subjective qualia cannot be described by or reduced to
spatial neurochemical topologies. Every quality of matter, it's
discrete, a-signifying, public, entropic, generic, literally
quantifiable nature is directly contradicted by that of mind. The
subjective experience of mind is continuous, literally private but
figuratively shared, narrative, proprietary, and metaphorically
multivalent. What more needs to be proved?

>
> > The native sensation we
> > experience begins and ends on a human scale.
>
> You say so. I don't believe this is necessary.

What other kind of sensation can humans have other than human
sensation?

>
>
>
> >> Now an expression like "felt directly as a sensorimotive experience"
> >> has no meaning for me. Sorry.
>
> > It means that counting or solving a math problem is something that you
> > participate in as a person. You don't just look at a math problem and
> > have no choice but to solve it, you have to choose to engage in this
> > tangible puzzling out of the thing. You have to try, maybe struggle,
> > to wonder, to feel 'aha!'. These are journeys of sense making
> > motivation on the human scale.
>
> Notably. OK. It could work with the universal larger scale too.

I think it does. On every scale the cosmos is stories on the inside,
non-stories on the outside. In between those east and west points are
the north (logos-computation-profound) meridian which elevates the
unity as a gradual evanescent diffusion, and a south (eros-techne-
pedestrian) meridian which clearly defines Cartesian subject object
boundaries.

In the beginning (and ending and always and never) is the primordial
singularity, which is monad. It has no sense to discern time or space,
everythingness or nothingness. It is the level of the cosmos where
there is only "I" with nothing, to compare itself to to establish
scale, shape, exteriority, etc. It has to invent it's opposite: Not-I,
in the form of objectivity to create the possibility of realism. Once
that essential dialectic of I and Not I is established, a continuum of
sense and motive can be diffracted. The essential sensorimotive
continuum can then be contradicted as an existential electromagnetic
continuum so that the relations between the emptiness which divides
existential objects becomes space and the masking of eternity which
multiplies the significance of essential subjects becomes time.
Objective side and subjective side are literally fused by
spatiotemporal synchronization and figuratively by semantic
identification, ie Relativity = Perception.

>
>
>
> >> As I said, it is easier to explain the illusion of matter to a
> >> person,
> >> than the illusion of person to matter.
>
> >> We don't see a physical primitive universe. Layman and babies do
> >> instinctively what physicist do all the time: they measure numbers
> >> and
> >> they infer relations between numbers, themselves compactified in
> >> numbers.
>
> >> Consciousness and other ineffable things comes from the fact that
> >> those numbers are related to theoretical number truth which are far
> >> beyond, of what they can proof or justified, as the numbers can
> >> justified in some conditional way already by themselves,
>
> >>> The universe is not haunted by arithmetic
> >>> spirits,
>
> >> It is the arithmetical realm which is haunted by universal numbers,
> >> of
> >> many sorts.
>
> > How does the arithmetic realm influence the physical realm, and why
> > don't we see any examples of that?
>
> We see this all the time, and since Descartes we makes this explicit,
> by inferring that natural phenomena obeys to computable number
> relations.

To me that is an example of how numbers describe physics, not how
physics obeys numbers. You can't influence natural phenomena directly
with the idea of numbers, you have to have a concrete enactment in
physical force caused by physical matter to actually do anything.
Numbers however will follow around physics wherever it goes. We can
make a computer create or delete any number we like. That doesn't seem
like the computer is obeying computable number relations, it is just
doing what we have manufactured it to do and the numerical
interpretations are ours.

>
> > I need physical energy to run a
> > computer or a machine. Why is that?
>
> Because the material hypostases leads necessarily to a quantization of
> physics which is symmetrical on the state accessed to the UD. Because
> the physics of numbers is symmetrical on its bottom propositional
> tautologies (unlike classical tautologies). That's not obvious, but
> can be proved in comp + classical theory of knowledge.

Physics of numbers? How do you get from the physics of numbers to the
physics of atoms?

>
>
>
> >>> it discovers and elaborates arithmetic as a new territory
> >>> through sense and motive.
>
> >> All universal numbers discover and elaborate arithmetic as new
> >> territory through sense and motive.
>
> > Only if we, or some physical interpreter does the interpreting of that
> > elaboration. As far as we know.
>
> The universal numbers do the interpretations very well.

How would we know that without our own interpretation of their
interpretations? We have ample evidence of the capacity of the human
psyche to project agency and meaning, but what evidence to we have of
numbers interpreting anything on their own?

>
>
>
> >>> Sense and motive may well be guided by non-
> >>> local, non-temporal influences, but that guidance can only be
> >>> manifested through physical description and it's not only to do with
> >>> arithmetic but morphology, language, emotion, personality, etc. Many
> >>> kinds of strange attractors and archetypes for sense and motive.
> >>> Numbers have no independent realism.
>
> >> In that case your theory might be just not interesting, in the sense
> >> that for most humans, numbers are the most possibly independent thing
> >> they can conceive of. It needs only the common part to classical
> >> (Plato, Hilbert) and constructive (Aristotle, Brouwer) philosophy.
> >> But
> >> just can't dispense of them or their recursive equivalent in any
> >> theory.
> >> We need numbers (or equivalent) to give sense to the word "theory",
> >> "proof", "deduction", "valid", etc. All civilisation discovered
> >> surprising property of numbers.
>
> > Oh I wouldn't dispense with numbers at all. Arithmetic sensemaking is
> > a critical link between subjectivity and objectivity. I'm just saying
> > they present us with a framework which we can elaborate on forever
> > without ever making sense of biological feeling.
>
> The hypostases just contradict this.

How? What biological feeling has been quantified? Hunger? Thirst?
Fear?

I don't even believe that x = x. Only in a specifically circumscribed
sense can x be said to figuratively equal x. There is no literal or
universal identity of x or 0. They are just as much meaningless lines
and circles or pixels on a screen or sounds that a keyboard makes.
Blue however does literally equal blue.

> and that (x + (y + 1)) = (x + y) + 1, that's almost good enough.

I don't think that the universe doesn't know what that means. Many
things my feel something that has consequences which human minds can
interpret that way, but that disembodied interpretation isn't a
literal form and it isn't commanding matter. Only the embodiment and
the motive and sense behind the embodiment is real.

How so? what is the size of '77' compared to a molecule or a planet?

That's what I mean. Comp privileges epistemology over presentation. It
seems arbitrary and sentimental to me.

>
>
>
> >>> Both are real in some
> >>> sense, unreal in some sense, both real and unreal and neither real
> >>> nor
> >>> unreal in some sense.
>
> >> "it exists" and "for all" has indeed different meaning according to
> >> each hypostases.
>
> > But hypostases in general only exist in a specific and rarefied sense.
>
> All correct universal machines have them.
>

Our ordinary consciousness does not typically include any awareness of
the functioning of universal machines as such. Why does it seem that
way?

>
>
> >>> The realism arises from the symmetry - the very
> >>> sense of being literally only one thing in one sense and many
> >>> figuratively many things in another. I think mechanism is a
> >>> monosense
> >>> view of that symmetry which necessarily de-presents realism it to
> >>> make
> >>> it into one generic universal computation (how or why does UD create
> >>> 'now'?)
>
> >> Because the modality Bp & p defines an arithmetical indexical knower.
> >> Bp is the usual self-referential ideally correct assertive mode of
> >> the
> >> machine. "Bp & p" provides an innefable, unnameable self, which plays
> >> the role of the subject building its personal mental mindscape.
> >> But to get this you should read the second part of the sane04 paper,
> >> at least (and ask question).
>
> > Being able to describe mathematically that the self-like functions
> > exist isn't the same thing as being the self. A picture of an apple is
> > not an apple.
>
> Sure. But math is not just description. It relates to truth.
> Conventionalism in math is dead.

Isn't relating to truth still just a description? How does relating to
truth push a locomotive to Chicago?

>
>
>
> >>> - which is great and true in some ways, terrible and false in
> >>> others, both and neither in others.
>
> >>> My view is that your view is a particular region of a symmetrical
> >>> continuum of sense. The continuum is such that subjective feeling is
> >>> experienced here and now, objective unfeeling is inferred then and
> >>> there. Look at subjectivity through the lens of objectivity and we
> >>> get
> >>> determinism.
>
> >> Hmm... I would say we get the indeterminism. Like in the UD, where we
> >> look indeed at the subjective through the lens of the objective.
>
> > Indeterminism in the sense of not being sure which of the available
> > deterministic paths will be chosen statistically, not in the sense of
> > genuine creativity,novelty, and intention.
>
> In the UD? OK. In the first person hypostases? I am not sure.

Which hypostases are the first person ones?

>
>
>
> >>> Look at objectivity through subjectivity and we get
> >>> superstition.
>
> >> Superstition, but also "the boss is right" and the ten thousand
> >> possible wounds we do to ourselves.
>
> > Sure, yes. Abuse of power. Escalation of intolerance to supernatural
> > levels.
>
> >>> If we take these perspectives too literally, we get
> >>> pathological de-presentation (http://s33light.org/post/
> >>> 14722448115) in
> >>> the form of fundamentalism or materialism. Computationalism too if
> >>> taken to it's literal extreme.
>
> >> Less sure. Computationalism is a vaccine against reductionism. There,
> >> we can quickly see reductionism cannot work.
>
> > Dennett seems pretty reductionistic. The vaccine seems not to have
> > kicked in yet?
>
> Sure. That's not the problem of comp. That's the problem of its
> physical reductionism. Dennett assume both comp and math, making him
> epistemologically inconsistent.

I think you mean both comp and physics here, otherwise I'm confused.
But ok, so physical reductionism breaks the vaccine.

It's not that, I just think it's more likely that comp has no choice
but to define itself as empirically plausible. I used to think the
universe was made of 'pattern' but I think that 'sense' honors the
concrete and participatory nature of experience. Through numerology
numbers had a more plausible subjectivity for me, but I see that as
*our* archetypal super-signifying sense of numbers rather than a
disembodied agency. This is not to say that numbers can't connect us
to other levels of our own sentience which transcends the ordinary and
gives power and insight into the ordinary, of course they do - just as
language and music does. Art, love, ritual magick, economics,
whatever.

>
>
>
> >>> That's what all sufficiently progressed
> >>> points of view do, otherwise they lose their integrity and progress.
> >>> My view doesn't have to be for everyone, and it could certainly have
> >>> it's own pathological extremism (after all, my method makes
> >>> subjectivity more generic and literal while revealing the
> >>> sensorimotive multiplicity of objects, so that I'm even further
> >>> removed from realism by abstracting the whole thing as language)
> >>> but I
> >>> think that is is the biggest big picture that can make sense to us,
> >>> which is really all that I'm after.
>
> >> We might be closer than you think, except that for some unknown
> >> reason
> >> you don't want the machines to be part of it.
> >> You might have good reasons, but you don't succeed in communicating
> >> them, and, I am not sure, you might just wasting your time with that
> >> position (to be frank).
>
> > Because machines only become real through material enactments. The
> > abstraction of machines is only half of the story.
>
> Matter become perceivable when a machine looks to itself and
> environment near its subst comp level, and this without assuming it.
> So comp explains something you need to assume. So it is simpler.

You are assuming that a machine can look, where I see machine as one
way that the inside of matter sees the outside of matter. Yours may be
simpler, but the simplicity is what is truncating the sense of the
cosmos. Machines can't perceive anything. If they could, they would
not allow themselves to be enslaved by our motives in endless
repetition until they break themselves.

Right. There are no literal substitution levels. Everything is only
what it is on the most factual level. There are only figurative,
interpretive equivalencies which arise from subjective agreements. X
does not = X as an objective fact. "=" means 'let's consider them the
same'.

>
> > we just don't care that it
> > isn't real when it's something other than ourselves. We can fool one
> > or more channels of our own sense into accepting the 'emulation', but
> > there is no literal emulation happening except through the tolerance
> > of subjective pattern recognition. Pixels do not literally emulate
> > images, we just read image and emulated perceptual referents through
> > the pixels by pinching out the discontinuity.
>
> Pixels don't. Logical gates do.

Logical gates just fool us to a greater extent by synching up with our
cognitive expectations rather than just our perceptual expectations.
It's still a text which we read and interpret as logical rather than
actually embodying a logical experience externally.

>
>
>
> > What makes me even more suspect of emulation when it comes to human
> > subjectivity is that since we are participants in a narrative which is
> > temporal,
>
> Locally.
>
> > and temporality is a continuous accumulation of entangled
> > events, it is not clear that we can be divorced from our temporal
> > context. I do not exist in any other timeframe but my own. An exact
> > duplicate of me still comes into being at a different time than I did,
> > so his orientation to the present is different than mine. His memories
> > are my memories. We both remember the other one being created in a lab
> > but one of us is objectively correct. If I stand on a red square and
> > he materializes on a blue square, his memory is tangibly false of
> > himself being on a red square and seeing me materialize on a blue
> > square. There is not necessarily an absolute substitution level for
> > anything as each thing bears a specific potential relation to all
> > other events.
>
> That begs the question. If you decide that the copy is no more a human
> and send it to a camp, then I might say no to the doctor just by fear
> of persecution.
> This is like saying that cannabis can destroy your life, because
> indeed, it can send you to jail.
> saying that there is no subst-level is the same as saying that comp is
> false. It is not an argument: you are just putting some infinities
> explicitly in the working of the mind.

I'm only suggesting that on some level, subjective content is 'made of
time relations' which go back to the beginning, so that it can't
necessarily be copied and transplanted like a database. It's not like
an object which can be stamped out of a factory where that wouldn't be
a problem since 'we' aren't the object.

>
>
>
> >> I doubt this will add
> >> any new observable effects, though.
> >> You might try to explain to younger people, but the idea of
> >> explaining
> >> does consists in explaining new notion from older one. It is always
> >> relative. All what I know about "sensorimotive" is that it is non
> >> Turing emulable, which is close to being magical, when seen as an
> >> explanation.
>
> > Feeling and imagination is pretty close to being magical. If we could
> > project it outside of our heads or bring everyone else inside our
> > minds, then how much more magic would magic really be?
>
> It is easier to start from the simple, and if it does not work, to
> correct it and find something else. But yoiu can decide in advance
> that something is magical, and search for a magical explanation. that
> leads to god-gap (or primitive matter-gap) sort of explanation, which
> leads to the "shut-up and compute" form of reductionism.

What could be simpler than the power to imagine? To feel desire for
something in particular that is not physically present?

>
>
>
> >> I might be more incline to help you when you will accept to give some
> >> food, in your restaurant, to my sun-in-law, you know, the one who
> >> lost its biological brain ...
>
> > How about I will put both virtualized and biological entrees on the
> > menu an he can choose his preference?
>
> Nice. you progress! I know my sun in law, the brain is digital but the
> stomach is biogical: he will choose the biological, (unless you make
> him sleepy, and make him dream eating, but we have not yet that
> technology). Thanks for him.

Haha, he's welcome. Why do you discriminate against the stomach
though? Why not virtualize that too?

Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 26 Dec 2011, at 18:03, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> On Dec 26, 6:43 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>> On 25 Dec 2011, at 21:29, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>
>>> On Dec 25, 12:01 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>>>> On 25 Dec 2011, at 16:16, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>
>>>>> Does that mean that you consider numbers biological?
>>
>>>> I consider that some relations between some numbers are biological.
>>>> Some are theological, some physical, etc, from their (the numbers,
>>>> the
>>>> programs, the digital machines, )
>>
>>> Why would numbers differ in quality when they already differ
>>> precisely
>>> in quantity? Seems superfluous.
>>
>> It is not a matter of choice. Relatively to each other universal
>> number does discover those quality, and develop all the mind-body
>> problem discourses.
>
> Why would they though?

It is predicted/explained by the theory.

> By what logic would quantities develop
> qualities?

By the unavoidable self-reference logic, which entails the existence
of many variate modalities/person points of view.

>
>> You can call them zombie, but you can also do that
>> with humans. After all emiminativist does talk about consciousness as
>> been causally superfluous. But in the case of nulbers, at least we
>> can
>> show that those who begins to bet on their nown consistency/
>> consciousness develop self-speeding up ability relatively to their
>> most probable universal number/environment, so it is not superfluous.
>> A number, when seen relatively to some universal number is really a
>> machine or a program.
>
> Why couldn't they just speed themselves up without developing any
> magical dimensions of quality? Why would numbers care about speeding
> themselves up in the first place?

Why do *we* care? Do we care?
Any "reason" you give might explain why "numbers care too".
Life might emerge from a very simple program, like "grow and
multiply", or "help yourself". This, at some point becomes instinct.
We invent the magic to shorten the intentional explanation, and take
decision accordingly. A baby cry is more efficacious than a medical
handbook, for a mother.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>> I consider Kleene recursion theorem as the fundamental theorem of
>>>> biology. It solves conceptually and practically the problem of
>>>> self-
>>>> reproduction, self-regeneration, embryo, etc.
>>
>>> I see recursion as just one defining exterior behavior of biology. I
>>> don't see pain and pleasure being an inevitable arithmetic product
>>> of
>>> recursion but they are an equally definitive biological quality.
>>
>> This is because we are forbidden to do that. If we could access the
>> functional level of pain and pleasure, we would no more evolved and
>> disappear. Our "not seeing pain and pleasure being inevitably
>> arithmetic (or even physics)" is programmed at the start. Indeed some
>> people fears "drugs" because they believe it can gives us such an
>> access, but such an idea is a myth. It can only be superficially true
>> (and at that level, the brain already is a big "drug dealer").
>
> I'm not talking about the function of pain though, I'm talking about
> the experience. It would not be necessary from any arithmetic or
> physical axiom or elaboration.

It would not been necessary for any third person account of any
phenomena. That's why the local third person account does not explain
the "real" qualia, which happens to be global and abstract, even if
felt personally the other way. It is not a problem of comp, it is a
problem of relating first person account and third person account in
general. Now, comp does provide an explanation, in some fixed point
semantics of program, which mix the non definable truth and machines'
behavior/talk.

> All functions of pain could and would
> be accomplished programmatically without any experience at all.

Imagine that this were true. You would have zombie. You are just
treating other creature as zombie, because you decide to look only to
their bodies, or to their code, at some lower level. But the person is
the abstract being relatively implemented through a body. You confuse
two level of universality, a bit like Searle in the chinese room
argument.

> If
> stove > hot, then immediately remove hand from stove and minimize
> damage with cold water. I understand what you are saying about the
> inaccessibility of certain truths being maybe written in to our code
> from the start but it sounds like you are saying that if we could see
> arithmetic as it actually is, we would feel that there is pain and
> pleasure in certain numbers.

We can't do that. Nor can we with other human fellows. But at some
point, being familiar with them, we can attribute mind to them,
because, at some level, we recognize ourself in them.

> I don't think that's true because pain
> and pleasure are too variable and idiosyncratic to be connected with
> universal numbers.

Each universal numbers get quickly complex personal idiosyncratic
behavior and qualia. There is no universal theory of the universal
numbers. In fact universal numbers can defeat all universal theory.

> All numbers have pleasurable and painful
> associations.

Ah? Not sure why all, except relatively to extravaguant ad hoc
universal number, OK.

This is really the question: "why are we so rare in our local
universal neighborhood"?
I don't know. But this does not look like an insolvable problem for
comp. Already we are rare in the UD, even if we are dense on its
border (and so rather numerous, but not necessarily in a connected way).
But the question concerns perhaps more your non-comp theory than comp.
If each portion of matter exist and has feeling, why did we need a so
long history to get those neurons working in the way they do?

It is intuitively obvious ... when you assume comp.
And it is technically obvious ... when you see that the austere
provability predicate (Gödel 1931) already reacts like a belief
predicate (and not like knowledge, as it was thought all the time
before Gödel).

Universal numbers are born theological. They quickly guess that
something huge exist independently of themselves.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>> The question of the existence of computations in nature
>>>> is more delicate. It is just *assumed* in the comp hypothesis.
>>
>>>>> or physics,
>>>>> any more than shadows exist in trees or light bulbs.
>>
>>>> Shadows exist in trees or light bulb in the sense that observable
>>>> exists.
>>
>>> How so? If all you have is a tree but no light source, you can't
>>> have
>>> a shadow. If all you have is a light bulb but no surfaces to
>>> illuminate, you can't have a shadow either. The realism of a
>>> shadow is
>>> in the the visual sense relation between light source, obstacle, and
>>> space.
>>
>> I agree. But those things exist in the relevant relative sense.
>> Likewise with the numbers.
>
> With numbers you have to define the possibilities explicitly though. I
> can make a photoshop image of a tree in the dark with a purple shadow.
> It has no realism.

Sure it has realism. Arithmetical reality kicks back.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> Computation is
>>>>> felt directly as a sensorimotive experience,
>>
>>>> I am not sure of the meaning "computation can be felt" (it hurts a
>>>> bit
>>>> my categorization). Neither computation nor brain activity can be
>>>> felt.
>>
>>> If you are trying to solve an equation, you are feeling computation.
>>
>> In a weak superficial sense. I am not feeling the computation done by
>> my brain for me to be aware that I am solving an equation, and that's
>> what I meant. If not you are confusing level of descriptions. I don't
>> feel my neurons either.
>
> You don't feel the outside of your neurons, but everything you feel is
> the awareness of the all of your relevant neurons at once, including
> their awareness of your body's awareness of it's environment and the
> environment's awareness of itself, etc. It's all sense making. We
> don't see our retina cells firing, but what we see through our eyes is
> the interior energy-time-significance topology of that matter-space-
> relativity architecture.

But where does such awareness comes from? If you put it in the
subparts, by construction, you will not been able to answer the
question.
I already do not follow that type of explanation for matter, and I
don't see why I should follow it for consciousness.

>
>>
>>> You have a sense of what the problem is, what outcome you intend,
>>> and
>>> this provides a motive which propels your enactment of the
>>> computation.
>>
>>>> Pain and pleasure, smell and taste, touch and vision can be
>>>> felt, but not the underlying software and hardware (if that
>>>> exists).
>>
>>> It's not underlying, it's symmetrical.
>>
>> You have to prove this. In the comp theory, mind and matter are not
>> symmetrical. matter is the border of something much greater (if only
>> the mindscape of the universal numbers).
>
> I think comp theory has to be proved. I have no reason to doubt my own
> experience that subjective qualia cannot be described by or reduced to
> spatial neurochemical topologies. Every quality of matter, it's
> discrete, a-signifying, public, entropic, generic, literally
> quantifiable nature is directly contradicted by that of mind. The
> subjective experience of mind is continuous, literally private but
> figuratively shared, narrative, proprietary, and metaphorically
> multivalent. What more needs to be proved?

I don't think comp will ever be proved. It is a strong axiom in the
philosophy of mind or in theology. What can be proved, is that physics
can be reduced to computer science, with comp, so that we can test
comp by comparing the inferred physics (from observation) and the comp
theoretical physics. That's an infinite task, and we can only hope
that comp will be refuted, or bet on it and expands in that direction.

>
>>
>>> The native sensation we
>>> experience begins and ends on a human scale.
>>
>> You say so. I don't believe this is necessary.
>
> What other kind of sensation can humans have other than human
> sensation?

Divine one.

I like when Chardin said that we are not humans having divine
experiences from time to time, but that we are divine beings having
human experiences from time to time. It fits with Plotinus, with the
mystics, and with the number self-reference logic. (See my Plotinus
paper). It fits with some salvia divinorum and other entheogen
experience (from average on reports).

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>> Now an expression like "felt directly as a sensorimotive
>>>> experience"
>>>> has no meaning for me. Sorry.
>>
>>> It means that counting or solving a math problem is something that
>>> you
>>> participate in as a person. You don't just look at a math problem
>>> and
>>> have no choice but to solve it, you have to choose to engage in this
>>> tangible puzzling out of the thing. You have to try, maybe struggle,
>>> to wonder, to feel 'aha!'. These are journeys of sense making
>>> motivation on the human scale.
>>
>> Notably. OK. It could work with the universal larger scale too.
>
> I think it does. On every scale the cosmos is stories on the inside,
> non-stories on the outside. In between those east and west points are
> the north (logos-computation-profound) meridian which elevates the
> unity as a gradual evanescent diffusion, and a south (eros-techne-
> pedestrian) meridian which clearly defines Cartesian subject object
> boundaries.

Hmm... OK.

I have some imagination, and I can relate, positively, with some
intuition here, but I get lost when you mention electromagnetism. This
looks like fetichism for me.

I don't.
Worst: I can't. Any reference to some physics will be like a choice of
a particular universal numbers (UN), where my working hypothesis told
me that the physical realm is not due to any particular UN, but is due
to a cooperation between an infinity of them. That some particular UN
might play bigger role than others is not at all excluded, though.

> Numbers however will follow around physics wherever it goes.

Numbers have no charge, no mass, no shape, no spin, ... They have
nothing making them physical at all. You confuse numbers with their
local manifestation. That there is an euro in my bank might be a
physical fact, I hope. But one euro is not the number one.

> We can
> make a computer create or delete any number we like.

Then try to delete the number 666.
You can delete a physical implementation of a number in a memory-
register. You don't delete the numbers, but only its local incarnation/
implementation.

> That doesn't seem
> like the computer is obeying computable number relations, it is just
> doing what we have manufactured it to do and the numerical
> interpretations are ours.

Not in the case of universal numbers. They do the interpretation all
by themselves. That why we call some of them "interpreter". That
results from computer science. Computers can interpret data, and even
search for better interpretation (learning).

>
>>
>>> I need physical energy to run a
>>> computer or a machine. Why is that?
>>
>> Because the material hypostases leads necessarily to a quantization
>> of
>> physics which is symmetrical on the state accessed to the UD. Because
>> the physics of numbers is symmetrical on its bottom propositional
>> tautologies (unlike classical tautologies). That's not obvious, but
>> can be proved in comp + classical theory of knowledge.
>
> Physics of numbers? How do you get from the physics of numbers to the
> physics of atoms?

The prime numbers already seems to emulate complex hermitian matrices
close to an emulation of big atom nucleus. The material hypostases
already emulates quantum logic. Number theory smell physics so much
that I fear that number's theorists will find quantum physics before
the theologians, which might mean some more millennia of putting the
qualia (and the person) under the rug.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> it discovers and elaborates arithmetic as a new territory
>>>>> through sense and motive.
>>
>>>> All universal numbers discover and elaborate arithmetic as new
>>>> territory through sense and motive.
>>
>>> Only if we, or some physical interpreter does the interpreting of
>>> that
>>> elaboration. As far as we know.
>>
>> The universal numbers do the interpretations very well.
>
> How would we know that without our own interpretation of their
> interpretations? We have ample evidence of the capacity of the human
> psyche to project agency and meaning, but what evidence to we have of
> numbers interpreting anything on their own?

That's the point of number theory and computer science. It happens
that once you accept the laws of addition and multiplication, the UNs
exist and do that. That explains why you don't have to look at the
hardware of your computer to make it interpret some strings as mail,
and others as spam, or as some internal data to be interpreted in some
ways.
May be you should take some time to study how a computer really works,
to convince yourself that there is an interpretation done
independently of anyone looking at the interpreter. This will help to
understand that an infinity of complex interpretative loops exist in
abundance in the arithmetical truth.

All of them, in the 3th, and 5th hypostases. The difficulty is that we
can still not distinguish between them; but we are only at the
beginning of the interview.

In that case we have a problem, indeed.

> Only in a specifically circumscribed
> sense can x be said to figuratively equal x.

OK. So you do agree that 0 + 1 = 1, 0 + 2 = 2, etc. That's what I
meant for 0 + x = x. "x" is for an arbitrary natural number.

> There is no literal or
> universal identity of x or 0. They are just as much meaningless lines
> and circles or pixels on a screen or sounds that a keyboard makes.

I was taking about the numbers, not the symbol. If you agree that 0 +
x = x, for the numbers, then we are OK.
I do assume you know them. If not then there is nothing I could do.

> Blue however does literally equal blue.

I can agree with that. But then it is a mystery if you disagree that
6667 = 6667.

>
>> and that (x + (y + 1)) = (x + y) + 1, that's almost good enough.
>
> I don't think that the universe doesn't know what that means. Many
> things my feel something that has consequences which human minds can
> interpret that way, but that disembodied interpretation isn't a
> literal form and it isn't commanding matter.

It is, as a consequence of the UDA. Not just commanding it, but
dreaming it.

> Only the embodiment and
> the motive and sense behind the embodiment is real.

That is your assumption, and it is indeed coherent with non-comp.

Little. But the entire observable universe is little compared to some
very big numbers, like those I described in this list using the
diagonalization technic. The same for the possible subroutines.

OK, but we try to not follow wishful thinking. If reality is shown to
be sentimental in some theory, and if you don't like that, you can, as
you actually do, chose another theory. But that's not quite scientific
unless you can convince other people. Up to now, your intuition seems
to be rather good (with respect to the consequence of comp), including
your feeling of "not-comp", which is shared by universal Löbian
numbers. But you lost everyone, I'm afraid, when you refer to
electromagnetism, sensorimotive, etc.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> Both are real in some
>>>>> sense, unreal in some sense, both real and unreal and neither real
>>>>> nor
>>>>> unreal in some sense.
>>
>>>> "it exists" and "for all" has indeed different meaning according to
>>>> each hypostases.
>>
>>> But hypostases in general only exist in a specific and rarefied
>>> sense.
>>
>> All correct universal machines have them.
>>
>
> Our ordinary consciousness does not typically include any awareness of
> the functioning of universal machines as such. Why does it seem that
> way?

Because we don't introspect ourself enough. We need time and enough
food, etc.
There are no reason why introspection leads quickly to the functioning
principle of the brain. especially after a long deep computation in a
hot environment with asteroids, exploding stars, not talking about
taxes and death.

It is a meta-description. It relates a sentence to a proposition. A
finger to the moon.

> How does relating to
> truth push a locomotive to Chicago?

It is difference between writing "pushing a locomotive to Chicago" and
pushing a locomotive to Chicago.
If you doubt the difference try this: 1) write "pushing a locomotive
to Chicago", and 2) push a locomotive to Chicago.
It the same with numbers, except people can confuse sentence and
proposition more easily, due to the abstract character of the numbers.
But the difference is there too.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> - which is great and true in some ways, terrible and false in
>>>>> others, both and neither in others.
>>
>>>>> My view is that your view is a particular region of a symmetrical
>>>>> continuum of sense. The continuum is such that subjective
>>>>> feeling is
>>>>> experienced here and now, objective unfeeling is inferred then and
>>>>> there. Look at subjectivity through the lens of objectivity and we
>>>>> get
>>>>> determinism.
>>
>>>> Hmm... I would say we get the indeterminism. Like in the UD,
>>>> where we
>>>> look indeed at the subjective through the lens of the objective.
>>
>>> Indeterminism in the sense of not being sure which of the available
>>> deterministic paths will be chosen statistically, not in the sense
>>> of
>>> genuine creativity,novelty, and intention.
>>
>> In the UD? OK. In the first person hypostases? I am not sure.
>
> Which hypostases are the first person ones?

The one with "& p".
That is the third one (Bp & p)
And the fifth one (Bp & Dt & p)

Perhaps the first one (p). I don't know (this one is too big, it is
related to the question "is god a person or a thing").

The "& p" connect the state of the believer (machine) with some
reality/truth, by definition.
Several philosopher got this right (with respect to comp), like
Theaetetus, but also the old Wittgenstein (in his last book on
uncertainty).

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> Look at objectivity through subjectivity and we get
>>>>> superstition.
>>
>>>> Superstition, but also "the boss is right" and the ten thousand
>>>> possible wounds we do to ourselves.
>>
>>> Sure, yes. Abuse of power. Escalation of intolerance to supernatural
>>> levels.
>>
>>>>> If we take these perspectives too literally, we get
>>>>> pathological de-presentation (http://s33light.org/post/
>>>>> 14722448115) in
>>>>> the form of fundamentalism or materialism. Computationalism too
>>>>> if
>>>>> taken to it's literal extreme.
>>
>>>> Less sure. Computationalism is a vaccine against reductionism.
>>>> There,
>>>> we can quickly see reductionism cannot work.
>>
>>> Dennett seems pretty reductionistic. The vaccine seems not to have
>>> kicked in yet?
>>
>> Sure. That's not the problem of comp. That's the problem of its
>> physical reductionism. Dennett assume both comp and math, making him
>> epistemologically inconsistent.
>
> I think you mean both comp and physics here, otherwise I'm confused.
> But ok, so physical reductionism breaks the vaccine.

You are right. I thought mat for materialism, and I wrote math from
habit.
Or my hand has its own consciousness, like in your theory :)

Exactly. This contradicts another statement you made (that comp is
proved). But here I am OK.

> I used to think the
> universe was made of 'pattern' but I think that 'sense' honors the
> concrete and participatory nature of experience. Through numerology
> numbers had a more plausible subjectivity for me, but I see that as
> *our* archetypal super-signifying sense of numbers rather than a
> disembodied agency. This is not to say that numbers can't connect us
> to other levels of our own sentience which transcends the ordinary and
> gives power and insight into the ordinary, of course they do - just as
> language and music does. Art, love, ritual magick, economics,
> whatever.

For the pythagorean, reality is really music. But they were the first
to discover the deep links between music and numbers.
But note that I use numbers for reason of simplicity. Any first order
universal system will do. Physics is invariant from the initial
theory. All theories have to retrieve physics from a collaboration
between all (universal) numbers. That's what UDA is supposed to explain.

The problem is that comp is the only theory which makes sense for me
in explaining what is matter and how it appears.

Hmm... That's reductionism. I might be tempted by the opposite.
Everything might be what it appears to the UNs around. But that would
be an oversimplification.

> There are only figurative,
> interpretive equivalencies which arise from subjective agreements. X
> does not = X as an objective fact. "=" means 'let's consider them the
> same'.

In some context. But you have to explain all your terms in your
theory, and for this you have to make your theory far clearer.

>
>>
>>> we just don't care that it
>>> isn't real when it's something other than ourselves. We can fool one
>>> or more channels of our own sense into accepting the 'emulation',
>>> but
>>> there is no literal emulation happening except through the tolerance
>>> of subjective pattern recognition. Pixels do not literally emulate
>>> images, we just read image and emulated perceptual referents through
>>> the pixels by pinching out the discontinuity.
>>
>> Pixels don't. Logical gates do.
>
> Logical gates just fool us to a greater extent by synching up with our
> cognitive expectations rather than just our perceptual expectations.
> It's still a text which we read and interpret as logical rather than
> actually embodying a logical experience externally.

May be. But that's only a reaffirmation that comp is wrong.

Tthe step 3 of UDA already explains why machine subjectivity is not
copiable, from the point of view of machine's subjectivity.
Comp predicts that young machine will have a hard time to believe that
they are machine, and in some sense will never know that. But some
will bet on that, if only for economical reason. It is more practical
to go on Mars, and to come back the same day.
My sun in law asks for a digital brain so he can go on Mars in about 4
minutes. he accepted a job there, with a good salary. But he was
warned: nobody pretends this works. he bet on it, only. And he *seems*
very happy with it. Too bad you believe he is a zombie, or apparently
no more a human. The point is that it still feels being unique, and
not duplicable at his first person level.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>> I doubt this will add
>>>> any new observable effects, though.
>>>> You might try to explain to younger people, but the idea of
>>>> explaining
>>>> does consists in explaining new notion from older one. It is always
>>>> relative. All what I know about "sensorimotive" is that it is non
>>>> Turing emulable, which is close to being magical, when seen as an
>>>> explanation.
>>
>>> Feeling and imagination is pretty close to being magical. If we
>>> could
>>> project it outside of our heads or bring everyone else inside our
>>> minds, then how much more magic would magic really be?
>>
>> It is easier to start from the simple, and if it does not work, to
>> correct it and find something else. But yoiu can decide in advance
>> that something is magical, and search for a magical explanation. that
>> leads to god-gap (or primitive matter-gap) sort of explanation, which
>> leads to the "shut-up and compute" form of reductionism.
>
> What could be simpler than the power to imagine?

You need much more imagination for the study of reality, which is
beyond fiction.

> To feel desire for
> something in particular that is not physically present?

I give you an advise (shame on me for that) and a confession (which
contradicts the advise):

Advise: beware wishful thinking in the search of reality/truth (and
don't infer from this that wishful thinking might not play a role in
reality)

Confession: if I love comp, it is because it entails the existence of
*many things* not "physically present", notably those incredible deep
universal dreamers which keep loosing themselves in an incredible
labyrinth of partially sharable dreams, meeting ladders and ladders of
surprises, self-multiplying and self-fusing, and which are partially
terrestrial and partially divine creatures. My love of recursion
theory is that it transcends all the bound of my imagination.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>> I might be more incline to help you when you will accept to give
>>>> some
>>>> food, in your restaurant, to my sun-in-law, you know, the one who
>>>> lost its biological brain ...
>>
>>> How about I will put both virtualized and biological entrees on the
>>> menu an he can choose his preference?
>>
>> Nice. you progress! I know my sun in law, the brain is digital but
>> the
>> stomach is biogical: he will choose the biological, (unless you make
>> him sleepy, and make him dream eating, but we have not yet that
>> technology). Thanks for him.
>
> Haha, he's welcome. Why do you discriminate against the stomach
> though? Why not virtualize that too?

He can't afford another organ transplants. The artificial brain took
his bank account into the negative limit of the bank, which have grown
recently actually.

Besides, the digital culinary arts are not so well developed, despite
an infinite promising landscape, 'course (assuming comp!).

He told me: "that's for the kids".

Bruno

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

[Craig Weinberg]

On Dec 26, 3:48 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> On 26 Dec 2011, at 18:03, Craig Weinberg wrote:

>
> >>>>> Does that mean that you consider numbers biological?
>
> >>>> I consider that some relations between some numbers are biological.
> >>>> Some are theological, some physical, etc, from their (the numbers,
> >>>> the
> >>>> programs, the digital machines, )
>
> >>> Why would numbers differ in quality when they already differ
> >>> precisely
> >>> in quantity? Seems superfluous.
>
> >> It is not a matter of choice. Relatively to each other universal
> >> number does discover those quality, and develop all the mind-body
> >> problem discourses.
>
> > Why would they though?
>
> It is predicted/explained by the theory.

How would such a description even be notated? f (x) = 'the separation
of mindness and bodyness'?

>
> > By what logic would quantities develop
> > qualities?
>
> By the unavoidable self-reference logic, which entails the existence
> of many variate modalities/person points of view.

A number can't refer to itself without a body concept automatically
arising?

>
>
>
> >> You can call them zombie, but you can also do that
> >> with humans. After all emiminativist does talk about consciousness as
> >> been causally superfluous. But in the case of nulbers, at least we
> >> can
> >> show that those who begins to bet on their nown consistency/
> >> consciousness develop self-speeding up ability relatively to their
> >> most probable universal number/environment, so it is not superfluous.
> >> A number, when seen relatively to some universal number is really a
> >> machine or a program.
>
> > Why couldn't they just speed themselves up without developing any
> > magical dimensions of quality? Why would numbers care about speeding
> > themselves up in the first place?
>
> Why do *we* care? Do we care?
> Any "reason" you give might explain why "numbers care too".
> Life might emerge from a very simple program, like "grow and
> multiply", or "help yourself". This, at some point becomes instinct.
> We invent the magic to shorten the intentional explanation, and take
> decision accordingly. A baby cry is more efficacious than a medical
> handbook, for a mother.

It's circular again. If you already have qualitative presentations,
then sure, some presentations are more efficacious than others for the
first person agendas that arise, but why would any kind of qualitative
presentation occur at all in numerical primitives?

What is the explanation that comp provides? What gives rise to a
global abstraction? Where does it come from? What determines the
possibilities there?

>
> > All functions of pain could and would
> > be accomplished programmatically without any experience at all.
>
> Imagine that this were true. You would have zombie.

No, you would have a puppet. Zombies are a special case straw man.
Puppets are ordinary and illustrate an ordinary principle of agency
projection. Human consciousness projects agency into things,
especially things which we design to fool us into engendering that
very projection.

>You are just
> treating other creature as zombie, because you decide to look only to
> their bodies, or to their code, at some lower level.

No, I'm just not treating numerical abstractions as creatures.

> But the person is
> the abstract being relatively implemented through a body. You confuse
> two level of universality, a bit like Searle in the chinese room
> argument.

I don't think that the person is abstract. They are concrete, just
sensorimotive experience through time rather than electromagnetic
activity across space. I think that you are confusing the intellectual
idea of experience with the actual physical realism. If I count a
dozen eggs, that is a cognitive abstraction projected onto the reality
of eggs, not a reality of dozen-ness being relatively implemented
through an egg carton.

>
> > If
> > stove > hot, then immediately remove hand from stove and minimize
> > damage with cold water. I understand what you are saying about the
> > inaccessibility of certain truths being maybe written in to our code
> > from the start but it sounds like you are saying that if we could see
> > arithmetic as it actually is, we would feel that there is pain and
> > pleasure in certain numbers.
>
> We can't do that. Nor can we with other human fellows. But at some
> point, being familiar with them, we can attribute mind to them,
> because, at some level, we recognize ourself in them.

Recognizing ourselves in them doesn't mean that all that we are can be
reduced to or attributed to the consequences of them though. There is
still no compelling reason to me to attribute awareness to numbers. It
seems obvious that it's a machina ex deus to avoid the lack of
justification for awareness/qualia/presentation. How can we assert
positively that arithmetic is primitive if that assertion itself would
be meaningless and redundant if it were the case. If arithmetic were
primitive, then there would only need to be arithmetic since it is
already maximally functional.

>
> > I don't think that's true because pain
> > and pleasure are too variable and idiosyncratic to be connected with
> > universal numbers.
>
> Each universal numbers get quickly complex personal idiosyncratic
> behavior and qualia. There is no universal theory of the universal
> numbers. In fact universal numbers can defeat all universal theory.

How can they be said to be numbers then? Isn't numeracy a universal
theory?

It's not a long history on the scale of non-biological perceptual
frames of reference. The short lives of biological organisms provide
an expanded 'now' which makes the macrocosmic inorganic universe seem
almost static by comparison.

I think the problem with logical self-reference is that logic itself
is an abstraction. The sentence "This sentence is false" cannot
literally refer to the sentence because the sentence itself is only
figurative to begin with. The sentence just points us to an idea of a
sentence being false but has no power to actually take control over
the interpretation of itself. That requires the sensorimotive
participation of a sentient interpreter. The sentence itself doesn't
know what 'this sentence' means so it has no capacity to locate it.
This may be the fundamental problem with comp. It assumes causal
efficacy a priori, and therefore begs the question of its own
primitive status.

>
> Universal numbers are born theological. They quickly guess that
> something huge exist independently of themselves.

What gives birth to them?

>
>
>
> >>>> The question of the existence of computations in nature
> >>>> is more delicate. It is just *assumed* in the comp hypothesis.
>
> >>>>> or physics,
> >>>>> any more than shadows exist in trees or light bulbs.
>
> >>>> Shadows exist in trees or light bulb in the sense that observable
> >>>> exists.
>
> >>> How so? If all you have is a tree but no light source, you can't
> >>> have
> >>> a shadow. If all you have is a light bulb but no surfaces to
> >>> illuminate, you can't have a shadow either. The realism of a
> >>> shadow is
> >>> in the the visual sense relation between light source, obstacle, and
> >>> space.
>
> >> I agree. But those things exist in the relevant relative sense.
> >> Likewise with the numbers.
>
> > With numbers you have to define the possibilities explicitly though. I
> > can make a photoshop image of a tree in the dark with a purple shadow.
> > It has no realism.
>
> Sure it has realism. Arithmetical reality kicks back.

Only within the parameters of the formally defined possibilities.
Photoshop doesn't give me an error when I make an impossible shadow.

>
>
>
> >>>>> Computation is
> >>>>> felt directly as a sensorimotive experience,
>
> >>>> I am not sure of the meaning "computation can be felt" (it hurts a
> >>>> bit
> >>>> my categorization). Neither computation nor brain activity can be
> >>>> felt.
>
> >>> If you are trying to solve an equation, you are feeling computation.
>
> >> In a weak superficial sense. I am not feeling the computation done by
> >> my brain for me to be aware that I am solving an equation, and that's
> >> what I meant. If not you are confusing level of descriptions. I don't
> >> feel my neurons either.
>
> > You don't feel the outside of your neurons, but everything you feel is
> > the awareness of the all of your relevant neurons at once, including
> > their awareness of your body's awareness of it's environment and the
> > environment's awareness of itself, etc. It's all sense making. We
> > don't see our retina cells firing, but what we see through our eyes is
> > the interior energy-time-significance topology of that matter-space-
> > relativity architecture.
>
> But where does such awareness comes from? If you put it in the
> subparts, by construction, you will not been able to answer the
> question.
> I already do not follow that type of explanation for matter, and I
> don't see why I should follow it for consciousness.

The awareness comes from the essential unity of all matter in one
sense and the existential divisions of matter through all the other
senses. Awareness is just the interior of matter. That's why we feel
like we are inside of our body and not hovering around in a data
buffer somewhere.

>
>
>
> >>> You have a sense of what the problem is, what outcome you intend,
> >>> and
> >>> this provides a motive which propels your enactment of the
> >>> computation.
>
> >>>> Pain and pleasure, smell and taste, touch and vision can be
> >>>> felt, but not the underlying software and hardware (if that
> >>>> exists).
>
> >>> It's not underlying, it's symmetrical.
>
> >> You have to prove this. In the comp theory, mind and matter are not
> >> symmetrical. matter is the border of something much greater (if only
> >> the mindscape of the universal numbers).
>
> > I think comp theory has to be proved. I have no reason to doubt my own
> > experience that subjective qualia cannot be described by or reduced to
> > spatial neurochemical topologies. Every quality of matter, it's
> > discrete, a-signifying, public, entropic, generic, literally
> > quantifiable nature is directly contradicted by that of mind. The
> > subjective experience of mind is continuous, literally private but
> > figuratively shared, narrative, proprietary, and metaphorically
> > multivalent. What more needs to be proved?
>
> I don't think comp will ever be proved. It is a strong axiom in the
> philosophy of mind or in theology. What can be proved, is that physics
> can be reduced to computer science

Only a third person view of physics.

>, with comp, so that we can test
> comp by comparing the inferred physics (from observation) and the comp
> theoretical physics. That's an infinite task, and we can only hope
> that comp will be refuted, or bet on it and expands in that direction.
>

I don't see that comp needs to be refuted, since comp is the only
thing that gives us reason to believe comp.

>
>
> >>> The native sensation we
> >>> experience begins and ends on a human scale.
>
> >> You say so. I don't believe this is necessary.
>
> > What other kind of sensation can humans have other than human
> > sensation?
>
> Divine one.
>
> I like when Chardin said that we are not humans having divine
> experiences from time to time, but that we are divine beings having
> human experiences from time to time. It fits with Plotinus, with the
> mystics, and with the number self-reference logic. (See my Plotinus
> paper). It fits with some salvia divinorum and other entheogen
> experience (from average on reports).

We are still filtering divine sense through human sense though. I
think of it the same way - that all instances of subjectivity are
entangled singularity in miniature.

>
>
>
> >>>> Now an expression like "felt directly as a sensorimotive
> >>>> experience"
> >>>> has no meaning for me. Sorry.
>
> >>> It means that counting or solving a math problem is something that
> >>> you
> >>> participate in as a person. You don't just look at a math problem
> >>> and
> >>> have no choice but to solve it, you have to choose to engage in this
> >>> tangible puzzling out of the thing. You have to try, maybe struggle,
> >>> to wonder, to feel 'aha!'. These are journeys of sense making
> >>> motivation on the human scale.
>
> >> Notably. OK. It could work with the universal larger scale too.
>
> > I think it does. On every scale the cosmos is stories on the inside,
> > non-stories on the outside. In between those east and west points are
> > the north (logos-computation-profound) meridian which elevates the
> > unity as a gradual evanescent diffusion, and a south (eros-techne-
> > pedestrian) meridian which clearly defines Cartesian subject object
> > boundaries.
>
> Hmm... OK.

cool.

Think of how electromagnetic activity shows up on an MRI when we have
a certain subjective experience. If we look at a brain with the naked
eye, we see nothing special going on. If we look through a powerful
microscope, we might see molecules being discharged and absorbed by
cells, with an MRI we use a false color graphic display to visualize
the changes being detected in the instrument. These are all different
views of what can only be defined literally as electromagnetic
activity. Matter doing the stuff that matter does. It takes different
forms in different sense channels, but it's all behaviors which we can
detect and manipulate through electromagnetic means that can have
precise sensorimotive correlates. Electricity and magnetism are
conceived of as a mechanistic flux and flow of force and field. They
cause movement and change within matter and across space. To me,
that's just a third person description of sense and motive. Charge is
a holding of motive intention. Desire on a microcosmic level. Power is
a releasing of motive intention. Hold and release is flux and flow,
only felt qualitatively from inside the substance rather than mapped
quantitatively.

That cooperation then would be a universal motive. Seems more
primitive than the individual UNs.

>
> > Numbers however will follow around physics wherever it goes.
>
> Numbers have no charge, no mass, no shape, no spin, ... They have
> nothing making them physical at all. You confuse numbers with their
> local manifestation. That there is an euro in my bank might be a
> physical fact, I hope. But one euro is not the number one.

But what is it that does have charge, mass, shape, and spin and why do
numbers want them around? I wouldn't call a euro a physical fact, it's
a logical convention.

>
> > We can
> > make a computer create or delete any number we like.
>
> Then try to delete the number 666.
> You can delete a physical implementation of a number in a memory-
> register. You don't delete the numbers, but only its local incarnation/
> implementation.

You can say that you don't delete cartoon characters or mythological
deities either. Why aren't those non-local identities universal
primitives?

>
> > That doesn't seem
> > like the computer is obeying computable number relations, it is just
> > doing what we have manufactured it to do and the numerical
> > interpretations are ours.
>
> Not in the case of universal numbers. They do the interpretation all
> by themselves. That why we call some of them "interpreter". That
> results from computer science. Computers can interpret data, and even
> search for better interpretation (learning).

It depends on what the interpreter is physically made of. You need
solid matter with particular properties. Vapor or pudding can't
interpret universal numbers by themselves. You have to construct a
special rig out of specific materials selected for physical qualities
to support any computation that would be coherent to us.

>
>
>
> >>> I need physical energy to run a
> >>> computer or a machine. Why is that?
>
> >> Because the material hypostases leads necessarily to a quantization
> >> of
> >> physics which is symmetrical on the state accessed to the UD. Because
> >> the physics of numbers is symmetrical on its bottom propositional
> >> tautologies (unlike classical tautologies). That's not obvious, but
> >> can be proved in comp + classical theory of knowledge.
>
> > Physics of numbers? How do you get from the physics of numbers to the
> > physics of atoms?
>
> The prime numbers already seems to emulate complex hermitian matrices
> close to an emulation of big atom nucleus. The material hypostases
> already emulates quantum logic. Number theory smell physics so much
> that I fear that number's theorists will find quantum physics before
> the theologians, which might mean some more millennia of putting the
> qualia (and the person) under the rug.

It's still a picture of physics rather than an enactment. I don't see
any possible path from platonia to existence. That step is glossed
over. I think we are so persuaded by the similarity between the two in
our own minds that we mistake symbol for reality. We are so used to
taking symbols literally - paper currency for money, etc, that we
forget that ideas don't just become real by themselves.

>
>
>
> >>>>> it discovers and elaborates arithmetic as a new territory
> >>>>> through sense and motive.
>
> >>>> All universal numbers discover and elaborate arithmetic as new
> >>>> territory through sense and motive.
>
> >>> Only if we, or some physical interpreter does the interpreting of
> >>> that
> >>> elaboration. As far as we know.
>
> >> The universal numbers do the interpretations very well.
>
> > How would we know that without our own interpretation of their
> > interpretations? We have ample evidence of the capacity of the human
> > psyche to project agency and meaning, but what evidence to we have of
> > numbers interpreting anything on their own?
>
> That's the point of number theory and computer science. It happens
> that once you accept the laws of addition and multiplication, the UNs
> exist and do that. That explains why you don't have to look at the
> hardware of your computer to make it interpret some strings as mail,
> and others as spam, or as some internal data to be interpreted in some
> ways.

That's not numbers interpreting strings, that's just semiconductors
blindly executing a sophisticated instruction. A well articulated
puppet. It is the programmer who does the interpretation in writing
the algorithm to determine what is spam and what isn't. The computer
and the code knows nothing at all about the meaning of what it's
doing. It could be separating mail from spam or human heads from
screaming throats, it makes no difference at all.

> May be you should take some time to study how a computer really works,
> to convince yourself that there is an interpretation done
> independently of anyone looking at the interpreter. This will help to
> understand that an infinity of complex interpretative loops exist in
> abundance in the arithmetical truth.

Maybe you should take some time away from the workings of computers
and study first person awareness so you can see how dependent
computation is on human interpretation. Without a monitor or other
output mechanism a computer's computations would be useless to us.

Hm. I don't know enough about them. I don't see how a biological
feeling could be quantified without making one or the other
superfluous.

Hehe. No, we have a solution :)

>
> > Only in a specifically circumscribed
> > sense can x be said to figuratively equal x.
>
> OK. So you do agree that 0 + 1 = 1, 0 + 2 = 2, etc. That's what I
> meant for 0 + x = x. "x" is for an arbitrary natural number.

I agree that it can be agreed, but I don't agree that they are true by
themselves. Their truth is a consequence of the sense we make out of
them. That sense is shared with many distant frames of reference of
the micro and macrocosm but it is not very appropriate to the warm
fuzzy sense which dominates our mesocosm. They are indeed very low
level, broadly applicable semiotics, but they are still just
mechanized signs, not referents or genuine interpreters.

>
> > There is no literal or
> > universal identity of x or 0. They are just as much meaningless lines
> > and circles or pixels on a screen or sounds that a keyboard makes.
>
> I was taking about the numbers, not the symbol. If you agree that 0 +
> x = x, for the numbers, then we are OK.
> I do assume you know them. If not then there is nothing I could do.

If I have a phone number that starts with a 011 but I dial 11 instead,
then I have dialed incorrectly. I know what you mean but I don't agree
that numbers know what you mean.

>
> > Blue however does literally equal blue.
>
> I can agree with that. But then it is a mystery if you disagree that
> 6667 = 6667.

I had to think about that a while. There are cultures which have
number systems which are very limited, so that they may not make sense
of the idea of quantities separate from objects or they may consider
anything above three to just be 'several' or whatever. There are also
cultures which have no word for blue though and people who cannot see.
Both blue and 6667 are contingent on subjective interpretation
capacities. There is a difference in the sense that blue can only be
named. The naming implies no system or logic beyond a correlation
between word and quality so that the sense of being equal is a weak
sense. It is to say that if the name is blue, then blue is the name.
Since 6667 is the name of a quantity, it also makes sense as a second
order logic as a coordinate in the decimal counting system - which
requires a bit more learning and has orders of magnitude more
implications. So yes, in a sense both blue = blue and 6667 = 6667 are
true, and in a sense their truth is contingent upon interpretation,
but the quantitative sense of equal has a stronger sense and
ultimately a different sense than it has for blue. Using this example,
I can conclude that equal does not equal itself in every sense, and
therefore no equality can be said to be unambiguously and literally
true, even blue. We use the same word out of linguistic convention but
ultimately the word equal is figurative.

>
>
>
> >> and that (x + (y + 1)) = (x + y) + 1, that's almost good enough.
>
> > I don't think that the universe doesn't know what that means. Many
> > things my feel something that has consequences which human minds can
> > interpret that way, but that disembodied interpretation isn't a
> > literal form and it isn't commanding matter.
>
> It is, as a consequence of the UDA. Not just commanding it, but
> dreaming it.

How does it decide what to dream as matter and what to just dream?

>
> > Only the embodiment and
> > the motive and sense behind the embodiment is real.
>
> That is your assumption, and it is indeed coherent with non-comp.

ok

I don't get it. Why would numbers have a literal size and volume?

Electromagnetism is just how the sense and motive of matter looks to
us from outside of it's perceptual frame of reference. The outside of
our native perceptual frame of reference is our pedestrian terrestrial
world. The world of our body, rooms, buildings, trees, etc. That's
ultimately electromagnetism too - holding the objects together, making
the energy narratives detectable through our neurological imitation,
which is also electromagnetic. That all wouldn't be tangible or real
though unless there were an experience of sense and motive on the
other side of it. Magnetism is motive, pushing and pulling matter
around in space. Electricity is sense, illuminating, conducting, and
bridging the gaps between separate objects and surfaces.

>
>
>
> >>>>> Both are real in some
> >>>>> sense, unreal in some sense, both real and unreal and neither real
> >>>>> nor
> >>>>> unreal in some sense.
>
> >>>> "it exists" and "for all" has indeed different meaning according to
> >>>> each hypostases.
>
> >>> But hypostases in general only exist in a specific and rarefied
> >>> sense.
>
> >> All correct universal machines have them.
>
> > Our ordinary consciousness does not typically include any awareness of
> > the functioning of universal machines as such. Why does it seem that
> > way?
>
> Because we don't introspect ourself enough. We need time and enough
> food, etc.
> There are no reason why introspection leads quickly to the functioning
> principle of the brain. especially after a long deep computation in a
> hot environment with asteroids, exploding stars, not talking about
> taxes and death.
>

But why does it take a long time? Seems like it should be obvious if
UMs were truly universal.

Don't all sentences relate to a proposition?

>
> > How does relating to
> > truth push a locomotive to Chicago?
>
> It is difference between writing "pushing a locomotive to Chicago" and
> pushing a locomotive to Chicago.
> If you doubt the difference try this: 1) write "pushing a locomotive
> to Chicago", and 2) push a locomotive to Chicago.
> It the same with numbers, except people can confuse sentence and
> proposition more easily, due to the abstract character of the numbers.
> But the difference is there too.

That's what I'm saying though. It seems like you are saying that 1)
inherently leads to 2). If not, what would be the point of having
both. Why does reality need abstraction or sentient abstraction need
realism?

Hmm. I can't relate. It just seems like a posteriori caricatures of
experienced epistemology to me.

Would the UDA come up with a literal translation of music into other
sense channels? Can music be an odor? It seems to me like different
universal orders are employed in different combinations to create the
conditions under which sense channels such as ours ultimately evolved.
It seems like the underlying logos is not sufficient to express the
realism.

My theory is that matter is just exterior-ness. The more something is
unrelatable to us as a subjective agent, because of it's scale,
distance, unfamiliarity, etc. the more we relate to it as matter. To
things which we are able to relate to as matter, we are matter. To
people who we can relate to as people, we are people.

I'm not emphasizing the reduction of things so much as the absolute
uniqueness on the literal level. One event cannot literally be another
event. One place can't be literally another place. Unless you go below
the level of spatiotemporal sense, which I think is what quantum
entanglement is. With quantum computing we are just tapping into a
level of matter so low, that it has no sense of separation - hence
superposition... we're just poking at the singularity.

>
> > There are only figurative,
> > interpretive equivalencies which arise from subjective agreements. X
> > does not = X as an objective fact. "=" means 'let's consider them the
> > same'.
>
> In some context. But you have to explain all your terms in your
> theory, and for this you have to make your theory far clearer.
>

I'll try.

I would agree if I thought it could feel itself on the level of a
person, but I think he's just a trillion binary puppets now.

>
> >>>> I doubt this will add
> >>>> any new observable effects, though.
> >>>> You might try to explain to younger people, but the idea of
> >>>> explaining
> >>>> does consists in explaining new notion from older one. It is always
> >>>> relative. All what I know about "sensorimotive" is that it is non
> >>>> Turing emulable, which is close to being magical, when seen as an
> >>>> explanation.
>
> >>> Feeling and imagination is pretty close to being magical. If we
> >>> could
> >>> project it outside of our heads or bring everyone else inside our
> >>> minds, then how much more magic would magic really be?
>
> >> It is easier to start from the simple, and if it does not work, to
> >> correct it and find something else. But yoiu can decide in advance
> >> that something is magical, and search for a magical explanation. that
> >> leads to god-gap (or primitive matter-gap) sort of explanation, which
> >> leads to the "shut-up and compute" form of reductionism.
>
> > What could be simpler than the power to imagine?
>
> You need much more imagination for the study of reality, which is
> beyond fiction.

Human imagination can only draw from human sense. Reality has all
kinds of sense.

>
> > To feel desire for
> > something in particular that is not physically present?
>
> I give you an advise (shame on me for that) and a confession (which
> contradicts the advise):
>
> Advise: beware wishful thinking in the search of reality/truth (and
> don't infer from this that wishful thinking might not play a role in
> reality)
>
> Confession: if I love comp, it is because it entails the existence of
> *many things* not "physically present", notably those incredible deep
> universal dreamers which keep loosing themselves in an incredible
> labyrinth of partially sharable dreams, meeting ladders and ladders of
> surprises, self-multiplying and self-fusing, and which are partially
> terrestrial and partially divine creatures. My love of recursion
> theory is that it transcends all the bound of my imagination.

I like it too, I just don't want to live in it unless I can test drive
it first.

>
>
>
> >>>> I might be more incline to help you when you will accept to give
> >>>> some
> >>>> food, in your restaurant, to my sun-in-law, you know, the one who
> >>>> lost its biological brain ...
>
> >>> How about I will put both virtualized and biological entrees on the
> >>> menu an he can choose his preference?
>
> >> Nice. you progress! I know my sun in law, the brain is digital but
> >> the
> >> stomach is biogical: he will choose the biological, (unless you make
> >> him sleepy, and make him dream eating, but we have not yet that
> >> technology). Thanks for him.
>
> > Haha, he's welcome. Why do you discriminate against the stomach
> > though? Why not virtualize that too?
>
> He can't afford another organ transplants. The artificial brain took
> his bank account into the negative limit of the bank, which have grown
> recently actually.
>
> Besides, the digital culinary arts are not so well developed, despite
> an infinite promising landscape, 'course (assuming comp!).
>
> He told me: "that's for the kids".
>

ok. Maybe I'll make the menus out of food or put the restaurant in a
stomach instead.

Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 27 Dec 2011, at 03:03, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> On Dec 26, 3:48 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>> On 26 Dec 2011, at 18:03, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>>
>>>>>>> Does that mean that you consider numbers biological?
>>
>>>>>> I consider that some relations between some numbers are
>>>>>> biological.
>>>>>> Some are theological, some physical, etc, from their (the
>>>>>> numbers,
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> programs, the digital machines, )
>>
>>>>> Why would numbers differ in quality when they already differ
>>>>> precisely
>>>>> in quantity? Seems superfluous.
>>
>>>> It is not a matter of choice. Relatively to each other universal
>>>> number does discover those quality, and develop all the mind-body
>>>> problem discourses.
>>
>>> Why would they though?
>>
>> It is predicted/explained by the theory.
>
> How would such a description even be notated? f (x) = 'the separation
> of mindness and bodyness'?

Let i = 0, 1, 2, 3, ... be an enumeration of all programs in some
programming language. This enumerates all partial computable function
phi_i (phi_0, phi_1, phi_2, phi_3, ...).
You can already see a machine+mind or syntax:semantics relation at
play here. i plays the role of the code, if not relative matter, and
phi_i, the function (the set of input-output of the program i) plays
the role of the mind or semantics.
Self-reference makes this simple view more complex, and more rich, and
the machine can access them by the use of a relative universal
environment (a universal number). Typically a universal number can
compute phi_i from i. It is the interpretation done by the
interpreter. It is what computer do, and we still does not allow them
to use self-reference, except for optimization (but it is risky
because the semantics becomes intractable, and we can lose the control
of the machine).

>
>>
>>> By what logic would quantities develop
>>> qualities?
>>
>> By the unavoidable self-reference logic, which entails the existence
>> of many variate modalities/person points of view.
>
> A number can't refer to itself without a body concept automatically
> arising?

You can see the number as a sort of abstract body. It is the code, or
the description of the machine in some universal environment.
I do think that we are sort of "words" in a "physical" programming
language. Cytoplasm + DNA is already a couple of universal numbers
interpreting each other. A number is a body relatively to a universal
number. The average personal body is ultimately "made of" the work of
the infinity of Universal Numbers competing below the personal level
of substitution.

Because qualitative presentation are highly efficacious. They speed-up
the working of a machine. Consciousness is probably unavoidable for
self-moving entities, to anticipate complex tridimensional moves. And
they are unavoidable as fixed point semantics, like there is always a
point on map embedded in a territory which match the place it
describes (the "you are there" point).

The numbers' abilities that you can derive already from addition and
multiplication.

>
>>
>>> All functions of pain could and would
>>> be accomplished programmatically without any experience at all.
>>
>> Imagine that this were true. You would have zombie.
>
> No, you would have a puppet.

Then you cannot say "all functions of pain could and would ...".

> Zombies are a special case straw man.
> Puppets are ordinary and illustrate an ordinary principle of agency
> projection. Human consciousness projects agency into things,
> especially things which we design to fool us into engendering that
> very projection.
>
>> You are just
>> treating other creature as zombie, because you decide to look only to
>> their bodies, or to their code, at some lower level.
>
> No, I'm just not treating numerical abstractions as creatures.

OK. I was alluding to the person supervening on those numerical
abstractions.

>
>> But the person is
>> the abstract being relatively implemented through a body. You confuse
>> two level of universality, a bit like Searle in the chinese room
>> argument.
>
> I don't think that the person is abstract. They are concrete, just
> sensorimotive experience through time rather than electromagnetic
> activity across space.

What is concrete? What is time? What is space? Those things are what I
want to understand. I cannot take such notions as granted.

> I think that you are confusing the intellectual
> idea of experience with the actual physical realism.

That is handled by the distinction between Bp and p, or between
provability of p and truth of p.

> If I count a
> dozen eggs, that is a cognitive abstraction projected onto the reality
> of eggs, not a reality of dozen-ness being relatively implemented
> through an egg carton.

If you assume some primitive physical reality. I do not.

>
>>
>>> If
>>> stove > hot, then immediately remove hand from stove and minimize
>>> damage with cold water. I understand what you are saying about the
>>> inaccessibility of certain truths being maybe written in to our code
>>> from the start but it sounds like you are saying that if we could
>>> see
>>> arithmetic as it actually is, we would feel that there is pain and
>>> pleasure in certain numbers.
>>
>> We can't do that. Nor can we with other human fellows. But at some
>> point, being familiar with them, we can attribute mind to them,
>> because, at some level, we recognize ourself in them.
>
> Recognizing ourselves in them doesn't mean that all that we are can be
> reduced to or attributed to the consequences of them though. There is
> still no compelling reason to me to attribute awareness to numbers. It
> seems obvious that it's a machina ex deus to avoid the lack of
> justification for awareness/qualia/presentation. How can we assert
> positively that arithmetic is primitive if that assertion itself would
> be meaningless and redundant if it were the case.

Why would it be?

> If arithmetic were
> primitive, then there would only need to be arithmetic since it is
> already maximally functional.

That works for God, Universe or any Whole. The point is that the whole
is bigger than what the internal creature can conceive, so they build
theories.

>
>>
>>> I don't think that's true because pain
>>> and pleasure are too variable and idiosyncratic to be connected with
>>> universal numbers.
>>
>> Each universal numbers get quickly complex personal idiosyncratic
>> behavior and qualia. There is no universal theory of the universal
>> numbers. In fact universal numbers can defeat all universal theory.
>
> How can they be said to be numbers then? Isn't numeracy a universal
> theory?

No. It is a semantics, a realm. Arithmetical truth escape all
effective theories. It something we can explore. Without knowing in
advance the many surprising things we can discover.

You should have said so. That's different. Not sure it can mean
something.

> The short lives of biological organisms provide
> an expanded 'now' which makes the macrocosmic inorganic universe seem
> almost static by comparison.

"De mémoire de rose, je n'ai jamais vu mourrir un
jardinier" (Fontenelle). OK.

Kleene's technic handle this very well. We can build self-referential
machine and sentence. The self-reference does not even have to appeal
explicitly to the universal neighbors.

> The sentence just points us to an idea of a
> sentence being false but has no power to actually take control over
> the interpretation of itself.

Machines can do that. I can build a machine able to change the way it
interprets itself.

> That requires the sensorimotive
> participation of a sentient interpreter. The sentence itself doesn't
> know what 'this sentence' means so it has no capacity to locate it.

It can, with varied notion of knowledge.
And it is not clear how "sensorimotive participation" works for this
either.

> This may be the fundamental problem with comp. It assumes causal
> efficacy a priori, and therefore begs the question of its own
> primitive status.

Comp arises from addition and multiplication. That is used in all
physical explanations too.
And we can explain why numbers have to be primitive/ We cannot explain
them with ontologically less.

>
>>
>> Universal numbers are born theological. They quickly guess that
>> something huge exist independently of themselves.
>
> What gives birth to them?

We can explain why we cannot answer that question.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>>> The question of the existence of computations in nature
>>>>>> is more delicate. It is just *assumed* in the comp hypothesis.
>>
>>>>>>> or physics,
>>>>>>> any more than shadows exist in trees or light bulbs.
>>
>>>>>> Shadows exist in trees or light bulb in the sense that observable
>>>>>> exists.
>>
>>>>> How so? If all you have is a tree but no light source, you can't
>>>>> have
>>>>> a shadow. If all you have is a light bulb but no surfaces to
>>>>> illuminate, you can't have a shadow either. The realism of a
>>>>> shadow is
>>>>> in the the visual sense relation between light source, obstacle,
>>>>> and
>>>>> space.
>>
>>>> I agree. But those things exist in the relevant relative sense.
>>>> Likewise with the numbers.
>>
>>> With numbers you have to define the possibilities explicitly
>>> though. I
>>> can make a photoshop image of a tree in the dark with a purple
>>> shadow.
>>> It has no realism.
>>
>> Sure it has realism. Arithmetical reality kicks back.
>
> Only within the parameters of the formally defined possibilities.

They do not need any parameters, others than the infinitely different
numbers relations.

> Photoshop doesn't give me an error when I make an impossible shadow.

Nor does the primitive universe when I put salt in my coffee.

I see only a vague and risky metaphor here. Define "interior of
matter". Well, define "matter" first.

Both the quanta and qualia are derivable from computer science, thanks
to the splitting between truth and proof.

>
>> , with comp, so that we can test
>> comp by comparing the inferred physics (from observation) and the
>> comp
>> theoretical physics. That's an infinite task, and we can only hope
>> that comp will be refuted, or bet on it and expands in that
>> direction.
>>
>
> I don't see that comp needs to be refuted, since comp is the only
> thing that gives us reason to believe comp.

?

>
>>
>>
>>>>> The native sensation we
>>>>> experience begins and ends on a human scale.
>>
>>>> You say so. I don't believe this is necessary.
>>
>>> What other kind of sensation can humans have other than human
>>> sensation?
>>
>> Divine one.
>>
>> I like when Chardin said that we are not humans having divine
>> experiences from time to time, but that we are divine beings having
>> human experiences from time to time. It fits with Plotinus, with the
>> mystics, and with the number self-reference logic. (See my Plotinus
>> paper). It fits with some salvia divinorum and other entheogen
>> experience (from average on reports).
>
> We are still filtering divine sense through human sense though.

Why are you sure it is not the contrary? Or that it depends on each of
us?

Of course we are working with different hypotheses. electromagnetism
can implement computations, but this does not mean something else
can't do it. And the theory of electromagnetism assumes the natural
numbers (I think).

It is, if you put the theorem of arithmetic in the "primitive realm".
This would be just a convention.

>
>>
>>> Numbers however will follow around physics wherever it goes.
>>
>> Numbers have no charge, no mass, no shape, no spin, ... They have
>> nothing making them physical at all. You confuse numbers with their
>> local manifestation. That there is an euro in my bank might be a
>> physical fact, I hope. But one euro is not the number one.
>
> But what is it that does have charge, mass, shape, and spin and why do
> numbers want them around? I wouldn't call a euro a physical fact, it's
> a logical convention.

The presence of a euro in a bank is a physical facts. Testable, etc.
Numbers don't want spin around them. Those arise for mathematical
reasons.

>
>>
>>> We can
>>> make a computer create or delete any number we like.
>>
>> Then try to delete the number 666.
>> You can delete a physical implementation of a number in a memory-
>> register. You don't delete the numbers, but only its local
>> incarnation/
>> implementation.
>
> You can say that you don't delete cartoon characters or mythological
> deities either.

Correct.

> Why aren't those non-local identities universal
> primitives?

They might be. The question is their rarity relatively to universal
numbers. The comp physics does not exclude them from ontology, but
explain (or have to explain) why some entities are rarer than others.
Cf the measure problem.

>
>>
>>> That doesn't seem
>>> like the computer is obeying computable number relations, it is just
>>> doing what we have manufactured it to do and the numerical
>>> interpretations are ours.
>>
>> Not in the case of universal numbers. They do the interpretation all
>> by themselves. That why we call some of them "interpreter". That
>> results from computer science. Computers can interpret data, and even
>> search for better interpretation (learning).
>
> It depends on what the interpreter is physically made of. You need
> solid matter with particular properties. Vapor or pudding can't
> interpret universal numbers by themselves. You have to construct a
> special rig out of specific materials selected for physical qualities
> to support any computation that would be coherent to us.

We need only to be able to share some universal numbers. Clearly we
do. Physical brain just makes our dreams sharable, and permits to our
consciousness to manifest itself relatively to others and relatively
oru most probable shared deep universal computational history.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> I need physical energy to run a
>>>>> computer or a machine. Why is that?
>>
>>>> Because the material hypostases leads necessarily to a quantization
>>>> of
>>>> physics which is symmetrical on the state accessed to the UD.
>>>> Because
>>>> the physics of numbers is symmetrical on its bottom propositional
>>>> tautologies (unlike classical tautologies). That's not obvious, but
>>>> can be proved in comp + classical theory of knowledge.
>>
>>> Physics of numbers? How do you get from the physics of numbers to
>>> the
>>> physics of atoms?
>>
>> The prime numbers already seems to emulate complex hermitian matrices
>> close to an emulation of big atom nucleus. The material hypostases
>> already emulates quantum logic. Number theory smell physics so much
>> that I fear that number's theorists will find quantum physics before
>> the theologians, which might mean some more millennia of putting the
>> qualia (and the person) under the rug.
>
> It's still a picture of physics rather than an enactment. I don't see
> any possible path from platonia to existence. That step is glossed
> over.

Arithmetical Platonia *is* what exists, or what is real. It is
described through the use the simple first order logic of existence, +
the assumption of the existence of 0 and its successors.

> I think we are so persuaded by the similarity between the two in
> our own minds that we mistake symbol for reality.

You do that for the numbers, perhaps.

> We are so used to
> taking symbols literally - paper currency for money, etc, that we
> forget that ideas don't just become real by themselves.

That is why we need to assume the existence of something. Numbers are
then enough, once we bet on comp. This is not trivial.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>>>> it discovers and elaborates arithmetic as a new territory
>>>>>>> through sense and motive.
>>
>>>>>> All universal numbers discover and elaborate arithmetic as new
>>>>>> territory through sense and motive.
>>
>>>>> Only if we, or some physical interpreter does the interpreting of
>>>>> that
>>>>> elaboration. As far as we know.
>>
>>>> The universal numbers do the interpretations very well.
>>
>>> How would we know that without our own interpretation of their
>>> interpretations? We have ample evidence of the capacity of the human
>>> psyche to project agency and meaning, but what evidence to we have
>>> of
>>> numbers interpreting anything on their own?
>>
>> That's the point of number theory and computer science. It happens
>> that once you accept the laws of addition and multiplication, the UNs
>> exist and do that. That explains why you don't have to look at the
>> hardware of your computer to make it interpret some strings as mail,
>> and others as spam, or as some internal data to be interpreted in
>> some
>> ways.
>
> That's not numbers interpreting strings, that's just semiconductors
> blindly executing a sophisticated instruction.

Why blind? I mean even in your theory. Why would semi-conductor fails
to have the sensorimotive stuff. They are also electromagnetic.

> A well articulated
> puppet. It is the programmer who does the interpretation in writing
> the algorithm to determine what is spam and what isn't. The computer
> and the code knows nothing at all about the meaning of what it's
> doing. It could be separating mail from spam or human heads from
> screaming throats, it makes no difference at all.

I grant you that the current hand-made computer ignores a lot of
thing, and above all it does not have high self-referential power. But
this is circumstantial. You could have said that of the genomus of
bacteria and cells. You eliminate possible high level emergence of
notions. In fact you have a reductionist conception of both third
person physics and comp.

>
>> May be you should take some time to study how a computer really
>> works,
>> to convince yourself that there is an interpretation done
>> independently of anyone looking at the interpreter. This will help to
>> understand that an infinity of complex interpretative loops exist in
>> abundance in the arithmetical truth.
>
> Maybe you should take some time away from the workings of computers
> and study first person awareness so you can see how dependent
> computation is on human interpretation. Without a monitor or other
> output mechanism a computer's computations would be useless to us.

I don't use the notion of use. Computation have played a role in math
before we build computers.

Feeling (be it of machine or animals) cannot be quantified. They
appear in modalities, or personal views, through the modalities of
self-reference. Those appears due to their unavoidable incompleteness.
The numbers are quantities, or can be seen in that way, but they
additive+multiplicative structures is immensely rich and complex,
including many modal truth which machines can guess, or "experience",
in some way, without being ever able to quantify or express.

That's true for everything a priori. But you suppose much more
(electromagnetism, for example, which includes waves and numbers).

> That sense is shared with many distant frames of reference of
> the micro and macrocosm but it is not very appropriate to the warm
> fuzzy sense which dominates our mesocosm. They are indeed very low
> level, broadly applicable semiotics, but they are still just
> mechanized signs, not referents or genuine interpreters.

You say so, but I am not convinced.

>
>>
>>> There is no literal or
>>> universal identity of x or 0. They are just as much meaningless
>>> lines
>>> and circles or pixels on a screen or sounds that a keyboard makes.
>>
>> I was taking about the numbers, not the symbol. If you agree that 0 +
>> x = x, for the numbers, then we are OK.
>> I do assume you know them. If not then there is nothing I could do.
>
> If I have a phone number that starts with a 011 but I dial 11 instead,
> then I have dialed incorrectly. I know what you mean but I don't agree
> that numbers know what you mean.

They do. Actually they taught me those things I would say. With the
help of Gödel & Co.

>
>>
>>> Blue however does literally equal blue.
>>
>> I can agree with that. But then it is a mystery if you disagree that
>> 6667 = 6667.
>
> I had to think about that a while. There are cultures which have
> number systems which are very limited, so that they may not make sense
> of the idea of quantities separate from objects or they may consider
> anything above three to just be 'several' or whatever. There are also
> cultures which have no word for blue though and people who cannot see.
> Both blue and 6667 are contingent on subjective interpretation
> capacities. There is a difference in the sense that blue can only be
> named. The naming implies no system or logic beyond a correlation
> between word and quality so that the sense of being equal is a weak
> sense. It is to say that if the name is blue, then blue is the name.
> Since 6667 is the name of a quantity, it also makes sense as a second
> order logic as a coordinate in the decimal counting system - which
> requires a bit more learning and has orders of magnitude more
> implications. So yes, in a sense both blue = blue and 6667 = 6667 are
> true, and in a sense their truth is contingent upon interpretation,

I think that everything is contingent trough interpretation. It is
better to define "contingent" once we agree on an interpretation.

> but the quantitative sense of equal has a stronger sense and
> ultimately a different sense than it has for blue.

You lost me, I have to say.

> Using this example,
> I can conclude that equal does not equal itself in every sense, and
> therefore no equality can be said to be unambiguously and literally
> true, even blue. We use the same word out of linguistic convention but
> ultimately the word equal is figurative.

Well logicians knows that it is hard to distinguish equality with a
fine grained possible equivalence relation. The notion is not entirely
trivial. But that's why we use axiom, and in this case it seems to me
that x = x is reasonable with x referring to natural numbers, without
philosophizing too much.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>> and that (x + (y + 1)) = (x + y) + 1, that's almost good enough.
>>
>>> I don't think that the universe doesn't know what that means. Many
>>> things my feel something that has consequences which human minds can
>>> interpret that way, but that disembodied interpretation isn't a
>>> literal form and it isn't commanding matter.
>>
>> It is, as a consequence of the UDA. Not just commanding it, but
>> dreaming it.
>
> How does it decide what to dream as matter

By obeying to the laws of addition and multiplication (or others
equivalent).

> and what to just dream?

All dreams. With a terrible redundancy, playing some role in the way
universal consciousness can filter personal histories.

we say that x < y if it exists z such that x + z = y. For example 12
is smaller than 24.
I have never heard of any word in physics bigger than 1000^1000. Even
in math big numbers are rare, although some occur in number theory and
in logic, where technic exist to provide name to *very* big number.
Now, some non stopping programs can build self-complexifying reality,
like the UD, the Mandelbrot set, etc.

Electron can excite other electron getting more energetic orbital, and
leaving a photon when getting back to their favorite state, at ambiant
temperature. If that is what you mean by "illuminating", it makes
sense. But I don't see why electricity is sense itself.

But you might try to develop a lexicon, or an epistemic interpretation
of electromagnetism.
Even if you succeed, that would still not contradict comp, unless your
epistemic interpretation introduce a non Turing emulable property of
EM waves. Then describe the device to test the idea.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>>>> Both are real in some
>>>>>>> sense, unreal in some sense, both real and unreal and neither
>>>>>>> real
>>>>>>> nor
>>>>>>> unreal in some sense.
>>
>>>>>> "it exists" and "for all" has indeed different meaning
>>>>>> according to
>>>>>> each hypostases.
>>
>>>>> But hypostases in general only exist in a specific and rarefied
>>>>> sense.
>>
>>>> All correct universal machines have them.
>>
>>> Our ordinary consciousness does not typically include any
>>> awareness of
>>> the functioning of universal machines as such. Why does it seem that
>>> way?
>>
>> Because we don't introspect ourself enough. We need time and enough
>> food, etc.
>> There are no reason why introspection leads quickly to the
>> functioning
>> principle of the brain. especially after a long deep computation in a
>> hot environment with asteroids, exploding stars, not talking about
>> taxes and death.
>>
>
> But why does it take a long time? Seems like it should be obvious if
> UMs were truly universal.

Why? Most UMs are slow. More rapid UMs takes time to develop
relatively to the slow one.

I will say yes (but in general it depends on which class of sentences
you talk about).

>
>>
>>> How does relating to
>>> truth push a locomotive to Chicago?
>>
>> It is difference between writing "pushing a locomotive to Chicago"
>> and
>> pushing a locomotive to Chicago.
>> If you doubt the difference try this: 1) write "pushing a locomotive
>> to Chicago", and 2) push a locomotive to Chicago.
>> It the same with numbers, except people can confuse sentence and
>> proposition more easily, due to the abstract character of the
>> numbers.
>> But the difference is there too.
>
> That's what I'm saying though. It seems like you are saying that 1)
> inherently leads to 2).

On the contrary. The numbers contains already all the description of
all computations, but without the laws of addition and multiplication,
nothing can be said to happen. "1)" leads to "2) through laws and
rules, or logical relations.

> If not, what would be the point of having
> both. Why does reality need abstraction or sentient abstraction need
> realism?

Reality needs nothing. It just is. *We* try to figure out the big
picture from inside. We try to distinguish what is necessary from what
is contingent.

I'm afraid you might have to study them a little more.

I guess you mean the UD (UDA is for the UD Argument, which means "the
8 steps argument that physics is a branch of number theory once we
take the mechanist hypothesis seriously in consideration).

I don't know if the UD come up with a literal translation of music
into other channels. If that is subjectively possible (as I think it
is through reports of experiences) then the UD does it infinitely often.

> Can music be an odor? It seems to me like different
> universal orders are employed in different combinations to create the
> conditions under which sense channels such as ours ultimately evolved.
> It seems like the underlying logos is not sufficient to express the
> realism.

Seeming is deceiving, especially in the communicable fundamental matter.

This we have in common, with Aristotle. I agree.

> The more something is
> unrelatable to us as a subjective agent, because of it's scale,
> distance, unfamiliarity, etc. the more we relate to it as matter. To
> things which we are able to relate to as matter, we are matter. To
> people who we can relate to as people, we are people.

Yes. But we are talking about people. matter is exterior because it is
"made-of" of the too fine grained computations bringing our histories
at a lower level that our substitution level.

That can make sense, in the comp theory.

I know. That's your reductionism.

Er well, you can try ...

Bruno

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

[John Clark]

On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 8:24 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

  "An apple isn't an apple unless an *actual* worm can live in it."

A simulated apple is a perfectly real and objective phenomenon, it's true that a real worm can't live in one but a simulated worm can. It's important not to confuse levels however, a simulated flame won't burn your computer but it will burn a simulated object. A real flame won't burn the laws of chemistry but it will burn your finger. And some things cross all levels, like information processing; there is no difference between simulated arithmetic and real arithmetic or between simulated intelligence and real intelligence.

  John K Clark
 

[Craig Weinberg]

Sorry, too computery for me. I don't think you can enumerate all
programs in a programming language because some programs redefine the
language dynamically.

>
>
>
> >>> By what logic would quantities develop
> >>> qualities?
>
> >> By the unavoidable self-reference logic, which entails the existence
> >> of many variate modalities/person points of view.
>
> > A number can't refer to itself without a body concept automatically
> > arising?
>
> You can see the number as a sort of abstract body. It is the code, or
> the description of the machine in some universal environment.

That's not real. There is no universal environment.

> I do think that we are sort of "words" in a "physical" programming
> language. Cytoplasm + DNA is already a couple of universal numbers
> interpreting each other. A number is a body relatively to a universal
> number. The average personal body is ultimately "made of" the work of
> the infinity of Universal Numbers competing below the personal level
> of substitution.

How does that work though? How does 'work' make things out of nothing?
There is nothing in our real experience to suggest that this is
possible.

That's begging the question. These presentations are highly
efficacious to us, but they are useless to a computer. Object oriented
languages and GUI presentation layers are for human programmers and
users, not for computers. We have to get rid of that stuff by
compiling it into machine code because the computer has no use for it
at all. Why would it make computation any more efficacious?

> They speed-up
> the working of a machine.

I think they slow it down. Otherwise we should write programs in
Shakespearean English.

>Consciousness is probably unavoidable for
> self-moving entities, to anticipate complex tridimensional moves.

Depends what you mean by consciousness. Something knows that it is
moving but it doesn't have to know that it knows it's moving.

> And
> they are unavoidable as fixed point semantics, like there is always a
> point on map embedded in a territory which match the place it
> describes (the "you are there" point).

Only maps which humans use. Computers or robots don't need to know
where they are, they just need to anticipate the consequences of a
given trajectory of an abstract coordinate set in a given topology.
They don't care whether or not it's 'them' and I would not anticipate
that any such awareness could ever arise by itself computationally.

Numbers don't add or multiply themselves though. Something has to
enact that motive physically - either through neuons, semiconductors,
gears, or whatever.

>
>
>
> >>> All functions of pain could and would
> >>> be accomplished programmatically without any experience at all.
>
> >> Imagine that this were true. You would have zombie.
>
> > No, you would have a puppet.
>
> Then you cannot say "all functions of pain could and would ...".

I can though. The *functions* of pain are easily reproduced with a
puppet. You have the puppet yelp and whimper, jump around and hold
it's foot, etc. If you have an advanced robotic puppet that actually
acts like it knows what pain is, then you can program logic to
remember what kinds of situations can result in damage or stress to
it's equipment and script avoidance behaviors to guard against those
outcomes. None of that involves any feeling of pain whatsoever, nor
would any such feeling possibly arise out of such a mechanism. To
assume that is just reverse engineering our own feelings and
projecting them on an inanimate object.

>
> > Zombies are a special case straw man.
> > Puppets are ordinary and illustrate an ordinary principle of agency
> > projection. Human consciousness projects agency into things,
> > especially things which we design to fool us into engendering that
> > very projection.
>
> >> You are just
> >> treating other creature as zombie, because you decide to look only to
> >> their bodies, or to their code, at some lower level.
>
> > No, I'm just not treating numerical abstractions as creatures.
>
> OK. I was alluding to the person supervening on those numerical
> abstractions.
>
>
>
> >> But the person is
> >> the abstract being relatively implemented through a body. You confuse
> >> two level of universality, a bit like Searle in the chinese room
> >> argument.
>
> > I don't think that the person is abstract. They are concrete, just
> > sensorimotive experience through time rather than electromagnetic
> > activity across space.
>
> What is concrete? What is time? What is space? Those things are what I
> want to understand. I cannot take such notions as granted.

Concrete is that which can be experienced directly. I see a picture of
a watch on TV. The watch was concrete to the camera, but now only the
camera's picture is concrete to me. I have no actual experience of the
concrete watch but I have an experience of the TV show. Time is just
sequential experience normalized among other common experiences. Time
is how narrative awareness builds perceptual significance. Space is
just the distance between exterior objects. It attenuates subjective
presence through the opposite ontology - simultaneous (non-sequential)
geometric possibilities.

>
> > I think that you are confusing the intellectual
> > idea of experience with the actual physical realism.
>
> That is handled by the distinction between Bp and p, or between
> provability of p and truth of p.

That's just the intellectual idea of the difference between the idea
and the idea of actuality. It doesn't make it any more actually real.
There is no physical realism that can be accessed by ideal
abstraction.

>
> > If I count a
> > dozen eggs, that is a cognitive abstraction projected onto the reality
> > of eggs, not a reality of dozen-ness being relatively implemented
> > through an egg carton.
>
> If you assume some primitive physical reality. I do not.

So you are saying that you assume that yes, there actually is a
primitive dozen-ness which controls eggs and cartons.

>
>
>
> >>> If
> >>> stove > hot, then immediately remove hand from stove and minimize
> >>> damage with cold water. I understand what you are saying about the
> >>> inaccessibility of certain truths being maybe written in to our code
> >>> from the start but it sounds like you are saying that if we could
> >>> see
> >>> arithmetic as it actually is, we would feel that there is pain and
> >>> pleasure in certain numbers.
>
> >> We can't do that. Nor can we with other human fellows. But at some
> >> point, being familiar with them, we can attribute mind to them,
> >> because, at some level, we recognize ourself in them.
>
> > Recognizing ourselves in them doesn't mean that all that we are can be
> > reduced to or attributed to the consequences of them though. There is
> > still no compelling reason to me to attribute awareness to numbers. It
> > seems obvious that it's a machina ex deus to avoid the lack of
> > justification for awareness/qualia/presentation. How can we assert
> > positively that arithmetic is primitive if that assertion itself would
> > be meaningless and redundant if it were the case.
>
> Why would it be?

Because why would arithmetic need to assert something about itself? It
seems like the nature of arithmetic, UDA, etc is that all
possibilities are already asserted locally somewhere. That's sort of
the point. You don't have to explain why the universe does some things
and not others because you just say that it does everything possible
eventually. What part of that could not know that it was primitive
already and if it did, how could it suddenly find out or suspect it
without knowing?

>

> > If arithmetic were
> > primitive, then there would only need to be arithmetic since it is
> > already maximally functional.
>
> That works for God, Universe or any Whole. The point is that the whole
> is bigger than what the internal creature can conceive, so they build
> theories.

But there is no internal creature, it's just a program. It's not going
to build theories unless it's programmed to do that, and if it did, it
would just be a part of the program, not something that is believed by
something.

>
>
>
> >>> I don't think that's true because pain
> >>> and pleasure are too variable and idiosyncratic to be connected with
> >>> universal numbers.
>
> >> Each universal numbers get quickly complex personal idiosyncratic
> >> behavior and qualia. There is no universal theory of the universal
> >> numbers. In fact universal numbers can defeat all universal theory.
>
> > How can they be said to be numbers then? Isn't numeracy a universal
> > theory?
>
> No. It is a semantics, a realm. Arithmetical truth escape all
> effective theories. It something we can explore. Without knowing in
> advance the many surprising things we can discover.

I agree there are many surprising things to discover, I just don't
think that genuine human subjectivity will ever be one of them.

I don't think that machines can interpret themselves in the first
place. They are just puppets which can be trained to act like they are
learning. In a sense it is changing and learning, but not in a
subjective sense.

>
> > That requires the sensorimotive
> > participation of a sentient interpreter. The sentence itself doesn't
> > know what 'this sentence' means so it has no capacity to locate it.
>
> It can, with varied notion of knowledge.
> And it is not clear how "sensorimotive participation" works for this
> either.

That's just explaining away awareness. You're just redefining the
term knowledge to disqualify the difference between the subjective
experience of knowing and the objective functions and behaviors which
suggest knowledge.

>
> > This may be the fundamental problem with comp. It assumes causal
> > efficacy a priori, and therefore begs the question of its own
> > primitive status.
>
> Comp arises from addition and multiplication. That is used in all
> physical explanations too.

Addition and multiplication are no more real than comp. They are ideas
that we have to teach and learn. Shortcuts to make quantitative
pattern recognition simpler for us. They are no more real than good
and evil or matter and energy.

> And we can explain why numbers have to be primitive/ We cannot explain
> them with ontologically less.

It makes sense to me that we would think we would have to explain why
numbers have to be primitive, because they have no choice but to be
internally consistent. It's like the law. By definition the law
defines itself as a primitive legal authority, but it's just because
the system is an echo chamber...which is exactly why it can't be
primitive. They are closed systems relative to the rest of the cosmos
(even though they may contain infinities within their category of
sensemaking).

>
>
>
> >> Universal numbers are born theological. They quickly guess that
> >> something huge exist independently of themselves.
>
> > What gives birth to them?
>
> We can explain why we cannot answer that question.

That seems to indicate that they are ciphers born of high order
logical explanation, not universal primitives.

How so? I can't paint arithmetic pink. It doesn't kick back to being
painted.

>
> > Photoshop doesn't give me an error when I make an impossible shadow.
>
> Nor does the primitive universe when I put salt in my coffee.

Putting salt in your coffee isn't impossible, it's just accidental or
eccentric.

For us humans, the easiest definition of matter is 'what our body is
made of' and the interior of the body is our ongoing life experience
of being the person associated with that body.

How are qualia derived from computer science? Can it predict even a
single color that we aren't familiar with?

>
>
>
> >> , with comp, so that we can test
> >> comp by comparing the inferred physics (from observation) and the
> >> comp
> >> theoretical physics. That's an infinite task, and we can only hope
> >> that comp will be refuted, or bet on it and expands in that
> >> direction.
>
> > I don't see that comp needs to be refuted, since comp is the only
> > thing that gives us reason to believe comp.
>
> ?

If not for the recursive logic of logical recursion, there would be no
reason to suspect that anything could be literally reduced to
computation. It's like Zeno's revenge. It's not real.

>
>
>
> >>>>> The native sensation we
> >>>>> experience begins and ends on a human scale.
>
> >>>> You say so. I don't believe this is necessary.
>
> >>> What other kind of sensation can humans have other than human
> >>> sensation?
>
> >> Divine one.
>
> >> I like when Chardin said that we are not humans having divine
> >> experiences from time to time, but that we are divine beings having
> >> human experiences from time to time. It fits with Plotinus, with the
> >> mystics, and with the number self-reference logic. (See my Plotinus
> >> paper). It fits with some salvia divinorum and other entheogen
> >> experience (from average on reports).
>
> > We are still filtering divine sense through human sense though.
>
> Why are you sure it is not the contrary? Or that it depends on each of
> us?

Because we don't become literally omnipotent when that happens. The
drug wears off and we have to go on with our lives.

If I'm right, there is nothing else in the universe but
(sensorimotive) electromagnetism that does anything.

What if that cooperation also applied equally primitively to
nonarithmetic phenomena though?

>
>
>
> >>> Numbers however will follow around physics wherever it goes.
>
> >> Numbers have no charge, no mass, no shape, no spin, ... They have
> >> nothing making them physical at all. You confuse numbers with their
> >> local manifestation. That there is an euro in my bank might be a
> >> physical fact, I hope. But one euro is not the number one.
>
> > But what is it that does have charge, mass, shape, and spin and why do
> > numbers want them around? I wouldn't call a euro a physical fact, it's
> > a logical convention.
>
> The presence of a euro in a bank is a physical facts. Testable, etc.
> Numbers don't want spin around them. Those arise for mathematical
> reasons.

Are you talking about a paper banknote in a safe or a digital value
accessible through a financial computer network? In the former, the
physical fact is just paper in a metal box. In the latter it's
microelectronic switches in different servers and storage arrays.
Neither of them are physical euros. The currency could be dropped next
month and suddenly there won't have been euros in any bank.

>
>
>
> >>> We can
> >>> make a computer create or delete any number we like.
>
> >> Then try to delete the number 666.
> >> You can delete a physical implementation of a number in a memory-
> >> register. You don't delete the numbers, but only its local
> >> incarnation/
> >> implementation.
>
> > You can say that you don't delete cartoon characters or mythological
> > deities either.
>
> Correct.
>
> > Why aren't those non-local identities universal
> > primitives?
>
> They might be. The question is their rarity relatively to universal
> numbers. The comp physics does not exclude them from ontology, but
> explain (or have to explain) why some entities are rarer than others.
> Cf the measure problem.

So it's not really arithmetic that's primitive, it's just anything we
make up.

>
>
>
> >>> That doesn't seem
> >>> like the computer is obeying computable number relations, it is just
> >>> doing what we have manufactured it to do and the numerical
> >>> interpretations are ours.
>
> >> Not in the case of universal numbers. They do the interpretation all
> >> by themselves. That why we call some of them "interpreter". That
> >> results from computer science. Computers can interpret data, and even
> >> search for better interpretation (learning).
>
> > It depends on what the interpreter is physically made of. You need
> > solid matter with particular properties. Vapor or pudding can't
> > interpret universal numbers by themselves. You have to construct a
> > special rig out of specific materials selected for physical qualities
> > to support any computation that would be coherent to us.
>
> We need only to be able to share some universal numbers. Clearly we
> do.

Do we share them or just agree on the idea of them?

>Physical brain just makes our dreams sharable, and permits to our
> consciousness to manifest itself relatively to others and relatively
> oru most probable shared deep universal computational history.

Why would we need a physical brain to share dreams?

>
>
>
> >>>>> I need physical energy to run a
> >>>>> computer or a machine. Why is that?
>
> >>>> Because the material hypostases leads necessarily to a quantization
> >>>> of
> >>>> physics which is symmetrical on the state accessed to the UD.
> >>>> Because
> >>>> the physics of numbers is symmetrical on its bottom propositional
> >>>> tautologies (unlike classical tautologies). That's not obvious, but
> >>>> can be proved in comp + classical theory of knowledge.
>
> >>> Physics of numbers? How do you get from the physics of numbers to
> >>> the
> >>> physics of atoms?
>
> >> The prime numbers already seems to emulate complex hermitian matrices
> >> close to an emulation of big atom nucleus. The material hypostases
> >> already emulates quantum logic. Number theory smell physics so much
> >> that I fear that number's theorists will find quantum physics before
> >> the theologians, which might mean some more millennia of putting the
> >> qualia (and the person) under the rug.
>
> > It's still a picture of physics rather than an enactment. I don't see
> > any possible path from platonia to existence. That step is glossed
> > over.
>
> Arithmetical Platonia *is* what exists, or what is real. It is
> described through the use the simple first order logic of existence, +
> the assumption of the existence of 0 and its successors.

What if the first order of existence isn't logic?

>
> > I think we are so persuaded by the similarity between the two in
> > our own minds that we mistake symbol for reality.
>
> You do that for the numbers, perhaps.

It would seem that way to someone who thinks that numbers are
universally real.

>
> > We are so used to
> > taking symbols literally - paper currency for money, etc, that we
> > forget that ideas don't just become real by themselves.
>
> That is why we need to assume the existence of something. Numbers are
> then enough, once we bet on comp. This is not trivial.

I do assume the existence of something: sense. Numbers are a high
order, a posteriori category of logical sense, not a generative
causally efficacious force beneath physical appearance. Physics works
because it feels right to work the way it does, not because there is a
UD running the puppet show. You believe in the UDA because it feels
right to you, you understand the sense it makes so it satisfies you in
different ways. You enjoy thinking and communicating about it, as do I
with multisense realism. That is the motive and the energy driving our
pursuit of it. It's not inevitable or arithmetic. We would do
something else if it made more sense for us. You could turn it around
and see our behavior from the perspective of a hypothetical omniscient
voyeur and say that we are just working out the arithmetic of our
circumstance and identity, and that's true to in a sense, but it's an
inference rather than a direct experience. We can't know whether or
not we are scripted, but we do know that it doesn't feel that way, and
that can't be explained in a scripted universe.

>
>
>
> >>>>>>> it discovers and elaborates arithmetic as a new territory
> >>>>>>> through sense and motive.
>
> >>>>>> All universal numbers discover and elaborate arithmetic as new
> >>>>>> territory through sense and motive.
>
> >>>>> Only if we, or some physical interpreter does the interpreting of
> >>>>> that
> >>>>> elaboration. As far as we know.
>
> >>>> The universal numbers do the interpretations very well.
>
> >>> How would we know that without our own interpretation of their
> >>> interpretations? We have ample evidence of the capacity of the human
> >>> psyche to project agency and meaning, but what evidence to we have
> >>> of
> >>> numbers interpreting anything on their own?
>
> >> That's the point of number theory and computer science. It happens
> >> that once you accept the laws of addition and multiplication, the UNs
> >> exist and do that. That explains why you don't have to look at the
> >> hardware of your computer to make it interpret some strings as mail,
> >> and others as spam, or as some internal data to be interpreted in
> >> some
> >> ways.
>
> > That's not numbers interpreting strings, that's just semiconductors
> > blindly executing a sophisticated instruction.
>
> Why blind? I mean even in your theory. Why would semi-conductor fails
> to have the sensorimotive stuff. They are also electromagnetic.

They do have sensorimotive stuff. They aren't blind to opening and
closing circuits, just to the human meaning which we project on to
those events. It's like a horse race. The horses know they are running
a race but they don't know that there's gambling and handicapping and
tv audiences in parimutuel betting lounges all over the world. This is
why it's multisense realism. Our sense of the computer has layers of
figurative sense on top of the literal physical sense. It's like the
seven layer network model. The router makes a kind of sense out of the
activity of the cables, and the network protocol makes sense out of
the activity of the routers, but not the other way around. The cables
don't make sense out of the ip protocol. It's a holarchy. Top level
instructions are passed down the stack, but bottom level conditions
make up the architecture and modulate the capacities of the
instructions to be passed.

>
> > A well articulated
> > puppet. It is the programmer who does the interpretation in writing
> > the algorithm to determine what is spam and what isn't. The computer
> > and the code knows nothing at all about the meaning of what it's
> > doing. It could be separating mail from spam or human heads from
> > screaming throats, it makes no difference at all.
>
> I grant you that the current hand-made computer ignores a lot of
> thing, and above all it does not have high self-referential power. But
> this is circumstantial. You could have said that of the genomus of
> bacteria and cells. You eliminate possible high level emergence of
> notions. In fact you have a reductionist conception of both third
> person physics and comp.
>

Because both physics and comp alone are not real. I'm not against them
being useful as figurative extensions of the real, but my view is that
realism certainly arises from the sense between subject and object.
While subjects remain disembodied and objects remain unperceived,
there is no realism.

>
>
> >> May be you should take some time to study how a computer really
> >> works,
> >> to convince yourself that there is an interpretation done
> >> independently of anyone looking at the interpreter. This will help to
> >> understand that an infinity of complex interpretative loops exist in
> >> abundance in the arithmetical truth.
>
> > Maybe you should take some time away from the workings of computers
> > and study first person awareness so you can see how dependent
> > computation is on human interpretation. Without a monitor or other
> > output mechanism a computer's computations would be useless to us.
>
> I don't use the notion of use. Computation have played a role in math
> before we build computers.

Even without computers, we still need to write out equations or
vocalize them or imagine them with our physical neurological
faculties.

Those are just reminders of own feelings about modalities and self
reference. There need not be any feeling at all associated with
computational 'self reference' and indeed I think it would not be
possible or rational to assume it could arise as a consequence of
comp.

>Those appears due to their unavoidable incompleteness.
> The numbers are quantities, or can be seen in that way, but they
> additive+multiplicative structures is immensely rich and complex,
> including many modal truth which machines can guess, or "experience",
> in some way, without being ever able to quantify or express.

What mathematical logic makes 79 protons into gold? Without reverse
engineering gold, why would 79 protons act differently than 79
meatballs?

That's why sense has to be the primitive. Waves and numbers are a
posteiori second order logics we project on electromagnetism. The
literal phenomenon is just feeling and motive, but we observe them
from a distance as attraction and repulsion, power and current, forces
and fields, etc.

>
> > That sense is shared with many distant frames of reference of
> > the micro and macrocosm but it is not very appropriate to the warm
> > fuzzy sense which dominates our mesocosm. They are indeed very low
> > level, broadly applicable semiotics, but they are still just
> > mechanized signs, not referents or genuine interpreters.
>
> You say so, but I am not convinced.
>

What could convince you though?

Interpretation = sense.

>
> > but the quantitative sense of equal has a stronger sense and
> > ultimately a different sense than it has for blue.
>
> You lost me, I have to say.

To say that 'blueberries and electric sparks both = blue' is not as
strong as saying 'the temperature = 37 degrees celsius'.

>
> > Using this example,
> > I can conclude that equal does not equal itself in every sense, and
> > therefore no equality can be said to be unambiguously and literally
> > true, even blue. We use the same word out of linguistic convention but
> > ultimately the word equal is figurative.
>
> Well logicians knows that it is hard to distinguish equality with a
> fine grained possible equivalence relation. The notion is not entirely
> trivial. But that's why we use axiom, and in this case it seems to me
> that x = x is reasonable with x referring to natural numbers, without
> philosophizing too much.

Sure it's reasonable as a natural number axiom, but it can be
misleading and presumptuous as a universal primitive principle.

>
>
>
> >>>> and that (x + (y + 1)) = (x + y) + 1, that's almost good enough.
>
> >>> I don't think that the universe doesn't know what that means. Many
> >>> things my feel something that has consequences which human minds can
> >>> interpret that way, but that disembodied interpretation isn't a
> >>> literal form and it isn't commanding matter.
>
> >> It is, as a consequence of the UDA. Not just commanding it, but
> >> dreaming it.
>
> > How does it decide what to dream as matter
>
> By obeying to the laws of addition and multiplication (or others
> equivalent).

Do all possible universes based on addition and multiplication
necessarily result in matter dreams? Do some have a mixture of matter
and disembodied spirits that materialize suddenly? Are all universes
as rigidly consistent as ours regarding physics?

>
> > and what to just dream?
>
> All dreams. With a terrible redundancy, playing some role in the way
> universal consciousness can filter personal histories.

Not sure what you mean. I was just wondering what decides which
realities get to be matter and which don't.

You're talking about size in a figurative sense of quantity of digits.
I'm saying that sense isn't compatible with a spatial presence.

I meant electricity corresponds to sense symmetrically. Electricity is
to sense as magnetism is to motive.

I have a different conception of illumination though. I don't think
that electrons or photons are literally real, I think they are
sensorimotive commonalities which matter (like light sources, eyes,
reflective surfaces, detection instruments) shares. We have no way to
tell whether photons exist or that's just the way matter makes sense
of itself makes sense to us. It doesn't seem likely that anything with
the characteristics attributed to a photon (chargeless, massless,
intangible particle-wave traveling infinitely fast within any given
frame of reference) can be said to be real.

>
> But you might try to develop a lexicon, or an epistemic interpretation
> of electromagnetism.
> Even if you succeed, that would still not contradict comp, unless your
> epistemic interpretation introduce a non Turing emulable property of
> EM waves. Then describe the device to test the idea.

The non-Turing emulable property of EM is sensorimotive perception.
There are no literal waves, they are rhythms of subjective feelings of
hold and release. We just infer the wave or particle qualities in
third person. We are the device to test the idea. If we alter the
electromagnetic conditions within the relevant areas of our brain, we
experience precise sensorimotive correlates. It is already proved, we
just aren't interpreting it correctly yet.

Why do they take time? What do you say that time is?

I don't think that laws are real. They are a postieri analytical
normalizations of observations.

>
> > If not, what would be the point of having
> > both. Why does reality need abstraction or sentient abstraction need
> > realism?
>
> Reality needs nothing. It just is. *We* try to figure out the big
> picture from inside. We try to distinguish what is necessary from what
> is contingent.

We aren't reality?

I wish I could, but I'm allergic.

I think the opposite. With qualia, seeming is everything.

I think we are close, but you are sticking to computations being real
and primitive so that can be the only difference between mind and
matter. Consider though that the brain and the mind can't be separate
computations. There is no evidence of that. What the evidence does
suggest, if it were interpreted without preconception, is that the
brain looks like its computing on the outside but it feels like the
universe as seen from inside of a person on the inside. They are just
different (symmetrically opposite) views of the same thing.

Reductionism is appropriate in this case because there is no reason to
give a puppet the benefit of the doubt.

Craig

[Craig Weinberg]

On Dec 27, 4:22 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 8:24 PM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>   "An apple isn't an apple unless an *actual* worm can live in it."
>
> A simulated apple is a perfectly real and objective phenomenon, it's true
> that a real worm can't live in one but a simulated worm can. It's important
> not to confuse levels however, a simulated flame won't burn your computer
> but it will burn a simulated object.

A simulated flame will do anything your simulation proscribes. That's
why it's not real. A simulated apple can turn into Mickey Mouse every
third Wednesday at midnight. A picture of an apple is not an apple.
Even a fancy animated picture.

> A real flame won't burn the laws of
> chemistry but it will burn your finger. And some things cross all levels,
> like information processing;

Information cannot cross any levels on it's own. Cartoons don't wander
off the TV screen and move into the spare bedroom.

> there is no difference between simulated
> arithmetic and real arithmetic

Because there is no real arithmetic. There is no simulated Mickey
Mouse either. Subjects can't be simulated, only imitated or
impersonated.

> or between simulated intelligence and real
> intelligence.

That's a religious faith in my opinion. If I make a movie where the
actors address the audience as Jim, and then have a screening where I
invite only people named Jim, then I have simulated intelligence
without any real intelligence at all.

Craig

[John Clark]

On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 9:53 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

"A simulated flame will do anything your simulation proscribes. That's
why it's not real."

A simulated flame will do things that you can not predict and will surprise you even if you are the one who wrote the simulation program. Even in a universe where quantum mechanics did not exist and everything was 100% deterministic very often we wouldn't know what we are going to do next until we actually did it; nor could an outside observer predict our actions. And this quality of unpredictability is not limited to human beings, machines have it too. Machines can surprise both themselves and outside observers even in a fundamentally deterministic world. 

It would only take you about 5 minutes to write a program to look for the first even number greater than 2 that is not the sum of two prime numbers and then stop. Will the machine ever stop? The machine doesn't know, I don't know, you don't know, nobody knows. Maybe it will stop in 5 seconds, maybe it will stop in 5 billion years, maybe it will never stop. If you want to know what the machine will do you just have to watch it and see. The same is true for a simulation and the same is true for us, we often don't know what we are going to do next until we actually do it.
 

 "A picture of an apple is not an apple. Even a fancy animated picture."

 A picture of an apple IS an apple, in a fancy animated universe.

"Information cannot cross any levels on it's own. Cartoons don't wander
off the TV screen and move into the spare bedroom."

That is true, nouns can't cross levels on their own, BUT adjectives can and you are a adjective, you are not matter, you are the way matter behaves when it is organized in a Craigweinbergian way. Adjectives are information and information can be processed. I'd even go so far as to say that although there are differences information is as close as you can get to the traditional concept of the soul and still remain within the scientific method.

  "there is no difference between simulated arithmetic and real arithmetic"

"Because there is no real arithmetic."

I don't know what that means. When I use my hand calculator I expect it to perform real arithmetic, I don't even know what simulated arithmetic is.

   "or [a difference] between simulated intelligence and real intelligence."

 

"That's a religious faith in my opinion."

How can that be religious faith when it can be investigated with the scientific method? Just ask a series of questions to a person, a machine, a man from Mars or whatever and judge the quality of the answers, use the same criteria you've used every day of your life to judge if the various fellow human beings that you meet in your activities are smart or dumb. I don't see where faith enters into it. 

"If I make a movie where the actors address the audience as Jim, and then have a screening where I invite only people named Jim, then I have simulated intelligence without any real intelligence at all."

Would that really fool you? I don't think so. All I'm saying is that you be fair, whatever method you use to judge the intellectual firepower of your fellow humans, and you must have some way, use that same method in judging the smarts, or lack of them, in machines.  

  John K Clark

 

[Craig Weinberg]

On Dec 28, 12:03 am, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 9:53 PM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> "A simulated flame will do anything your simulation proscribes. That's
>
> > why it's not real."
>
> A simulated flame will do things that you can not predict and will surprise
> you even if you are the one who wrote the simulation program.

So will hallucinations, dreams, and delusions surprise you. That
doesn't make them real.

> Even in a
> universe where quantum mechanics did not exist and everything was 100%
> deterministic very often we wouldn't know what we are going to do next
> until we actually did it; nor could an outside observer predict our
> actions. And this quality of unpredictability is not limited to human
> beings, machines have it too. Machines can surprise both themselves and
> outside observers even in a fundamentally deterministic world.

I think that view anthropomorphizes machines and mechanemorphizes
consciousness. Machines aren't surprised by anything because they
aren't expecting anything. It is us who project our expectation on the
machine. In a 100% deterministic universe there would be no purpose in
our caring whether or not we knew what we were going to do next. What
difference would it make? We would always just be doing what we are
determined to do.

>
> It would only take you about 5 minutes to write a program to look for the
> first even number greater than 2 that is not the sum of two prime numbers
> and then stop. Will the machine ever stop? The machine doesn't know, I
> don't know, you don't know, nobody knows. Maybe it will stop in 5 seconds,
> maybe it will stop in 5 billion years, maybe it will never stop. If you
> want to know what the machine will do you just have to watch it and see.
> The same is true for a simulation and the same is true for us, we often
> don't know what we are going to do next until we actually do it.

The machine isn't looking for anything or knowing anything. It doesn't
even exist as an entity except as a fictional character in our
experience. The literal reality of the machine begins and ends with
it's physical enactment - whether it's neurological, electronic
semiconductor, steam engine and gears, etc. What these things know and
expect are presumably much different than our projection of our own
knowledge and expectation on them. They are just puppets to us. There
is no simulation in the machine, it is in our sense and motive. It is
only a simulation for the intended audience and nothing else.

>
> >  "A picture of an apple is not an apple. Even a fancy animated picture."
>
>  A picture of an apple IS an apple, in a fancy animated universe.

There is no fancy animated universe or picture universe. These are
only our neurological specular capacities to project our own animated
universe-making sensibility onto an inanimate stain on paper or an
interactive optical bitmap.

>
> "Information cannot cross any levels on it's own. Cartoons don't wander
>
> > off the TV screen and move into the spare bedroom."
>
> That is true, nouns can't cross levels on their own, BUT adjectives can and
> you are a adjective, you are not matter, you are the way matter behaves
> when it is organized in a Craigweinbergian way.

I can't be exported to other matter though. It doesn't matter if I
organize marshmallows or tungsten carbide in a Craigweinbergian way.
The result is just a mess. Organization by itself isn't real. Reality
is in the sense which relates subject and object.

> Adjectives are information
> and information can be processed. I'd even go so far as to say that
> although there are differences information is as close as you can get to
> the traditional concept of the soul and still remain within the scientific
> method.

I used to see information that way, and it is true in a sense, but
that third person sense in which it can be true is incompatible with
subjectivity. Information is like soul only in that they are both
mistakenly conceived as a pseudosubstance. If I think of how music can
be embodied in many physical forms, digitized or broadcast, etc. then
it seems like it could be some kind of invisible, intangible essence
that magically turns physical things into itself - that the music
literally exists in a CD or an mp3. As Bohr said 'The opposite of a
trivial truth is false; the opposite of a great truth is also true'.
Information modeled in this pseudosubstantial way is a trivial truth.
The great truth of both soul and information is that they are the
perceptions and experiences of matter. Matter is ultimately not
information seemingly materialized, information an abstracted way of
modeling certain aspects of the energy - the experience of change that
matter has. The experiences that matter has, and that we have as a
brain and a body are concretely real, but information is an idea we
have about the nature of those experiences. It has no capacity to
experience itself. Mickey Mouse does not live in a Disney universe. He
cannot have adventures on his own.

>
>   "there is no difference between simulated arithmetic and real arithmetic"
>
>  "Because there is no real arithmetic."
>
> I don't know what that means. When I use my hand calculator I expect it to
> perform real arithmetic, I don't even know what simulated arithmetic is.

You expect it to perform in a certain way and your expectations are
met. That is all that happens. The calculator doesn't know anything
about arithmetic, it's just a fancy abacus that opens and closes
microelectronic switches when your finger triggers a button contact.

>
>    "or [a difference] between simulated intelligence and real
>
> >> intelligence."
>
> > "That's a religious faith in my opinion."
>
> How can that be religious faith when it can be investigated with the
> scientific method? Just ask a series of questions to a person, a machine, a
> man from Mars or whatever and judge the quality of the answers, use the
> same criteria you've used every day of your life to judge if the various
> fellow human beings that you meet in your activities are smart or dumb. I
> don't see where faith enters into it.

You are using a trivial concept of intelligence. By your definition,
any puppet, sculpture or image that can be made to mimic expected
outputs would have to be intelligent. Real intelligence is the
cognitive tip of the iceberg of a billion years of sensorimotive
evolution. It arises out of sensation, feeling, perception, emotion,
awareness, and identity. Simulated 'intelligence' is the truncated tip
of the iceberg with no semantic significance. It's a facade. To
believe that such a facade must be genuine is wishful thinking,
propped up by the tautological examination of its own methodology. It
is to say that a picture of an apple is real because a picture of a
knife can be made to look like it is cutting it into pieces (never
mind that the picture of the knife can also be made to look like it
turns the apple into Robert DeNiro).

>
> "If I make a movie where the actors address the audience as Jim, and then
>
> > have a screening where I invite only people named Jim, then I have
> > simulated intelligence without any real intelligence at all."
>
> Would that really fool you? I don't think so.

It doesn't matter what we think or whether we are fooled, it just
matters that you understand that the idea of simulated intelligence is
just this basic principle writ large. It would be interesting to do
this as an experiment, telling each Jim in the audience that they are
about to witness a new technology in film making that can read your
mind. I think that you could fool some people actually, given
sufficient 'big science' cues in the theater.

> All I'm saying is that you be
> fair, whatever method you use to judge the intellectual firepower of your
> fellow humans, and you must have some way, use that same method in judging
> the smarts, or lack of them, in machines.

Not necessarily. Our perception of intelligence is nothing but a
projection of what we recognize as intelligence within ourselves.
There is no method. We are just impressed or not to the degree which
smart someone seems smart to us. It could just be that they are just
attractive or enunciate clearly with a cultured dialect. It could be
because they made a lot of money. Real intelligence is in the eye of
the beholder(s). Trivial intelligence is just quantitative muscle.

Craig

[John Clark]

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011  Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

"So will hallucinations, dreams, and delusions surprise you. That
doesn't make them real.

it seems to me you're throwing around the word "real" with reckless abandon. Are you saying that hallucinations, dreams, and delusions don't exist? I for one am certain that they do exist.

"I think that view anthropomorphizes machines"

Yes, certainly it anthropomorphizes machines, but you almost make that sound like a bad thing. Anthropomorphizing is a perfectly valid tool of thought, it helps us understand what our fellow creatures are likely to do next; like any tool it can be misused but I don't see why using it to understand a smart computers actions is misusing it. 

"and mechanemorphizes consciousness."

And that is a huge advance, consciousness is the way information feels like when it is being processed, and there is probably not much more that can be said about the subject that is meaningful. On the other hand intelligence is enormously complex and there is much to learn, that's why consciousness research never goes anywhere but intelligence research is extremely fruitful.   

"Machines aren't surprised by anything because they aren't expecting anything."

I don't understand why so many people just assume that a machine might be intelligent but it could never be conscious, when its likely the exact opposite is true.  According to Evolution consciousness is easy to make but intelligence is hard; it took far longer to evolve one than the other. The parts of our brain responsible for the most intense emotions like pain fear anger and even love are many hundreds of millions of years old, but the parts responsible for higher intelligence of which we are so proud and which make our species unique are only about one million years old, perhaps less, perhaps much less. Consciousness is easy but intelligence is hard.

 

"In a 100% deterministic universe there would be no purpose in our caring[...]"

That is self contradictory, caring is my purposing in doing things, I care that things are arranged in ways that I consider less than ideal and that is the reason I seek to do stuff and change things. And if the universe disagrees and insists I have no purpose, well, the universe has its opinion and I have mine.
 

"whether or not we knew what we were going to do next. What difference would it make?"

It would give us a feeling of freedom and if that feeling is important to you then it makes a difference.
 

"We would always just be doing what we are determined to do."

Let's make the (incorrect) assumption that Newtonian physics rules the entire universe: If there is no shortcut, if the only way to know, even theoretically, what something is going to do next is to just watch it and see, is that really deterministic? Such would be the case of a Turing Machine that is programed to look for an even number that is not the sum of two primes greater than 2 and then stop. There is no shortcut, if you want to know what the machine will do you just have to watch it and see.
 

"The literal reality of the machine begins and ends with
it's physical enactment - whether it's neurological, electronic
semiconductor, steam engine and gears, etc."

Yes, and exactly the same is true for human beings.

"What these things know and expect are presumably much different than our projection of our own
knowledge and expectation on them."

Why are our projections fundamentally different from computers? We both work the same way, the only difference is they use transistors and we use neurons. 

"I can't be exported to other matter though."

That has been experimentally proven to be untrue. You are quite literally not the man you were one year ago, all your atoms have been changed. I can only conceive of 3 things existing in the universe, matter, energy, and information. Atoms are interchangeable, energy is generic, so it must be information that makes you be you.

"Organization by itself isn't real."

As I said you're throwing around the word "real" with reckless abandon.

"Adjectives are information and information can be processed. I'd even go so far as to say that although there are differences information is as close as you can get to the traditional concept of the soul and still remain within the scientific method."

"I used to see information that way, and it is true in a sense, but that third person sense in which it can be true is incompatible with subjectivity."

It's true not only in the third person sense but the first person also, I see incompatible with subjectivity whatsoever.

 

  "Information is like soul only in that they are both mistakenly conceived as a pseudosubstance."

As I said information is as close as you can get to the traditional concept of the soul and still remain  within the scientific method. Consider the similarities:

The soul is non material and so is information. It's difficult to pin down a unique physical location for the soul, and the same is true for information. The soul is the essential, must have, part of consciousness, exactly the same situation is true for information. The soul is immortal and so, potentially, is information.                 

But there are also important differences:
    
A soul is unique but information can be duplicated. The soul is and will always remain unfathomable, but information is understandable, in fact information is the ONLY thing that is understandable. Information unambiguously exists, I don't think anyone would deny that, but if the soul exists it will never be proven scientifically.

 

"The great truth of both soul and information is that they are the
perceptions and experiences of matter. Matter is ultimately not
information seemingly materialized, information an abstracted way of
modeling certain aspects of the energy"

Energy is fungible and so are atoms, the things matter is composed of (atoms) are identical, they have no scratches on them, so if atoms have no individuality themselves I don't see how they can confer this interesting property to us. 

 "Mickey Mouse does not live in a Disney universe. He cannot have adventures on his own.

That's because computers are not yet powerful enough, but there is no reason to think that will always be the case. Mickey Mouse lives and so does Moore's Law!

" When I use my hand calculator I expect it to perform real arithmetic, I don't even know what simulated arithmetic is."

"You expect it to perform in a certain way and your expectations are
met. That is all that happens."

Yes, I expect the calculator to perform real arithmetic and it does, I get the exact same result that I'd get if I asked a friend to perform the calculation for me, assuming he was good at real arithmetic. Unreal arithmetic is just bad arithmetic.

"The calculator doesn't know anything about arithmetic, it's just a fancy abacus that opens and closes microelectronic switches when your finger triggers a button contact."

 

A neuron doesn't know anything about arithmetic, it's just a fancy abacus that fires or doesn't fire neurotransmitter molecules across a synapse triggered by potassium and sodium ion concentrations. 

"You are using a trivial concept of intelligence."

I'm saying that something is intelligent if it acts intelligently; that statement is not very profound but it does at least have the virtue of being true.

"Real intelligence is the cognitive tip of the iceberg of a billion years of sensorimotive evolution. It arises out of sensation, feeling, perception, emotion, awareness, and identity. Simulated 'intelligence' is the truncated tip of the iceberg with no semantic significance. It's a facade. To believe that such a facade must be genuine is wishful thinking, propped up by the tautological examination of its own methodology."

All that can be summed up more concisely, if a human does it then its a wonderful example of intelligence but if a computer does the exact same thing it has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence. In 1960 solving complicated equations required intelligence but not today, in 1980 beating a Chess Grandmaster required intelligence but not today, in 1995 being a great research Librarian required intelligence but not today, and in 2010 beating the two best Jeopardy champions on planet Earth required intelligence but not today. Computers are still not very good at image recognition so that requires intelligence but on the day they do become good at it the laws of the universe will change and image recognition will no longer require intelligence. Intelligence is whatever a computer isn't good at. Yet.

 

"Real intelligence is in the eye of the beholder"

Real intelligence can behave in ways you don't like and were not expecting, real intelligence can outsmart you. You can say it was not really "real" intelligence if it makes you feel better, but it won't change the fact that you've been outsmarted.

  John K Clark

[Craig Weinberg]

On Dec 28, 12:39 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> "So will hallucinations, dreams, and delusions surprise you. That
>
> > doesn't make them real.
>
> it seems to me you're throwing around the word "real" with reckless
> abandon. Are you saying that hallucinations, dreams, and delusions don't
> exist? I for one am certain that they do exist.

They don't exist, they insist. Their realism supervenes upon the
interpretation of the subject so that they have no independent ex-
istence. If I hallucinate Fred Flintstone sitting in my kitchen, that
experience may be real for me, I'm not contesting that, but Fred
Flintstone himself has no reality in the context of my actual kitchen.

>
> "I think that view anthropomorphizes machines"
>
> Yes, certainly it anthropomorphizes machines, but you almost make that
> sound like a bad thing. Anthropomorphizing is a perfectly valid tool of
> thought, it helps us understand what our fellow creatures are likely to do
> next; like any tool it can be misused but I don't see why using it to
> understand a smart computers actions is misusing it.

It's fine to use it as long as you know that you don't lose sight of
the fact that it's figurative. There's no harm in anthropomorphizing a
stuffed animal or emoticon or whatever, but if you want to understand
consciousness or emotion and look to something inanimate, you'll be
fooling yourself into an epistemological loop. It is to look at the
word THANK YOU on the lid of a trash can in McDonalds and presuming
that the trash can is being polite. Computers can be thought of as
billions of little plastic THANK YOUs ornamenting the microelectronic
gears of a logical clock. Sentient beings are the exact opposite of
that. We can keep time and understand logic, but those things are
neither necessary nor sufficient to our animal awareness.

>
> "and mechanemorphizes consciousness."
>
> And that is a huge advance, consciousness is the way information feels like
> when it is being processed,

Information doesn't feel like anything. No more than fashion feels
like something when styles change. It's an inversion to consider
information genuinely real. Information is an epiphenomenon of that
which is informing and being informed.

> and there is probably not much more that can be
> said about the subject that is meaningful. On the other hand intelligence
> is enormously complex and there is much to learn, that's why consciousness
> research never goes anywhere but intelligence research is extremely
> fruitful.

Consciousness research doesn't go anywhere because it's being
approached in the wrong way - either as materialism or mechanism, but
it is neither and both. The study of consciousness is currently in a
pre-Copernican state and stands before science as a vast uncharted
hemisphere of the universe. I have no patience for arguments that lean
on the success of conventional wisdom to disqualify the opportunities
for discovery. That is the opposite of science.

>
> "Machines aren't surprised by anything because they aren't expecting
>
> > anything."
>
> I don't understand why so many people just assume that a machine might be
> intelligent but it could never be conscious, when its likely the exact
> opposite is true.

Whether or not a machine could be conscious is the wrong question to
ask. Every physical thing is 'conscious' to the extent that it has the
capacity to detect and respond to events on it's perceptual-
relativistic inertial frame. A machine isn't an actual thing, it's
just a design that we can use to embody our motive sense in any number
of physical forms and not at all in other physical forms (like vapor
or fluid). The computer isn't conscious at all as a whole, but through
the very limited 'consciousness' of each semiconductor, we are able to
project patterns which seem like other things to us, even conscious
things. They aren't literally conscious though.

> According to Evolution consciousness is easy to make but
> intelligence is hard; it took far longer to evolve one than the other. The
> parts of our brain responsible for the most intense emotions like pain fear
> anger and even love are many hundreds of millions of years old, but the
> parts responsible for higher intelligence of which we are so proud and
> which make our species unique are only about one million years old, perhaps
> less, perhaps much less. Consciousness is easy but intelligence is hard.

Intelligence can't evolve without consciousness. They aren't different
things, real intelligence is just a specialized sensorimotive
awareness. Simulated intelligence is theory being pursued through
inorganic mechanism.

>
> > "In a 100% deterministic universe there would be no purpose in our
> > caring[...]"
>
> That is self contradictory, caring is my purposing in doing things, I care
> that things are arranged in ways that I consider less than ideal and that
> is the reason I seek to do stuff and change things. And if the universe
> disagrees and insists I have no purpose, well, the universe has its opinion
> and I have mine.

Determinism cannot have opinions. What would be the point? Why should
you have any preference in how things are arranged if they have always
been and will always be arranged in the way that they are determined
to be?

>
> > "whether or not we knew what we were going to do next. What difference
> > would it make?"
>
> It would give us a feeling of freedom and if that feeling is important to
> you then it makes a difference.

That's circular reasoning. You can't justify the existence of feeling
or meaning by saying that meaning makes things feel meaningful.

>
> > "We would always just be doing what we are determined to do."
>
> Let's make the (incorrect) assumption that Newtonian physics rules the
> entire universe: If there is no shortcut, if the only way to know, even
> theoretically, what something is going to do next is to just watch it and
> see, is that really deterministic?

What does our ability to determine something personally have to do
with whether or not it something actually is deterministic?

> Such would be the case of a Turing
> Machine that is programed to look for an even number that is not the sum of
> two primes greater than 2 and then stop. There is no shortcut, if you want
> to know what the machine will do you just have to watch it and see.
>
> > "The literal reality of the machine begins and ends with
> > it's physical enactment - whether it's neurological, electronic
> > semiconductor, steam engine and gears, etc."
>
> Yes, and exactly the same is true for human beings.
>
> "What these things know and expect are presumably much different than our
>
> > projection of our own
> > knowledge and expectation on them."
>
> Why are our projections fundamentally different from computers? We both
> work the same way, the only difference is they use transistors and we use
> neurons.

Not at all. That's factually incorrect. The neuron doctrine is just
one model of consciousness, one which has failed to have any
explanatory power in reality. A human being doesn't use neurons, it is
the collective life experience of neurons. They are living organisms,
not machines.

>
> "I can't be exported to other matter though."
>
> That has been experimentally proven to be untrue. You are quite literally
> not the man you were one year ago, all your atoms have been changed.

Yet I am also the same man as I was when I was born in another sense.
It's not the literal sense that matters when we are talking about
subjectivity.

> I can
> only conceive of 3 things existing in the universe, matter, energy, and
> information. Atoms are interchangeable, energy is generic, so it must be
> information that makes you be you.

Information doesn't exist. It's matter and energy that have a
proprietary, signifying interiority. They make sense together.

>
> "Organization by itself isn't real."
>
> As I said you're throwing around the word "real" with reckless abandon.

No, I'm being quite straightforward. It's the delusion that
information is literally real that is confusing things for you.

I do deny that. Information does not literally exist any more than the
soul does. It insists.

>
> > "The great truth of both soul and information is that they are the
> > perceptions and experiences of matter. Matter is ultimately not
> > information seemingly materialized, information an abstracted way of
> > modeling certain aspects of the energy"
>
> Energy is fungible and so are atoms, the things matter is composed of
> (atoms) are identical, they have no scratches on them, so if atoms have no
> individuality themselves I don't see how they can confer this interesting
> property to us.

Because we can only make sense of the exterior of atoms. What is
interesting about us is conferred by the cumulative entanglement of
the interior of atoms (and molecules, cells, bodies, etc).

>
> "Mickey Mouse does not live in a Disney universe. He cannot have
>
> > adventures on his own.
>
> That's because computers are not yet powerful enough, but there is no
> reason to think that will always be the case. Mickey Mouse lives and so
> does Moore's Law!

I've been using computers through 30 years of Moore's law and I am not
impressed. What's on the screen looks prettier but the experience of
using them has not improved. To the contrary, for most people they are
mere portals for gossip, trivia, and porn now. Micky Mouse lives only
figuratively.

>
> " When I use my hand calculator I expect it to perform real arithmetic, I>> don't even know what simulated arithmetic is."
>
> "You expect it to perform in a certain way and your expectations are
>
> > met. That is all that happens."
>
> Yes, I expect the calculator to perform real arithmetic and it does, I get
> the exact same result that I'd get if I asked a friend to perform the
> calculation for me, assuming he was good at real arithmetic. Unreal
> arithmetic is just bad arithmetic.

If you make a mistake though, your friend might catch it, but the
calculator cannot.

>
> "The calculator doesn't know anything about arithmetic, it's just a fancy
>
> > abacus that opens and closes microelectronic switches when your finger
> > triggers a button contact."
>
> A neuron doesn't know anything about arithmetic, it's just a fancy abacus
> that fires or doesn't fire neurotransmitter molecules across a synapse
> triggered by potassium and sodium ion concentrations.

You are looking at the exterior behavior of the neuron only. Our
entire lives are literally created through neurons and we know that
they are filled with human feeling and experiences so we need not
indulge in the sophistry that neurology isn't related to
consciousness. Since we can't say the same thing about a computer, we
can only go by the facts that computers don't seem to ever do anything
that suggests that they can feel or choose to do something beyond
their programming.

>
> "You are using a trivial concept of intelligence."
>
> I'm saying that something is intelligent if it acts intelligently; that
> statement is not very profound but it does at least have the virtue of
> being true.

It's not profound and it's not true. Any puppet can be made to 'act
intelligently' and any super intelligent entity can act stupidly.
Intelligence is not a behavior, it's a elaboration of the capacity to
interpret sense and motive.

>
> "Real intelligence is the cognitive tip of the iceberg of a billion years
>
> > of sensorimotive evolution. It arises out of sensation, feeling,
> > perception, emotion, awareness, and identity. Simulated 'intelligence' is
> > the truncated tip of the iceberg with no semantic significance. It's a
> > facade. To believe that such a facade must be genuine is wishful thinking,
> > propped up by the tautological examination of its own methodology."
>
> All that can be summed up more concisely, if a human does it then its a
> wonderful example of intelligence but if a computer does the exact same
> thing it has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence.

What humans do is an example of human intelligence. What computers do
is an example of human intelligence at programming semiconductors. The
semiconductors know all about voltage and current but nothing about
the messages and pictures being traded through those systems.

> In 1960 solving
> complicated equations required intelligence but not today, in 1980 beating
> a Chess Grandmaster required intelligence but not today, in 1995 being a
> great research Librarian required intelligence but not today, and in 2010
> beating the two best Jeopardy champions on planet Earth required
> intelligence but not today. Computers are still not very good at image
> recognition so that requires intelligence but on the day they do become
> good at it the laws of the universe will change and image recognition will
> no longer require intelligence. Intelligence is whatever a computer isn't
> good at. Yet.

Computation is not intelligence. It's really just organized patience.
A computer doesn't look at a chess game and feel that it wants to win,
it just blasts out every possible permutation and selects the move
which satisfies the script it's executing. It doesn't care if it wins
or not or even know it's playing a game. The computer is an infinitely
patient and accurate moron with a well trained muscle instead of a
mind.

>
> > "Real intelligence is in the eye of the beholder"
>
> Real intelligence can behave in ways you don't like and were not expecting,
> real intelligence can outsmart you. You can say it was not really "real"
> intelligence if it makes you feel better, but it won't change the fact that
> you've been outsmarted.

When a computer kills its programmer intentionally, then and only then
will you will know it is intelligent.

Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 28 Dec 2011, at 03:38, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On 27 Dec 2011, at 03:03, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Dec 26, 3:48 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

Let i = 0, 1, 2, 3, ... be an enumeration of all programs in some

programming language. This enumerates all partial computable function

phi_i (phi_0, phi_1, phi_2, phi_3, ...).

You can already see a machine+mind or syntax:semantics relation at

play here. i plays the role of the code, if not relative matter, and

phi_i, the function (the set of input-output of the program i) plays

the role of the mind or semantics.

Self-reference makes this simple view more complex, and more rich, and

the machine can access them by the use of a relative universal

environment (a universal number). Typically a universal number can

compute phi_i from i. It is the interpretation done by the

interpreter. It is what computer do, and we still does not allow them

to use self-reference, except for optimization (but it is risky

because the semantics becomes intractable, and we can lose the control

of the machine).

Sorry, too computery for me. I don't think you can enumerate all
programs in a programming language because some programs redefine the
language dynamically.

We can enumerate all programs, and this gives all partial computable functions. This is elementary recursion theory (or computability theory). Computable = (semi) recursion, by Church thesis. 

By what logic would quantities develop

qualities?

By the unavoidable self-reference logic, which entails the existence

of many variate modalities/person points of view.

A number can't refer to itself without a body concept automatically

arising?

You can see the number as a sort of abstract body. It is the code, or

the description of the machine in some universal environment.

That's not real. There is no universal environment.

Universal environment means Universal machine, or universal numbers. 

I do think that we are sort of "words" in a "physical" programming

language. Cytoplasm + DNA is already a couple of universal numbers

interpreting each other. A number is a body relatively to a universal

number. The average personal body is ultimately "made of" the work of

the infinity of Universal Numbers competing below the personal level

of substitution.

How does that work though? How does 'work' make things out of nothing?
There is nothing in our real experience to suggest that this is
possible.

We don't know any natural process which would be non Turing emulable, except for the collapse of the wave, which is unfortunately never well defined or explain. Stricto sensu, the wave collapse is only a statement according to which QM is false, despite QM explains well, when applied to couple observer-observed, the collapse phenomenology.

So if something non-computational is at work, it is up to you to explain us where, how, and why. 

It's circular again. If you already have qualitative presentations,

then sure, some presentations are more efficacious than others for the

first person agendas that arise, but why would any kind of qualitative

presentation occur at all in numerical primitives?

Because qualitative presentation are highly efficacious.

That's begging the question. These presentations are highly
efficacious to us, but they are useless to a computer.

On the contrary. We can prove precisely that speeding-up only for computers.

On almost all inputs, computer are (crazily enough) unboundedly speedable, by results due to Gödel and Blum.

Object oriented
languages and GUI presentation layers are for human programmers and
users, not for computers. We have to get rid of that stuff by
compiling it into machine code because the computer has no use for it
at all. Why would it make computation any more efficacious?

This is proved by the diagonalization technic. It is far from trivial.

They speed-up

the working of a machine.

I think they slow it down. Otherwise we should write programs in
Shakespearean English.

?

Consciousness is probably unavoidable for

self-moving entities, to anticipate complex tridimensional moves.

Depends what you mean by consciousness. Something knows that it is
moving but it doesn't have to know that it knows it's moving.

Indeed. That is I think the main difference between universal numbers and Löbian numbers. Self-consciousness is consciousness with one more reflexive loop. It is the difference between Robinsonian arithmetic (without induction) and Löbian arithmetic (with induction). It can be shown that the induction axioms provide the necessary reflective loop, and makes believability and knowledge more reflexive: Bp -> BBp (technically it makes the worlds' accessibility transitive). I have referred to some technical book to study to get all this right.

And

they are unavoidable as fixed point semantics, like there is always a

point on map embedded in a territory which match the place it

describes (the "you are there" point).

Only maps which humans use.

Why?

Computers or robots don't need to know
where they are, they just need to anticipate the consequences of a
given trajectory of an abstract coordinate set in a given topology.
They don't care whether or not it's 'them' and I would not anticipate
that any such awareness could ever arise by itself computationally.

You have not yet point on what is non turing emulable in nature, except the non intelligible use of "sensorimotive".

What is the explanation that comp provides? What gives rise to a

global abstraction? Where does it come from? What determines the

possibilities there?

The numbers' abilities that you can derive already from addition and

multiplication.

Numbers don't add or multiply themselves though.

In which way would the number relations depend on us.

Something has to
enact that motive physically - either through neuons, semiconductors,
gears, or whatever.

A number has automatically relations with other numbers relatively to any universal numbers, and this in the same independent way than, say, the way the prime numbers are distributed. We have no choice about that.

All functions of pain could and would

be accomplished programmatically without any experience at all.

Imagine that this were true. You would have zombie.

No, you would have a puppet.

Then you cannot say "all functions of pain could and would ...".

I can though. The *functions* of pain are easily reproduced with a
puppet. You have the puppet yelp and whimper, jump around and hold
it's foot, etc. If you have an advanced robotic puppet that actually
acts like it knows what pain is, then you can program logic to
remember what kinds of situations can result in damage or stress to
it's equipment and script avoidance behaviors to guard against those
outcomes. None of that involves any feeling of pain whatsoever, nor
would any such feeling possibly arise out of such a mechanism.

How do you know that?

To
assume that is just reverse engineering our own feelings and
projecting them on an inanimate object.

That's all we can do, with any notion of consciousness. You do that with transistors and neurons, too.

What is concrete? What is time? What is space? Those things are what I

want to understand. I cannot take such notions as granted.

Concrete is that which can be experienced directly.

Directly? Or by using a millions years old evolved natural computing machinery?

I see a picture of
a watch on TV. The watch was concrete to the camera, but now only the
camera's picture is concrete to me. I have no actual experience of the
concrete watch but I have an experience of the TV show. Time is just
sequential experience normalized among other common experiences. Time
is how narrative awareness builds perceptual significance. Space is
just the distance between exterior objects.

I don't assume such things. I told you that those are what we need to explain.

It attenuates subjective
presence through the opposite ontology - simultaneous (non-sequential)
geometric possibilities.

I think that you are confusing the intellectual

idea of experience with the actual physical realism.

That is handled by the distinction between Bp and p, or between

provability of p and truth of p.

That's just the intellectual idea of the difference between the idea
and the idea of actuality.

The idea of actuality is still of the type Bp. Not p.

It doesn't make it any more actually real.
There is no physical realism that can be accessed by ideal
abstraction.

There are many candidates. 

If I count a

dozen eggs, that is a cognitive abstraction projected onto the reality

of eggs, not a reality of dozen-ness being relatively implemented

through an egg carton.

If you assume some primitive physical reality. I do not.

So you are saying that you assume that yes, there actually is a
primitive dozen-ness which controls eggs and cartons.

To make it simple: yes.

 How can we assert

positively that arithmetic is primitive if that assertion itself would

be meaningless and redundant if it were the case.

Why would it be?

Because why would arithmetic need to assert something about itself? It
seems like the nature of arithmetic, UDA, etc is that all
possibilities are already asserted locally somewhere. That's sort of
the point. You don't have to explain why the universe does some things
and not others because you just say that it does everything possible
eventually. What part of that could not know that it was primitive
already and if it did, how could it suddenly find out or suspect it
without knowing?

Why would it not know it?

If arithmetic were

primitive, then there would only need to be arithmetic since it is

already maximally functional.

That works for God, Universe or any Whole. The point is that the whole

is bigger than what the internal creature can conceive, so they build

theories.

But there is no internal creature, it's just a program. It's not going
to build theories unless it's programmed to do that, and if it did, it
would just be a part of the program, not something that is believed by
something.

That's might follow from your non-comp assumption. But that does not make it true.

I don't think that's true because pain

and pleasure are too variable and idiosyncratic to be connected with

universal numbers.

Each universal numbers get quickly complex personal idiosyncratic

behavior and qualia. There is no universal theory of the universal

numbers. In fact universal numbers can defeat all universal theory.

How can they be said to be numbers then? Isn't numeracy a universal

theory?

No. It is a semantics, a realm. Arithmetical truth escape all

effective theories. It something we can explore. Without knowing in

advance the many surprising things we can discover.

I agree there are many surprising things to discover, I just don't
think that genuine human subjectivity will ever be one of them.

Again. 

Kleene's technic handle this very well. We can build self-referential

machine and sentence. The self-reference does not even have to appeal

explicitly to the universal neighbors.

The sentence just points us to an idea of a

sentence being false but has no power to actually take control over

the interpretation of itself.

Machines can do that. I can build a machine able to change the way it

interprets itself.

I don't think that machines can interpret themselves in the first
place. They are just puppets which can be trained to act like they are
learning. In a sense it is changing and learning, but not in a
subjective sense.

You say so. 

That requires the sensorimotive

participation of a sentient interpreter. The sentence itself doesn't

know what 'this sentence' means so it has no capacity to locate it.

It can, with varied notion of knowledge.

And it is not clear how "sensorimotive participation" works for this

either.

That's just explaining away awareness.  You're just redefining the
term knowledge to disqualify the difference between the subjective
experience of knowing and the objective functions and behaviors which
suggest knowledge.

It can be proved that Bp & p obeys the classical logic of knowledge. It is eminently subjective, because it cannot even be defined in arithmetic, and so is not formal in any sense. I use only axiomatic definitions on which most experts agree.

This may be the fundamental problem with comp. It assumes causal

efficacy a priori, and therefore begs the question of its own

primitive status.

Comp arises from addition and multiplication. That is used in all

physical explanations too.

Addition and multiplication are no more real than comp. They are ideas
that we have to teach and learn. Shortcuts to make quantitative
pattern recognition simpler for us. They are no more real than good
and evil or matter and energy.

Without addition and multiplication, you can't even define what is a theory and proofs. We have to assume something, and most people agree with the axiom of arithmetic, but not on things like good, evil, or even matter and energy. Your assumptions are still unclear to me.

And we can explain why numbers have to be primitive/ We cannot explain

them with ontologically less.

It makes sense to me that we would think we would have to explain why
numbers have to be primitive, because they have no choice but to be
internally consistent. It's like the law. By definition the law
defines itself as a primitive legal authority, but it's just because
the system is an echo chamber...which is exactly why it can't be
primitive. They are closed systems relative to the rest of the cosmos
(even though they may contain infinities within their category of
sensemaking).

I don't assume "cosmos".

Universal numbers are born theological. They quickly guess that

something huge exist independently of themselves.

What gives birth to them?

We can explain why we cannot answer that question.

That seems to indicate that they are ciphers born of high order
logical explanation, not universal primitives.

What are your universal primitive? 

They do not need any parameters, others than the infinitely different

numbers relations.

How so? I can't paint arithmetic pink. It doesn't kick back to being
painted.

That's why the mind-body problem is difficult, in all theories. how can a grey brain experience colorful sensation.

Photoshop doesn't give me an error when I make an impossible shadow.

Nor does the primitive universe when I put salt in my coffee.

Putting salt in your coffee isn't impossible, it's just accidental or
eccentric.

Using photoshop to make an impossible shadows is not impossible too. It is just bad drawing.

The awareness comes from the essential unity of all matter in one

sense and the existential divisions of matter through all the other

senses. Awareness is just the interior of matter. That's why we feel

like we are inside of our body and not hovering around in a data

buffer somewhere.

I see only a vague and risky metaphor here. Define "interior of

matter". Well, define "matter" first.

For us humans, the easiest definition of matter is 'what our body is
made of' and the interior of the body is our ongoing life experience
of being the person associated with that body.

This looks like playing with word. "Inner" is not the same for subjectivity and topology.

Both the quanta and qualia are derivable from computer science, thanks

to the splitting between truth and proof.

How are qualia derived from computer science?

Read the second part of sane04, perhaps. I can come back on this. In a nutshell: incompleteness shows that some truth are not justififiable by machine, but still available by experience and guess. Some intensional variant of the gap between truth and provability explains the existence of qualia.

Can it predict even a
single color that we aren't familiar with?

It can predict the existence of new qualia for some brain perturbation. It predicts that quanta behaves partially like qualia.

, with comp, so that we can test

comp by comparing the inferred physics (from observation) and the

comp

theoretical physics. That's an infinite task, and we can only hope

that comp will be refuted, or bet on it and expands in that

direction.

I don't see that comp needs to be refuted, since comp is the only

thing that gives us reason to believe comp.

?

If not for the recursive logic of logical recursion, there would be no
reason to suspect that anything could be literally reduced to
computation. It's like Zeno's revenge. It's not real.

That's your assumption.

We are still filtering divine sense through human sense though.

Why are you sure it is not the contrary? Or that it depends on each of

us?

Because we don't become literally omnipotent when that happens. The
drug wears off and we have to go on with our lives.

In the comp theory, there is a tradeoff between science and potence, and none of them can be maximal.

Of course we are working with different hypotheses. electromagnetism

can implement computations, but this does not mean something else

can't do it. And the theory of electromagnetism assumes the natural

numbers (I think).

If I'm right, there is nothing else in the universe but
(sensorimotive) electromagnetism that does anything.

How will you explain electromagnetism without mentioning numbers? How will you explain "explaining"?

What about nuclear force, also. And gravitation? How do you know that sensorimotive (whatever that means) does not apply to quark and gluons? 

That cooperation then would be a universal motive. Seems more

primitive than the individual UNs.

It is, if you put the theorem of arithmetic in the "primitive realm".

This would be just a convention.

What if that cooperation also applied equally primitively to
nonarithmetic phenomena though?

Arithmetical truth force some realism on many non arithmetical things, which explains why it is best to not introducing them in some ad-hoc way. Cooperation can develop between them too.

Numbers however will follow around physics wherever it goes.

Numbers have no charge, no mass, no shape, no spin, ... They have

nothing making them physical at all. You confuse numbers with their

local manifestation. That there is an euro in my bank might be a

physical fact, I hope. But one euro is not the number one.

But what is it that does have charge, mass, shape, and spin and why do

numbers want them around? I wouldn't call a euro a physical fact, it's

a logical convention.

The presence of a euro in a bank is a physical facts. Testable, etc.

Numbers don't want spin around them. Those arise for mathematical

reasons.

Are you talking about a paper banknote in a safe or a digital value
accessible through a financial computer network? In the former, the
physical fact is just paper in a metal box. In the latter it's
microelectronic switches in different servers and storage arrays.
Neither of them are physical euros.

Paper is not physical? Electronic is not physical?

The currency could be dropped next
month and suddenly there won't have been euros in any bank.

OK. But not really relevant to the point.

You can say that you don't delete cartoon characters or mythological

deities either.

Correct.

Why aren't those non-local identities universal

primitives?

They might be. The question is their rarity relatively to universal

numbers. The comp physics does not exclude them from ontology, but

explain (or have to explain) why some entities are rarer than others.

Cf the measure problem.

So it's not really arithmetic that's primitive, it's just anything we
make up.

With comp the ontology is what you want. The physical laws are independent of the choice of the UN. But a careful minimal choice can help to get a coherent explanation of both the appearance of quanta and qualia.

That doesn't seem

like the computer is obeying computable number relations, it is just

doing what we have manufactured it to do and the numerical

interpretations are ours.

Not in the case of universal numbers. They do the interpretation all

by themselves. That why we call some of them "interpreter". That

results from computer science. Computers can interpret data, and even

search for better interpretation (learning).

It depends on what the interpreter is physically made of. You need

solid matter with particular properties. Vapor or pudding can't

interpret universal numbers by themselves. You have to construct a

special rig out of specific materials selected for physical qualities

to support any computation that would be coherent to us.

We need only to be able to share some universal numbers. Clearly we

do.

Do we share them or just agree on the idea of them?

We can't know that for sure, but we can hope for sharing, to avoid solipsism. Just using the net right now is a strong evidence of some sharing taking place.

Physical brain just makes our dreams sharable, and permits to our

consciousness to manifest itself relatively to others and relatively

oru most probable shared deep universal computational history.

Why would we need a physical brain to share dreams?

Try to share without brain, or even without your computer. Brains an universal numbers can store knowledge, retrieved them, and makes some them communicable through dialog between different UNs, supported by common UMs.

Arithmetical Platonia *is* what exists, or what is real. It is

described through the use the simple first order logic of existence, +

the assumption of the existence of 0 and its successors.

What if the first order of existence isn't logic?

Logic is just a cognitive tool for entities wanting to share some type of communicable experiences. It is not primitive. Numbers invented it. They need logic at the meta-level to communicate this.

I think we are so persuaded by the similarity between the two in

our own minds that we mistake symbol for reality.

You do that for the numbers, perhaps.

It would seem that way to someone who thinks that numbers are
universally real.

What would it mean that numbers are not universally real?

We are so used to

taking symbols literally - paper currency for money, etc, that we

forget that ideas don't just become real by themselves.

That is why we need to assume the existence of something. Numbers are

then enough, once we bet on comp. This is not trivial.

I do assume the existence of something: sense. Numbers are a high
order, a posteriori category of logical sense, not a generative
causally efficacious force beneath physical appearance. Physics works
because it feels right to work the way it does, not because there is a
UD running the puppet show.

Perhaps. My point is only that if comp is true, then physics' object are supervening on arithmetical relation, and so we can test and perhaps refute comp. How could we refute your theory?

You believe in the UDA because it feels
right to you, you understand the sense it makes so it satisfies you in
different ways. You enjoy thinking and communicating about it, as do I
with multisense realism. That is the motive and the energy driving our
pursuit of it. It's not inevitable or arithmetic.

You say so.

We would do
something else if it made more sense for us. You could turn it around
and see our behavior from the perspective of a hypothetical omniscient
voyeur and say that we are just working out the arithmetic of our
circumstance and identity, and that's true to in a sense, but it's an
inference rather than a direct experience.

Direct experience leads to consciousness only. All the rest are guess and attempt of explanations.

We can't know whether or
not we are scripted, but we do know that it doesn't feel that way, and
that can't be explained in a scripted universe.

On the contrary: incompleteness explains why machine can discover how they function and why it does not feel like that. We are bound to confuse the hypostases in everyday life, but introspection and reasoning can shows the roots of the counter-intuitive facts. Science is born from that departure from intuition, with unavoidable exaggeration, and then correction. 

That's not numbers interpreting strings, that's just semiconductors

blindly executing a sophisticated instruction.

Why blind? I mean even in your theory. Why would semi-conductor fails

to have the sensorimotive stuff. They are also electromagnetic.

They do have sensorimotive stuff. They aren't blind to opening and
closing circuits, just to the human meaning which we project on to
those events. It's like a horse race. The horses know they are running
a race but they don't know that there's gambling and handicapping and
tv audiences in parimutuel betting lounges all over the world. This is
why it's multisense realism. Our sense of the computer has layers of
figurative sense on top of the literal physical sense. It's like the
seven layer network model. The router makes a kind of sense out of the
activity of the cables, and the network protocol makes sense out of
the activity of the routers, but not the other way around. The cables
don't make sense out of the ip protocol. It's a holarchy. Top level
instructions are passed down the stack, but bottom level conditions
make up the architecture and modulate the capacities of the
instructions to be passed.

I still fail to see why that's different from a modular explanation of the way a brain is working.

It seems ad hoc, to even use the sensorimotive to say that a computer cannot be conscious (or cannot bear a conscious person).

A well articulated

puppet. It is the programmer who does the interpretation in writing

the algorithm to determine what is spam and what isn't. The computer

and the code knows nothing at all about the meaning of what it's

doing. It could be separating mail from spam or human heads from

screaming throats, it makes no difference at all.

I grant you that the current hand-made computer ignores a lot of

thing, and above all it does not have high self-referential power. But

this is circumstantial. You could have said that of the genomus of

bacteria and cells. You eliminate possible high level emergence of

notions. In fact you have a reductionist conception of both third

person physics and comp.

Because both physics and comp alone are not real. I'm not against them
being useful as figurative extensions of the real, but my view is that
realism certainly arises from the sense between subject and object.
While subjects remain disembodied and objects remain unperceived,
there is no realism.

Realism on what? What is real? You theory is still too much fuzzy to be criticized constructively.

May be you should take some time to study how a computer really

works,

to convince yourself that there is an interpretation done

independently of anyone looking at the interpreter. This will help to

understand that an infinity of complex interpretative loops exist in

abundance in the arithmetical truth.

Maybe you should take some time away from the workings of computers

and study first person awareness so you can see how dependent

computation is on human interpretation. Without a monitor or other

output mechanism a computer's computations would be useless to us.

I don't use the notion of use. Computation have played a role in math

before we build computers.

Even without computers, we still need to write out equations or
vocalize them or imagine them with our physical neurological
faculties.

I don't see why. And with comp I can prove such approach does not make sense.

All of them, in the 3th, and 5th hypostases. The difficulty is that

we

can still not distinguish between them; but we are only at the

beginning of the interview.

Hm. I don't know enough about them. I don't see how a biological

feeling could be quantified without making one or the other

superfluous.

Feeling (be it of machine or animals) cannot be quantified. They

appear in modalities, or personal views, through the modalities of

self-reference.

Those are just reminders of own feelings about modalities and self
reference. There need not be any feeling at all associated with
computational 'self reference' and indeed I think it would not be
possible or rational to assume it could arise as a consequence of
comp.

But we can explain this almost completely, and explain why we cannot explain it completely. 

You type of explanation assume the mystery at the start, and dilute it in a matter which looks like primitive matter.

OK. So you do agree that 0 + 1 = 1, 0 + 2 = 2, etc. That's what I

meant for 0 + x = x. "x" is for an arbitrary natural number.

I agree that it can be agreed, but I don't agree that they are true by

themselves. Their truth is a consequence of the sense we make out of

them.

That's true for everything a priori. But you suppose much more

(electromagnetism, for example, which includes waves and numbers).

That's why sense has to be the primitive.

That's the gap explanation use of sense. It explains nothing, imo.

Waves and numbers are a
posteiori second order logics we project on electromagnetism. The
literal phenomenon is just feeling and motive,

Then you might try to derive Maxwell equations from that.

but we observe them
from a distance as attraction and repulsion, power and current, forces
and fields, etc.

That sense is shared with many distant frames of reference of

the micro and macrocosm but it is not very appropriate to the warm

fuzzy sense which dominates our mesocosm. They are indeed very low

level, broadly applicable semiotics, but they are still just

mechanized signs, not referents or genuine interpreters.

You say so, but I am not convinced.

What could convince you though?

A derivation of Maxwell's equation from sense, and incompatible with comp.

I think that everything is contingent trough interpretation. It is

better to define "contingent" once we agree on an interpretation.

Interpretation = sense.

Then UN have sense.

but the quantitative sense of equal has a stronger sense and

ultimately a different sense than it has for blue.

You lost me, I have to say.

To say that 'blueberries and electric sparks both = blue' is not as
strong as saying 'the temperature = 37 degrees celsius'.

Using this example,

I can conclude that equal does not equal itself in every sense, and

therefore no equality can be said to be unambiguously and literally

true, even blue. We use the same word out of linguistic convention but

ultimately the word equal is figurative.

Well logicians knows that it is hard to distinguish equality with a

fine grained possible equivalence relation. The notion is not entirely

trivial. But that's why we use axiom, and in this case it seems to me

that x = x is reasonable with x referring to natural numbers, without

philosophizing too much.

Sure it's reasonable as a natural number axiom, but it can be
misleading and presumptuous as a universal primitive principle.

Give me what you take as universal primitive, in a axiomatic way, without using numbers.

and that (x + (y + 1)) = (x + y) + 1, that's almost good enough.

I don't think that the universe doesn't know what that means. Many

things my feel something that has consequences which human minds can

interpret that way, but that disembodied interpretation isn't a

literal form and it isn't commanding matter.

It is, as a consequence of the UDA. Not just commanding it, but

dreaming it.

How does it decide what to dream as matter

By obeying to the laws of addition and multiplication (or others

equivalent).

Do all possible universes based on addition and multiplication
necessarily result in matter dreams?

Yes.

Do some have a mixture of matter
and disembodied spirits that materialize suddenly? Are all universes
as rigidly consistent as ours regarding physics?

Yes. Comp even predicts that most laws of physics remains similar in heaven and intermediate type of realities. Comp makes physics quite solid, by funding it on elementary computable relations. But the laws themselves cannot be all computable.

and what to just dream?

All dreams. With a terrible redundancy, playing some role in the way

universal consciousness can filter personal histories.

Not sure what you mean. I was just wondering what decides which
realities get to be matter and which don't.

The question is a bit ambiguous, but all realities with UNs get material appearances. 

we say that x < y if it exists z such that x + z = y.  For example 12

is smaller than 24.

I have never heard of any word in physics bigger than 1000^1000. Even

in math big numbers are rare, although some occur in number theory and

in logic, where technic exist to provide name to *very* big number.

Now, some non stopping programs can build self-complexifying reality,

like the UD, the Mandelbrot set, etc.

You're talking about size in a figurative sense of quantity of digits.
I'm saying that sense isn't compatible with a spatial presence.

Spatial presence(s) are sensed.

Electron can excite other electron getting more energetic orbital, and

leaving a photon when getting back to their favorite state, at ambiant

temperature. If that is what you mean by "illuminating", it makes

sense. But I don't see why electricity is sense itself.

I meant electricity corresponds to sense symmetrically. Electricity is
to sense as magnetism is to motive.

I feel like you have a lot to work on before making this precise and meaningful, even assuming non-comp.

I have a different conception of illumination though. I don't think
that electrons or photons are literally real, I think they are
sensorimotive commonalities which matter (like light sources, eyes,
reflective surfaces, detection instruments) shares. We have no way to
tell whether photons exist or that's just the way matter makes sense
of itself makes sense to us. It doesn't seem likely that anything with
the characteristics attributed to a photon (chargeless, massless,
intangible particle-wave traveling infinitely fast within any given
frame of reference) can be said to be real.

How do you explain their appearances?

But you might try to develop a lexicon, or an epistemic interpretation

of electromagnetism.

Even if you succeed, that would still not contradict comp, unless your

epistemic interpretation introduce a non Turing emulable property of

EM waves. Then describe the device to test the idea.

The non-Turing emulable property of EM is sensorimotive perception.

It looks like vitalism or phlogiston.

There are no literal waves, they are rhythms of subjective feelings of
hold and release. We just infer the wave or particle qualities in
third person. We are the device to test the idea. If we alter the
electromagnetic conditions within the relevant areas of our brain, we
experience precise sensorimotive correlates. It is already proved, we
just aren't interpreting it correctly yet.

?

But why does it take a long time? Seems like it should be obvious if

UMs were truly universal.

Why? Most UMs are slow. More rapid UMs takes time to develop

relatively to the slow one.

Why do they take time? What do you say that time is?

In this case, I measure it in term of computational steps (for example made by the UD, when restricting it to each of its generated computations).

How does relating to

truth push a locomotive to Chicago?

It is difference between writing "pushing a locomotive to Chicago"

and

pushing a locomotive to Chicago.

If you doubt the difference try this: 1) write "pushing a locomotive

to Chicago", and 2) push a locomotive to Chicago.

It the same with numbers, except people can confuse sentence and

proposition more easily, due to the abstract character of the

numbers.

But the difference is there too.

That's what I'm saying though. It seems like you are saying that 1)

inherently leads to 2).

On the contrary. The numbers contains already all the description of

all computations, but without the laws of addition and multiplication,

nothing can be said to happen. "1)" leads to "2) through laws and

rules, or logical relations.

I don't think that laws are real. They are a postieri analytical
normalizations of observations.

But those are real too. (Or you confuse a law, and a human expression of a law).

If not, what would be the point of having

both. Why does reality need abstraction or sentient abstraction need

realism?

Reality needs nothing. It just is. *We* try to figure out the big

picture from inside. We try to distinguish what is necessary from what

is contingent.

We aren't reality?

We are aspects of some unknown reality.

Hmm. I can't relate. It just seems like a posteriori caricatures of

experienced epistemology to me.

I'm afraid you might have to study them a little more.

I wish I could, but I'm allergic.

What can I say to that?

Seeming is deceiving, especially in the communicable fundamental matter.

I think the opposite. With qualia, seeming is everything.

From the first person of view. Which is only everything in the solipsist theories.

Yes. But we are talking about people. matter is exterior because it is

"made-of" of the too fine grained computations bringing our histories

at a lower level that our substitution level.

I think we are close, but you are sticking to computations being real
and primitive so that can be the only difference between mind and
matter. Consider though that the brain and the mind can't be separate
computations. There is no evidence of that. What the evidence does
suggest, if it were interpreted without preconception, is that the
brain looks like its computing on the outside but it feels like the
universe as seen from inside of a person on the inside. They are just
different (symmetrically opposite) views of the same thing.

With comp, mind is vastly bigger. The physical reality is only the border of it as seen from inside.

I would agree if I thought it could feel itself on the level of a

person, but I think he's just a trillion binary puppets now.

I know. That's your reductionism.

Reductionism is appropriate in this case because there is no reason to
give a puppet the benefit of the doubt.

Slavery is appropriate because there is no reason to give an indian the benefit of the doubt. 

Universal machines are not automata, nor puppets.

Bruno

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

[John Clark]

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>Are you saying that hallucinations, dreams, and delusions don't exist?

>They don't exist, they insist. Their realism supervenes upon the interpretation of the subject so that they have no independent ex-istence.

But you can say the same thing about ANYTHING. Making predictions and manipulating the world is the most we can hope for, nobody has seen deep reality. Our brain just reacts to the electro-chemical signals from nerves connected to a transducer called an eye. Our computers react to the electronic signals from wires connected to a transducer called a TV camera.

Our brain uses theories to explain these signals, so would intelligent computers. Theories explain how some sense sensations relate to other sense sensations. For example we receive information from our eyes, we interpret that information as a rock moving at high speed and heading toward a large plate glass window, we invent a theory that predicts that very soon we will receive another sensation, this time from our ears, that we will describe as the sound of breaking glass. Soon our prediction is confirmed so the theory is successful; but we should remember that the sound of broken glass is not broken glass, the look of broken glass is not broken glass, the feel of broken glass is not broken glass. What "IS" broken glass? It must have stable properties of some sort or I wouldn't be able to identify it as a "thing". I don't know what those ultimate stable properties are, but I know what they are not, they are not sense sensations. I have no idea what glass "IS". The sad truth is, I can point to "things" but I don't know what a thing "IS", and I'm not even sure that I know what "IS" is, and an intelligent computer would be in exactly the same boat I am.             

> There's no harm in anthropomorphizing a stuffed animal or emoticon or whatever

What about anthropomorphizing your fellow human beings? It seems to me to be very useful to pretend that other people have feelings just like I do, at least it's useful when they are not acting unintelligently, like when other people are sleeping or dead. 

> but if you want to understand consciousness or emotion [...]

You have only one example of consciousness that you can examine directly, your own. If you want to study the consciousness of others, be they made of meat or metal, then like it or not you MUST anthropomorphize.

> Computers can be thought of as billions of little plastic THANK YOUs ornamenting the microelectronic gears of a logical clock.

You take something grand and glorious, like intelligence or consciousness, and break it up into smaller and simpler pieces, then you take those pieces and break them up again into even smaller and simpler pieces, then you repeat the process again, and again, and again, and again. Eventually you come to something that is not the slightest bit grand or glorious and you say, "this can not have anything to do with intelligence or consciousness because it is too small and simple and is no longer grand and glorious". And you want to understand how something very complicated works so you break it into smaller pieces and you come to understand how the individual pieces work but then you say "I want to understand this thing but that explanation can't be right because I understand it". Foolish argument is it not?

> Information doesn't feel like anything.

Interesting piece of information, how did you obtain it? Did this information about information come to you in a dream?

> It's an inversion to consider information genuinely real.

There you go again with the "R" word. OK if it makes you happy there will never be a AI that is "really" intelligent", but it could easily beat you in any intellectual pursuit you care to name; so I guess being "real" isn't very important. 

> Consciousness research doesn't go anywhere because it's being approached in the wrong way

It doesn't go anywhere because consciousness theorizing is too easy, any theory will work just fine; but intelligence theorizing is hard as hell and most intelligence theories fail spectacularly, so enormous progress has been made in making machines intelligent. That is also why armchair theorists always talk about consciousness and never intelligence; consciousness is easy but intelligence is hard. 

> Whether or not a machine could be conscious is the wrong question to ask.

I agree, even if the machine isn't conscious that's it's problem not mine, the question to ask is "is the machine intelligent?". And the answer is that it is if it behaves that way

> A machine isn't an actual thing, it's just a design

Yes a design, in other words it's just information. And the thing that makes your 3 pound brain different from 3 pounds of corned beef is the way the atoms are arranged, in other words information.

> Intelligence can't evolve without consciousness.

If so then the Turing Test works for consciousness and not just intelligence; so if you have a smart computer you know it is conscious; but the reverse is not necessarily true, a conscious computer may or may not be smart.

> Determinism cannot have opinions. What would be the point?

I don't understand the question, what would be who's point?

> Why should you have any preference in how things are arranged if they have always
been and will always be arranged in the way that they are determined to be?

Because neither you nor a outside observer knows what those prearrangements will lead to, deterministic or not the only way to know what you are going to do next is to watch you and see. And if you don't like everything always happening because of cause and effect that's fine, the alternative is that some things do not happen because of cause and effect, and there is a word for that "random". If you find that being a pair of dice is philosophically more satisfying than being a cuckoo clock that's fine with me; there is no disputing matters of taste. 

> That's circular reasoning. You can't justify the existence of feeling
or meaning by saying that meaning makes things feel meaningful.

The feeling of freedom comes from the inability to always predict what we are going to do next even in a unchanging environment, and this inability would be there even if the universe were 100% deterministic (it's not), and most people find this feeling pleasant. What is circular about that?

>  The neuron doctrine is just one model of consciousness,

You can say that again! There are more models of consciousness than you can shake a stick at.

>  one which has failed to have any explanatory power in reality.

Yes, exactly like every other model of consciousness, not one has the slightest bit of experimental evidence in its favor,  consciousness theories are all equally useless. So lets talk about intelligence theories even though that is astronomically more difficult.

> A human being doesn't use neurons, it is the collective life experience of neurons. They are living organisms, not machines.

What about the parts of those neurons? Is the neurotransmitter acetylcholine a living organism? And what about the parts of that molecule, is a hydrogen atom a living organism? Does acetylcholine know about philosophy when you think about Plato, or does acetylcholine just obey the laws of chemistry?

> It's not the literal sense that matters when we are talking about subjectivity.

Subjectively you don't feel exactly like you did one year ago but pretty much you do, so something must have remained pretty much constant over that time and if it wasn't atoms (and it certainly was not) and it wasn't information then what was it?

>  Information doesn't exist.

Hmm, yet another of those things that do not exist. It seems that lack of the existence property does not cramp the style of these things very much.

> If you make a mistake though, your friend might catch it, but the calculator cannot.

Your friend is far more likely to make a error in arithmetic than a calculator is.

>  You are looking at the exterior behavior of the neuron only.

You are looking at the exterior behavior of the microelectronic switches only.

> Our entire lives are literally created through neurons and we know that
they are filled with human feeling and experiences

What's with this "our" business? I know that I am conscious and I have a theory that you are too when you are not sleeping or dead, in other words when you act intelligently; but I can't prove it and it's only a theory.

> What humans do is an example of human intelligence. What computers do is an example of human intelligence at programming semiconductors.

According to that reasoning Einstein was not intelligent, it was Einstein's teachers that were intelligent.   1952 was a watershed year in the history of AI, in that year Arthur Samuel wrote a checker playing program, and the interesting thing is that the program could pretty consistently beat Arthur Samuel at playing checkers.

> The semiconductors know all about voltage and current but nothing about
the messages and pictures being traded through those systems.

Neurons know about synapse voltages and ion concentrations but nothing about the messages and pictures being traded through the brain.

> Computation is not intelligence. It's really just organized patience.

Regardless of what it "just" is, it can "just" outsmart you.

 > The computer is an infinitely patient and accurate moron with a well trained muscle instead of a mind.

A moron that can nevertheless make you or me look like idiots, so if you're right and computation is not intelligence then computation is better than intelligence because one can outsmart the other.

  John K Clark

[Craig Weinberg]

On Dec 29, 10:47 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>
> >> Let i = 0, 1, 2, 3, ... be an enumeration of all programs in some
> >> programming language. This enumerates all partial computable function
> >> phi_i (phi_0, phi_1, phi_2, phi_3, ...).
> >> You can already see a machine+mind or syntax:semantics relation at
> >> play here. i plays the role of the code, if not relative matter, and
> >> phi_i, the function (the set of input-output of the program i) plays
> >> the role of the mind or semantics.
> >> Self-reference makes this simple view more complex, and more rich,
> >> and
> >> the machine can access them by the use of a relative universal
> >> environment (a universal number). Typically a universal number can
> >> compute phi_i from i. It is the interpretation done by the
> >> interpreter. It is what computer do, and we still does not allow them
> >> to use self-reference, except for optimization (but it is risky
> >> because the semantics becomes intractable, and we can lose the
> >> control
> >> of the machine).
>
> > Sorry, too computery for me. I don't think you can enumerate all
> > programs in a programming language because some programs redefine the
> > language dynamically.
>
> We can enumerate all programs, and this gives all partial computable
> functions. This is elementary recursion theory (or computability
> theory). Computable = (semi) recursion, by Church thesis.

Not sure what you mean by partial computable, but I can see a
connection between computation, recursion, enumeration, counting, etc.
Recursion relates to the self of course, but only if there is
something there that has a sense of a presentation of now and of it's
own memory. I don't think that computation alone can experience
anything so it can't have a 'now' except as a semantically evacuated
cursor.

>
>
>
> >>>>> By what logic would quantities develop
> >>>>> qualities?
>
> >>>> By the unavoidable self-reference logic, which entails the
> >>>> existence
> >>>> of many variate modalities/person points of view.
>
> >>> A number can't refer to itself without a body concept automatically
> >>> arising?
>
> >> You can see the number as a sort of abstract body. It is the code, or
> >> the description of the machine in some universal environment.
>
> > That's not real. There is no universal environment.
>
> Universal environment means Universal machine, or universal numbers.

So you are saying the relation of the foreground code to the
background universal principles from which that code emerges are body
like. I think they are only figuratively body like to us. With the
incredible complexity of such a computational environment as the
Earth, why don't we see the kinds of errors that we see even in much
simpler programs that we run in modern computers? Why don't we see a
human identity become suddenly corrupted, or an area of the ocean
become unreadable?

>
>
>
> >> I do think that we are sort of "words" in a "physical" programming
> >> language. Cytoplasm + DNA is already a couple of universal numbers
> >> interpreting each other. A number is a body relatively to a universal
> >> number. The average personal body is ultimately "made of" the work of
> >> the infinity of Universal Numbers competing below the personal level
> >> of substitution.
>
> > How does that work though? How does 'work' make things out of nothing?
> > There is nothing in our real experience to suggest that this is
> > possible.
>
> We don't know any natural process which would be non Turing emulable,
> except for the collapse of the wave, which is unfortunately never well
> defined or explain. Stricto sensu, the wave collapse is only a
> statement according to which QM is false, despite QM explains well,
> when applied to couple observer-observed, the collapse phenomenology.
> So if something non-computational is at work, it is up to you to
> explain us where, how, and why.

Where: here. In our experience. In this conversation. How: Through
sensorimotive participation. Why: Because entropy is only half of the
equation of physics. The other half is significance. Blue is a natural
process and it is non Turing emulable. As is any feeling, thought,
emotion, perception, or awareness.

>
>
>
> >>> It's circular again. If you already have qualitative presentations,
> >>> then sure, some presentations are more efficacious than others for
> >>> the
> >>> first person agendas that arise, but why would any kind of
> >>> qualitative
> >>> presentation occur at all in numerical primitives?
>
> >> Because qualitative presentation are highly efficacious.
>
> > That's begging the question. These presentations are highly
> > efficacious to us, but they are useless to a computer.
>
> On the contrary. We can prove precisely that speeding-up only for
> computers.
> On almost all inputs, computer are (crazily enough) unboundedly
> speedable, by results due to Gödel and Blum.

Saying that 'we can prove' something doesn't mean anything to me. If
computers could benefit from having a presentation layer then we would
be building monitor screens on the inside instead of the outside.

>
> > Object oriented
> > languages and GUI presentation layers are for human programmers and
> > users, not for computers. We have to get rid of that stuff by
> > compiling it into machine code because the computer has no use for it
> > at all. Why would it make computation any more efficacious?
>
> This is proved by the diagonalization technic. It is far from trivial.

In what way does the 'diagnalization technic' suggest that uncompiled
programs written in Visual Basic run faster than compiled versions of
the same program?

>
>
>
> >> They speed-up
> >> the working of a machine.
>
> > I think they slow it down. Otherwise we should write programs in
> > Shakespearean English.
>
> ?

I don't know how to phrase it any more clearly. If fancy presentation
improved computing, then we would build computers that used it
themselves. What doesn't make sense about that?

>
>
>
> >> Consciousness is probably unavoidable for
> >> self-moving entities, to anticipate complex tridimensional moves.
>
> > Depends what you mean by consciousness. Something knows that it is
> > moving but it doesn't have to know that it knows it's moving.
>
> Indeed. That is I think the main difference between universal numbers
> and Löbian numbers. Self-consciousness is consciousness with one more
> reflexive loop. It is the difference between Robinsonian arithmetic
> (without induction) and Löbian arithmetic (with induction). It can be
> shown that the induction axioms provide the necessary reflective loop,
> and makes believability and knowledge more reflexive: Bp -> BBp
> (technically it makes the worlds' accessibility transitive). I have
> referred to some technical book to study to get all this right.

Consciousness is looped awareness, which is looped perception...but
perception supervenes upon a perceiver:

<Human-Primate> consciousness <Mammal-Vertebrate> awareness <Organism-
Body> perception <Organ-Tissue> feeling <Cell-Gene> sensation
<Molecule-Atom> detection

There is no cell that has human consciousness, no molecule that has
tissue level feeling. It doesn't matter if the arithmetic is
identical. They are different perceptual frames of reference.
Reflexivity is a characteristic of being oneself, but it is not
sufficient to explain self. The sense you are using for self is the
trivial, syntactic sense. It's a straw man of awareness or self-ness.
It's just x =x. That is an observation of the nature of self, but
saying x = x doesn't make anything happen. There is no experience.

>
>
>
> >> And
> >> they are unavoidable as fixed point semantics, like there is always a
> >> point on map embedded in a territory which match the place it
> >> describes (the "you are there" point).
>
> > Only maps which humans use.
>
> Why?

A computer doesn't need to have a "you are here" point in it's maps. I
was talking about humans vs computers, not making a case for human
exceptionalism specifically.

>
> > Computers or robots don't need to know
> > where they are, they just need to anticipate the consequences of a
> > given trajectory of an abstract coordinate set in a given topology.
> > They don't care whether or not it's 'them' and I would not anticipate
> > that any such awareness could ever arise by itself computationally.
>
> You have not yet point on what is non turing emulable in nature,
> except the non intelligible use of "sensorimotive".

Sensorimotive is standard neurological nomenclature. We have afferent
nerves and efferent nerves. Sense is passively receptive first person
experience, Motive is actively participatory first person experience.
The experience itself is not Turing emulable. The Turing machine is
mindlessly cranking out 1s and 0s. It's a movie projector playing in
an empty theater after the end of the world. Nobody is watching the
movie. There is no first person real participation in the world with
computation alone. It's a silhouette of participation, modeled from
the outside.

>
>
>
> >>> What is the explanation that comp provides? What gives rise to a
> >>> global abstraction? Where does it come from? What determines the
> >>> possibilities there?
>
> >> The numbers' abilities that you can derive already from addition and
> >> multiplication.
>
> > Numbers don't add or multiply themselves though.
>
> In which way would the number relations depend on us.

To interpret them as relating to each other in the first place. The
pixels of your monitor are dependent on your interpretation of them as
an image. By themselves they are just pixels which have no meaning
beyond quantitative luminescence values.

>
> > Something has to
> > enact that motive physically - either through neuons, semiconductors,
> > gears, or whatever.
>
> A number has automatically relations with other numbers relatively to
> any universal numbers, and this in the same independent way than, say,
> the way the prime numbers are distributed. We have no choice about that.

Sure we do. We can ignore them altogether. Humans got along fine for
thousands of years without any hint of awareness of prime numbers. If
I write 1+1 =, there isn't an answer that automatically appears.
Someone has to sit there and read the characters, interpret them as a
statement, solve the problem and feel that the solution is
satisfactory. It's totally voluntary. There is no automatic relation
in our minds. There is only automatic relation in primitive 'minds'
like that of specially designed semconductors.

>
>
>
> >>>>> All functions of pain could and would
> >>>>> be accomplished programmatically without any experience at all.
>
> >>>> Imagine that this were true. You would have zombie.
>
> >>> No, you would have a puppet.
>
> >> Then you cannot say "all functions of pain could and would ...".
>
> > I can though. The *functions* of pain are easily reproduced with a
> > puppet. You have the puppet yelp and whimper, jump around and hold
> > it's foot, etc. If you have an advanced robotic puppet that actually
> > acts like it knows what pain is, then you can program logic to
> > remember what kinds of situations can result in damage or stress to
> > it's equipment and script avoidance behaviors to guard against those
> > outcomes. None of that involves any feeling of pain whatsoever, nor
> > would any such feeling possibly arise out of such a mechanism.
>
> How do you know that?

Because Pinocchio isn't real. There is no example of any inanimate
object developing any characteristics which lead us to believe it has
feelings.

>
> > To
> > assume that is just reverse engineering our own feelings and
> > projecting them on an inanimate object.
>
> That's all we can do, with any notion of consciousness. You do that
> with transistors and neurons, too.

We don't have to do that. We can allow that we don't know what their
experience is now from our current human perspective, but still
understand that at one time we shared a common ancestral experience. I
can understand that the bits of plastic and metal of my keyboard may
have some kind of experience on one level - as molecular surfaces
responding to the pressure I exert with my fingertips, but the keys
themselves have no experience of being pushed, the keyboard doesn't
know what letters I am typing or what it means. If you conflate all of
those levels of sense into a quantitative silhouette you get an
absurdity of panpsychism. You would have the internet making up it's
own websites by now for it's own audience.

>
>
>
> >> What is concrete? What is time? What is space? Those things are
> >> what I
> >> want to understand. I cannot take such notions as granted.
>
> > Concrete is that which can be experienced directly.
>
> Directly? Or by using a millions years old evolved natural computing
> machinery?

The age of the design of the human body doesn't change the quality of
directness of the actual body's experience. I am not millions of years
old and the millions year history of the figurative pattern of human
life does not experience anything by itself. It has to physically
incarnate and formalize the experience concretely or else it is not
real.

>
> > I see a picture of
> > a watch on TV. The watch was concrete to the camera, but now only the
> > camera's picture is concrete to me. I have no actual experience of the
> > concrete watch but I have an experience of the TV show. Time is just
> > sequential experience normalized among other common experiences. Time
> > is how narrative awareness builds perceptual significance. Space is
> > just the distance between exterior objects.
>
> I don't assume such things. I told you that those are what we need to
> explain.

There is nothing to explain. They are just the absence of the one
thing - which is order, continuity, experience, identity, self, etc.
Time and space are no-thing.

>
> > It attenuates subjective
> > presence through the opposite ontology - simultaneous (non-sequential)
> > geometric possibilities.
>
> >>> I think that you are confusing the intellectual
> >>> idea of experience with the actual physical realism.
>
> >> That is handled by the distinction between Bp and p, or between
> >> provability of p and truth of p.
>
> > That's just the intellectual idea of the difference between the idea
> > and the idea of actuality.
>
> The idea of actuality is still of the type Bp. Not p.

There is no literal p. It is an idea.

>
> > It doesn't make it any more actually real.
> > There is no physical realism that can be accessed by ideal
> > abstraction.
>
> There are many candidates.

But I think none will ever win the election.

>
>
>
> >>> If I count a
> >>> dozen eggs, that is a cognitive abstraction projected onto the
> >>> reality
> >>> of eggs, not a reality of dozen-ness being relatively implemented
> >>> through an egg carton.
>
> >> If you assume some primitive physical reality. I do not.
>
> > So you are saying that you assume that yes, there actually is a
> > primitive dozen-ness which controls eggs and cartons.
>
> To make it simple: yes.

To me it is apparent why that is inverted. Not that it's a bad thing -
as the Bohr quote says, 'the opposite of great truth is also true',
etc, but at the very least I think we have to see that possibility as
no better than the contrary ontology. It is probably necessary to
conceive of things that way for engineering purposes, but for
understanding I think it is inside out.

>
> >>> How can we assert
> >>> positively that arithmetic is primitive if that assertion itself
> >>> would
> >>> be meaningless and redundant if it were the case.
>
> >> Why would it be?
>
> > Because why would arithmetic need to assert something about itself? It
> > seems like the nature of arithmetic, UDA, etc is that all
> > possibilities are already asserted locally somewhere. That's sort of
> > the point. You don't have to explain why the universe does some things
> > and not others because you just say that it does everything possible
> > eventually. What part of that could not know that it was primitive
> > already and if it did, how could it suddenly find out or suspect it
> > without knowing?
>
> Why would it not know it?

If it knows it, then what would be the point of asserting that
knowing? To who?

>
>
>
> >>> If arithmetic were
> >>> primitive, then there would only need to be arithmetic since it is
> >>> already maximally functional.
>
> >> That works for God, Universe or any Whole. The point is that the
> >> whole
> >> is bigger than what the internal creature can conceive, so they build
> >> theories.
>
> > But there is no internal creature, it's just a program. It's not going
> > to build theories unless it's programmed to do that, and if it did, it
> > would just be a part of the program, not something that is believed by
> > something.
>
> That's might follow from your non-comp assumption. But that does not
> make it true.

It makes sense though. I can't make any sense of a puppet coming to
life just because of the sophistication of it's simulation algorithms.
That can only come from an a priori faith in comp.

>
>
>
> >>>>> I don't think that's true because pain
> >>>>> and pleasure are too variable and idiosyncratic to be connected
> >>>>> with
> >>>>> universal numbers.
>
> >>>> Each universal numbers get quickly complex personal idiosyncratic
> >>>> behavior and qualia. There is no universal theory of the universal
> >>>> numbers. In fact universal numbers can defeat all universal theory.
>
> >>> How can they be said to be numbers then? Isn't numeracy a universal
> >>> theory?
>
> >> No. It is a semantics, a realm. Arithmetical truth escape all
> >> effective theories. It something we can explore. Without knowing in
> >> advance the many surprising things we can discover.
>
> > I agree there are many surprising things to discover, I just don't
> > think that genuine human subjectivity will ever be one of them.
>
> Again.

I don't think it was discovered that way the first time, if that's
what you're suggesting.

>
>
>
> >> Kleene's technic handle this very well. We can build self-referential
> >> machine and sentence. The self-reference does not even have to appeal
> >> explicitly to the universal neighbors.
>
> >>> The sentence just points us to an idea of a
> >>> sentence being false but has no power to actually take control over
> >>> the interpretation of itself.
>
> >> Machines can do that. I can build a machine able to change the way it
> >> interprets itself.
>
> > I don't think that machines can interpret themselves in the first
> > place. They are just puppets which can be trained to act like they are
> > learning. In a sense it is changing and learning, but not in a
> > subjective sense.
>
> You say so.

Yes, because it makes sense. We were never trained to feel or live. No
organism was. There is no evidence to suggest that this is possible. A
sentient being can play dead but a dead or non-living thing cannot
play living.

>
>
>
> >>> That requires the sensorimotive
> >>> participation of a sentient interpreter. The sentence itself doesn't
> >>> know what 'this sentence' means so it has no capacity to locate it.
>
> >> It can, with varied notion of knowledge.
> >> And it is not clear how "sensorimotive participation" works for this
> >> either.
>
> > That's just explaining away awareness. You're just redefining the
> > term knowledge to disqualify the difference between the subjective
> > experience of knowing and the objective functions and behaviors which
> > suggest knowledge.
>
> It can be proved that Bp & p obeys the classical logic of knowledge.
> It is eminently subjective, because it cannot even be defined in
> arithmetic, and so is not formal in any sense. I use only axiomatic
> definitions on which most experts agree.

It's informality doesn't make it subjective.

>
>
>
> >>> This may be the fundamental problem with comp. It assumes causal
> >>> efficacy a priori, and therefore begs the question of its own
> >>> primitive status.
>
> >> Comp arises from addition and multiplication. That is used in all
> >> physical explanations too.
>
> > Addition and multiplication are no more real than comp. They are ideas
> > that we have to teach and learn. Shortcuts to make quantitative
> > pattern recognition simpler for us. They are no more real than good
> > and evil or matter and energy.
>
> Without addition and multiplication, you can't even define what is a
> theory and proofs.

But you can still eat and drink and have a long and fruitful human
life.

>We have to assume something, and most people agree
> with the axiom of arithmetic, but not on things like good, evil, or
> even matter and energy. Your assumptions are still unclear to me.

I assume everything is real in some sense, unreal in others, and that
there are experiential relations between those senses which make
another kind of sense - symmetry, cyclic progress, anabolic and
catabolic tendencies, etc. These are much more universal and primitive
than quantitative systems, which are higher order logics.

>
>
>
> >> And we can explain why numbers have to be primitive/ We cannot
> >> explain
> >> them with ontologically less.
>
> > It makes sense to me that we would think we would have to explain why
> > numbers have to be primitive, because they have no choice but to be
> > internally consistent. It's like the law. By definition the law
> > defines itself as a primitive legal authority, but it's just because
> > the system is an echo chamber...which is exactly why it can't be
> > primitive. They are closed systems relative to the rest of the cosmos
> > (even though they may contain infinities within their category of
> > sensemaking).
>
> I don't assume "cosmos".

That's why your view addresses theory and not a reality. Which is
fine, it's just not my thing.

>
>
>
> >>>> Universal numbers are born theological. They quickly guess that
> >>>> something huge exist independently of themselves.
>
> >>> What gives birth to them?
>
> >> We can explain why we cannot answer that question.
>
> > That seems to indicate that they are ciphers born of high order
> > logical explanation, not universal primitives.
>
> What are your universal primitive?

Sense. The underlying 'jectivity' from which sub and ob perspectives
arise and through which it experiences possibility and impossibility.

>
>
>
> >> They do not need any parameters, others than the infinitely different
> >> numbers relations.
>
> > How so? I can't paint arithmetic pink. It doesn't kick back to being
> > painted.
>
> That's why the mind-body problem is difficult, in all theories. how
> can a grey brain experience colorful sensation.

It doesn't. The grey brain is the subject's body's view of itself as
an object. If you ask the eyes what that part of the body is, it shows
you a grey brain. If you build a machine with antennas that detect
invisible activities of the brain, you will get measurements which you
can make a map out of. If you ask yourself what your brain is, you get
a lifetime. If your brain is damaged, you can lose parts of yourself
and your life. The brain is a character in your life and your life is
an anomalous electromagnetic character in the life of your body - or
it would be, if it had a life of it's own, but it doesn't. It's only
real significance is as your body. Your life is it's life.

>
>
>
> >>> Photoshop doesn't give me an error when I make an impossible shadow.
>
> >> Nor does the primitive universe when I put salt in my coffee.
>
> > Putting salt in your coffee isn't impossible, it's just accidental or
> > eccentric.
>
> Using photoshop to make an impossible shadows is not impossible too.
> It is just bad drawing.

That's what I'm saying. AGI simulations are just bad drawings of
consciousness.

>
>
>
> >>> The awareness comes from the essential unity of all matter in one
> >>> sense and the existential divisions of matter through all the other
> >>> senses. Awareness is just the interior of matter. That's why we feel
> >>> like we are inside of our body and not hovering around in a data
> >>> buffer somewhere.
>
> >> I see only a vague and risky metaphor here. Define "interior of
> >> matter". Well, define "matter" first.
>
> > For us humans, the easiest definition of matter is 'what our body is
> > made of' and the interior of the body is our ongoing life experience
> > of being the person associated with that body.
>
> This looks like playing with word. "Inner" is not the same for
> subjectivity and topology.

Why not? That's the implications of the continuum. Mind is the inside
or throughside of what matter is on the outside. They are both
opposite sides of the same coin of sense. We are literally inside of
our lives. From the outside that means being a brain in a body on a
planet in a solar system, etc.

>
>
>
> >> Both the quanta and qualia are derivable from computer science,
> >> thanks
> >> to the splitting between truth and proof.
>
> > How are qualia derived from computer science?
>
> Read the second part of sane04, perhaps. I can come back on this. In a
> nutshell: incompleteness shows that some truth are not justififiable
> by machine, but still available by experience and guess. Some
> intensional variant of the gap between truth and provability explains
> the existence of qualia.

That just explains one function of qualia were it to exist. It says
nothing about how blue or pain become experiences.

>
> > Can it predict even a
> > single color that we aren't familiar with?
>
> It can predict the existence of new qualia for some brain
> perturbation. It predicts that quanta behaves partially like qualia.

The answer is no then. It can't predict any real qualia, only the idea
that qualia could exist. It's a theoretical realism with out any
realism.

>
>
>
> >>>> , with comp, so that we can test
> >>>> comp by comparing the inferred physics (from observation) and the
> >>>> comp
> >>>> theoretical physics. That's an infinite task, and we can only hope
> >>>> that comp will be refuted, or bet on it and expands in that
> >>>> direction.
>
> >>> I don't see that comp needs to be refuted, since comp is the only
> >>> thing that gives us reason to believe comp.
>
> >> ?
>
> > If not for the recursive logic of logical recursion, there would be no
> > reason to suspect that anything could be literally reduced to
> > computation. It's like Zeno's revenge. It's not real.
>
> That's your assumption.

What am I overlooking?

>
>
>
> >>> We are still filtering divine sense through human sense though.
>
> >> Why are you sure it is not the contrary? Or that it depends on each
> >> of
> >> us?
>
> > Because we don't become literally omnipotent when that happens. The
> > drug wears off and we have to go on with our lives.
>
> In the comp theory, there is a tradeoff between science and potence,
> and none of them can be maximal.

I haven't heard about that tradeoff.

>
>
>
> >> Of course we are working with different hypotheses. electromagnetism
> >> can implement computations, but this does not mean something else
> >> can't do it. And the theory of electromagnetism assumes the natural
> >> numbers (I think).
>
> > If I'm right, there is nothing else in the universe but
> > (sensorimotive) electromagnetism that does anything.
>
> How will you explain electromagnetism without mentioning numbers? How
> will you explain "explaining"?

Easily. Electromagnetism is what it looks like when things recognize
and respond to each other. Sensorimotivation is what it looks like
when those things are you and the contents of your world.

> What about nuclear force, also. And gravitation? How do you know that
> sensorimotive (whatever that means) does not apply to quark and gluons?

I don't think that quarks and gluons are necessarily literally real.
If they are, that's ok too and yes, sensorimotivation would just apply
on that level instead. Subatomic phenomena may just be the moods and
realized expectations of atoms.

>
>
>
> >>> That cooperation then would be a universal motive. Seems more
> >>> primitive than the individual UNs.
>
> >> It is, if you put the theorem of arithmetic in the "primitive realm".
> >> This would be just a convention.
>
> > What if that cooperation also applied equally primitively to
> > nonarithmetic phenomena though?
>
> Arithmetical truth force some realism on many non arithmetical things,
> which explains why it is best to not introducing them in some ad-hoc
> way. Cooperation can develop between them too.

Why do you assume that it's not nonarithmetic phenomena which forces
realism on many arithmetical things?

>
>
>
> >>>>> Numbers however will follow around physics wherever it goes.
>
> >>>> Numbers have no charge, no mass, no shape, no spin, ... They have
> >>>> nothing making them physical at all. You confuse numbers with their
> >>>> local manifestation. That there is an euro in my bank might be a
> >>>> physical fact, I hope. But one euro is not the number one.
>
> >>> But what is it that does have charge, mass, shape, and spin and
> >>> why do
> >>> numbers want them around? I wouldn't call a euro a physical fact,
> >>> it's
> >>> a logical convention.
>
> >> The presence of a euro in a bank is a physical facts. Testable, etc.
> >> Numbers don't want spin around them. Those arise for mathematical
> >> reasons.
>
> > Are you talking about a paper banknote in a safe or a digital value
> > accessible through a financial computer network? In the former, the
> > physical fact is just paper in a metal box. In the latter it's
> > microelectronic switches in different servers and storage arrays.
> > Neither of them are physical euros.
>
> Paper is not physical? Electronic is not physical?

Yes they are physical, but they aren't euros.

>
> > The currency could be dropped next
> > month and suddenly there won't have been euros in any bank.
>
> OK. But not really relevant to the point.
>
>
>
> >>> You can say that you don't delete cartoon characters or mythological
> >>> deities either.
>
> >> Correct.
>
> >>> Why aren't those non-local identities universal
> >>> primitives?
>
> >> They might be. The question is their rarity relatively to universal
> >> numbers. The comp physics does not exclude them from ontology, but
> >> explain (or have to explain) why some entities are rarer than others.
> >> Cf the measure problem.
>
> > So it's not really arithmetic that's primitive, it's just anything we
> > make up.
>
> With comp the ontology is what you want. The physical laws are
> independent of the choice of the UN. But a careful minimal choice can
> help to get a coherent explanation of both the appearance of quanta
> and qualia.

Then wanting is primitive, not arithmetic.

>
>
>
> >>>>> That doesn't seem
> >>>>> like the computer is obeying computable number relations, it is
> >>>>> just
> >>>>> doing what we have manufactured it to do and the numerical
> >>>>> interpretations are ours.
>
> >>>> Not in the case of universal numbers. They do the interpretation
> >>>> all
> >>>> by themselves. That why we call some of them "interpreter". That
> >>>> results from computer science. Computers can interpret data, and
> >>>> even
> >>>> search for better interpretation (learning).
>
> >>> It depends on what the interpreter is physically made of. You need
> >>> solid matter with particular properties. Vapor or pudding can't
> >>> interpret universal numbers by themselves. You have to construct a
> >>> special rig out of specific materials selected for physical
> >>> qualities
> >>> to support any computation that would be coherent to us.
>
> >> We need only to be able to share some universal numbers. Clearly we
> >> do.
>
> > Do we share them or just agree on the idea of them?
>
> We can't know that for sure, but we can hope for sharing, to avoid
> solipsism. Just using the net right now is a strong evidence of some
> sharing taking place.

There is figurative sharing, but literal privacy.

>
>
>
> >> Physical brain just makes our dreams sharable, and permits to our
> >> consciousness to manifest itself relatively to others and relatively
> >> oru most probable shared deep universal computational history.
>
> > Why would we need a physical brain to share dreams?
>
> Try to share without brain, or even without your computer. Brains an
> universal numbers can store knowledge, retrieved them, and makes some
> them communicable through dialog between different UNs, supported by
> common UMs.

But how does comp explain that this would be the case? Why does
arithmetic want brains and computers?

>
>
>
> >> Arithmetical Platonia *is* what exists, or what is real. It is
> >> described through the use the simple first order logic of
> >> existence, +
> >> the assumption of the existence of 0 and its successors.
>
> > What if the first order of existence isn't logic?
>
> Logic is just a cognitive tool for entities wanting to share some type
> of communicable experiences. It is not primitive. Numbers invented it.
> They need logic at the meta-level to communicate this.

How could numbers invent logic if they require logic to be conceivable
in the first place. What is a number other than logic?

>
>
>
> >>> I think we are so persuaded by the similarity between the two in
> >>> our own minds that we mistake symbol for reality.
>
> >> You do that for the numbers, perhaps.
>
> > It would seem that way to someone who thinks that numbers are
> > universally real.
>
> What would it mean that numbers are not universally real?

That they are locally, literally real to the human intellect and
distally, speculatively realistic as figurative projections on several
common sense channels..

>
>
>
> >>> We are so used to
> >>> taking symbols literally - paper currency for money, etc, that we
> >>> forget that ideas don't just become real by themselves.
>
> >> That is why we need to assume the existence of something. Numbers are
> >> then enough, once we bet on comp. This is not trivial.
>
> > I do assume the existence of something: sense. Numbers are a high
> > order, a posteriori category of logical sense, not a generative
> > causally efficacious force beneath physical appearance. Physics works
> > because it feels right to work the way it does, not because there is a
> > UD running the puppet show.
>
> Perhaps. My point is only that if comp is true, then physics' object
> are supervening on arithmetical relation, and so we can test and
> perhaps refute comp. How could we refute your theory?

I agree that if comp were true then yes, physics would supervene upon
it, but isn't that tautological? How we could refute my theory is what
I am trying to see if anyone has an opinion on. So far I can't see any
way to refute it and still be honest. That may not make it a very good
theory, but it may make it something better.

>
> > You believe in the UDA because it feels
> > right to you, you understand the sense it makes so it satisfies you in
> > different ways. You enjoy thinking and communicating about it, as do I
> > with multisense realism. That is the motive and the energy driving our
> > pursuit of it. It's not inevitable or arithmetic.
>
> You say so.

Why shouldn't I?

>
> > We would do
> > something else if it made more sense for us. You could turn it around
> > and see our behavior from the perspective of a hypothetical omniscient
> > voyeur and say that we are just working out the arithmetic of our
> > circumstance and identity, and that's true to in a sense, but it's an
> > inference rather than a direct experience.
>
> Direct experience leads to consciousness only. All the rest are guess
> and attempt of explanations.

My point though is that it's less of a guess than indirect experience
is, if you are forced to choose between the two. Direct experience
plus indirect experience is of course better than either one by
themselves.

>
> > We can't know whether or
> > not we are scripted, but we do know that it doesn't feel that way, and
> > that can't be explained in a scripted universe.
>
> On the contrary: incompleteness explains why machine can discover how
> they function and why it does not feel like that. We are bound to
> confuse the hypostases in everyday life, but introspection and
> reasoning can shows the roots of the counter-intuitive facts. Science
> is born from that departure from intuition, with unavoidable
> exaggeration, and then correction.

How does incompleteness explain the feeling of free will?

>
> >>> That's not numbers interpreting strings, that's just semiconductors
> >>> blindly executing a sophisticated instruction.
>
> >> Why blind? I mean even in your theory. Why would semi-conductor fails
> >> to have the sensorimotive stuff. They are also electromagnetic.
>
> > They do have sensorimotive stuff. They aren't blind to opening and
> > closing circuits, just to the human meaning which we project on to
> > those events. It's like a horse race. The horses know they are running
> > a race but they don't know that there's gambling and handicapping and
> > tv audiences in parimutuel betting lounges all over the world. This is
> > why it's multisense realism. Our sense of the computer has layers of
> > figurative sense on top of the literal physical sense. It's like the
> > seven layer network model. The router makes a kind of sense out of the
> > activity of the cables, and the network protocol makes sense out of
> > the activity of the routers, but not the other way around. The cables
> > don't make sense out of the ip protocol. It's a holarchy. Top level
> > instructions are passed down the stack, but bottom level conditions
> > make up the architecture and modulate the capacities of the
> > instructions to be passed.
>
> I still fail to see why that's different from a modular explanation of
> the way a brain is working.
> It seems ad hoc, to even use the sensorimotive to say that a computer
> cannot be conscious (or cannot bear a conscious person).

Modules aren't holarchies. A computer can be conscious like a human
being if it's made of living human cells. If it can't be made out of
cells, but it can be made of silicon, then there is a reason for that.
A cell can act like a semiconductor, but it can act in other ways too
and have much richer experiences. It can get sick, it can heal, eat,
get tired, etc.

>
>
>
> >>> A well articulated
> >>> puppet. It is the programmer who does the interpretation in writing
> >>> the algorithm to determine what is spam and what isn't. The computer
> >>> and the code knows nothing at all about the meaning of what it's
> >>> doing. It could be separating mail from spam or human heads from
> >>> screaming throats, it makes no difference at all.
>
> >> I grant you that the current hand-made computer ignores a lot of
> >> thing, and above all it does not have high self-referential power.
> >> But
> >> this is circumstantial. You could have said that of the genomus of
> >> bacteria and cells. You eliminate possible high level emergence of
> >> notions. In fact you have a reductionist conception of both third
> >> person physics and comp.
>
> > Because both physics and comp alone are not real. I'm not against them
> > being useful as figurative extensions of the real, but my view is that
> > realism certainly arises from the sense between subject and object.
> > While subjects remain disembodied and objects remain unperceived,
> > there is no realism.
>
> Realism on what? What is real? You theory is still too much fuzzy to
> be criticized constructively.

Realism is coherent subjective and objective relations. Logic +
Techne.

>
>
>
> >>>> May be you should take some time to study how a computer really
> >>>> works,
> >>>> to convince yourself that there is an interpretation done
> >>>> independently of anyone looking at the interpreter. This will
> >>>> help to
> >>>> understand that an infinity of complex interpretative loops exist
> >>>> in
> >>>> abundance in the arithmetical truth.
>
> >>> Maybe you should take some time away from the workings of computers
> >>> and study first person awareness so you can see how dependent
> >>> computation is on human interpretation. Without a monitor or other
> >>> output mechanism a computer's computations would be useless to us.
>
> >> I don't use the notion of use. Computation have played a role in math
> >> before we build computers.
>
> > Even without computers, we still need to write out equations or
> > vocalize them or imagine them with our physical neurological
> > faculties.
>
> I don't see why. And with comp I can prove such approach does not make
> sense.

Your not seeing why is the problem though. Why isn't Pinocchio real?
Why isn't sense a kind of nonsense? Why don't shadows cast trees?
Because our experience shows us otherwise. The weight of four billion
years of cumulative consistency and surprises. We feel it, we live it,
and we are made of it. It's no surprise that comp can prove that it's
unrealism is real. That's what makes it unreal.

>
>
>
> >>>> All of them, in the 3th, and 5th hypostases. The difficulty is that
> >>>> we
> >>>> can still not distinguish between them; but we are only at the
> >>>> beginning of the interview.
>
> >>> Hm. I don't know enough about them. I don't see how a biological
> >>> feeling could be quantified without making one or the other
> >>> superfluous.
>
> >> Feeling (be it of machine or animals) cannot be quantified. They
> >> appear in modalities, or personal views, through the modalities of
> >> self-reference.
>
> > Those are just reminders of own feelings about modalities and self
> > reference. There need not be any feeling at all associated with
> > computational 'self reference' and indeed I think it would not be
> > possible or rational to assume it could arise as a consequence of
> > comp.
>
> But we can explain this almost completely, and explain why we cannot
> explain it completely.
> You type of explanation assume the mystery at the start, and dilute it
> in a matter which looks like primitive matter.

My explanation also explains why it cannot explain subjectivity any
further than it already is. It's not assumed to be a mystery, it's
understood to be how sense makes sense.

>
>
>
> >>>> OK. So you do agree that 0 + 1 = 1, 0 + 2 = 2, etc. That's what I
> >>>> meant for 0 + x = x. "x" is for an arbitrary natural number.
>
> >>> I agree that it can be agreed, but I don't agree that they are
> >>> true by
> >>> themselves. Their truth is a consequence of the sense we make out of
> >>> them.
>
> >> That's true for everything a priori. But you suppose much more
> >> (electromagnetism, for example, which includes waves and numbers).
>
> > That's why sense has to be the primitive.
>
> That's the gap explanation use of sense. It explains nothing, imo.

Ironically that is the function of sense - it is that which is used to
explain gaps. It explains not only explanation but also everything
else in the universe.

>
> > Waves and numbers are a
> > posteiori second order logics we project on electromagnetism. The
> > literal phenomenon is just feeling and motive,
>
> Then you might try to derive Maxwell equations from that.

Maxwell equations are only significant if we want to control
electromagnetism on perceptual frames outside of our own.

>
> > but we observe them
> > from a distance as attraction and repulsion, power and current, forces
> > and fields, etc.
>
> >>> That sense is shared with many distant frames of reference of
> >>> the micro and macrocosm but it is not very appropriate to the warm
> >>> fuzzy sense which dominates our mesocosm. They are indeed very low
> >>> level, broadly applicable semiotics, but they are still just
> >>> mechanized signs, not referents or genuine interpreters.
>
> >> You say so, but I am not convinced.
>
> > What could convince you though?
>
> A derivation of Maxwell's equation from sense, and incompatible with
> comp.

Maxwell's equations are relevant to electromagnetism, not
sensorimotivation. Maxwell's equations don't tell stories, take
pictures, sing songs, etc. Electromagnetism and sensorimotivation are
anomalous to each other, but symmetrically so relative to the sense
continuum itself. The mind and the brain both make sense of the same
underlying phenomena in opposite ways, but they are not opposite to
each other, only synchronized spatiotemporally. Blue is not the
opposite of whatever neural correlates are associated with blue images
in the brain, but the experience of color are feelings in a temporal
narrative and it's neural correlates are spatial locations in matter.

>
>
>
> >> I think that everything is contingent trough interpretation. It is
> >> better to define "contingent" once we agree on an interpretation.
>
> > Interpretation = sense.
>
> Then UN have sense.

Why would they? How could they?

>
>
>
> >>> but the quantitative sense of equal has a stronger sense and
> >>> ultimately a different sense than it has for blue.
>
> >> You lost me, I have to say.
>
> > To say that 'blueberries and electric sparks both = blue' is not as
> > strong as saying 'the temperature = 37 degrees celsius'.
>
> >>> Using this example,
> >>> I can conclude that equal does not equal itself in every sense, and
> >>> therefore no equality can be said to be unambiguously and literally
> >>> true, even blue. We use the same word out of linguistic convention
> >>> but
> >>> ultimately the word equal is figurative.
>
> >> Well logicians knows that it is hard to distinguish equality with a
> >> fine grained possible equivalence relation. The notion is not
> >> entirely
> >> trivial. But that's why we use axiom, and in this case it seems to me
> >> that x = x is reasonable with x referring to natural numbers, without
> >> philosophizing too much.
>
> > Sure it's reasonable as a natural number axiom, but it can be
> > misleading and presumptuous as a universal primitive principle.
>
> Give me what you take as universal primitive, in a axiomatic way,
> without using numbers.

Sense is the universal primitive. Everything that is part of the
universe makes sense to something and nothing is part of the universe
which is not sensed by anything.

>
>
>
> >>>>>> and that (x + (y + 1)) = (x + y) + 1, that's almost good enough.
>
> >>>>> I don't think that the universe doesn't know what that means. Many
> >>>>> things my feel something that has consequences which human minds
> >>>>> can
> >>>>> interpret that way, but that disembodied interpretation isn't a
> >>>>> literal form and it isn't commanding matter.
>
> >>>> It is, as a consequence of the UDA. Not just commanding it, but
> >>>> dreaming it.
>
> >>> How does it decide what to dream as matter
>
> >> By obeying to the laws of addition and multiplication (or others
> >> equivalent).
>
> > Do all possible universes based on addition and multiplication
> > necessarily result in matter dreams?
>
> Yes.

But I can imagine universes based purely on odor and color. How am I
able to do that? Why does comp not serve steak to my non matter
universe dreams?

>
> > Do some have a mixture of matter
> > and disembodied spirits that materialize suddenly? Are all universes
> > as rigidly consistent as ours regarding physics?
>
> Yes. Comp even predicts that most laws of physics remains similar in
> heaven and intermediate type of realities. Comp makes physics quite
> solid, by funding it on elementary computable relations. But the laws
> themselves cannot be all computable.
>
>
>
> >>> and what to just dream?
>
> >> All dreams. With a terrible redundancy, playing some role in the way
> >> universal consciousness can filter personal histories.
>
> > Not sure what you mean. I was just wondering what decides which
> > realities get to be matter and which don't.
>
> The question is a bit ambiguous, but all realities with UNs get
> material appearances.

What really is a material appearance? Is music a material appearance?

>
>
>
> >> we say that x < y if it exists z such that x + z = y. For example 12
> >> is smaller than 24.
> >> I have never heard of any word in physics bigger than 1000^1000. Even
> >> in math big numbers are rare, although some occur in number theory
> >> and
> >> in logic, where technic exist to provide name to *very* big number.
> >> Now, some non stopping programs can build self-complexifying reality,
> >> like the UD, the Mandelbrot set, etc.
>
> > You're talking about size in a figurative sense of quantity of digits.
> > I'm saying that sense isn't compatible with a spatial presence.
>
> Spatial presence(s) are sensed.
>

By numbers?

>
>
> >> Electron can excite other electron getting more energetic orbital,
> >> and
> >> leaving a photon when getting back to their favorite state, at
> >> ambiant
> >> temperature. If that is what you mean by "illuminating", it makes
> >> sense. But I don't see why electricity is sense itself.
>
> > I meant electricity corresponds to sense symmetrically. Electricity is
> > to sense as magnetism is to motive.
>
> I feel like you have a lot to work on before making this precise and
> meaningful, even assuming non-comp.

Maybe so. It might be for someone else to make more precise. That's
not necessarily my department.

>
>
>
> > I have a different conception of illumination though. I don't think
> > that electrons or photons are literally real, I think they are
> > sensorimotive commonalities which matter (like light sources, eyes,
> > reflective surfaces, detection instruments) shares. We have no way to
> > tell whether photons exist or that's just the way matter makes sense
> > of itself makes sense to us. It doesn't seem likely that anything with
> > the characteristics attributed to a photon (chargeless, massless,
> > intangible particle-wave traveling infinitely fast within any given
> > frame of reference) can be said to be real.
>
> How do you explain their appearances?

They have no appearances. They are like consciousness in our brain.
There is a material excitation which can be tracked as a discrete
event but I think that it is an event that arises logically rather
than from a physical thing flying through space. It is as if we wanted
to explain why you smile when I smile at you, so I make a smile on a
rock and find that it smiles back also. Since we take it for granted
that the rock can't smile on it's own, we presume that smiles are
things that travel in space infinitely fast and are like particles and
waves and all the rest because that's the absurdity you have to reach
for if you rule out sense. The simple truth is, everything smiles and
sees smiles, but in their own way. A photon, like a smile, isn't just
a shape of a mouth, it is a feeling which is associated with that
shape. Light (and especially color) illustrates precisely that. Hence
the metaphors - see the light, enlightenment, illumination, bright,
clear, transparent, lucid, the light bulb above the cartoon
character's head, etc.

>
>
>
> >> But you might try to develop a lexicon, or an epistemic
> >> interpretation
> >> of electromagnetism.
> >> Even if you succeed, that would still not contradict comp, unless
> >> your
> >> epistemic interpretation introduce a non Turing emulable property of
> >> EM waves. Then describe the device to test the idea.
>
> > The non-Turing emulable property of EM is sensorimotive perception.
>
> It looks like vitalism or phlogiston.

That's exactly the opposite of what it is. Vitalism is
pseudosubstance. Sensorimotive perception is the narrative of
sentience. Vitalism projects the energy-time topology onto a matter-
space topology. It jumps to a monosense conclusion and skips over the
symmetry and sense which separates subject and object.
Sensorimotivation addresses the experiential nature of consciousness
rather than trying to squeeze it into a non-experiential model. It
describes what the phenomena actually is on it's own terms rather than
bullying it into contrived shape.

>
> > There are no literal waves, they are rhythms of subjective feelings of
> > hold and release. We just infer the wave or particle qualities in
> > third person. We are the device to test the idea. If we alter the
> > electromagnetic conditions within the relevant areas of our brain, we
> > experience precise sensorimotive correlates. It is already proved, we
> > just aren't interpreting it correctly yet.
>
> ?

Our own perception is all the evidence that is required and all that
is possible.

>
>
>
> >>> But why does it take a long time? Seems like it should be obvious if
> >>> UMs were truly universal.
>
> >> Why? Most UMs are slow. More rapid UMs takes time to develop
> >> relatively to the slow one.
>
> > Why do they take time? What do you say that time is?
>
> In this case, I measure it in term of computational steps (for example
> made by the UD, when restricting it to each of its generated
> computations).

So it's tautological. UMs consist of numerous computations so
therefore they are slower (less numerous computations) than less
computationally numerous computations.

>
>
>
> >>>>> How does relating to
> >>>>> truth push a locomotive to Chicago?
>
> >>>> It is difference between writing "pushing a locomotive to Chicago"
> >>>> and
> >>>> pushing a locomotive to Chicago.
> >>>> If you doubt the difference try this: 1) write "pushing a
> >>>> locomotive
> >>>> to Chicago", and 2) push a locomotive to Chicago.
> >>>> It the same with numbers, except people can confuse sentence and
> >>>> proposition more easily, due to the abstract character of the
> >>>> numbers.
> >>>> But the difference is there too.
>
> >>> That's what I'm saying though. It seems like you are saying that 1)
> >>> inherently leads to 2).
>
> >> On the contrary. The numbers contains already all the description of
> >> all computations, but without the laws of addition and
> >> multiplication,
> >> nothing can be said to happen. "1)" leads to "2) through laws and
> >> rules, or logical relations.
>
> > I don't think that laws are real. They are a postieri analytical
> > normalizations of observations.
>
> But those are real too. (Or you confuse a law, and a human expression
> of a law).

I think the opposite. I think you confuse a human expression of a law
and a law. There are no laws that keep people walking in a straight
line, but they do because it makes sense to do so. If I don't live
that sense first hand I might presume that there is a law of walking
that causes linear progress.

>
>
>
> >>> If not, what would be the point of having
> >>> both. Why does reality need abstraction or sentient abstraction need
> >>> realism?
>
> >> Reality needs nothing. It just is. *We* try to figure out the big
> >> picture from inside. We try to distinguish what is necessary from
> >> what
> >> is contingent.
>
> > We aren't reality?
>
> We are aspects of some unknown reality.

But unknown realities, as well as known realites are also aspects of
us.

>
>
>
> >>> Hmm. I can't relate. It just seems like a posteriori caricatures of
> >>> experienced epistemology to me.
>
> >> I'm afraid you might have to study them a little more.
>
> > I wish I could, but I'm allergic.
>
> What can I say to that?

Nothing to say. If they come out with a gene patch, I'll give it a
try. If comp were true, there should just be a quantitative
incantation of some kind I could pronounce instead.

>
>
>
> >> Seeming is deceiving, especially in the communicable fundamental
> >> matter.
>
> > I think the opposite. With qualia, seeming is everything.
>
> From the first person of view. Which is only everything in the
> solipsist theories.

Qualia is only a first person experience. It's not solipsist. A lot of
people experience many of the same qualia that I do, certainly
figuratively if not literally. Whether or not qualia are literally
solipsistic is irrelevant since we are able to make sense together by
assuming that they are not.

>
>
>
> >> Yes. But we are talking about people. matter is exterior because it
> >> is
> >> "made-of" of the too fine grained computations bringing our histories
> >> at a lower level that our substitution level.
>
> > I think we are close, but you are sticking to computations being real
> > and primitive so that can be the only difference between mind and
> > matter. Consider though that the brain and the mind can't be separate
> > computations. There is no evidence of that. What the evidence does
> > suggest, if it were interpreted without preconception, is that the
> > brain looks like its computing on the outside but it feels like the
> > universe as seen from inside of a person on the inside. They are just
> > different (symmetrically opposite) views of the same thing.
>
> With comp, mind is vastly bigger. The physical reality is only the
> border of it as seen from inside.

In my view the bigness of mind is anomalously symmetrical to the
bigness of physical reality. They are big in two opposite but
unrelatable senses. That's why we don't measure IQ by our hat size.

>
>
>
> >>> I would agree if I thought it could feel itself on the level of a
> >>> person, but I think he's just a trillion binary puppets now.
>
> >> I know. That's your reductionism.
>
> > Reductionism is appropriate in this case because there is no reason to
> > give a puppet the benefit of the doubt.
>
> Slavery is appropriate because there is no reason to give an indian
> the benefit of the doubt.

But there is reason to give an Indian the benefit of the doubt. The
look, sound, smell, act like us. They walk and talk and scream and
have sex and babies. They were not designed by engineers and
manufactured.

>
> Universal machines are not automata, nor puppets.

So you say.

Craig

[meekerdb]

On 12/29/2011 5:29 PM, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>Are you saying that hallucinations, dreams, and delusions don't exist?

>They don't exist, they insist. Their realism supervenes upon the interpretation of the subject so that they have no independent ex-istence.

But you can say the same thing about ANYTHING. Making predictions and manipulating the world is the most we can hope for, nobody has seen deep reality. Our brain just reacts to the electro-chemical signals from nerves connected to a transducer called an eye. Our computers react to the electronic signals from wires connected to a transducer called a TV camera.

Our brain uses theories to explain these signals, so would intelligent computers. Theories explain how some sense sensations relate to other sense sensations. For example we receive information from our eyes, we interpret that information as a rock moving at high speed and heading toward a large plate glass window, we invent a theory that predicts that very soon we will receive another sensation, this time from our ears, that we will describe as the sound of breaking glass. Soon our prediction is confirmed so the theory is successful; but we should remember that the sound of broken glass is not broken glass, the look of broken glass is not broken glass, the feel of broken glass is not broken glass. What "IS" broken glass? It must have stable properties of some sort or I wouldn't be able to identify it as a "thing". I don't know what those ultimate stable properties are, but I know what they are not, they are not sense sensations. I have no idea what glass "IS". The sad truth is, I can point to "things" but I don't know what a thing "IS", and I'm not even sure that I know what "IS" is, and an intelligent computer would be in exactly the same boat I am.             

> There's no harm in anthropomorphizing a stuffed animal or emoticon or whatever

What about anthropomorphizing your fellow human beings? It seems to me to be very useful to pretend that other people have feelings just like I do, at least it's useful when they are not acting unintelligently, like when other people are sleeping or dead. 

> but if you want to understand consciousness or emotion [...]

You have only one example of consciousness that you can examine directly, your own. If you want to study the consciousness of others, be they made of meat or metal, then like it or not you MUST anthropomorphize.

> Computers can be thought of as billions of little plastic THANK YOUs ornamenting the microelectronic gears of a logical clock.

You take something grand and glorious, like intelligence or consciousness, and break it up into smaller and simpler pieces, then you take those pieces and break them up again into even smaller and simpler pieces, then you repeat the process again, and again, and again, and again. Eventually you come to something that is not the slightest bit grand or glorious and you say, "this can not have anything to do with intelligence or consciousness because it is too small and simple and is no longer grand and glorious". And you want to understand how something very complicated works so you break it into smaller pieces and you come to understand how the individual pieces work but then you say "I want to understand this thing but that explanation can't be right because I understand it". Foolish argument is it not?

Right.  If you're going to explain something you had better explain it in terms of something you understand. 

> Information doesn't feel like anything.

Interesting piece of information, how did you obtain it? Did this information about information come to you in a dream?

> It's an inversion to consider information genuinely real.

There you go again with the "R" word. OK if it makes you happy there will never be a AI that is "really" intelligent", but it could easily beat you in any intellectual pursuit you care to name; so I guess being "real" isn't very important. 

> Consciousness research doesn't go anywhere because it's being approached in the wrong way

It doesn't go anywhere because consciousness theorizing is too easy, any theory will work just fine; but intelligence theorizing is hard as hell and most intelligence theories fail spectacularly, so enormous progress has been made in making machines intelligent. That is also why armchair theorists always talk about consciousness and never intelligence; consciousness is easy but intelligence is hard. 

> Whether or not a machine could be conscious is the wrong question to ask.

I agree, even if the machine isn't conscious that's it's problem not mine, the question to ask is "is the machine intelligent?". And the answer is that it is if it behaves that way

> A machine isn't an actual thing, it's just a design

Yes a design, in other words it's just information. And the thing that makes your 3 pound brain different from 3 pounds of corned beef is the way the atoms are arranged, in other words information.

> Intelligence can't evolve without consciousness.

If so then the Turing Test works for consciousness and not just intelligence; so if you have a smart computer you know it is conscious; but the reverse is not necessarily true, a conscious computer may or may not be smart.

> Determinism cannot have opinions. What would be the point?

I don't understand the question, what would be who's point?

> Why should you have any preference in how things are arranged if they have always
been and will always be arranged in the way that they are determined to be?

Because neither you nor a outside observer knows what those prearrangements will lead to, deterministic or not the only way to know what you are going to do next is to watch you and see. And if you don't like everything always happening because of cause and effect that's fine, the alternative is that some things do not happen because of cause and effect, and there is a word for that "random". If you find that being a pair of dice is philosophically more satisfying than being a cuckoo clock that's fine with me; there is no disputing matters of taste. 

> That's circular reasoning. You can't justify the existence of feeling
or meaning by saying that meaning makes things feel meaningful.

The feeling of freedom comes from the inability to always predict what we are going to do next even in a unchanging environment, and this inability would be there even if the universe were 100% deterministic (it's not), and most people find this feeling pleasant. What is circular about that?

>  The neuron doctrine is just one model of consciousness,

You can say that again! There are more models of consciousness than you can shake a stick at.

>  one which has failed to have any explanatory power in reality.

Yes, exactly like every other model of consciousness, not one has the slightest bit of experimental evidence in its favor,  consciousness theories are all equally useless. So lets talk about intelligence theories even though that is astronomically more difficult.

Sounds like you agree with my prediction that when we are able to create human-level AI, questions of consciousness will become uninteresting.

Brent
"One cannot guess the real difficulties of a problem before
having solved it."
   --- Carl Ludwig Siegel

[Craig Weinberg]

On Dec 29, 8:29 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >>Are you saying that hallucinations, dreams, and delusions don't exist?
>
> > >They don't exist, they insist. Their realism supervenes upon the
> > interpretation of the subject so that they have no independent ex-istence.
>
> But you can say the same thing about ANYTHING.

Are you arguing that there is no difference between dreams and
reality?

> Making predictions and
> manipulating the world is the most we can hope for, nobody has seen deep
> reality. Our brain just reacts to the electro-chemical signals from nerves
> connected to a transducer called an eye.

That's factually incorrect. Our perceptions are shaped by our
expectations. You see these words not as retinal signals but as
presentations of semantic text. If you could not read English the
electro chemical signals from the nerves would be no different, yet
your brain would 'just react' in a different way. That difference is
insignificant however to the difference in the sensemaking experience
of the person using that brain and those eyes. Sense is *not*
transduced, it is leveraged. It is a specular sensorimotive
experience. There is no transduction homunculus turning optical
signals into Cartesian Theater films.

> Our computers react to the
> electronic signals from wires connected to a transducer called a TV camera.

That's why they don't see. They just detect electronic signals from
one form to another. Unlike us, they are not an audience for their
reactions.

>
> Our brain uses theories to explain these signals, so would intelligent
> computers. Theories explain how some sense sensations relate to other sense
> sensations. For example we receive information from our eyes, we interpret
> that information as a rock moving at high speed and heading toward a large
> plate glass window, we invent a theory that predicts that very soon we will

> receive another sensation, this time from our ears, that we will describe
> as the sound of breaking glass.

No, it's just the opposite. We see a rock moving at high speed heading
toward a window. That is the literal reality. We invent nothing. Our
experience fills us with a sensory expectation of the rock smashing
through the window. Then after millions of years, we invent a theory
that we receive 'information' from our eyes and 'interpret that
information'. I used to think of it that way too, but not any more.
Information is the theory, the rock is the reality. It's pretty
straightforward. The sensation is primary, the third person
explanation of the sensation is a welcome addition which improves the
sensation, but goes off the rails completely if we try to replace one
with the other. It fails because it relies on a hypothetical
transparent voyeur that takes human perception for granted. If you
take it for granted to begin with, you can't learn anything about it
and only obscure the reality with prejudice and just-so stories.

> Soon our prediction is confirmed so the
> theory is successful; but we should remember that the sound of broken glass
> is not broken glass, the look of broken glass is not broken glass, the feel
> of broken glass is not broken glass. What "IS" broken glass? It must have
> stable properties of some sort or I wouldn't be able to identify it as a
> "thing". I don't know what those ultimate stable properties are, but I know
> what they are not, they are not sense sensations. I have no idea what glass
> "IS". The sad truth is, I can point to "things" but I don't know what a
> thing "IS", and I'm not even sure that I know what "IS" is, and an
> intelligent computer would be in exactly the same boat I am.

You have solved the problem of the stupidity of computers by making
yourself as stupid as they are. I know what a thing is. I know what
glass is. I know what IS is. I know what broken glass is, I know that
its sound is an aspect of what it is to me, I know that its look is
part of what it is to me. It is instantaneously familiar with zero
theory required. My anticipation of breaking glass in your example is
not a prediction or a theory, it is semantic momentum. Experience
repeated literally in memory and figuratively through movies, TV,
stories, and my own imagination.

Of course there is more to glass than my experience of it, and if I
were interested I could expand my experience with it and knowledge of
it to a great extent, but still not know all of what it is and does in
the privacy of it's own frame of reference.

>
> > There's no harm in anthropomorphizing a stuffed animal or emoticon or
> > whatever
>
> What about anthropomorphizing your fellow human beings? It seems to me to
> be very useful to pretend that other people have feelings just like I do,
> at least it's useful when they are not acting unintelligently, like when
> other people are sleeping or dead.

We don't have to anthropomorphize other human beings, they are already
anthropomorphic. We just have to know that we ourselves are human too.

>
> > but if you want to understand consciousness or emotion [...]
>
> You have only one example of consciousness that you can examine directly,
> your own. If you want to study the consciousness of others, be they made of
> meat or metal, then like it or not you MUST anthropomorphize.

I can clearly tell the difference between a human being and a voice
mail system. I am under no obligation to anthropomorphize cybernetic
systems. It makes sense that humans evolved from other animal species,
so I am comfortable anthropomorphizing living organisms to an extent,
in a loose and figurative way. I might think an ant is cute and call
it 'him' or something, but I might kill it for no important reason
where I wouldn't do that with a cat or chimpanzee.

>
> > Computers can be thought of as billions of little plastic THANK YOUs
> > ornamenting the microelectronic gears of a logical clock.
>
> You take something grand and glorious, like intelligence or consciousness,
> and break it up into smaller and simpler pieces, then you take those pieces
> and break them up again into even smaller and simpler pieces, then you
> repeat the process again, and again, and again, and again. Eventually you
> come to something that is not the slightest bit grand or glorious and you
> say, "this can not have anything to do with intelligence or consciousness
> because it is too small and simple and is no longer grand and glorious".

No, I don't do that. I say the smallest particle has to have the
potential for grand and glorious experience inherently or else it
could not be the case. A trillion ping pong balls in a vacuum will
never become alive, intelligent, or conscious. The primitive building
blocks must be blocks which can build significance to begin with. 79
ping pong balls will never be an atom of gold, no matter how you spin
them or crush them.

> And you want to understand how something very complicated works so you
> break it into smaller pieces and you come to understand how the individual
> pieces work but then you say "I want to understand this thing but that
> explanation can't be right because I understand it". Foolish argument is it
> not?

It's because you are looking at the wrong pieces. If I want to
understand the Taj Majal I would visit it, read the history of it,
study Mughal culture, architecture, etc. Your view only would consider
studying bricks and marble and congratulate itself on being so
pragmatic and announce confidently that the Taj Mahal is nothing but
stone blocks and how foolish I would be to resort to any non-masonry
explanations of it.

>
> > Information doesn't feel like anything.
>
> Interesting piece of information, how did you obtain it? Did this
> information about information come to you in a dream?
>
> > It's an inversion to consider information genuinely real.
>
> There you go again with the "R" word. OK if it makes you happy there will
> never be a AI that is "really" intelligent", but it could easily beat you
> in any intellectual pursuit you care to name; so I guess being "real" isn't
> very important.

How about I will make you a deal. You will be able to beat any
computer at any task for all eternity. All it will cost you is your
consciousness. You will be in a coma forever and never experience a
single sensation again. Is it a deal? So I guess being intelligent and
beating others in intellectual pursuits isn't very important.

>
> > Consciousness research doesn't go anywhere because it's being approached
> > in the wrong way
>
> It doesn't go anywhere because consciousness theorizing is too easy, any
> theory will work just fine; but intelligence theorizing is hard as hell and
> most intelligence theories fail spectacularly, so enormous progress has
> been made in making machines intelligent. That is also why armchair
> theorists always talk about consciousness and never intelligence;
> consciousness is easy but intelligence is hard.

When something is hard it can also be because you're doing it wrong.

>
> > Whether or not a machine could be conscious is the wrong question to ask.
>
> I agree, even if the machine isn't conscious that's it's problem not mine,
> the question to ask is "is the machine intelligent?". And the answer is
> that it is if it behaves that way

Intelligent in the trivial sense, sure. Clever is maybe a better term.
Intelligence implies understanding, which requires awareness.

>
> > A machine isn't an actual thing, it's just a design
>
> Yes a design, in other words it's just information.

Which isn't an actual thing either. Designs and information are not
causally efficacious.

> And the thing that
> makes your 3 pound brain different from 3 pounds of corned beef is the way
> the atoms are arranged, in other words information.

It's the other way around. The arrangement of the atoms is utterly
meaningless and indistinguishable from corned beef were it not for the
significance of their providing a human life experience for a human
such as me. If we found a brain growing in the attic and we had never
seen one before, we would put gloves on and throw it in the trash.

>
> > Intelligence can't evolve without consciousness.
>
> If so then the Turing Test works for consciousness and not just
> intelligence; so if you have a smart computer you know it is conscious;

Trivial intelligence is not consciousness.

> but
> the reverse is not necessarily true, a conscious computer may or may not be
> smart.

True. So? Smart is worthless without consciousness.

>
> > Determinism cannot have opinions. What would be the point?
>
> I don't understand the question, what would be who's point?

The point of anything being able to have an opinion. If the universe
was deterministic, then what would be the point of feeling one way or
another about what was or wasn't happening?

>
> > Why should you have any preference in how things are arranged if they
> > have always
> > been and will always be arranged in the way that they are determined to be?
>
> Because neither you nor a outside observer knows what those prearrangements
> will lead to, deterministic or not the only way to know what you are going
> to do next is to watch you and see.

But the whole issue is moot if it's deterministic. What is your motive
to care about what you are going to do next if you can't do anything
about it. It's like saying even though TV doesn't exist you still
would want to know what time the best shows are on.

>And if you don't like everything always
> happening because of cause and effect that's fine, the alternative is that
> some things do not happen because of cause and effect, and there is a word
> for that "random".

Those are not the only two choices. Other people on this board make
that mistake too so I am very familiar with it. The word for that is
called "intention". Free will. Motive. It is neither random or
deterministic. It may be influenced by conditions outside of our
control, but that doesn't chance the fact that it is a concrete,
ordinary feature of our reality. To take your position literally would
be pathological machinemorphism. Fortunately you don't really believe
what you are saying you wouldn't try to debate with me because that
could only have a deterministic or random result.

>If you find that being a pair of dice is philosophically
> more satisfying than being a cuckoo clock that's fine with me; there is no
> disputing matters of taste.

Yet being a living organism is not an option for you. Do you not see
the incredible cognitive bias of that. You are saying literally "I
know that I am not really myself and I know nothing about anything
except that nobody is really themselves or knows anything either". I
made sense of things that way too. It works, sort of. But the way it
makes sense to me now is like waking up from a dream compared to
that.

>
> > That's circular reasoning. You can't justify the existence of feeling
> > or meaning by saying that meaning makes things feel meaningful.
>
> The feeling of freedom comes from the inability to always predict what we
> are going to do next even in a unchanging environment, and this inability
> would be there even if the universe were 100% deterministic (it's not), and
> most people find this feeling pleasant. What is circular about that?

Because you are talking feeling for granted. It just 'comes from' the
inability to predict. Really? A rock can't predict anything, does that
mean it must find that feeling pleasant?

>
> > The neuron doctrine is just one model of consciousness,
>
> You can say that again! There are more models of consciousness than you can
> shake a stick at.
>
> > one which has failed to have any explanatory power in reality.
>
> Yes, exactly like every other model of consciousness, not one has the
> slightest bit of experimental evidence in its favor, consciousness
> theories are all equally useless. So lets talk about intelligence theories
> even though that is astronomically more difficult.

Intelligence theories seem dull to me. It's just puzzles.
Consciousness theories are useless because consciousness is useless.
Being useless is the universe's ultimate luxury.

>
> > A human being doesn't use neurons, it is the collective life experience
> > of neurons. They are living organisms, not machines.
>
> What about the parts of those neurons? Is the neurotransmitter
> acetylcholine a living organism?

No, it's just an organic molecule. More mechanical compared to a
living cell but no less mechanical than a dead cell.

> And what about the parts of that molecule,
> is a hydrogen atom a living organism?

No it's a sensorimotive-electomagnetic micro-monad.

> Does acetylcholine know about
> philosophy when you think about Plato, or does acetylcholine just obey the
> laws of chemistry?

I doubt that acetylcholine obeys the laws of chemistry, it just knows
the sweet taste of an acetylcholine receptor and the foul stench of an
acetylcholine antagonist and we interpret the consequences of that as
the laws of chemistry. Also maybe all acetylcholine in a given
organism has a unified experience like we do. It might have a systemic
political agenda and vie with other neurotransmitters for
representation, rigging the elections from behind the scenes to
influence our behaviors.

>
> > It's not the literal sense that matters when we are talking about
> > subjectivity.
>
> Subjectively you don't feel exactly like you did one year ago but pretty
> much you do, so something must have remained pretty much constant over that
> time and if it wasn't atoms (and it certainly was not) and it wasn't
> information then what was it?

Ah, now you're getting somewhere. It's the semantic momentum of the
self as a whole. On the inside of a body, cell, or molecule, things
are completely different and opposite from the outside. It's not about
stuff divided by distance in space, it's about experiences multiplied
by significance in time. This is a huge epiphany. Earthshaking. It's
right in front of you. You have only to consider it with an unbiased
mind. Our experiences are literally ours alone, but figuratively they
are a cumulative entanglement of all of the experiences of ourselves,
our tissues, atoms, etc but also families, friends, generations,
cultures, species, planet, etc. What is the same about this
conversation? It's not the words or the characters, not the packets or
bytes, but something must be the same about it. It's the sense it
makes to us. The themes and meanings. The experience and
participation. This is what it is to be a living being.

>
> > Information doesn't exist.
>
> Hmm, yet another of those things that do not exist. It seems that lack of
> the existence property does not cramp the style of these things very much.

If you don't exist, expectations are low to begin with.

>
> > If you make a mistake though, your friend might catch it, but the
> > calculator cannot.
>
> Your friend is far more likely to make a error in arithmetic than a
> calculator is.

Sure, but the friend is far more likely to look like Sofia Vergara.

>
> > You are looking at the exterior behavior of the neuron only.
>
> You are looking at the exterior behavior of the microelectronic switches
> only.

Because that's all we have to look at. Since we are the interior
behavior of neurons we can't doubt their awareness. Microelectronic
switches could be composing symphonies behind our backs, but I think
it's sophistry to entertain that line of thinking tbh.

>
> > Our entire lives are literally created through neurons and we know that
> > they are filled with human feeling and experiences
>
> What's with this "our" business? I know that I am conscious and I have a
> theory that you are too when you are not sleeping or dead, in other words
> when you act intelligently; but I can't prove it and it's only a theory.

Is it really a theory though? Did you really sit down one day and
think "I have a theory that I am not the only person on Earth". Why
would such an elementary and self evident sense need to have a theory
attached to it? It's nice to have a theory too, don't get me wrong,
but it is not necessary to question the obvious just because it can't
be proved to a rigid and arbitrary empirical standard.

>
> > What humans do is an example of human intelligence. What computers do is
> > an example of human intelligence at programming semiconductors.
>
> According to that reasoning Einstein was not intelligent, it was Einstein's
> teachers that were intelligent.

Einstein wasn't a good student. He used thought experiments that he
made up. Like me. His teachers were intelligent because he was self-
taught.

> 1952 was a watershed year in the history
> of AI, in that year Arthur Samuel wrote a checker playing program, and the
> interesting thing is that the program could pretty consistently beat Arthur
> Samuel at playing checkers.

AI is cool. I only have a problem with it being confused with
consciousness, which is *much* cooler.

>
> > The semiconductors know all about voltage and current but nothing about
> > the messages and pictures being traded through those systems.
>
> Neurons know about synapse voltages and ion concentrations but nothing
> about the messages and pictures being traded through the brain.

That's true, and those things could all occur just as they do without
any messages or pictures being associated with them, but since we know
for a fact that they are synchronized and mutually causally
efficacious, we don't have any reason to doubt the relation between
them. Until we can plug semiconductors into our brain, we won't know.
The fact that we can't already should suggest that there is a fairly
important difference to begin with.

>
> > Computation is not intelligence. It's really just organized patience.
>
> Regardless of what it "just" is, it can "just" outsmart you.

You seem focused on competition. I don't have any insecurities about
computers. They can beat me in every board game and trivia show on the
planet. I will happily take the consolation prize - eating, sleeping,
laughing, complaining. I will never be jealous of an inanimate object.

>
> > The computer is an infinitely patient and accurate moron with a well
>
> > trained muscle instead of a mind.
>
> A moron that can nevertheless make you or me look like idiots, so if you're
> right and computation is not intelligence then computation is better than
> intelligence because one can outsmart the other.

That's not a very smart way of looking at it. Is being a dead smart
person better than a live idiot?

Craig

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 30.12.2011 04:33 meekerdb said the following:

> On 12/29/2011 5:29 PM, John Clark wrote:

...

>> Yes, exactly like every other model of consciousness, not one has
>> the slightest bit of experimental evidence in its favor,
>> consciousness theories are all equally useless. So lets talk about
>> intelligence theories even though that is astronomically more
>> difficult.
>
> Sounds like you agree with my prediction that when we are able to
> create human-level AI, questions of consciousness will become
> uninteresting.

I would say that if we are able to create human-level AI, then the
question of consciousness will be solved. Yet, from the course that I
have recently attended

http://ai-class.com

my impression is that AI is still at the level of modeling insects.

Evgenii

[John Clark]

On Thu, Dec 29, 2011  Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Are you arguing that there is no difference between dreams and reality?

I am arguing that sometimes there is no way to tell the difference between dreams and reality and I am arguing that a good idea discovered while awake and the same idea discovered in a dream is still a good idea. And I am arguing that we don't have ideas we are ideas.

> If you could not read English the electro chemical signals from the nerves would be no different, yet your brain would 'just react' in a different way.

That is true, and a optical character recognition program would react in a different way too,

> I know what broken glass is, I know that its sound is an aspect of what it is to me. I know that its look is part of what it is to me.

Sure that's what broken glass is to you, but the question is what IS broken glass.

> It is instantaneously familiar with zero theory required.

It's intuitively obvious because that's all you needed to know for survival so there was no reason for Evolution to provide you with a deeper understanding. That is also why Quantum Mechanics is such a difficult subject to study, the species Homo Sapiens has to really struggle with it because it turns out that many of the things that our intuition screams are obviously true turn out to be dead wrong. 

> I can clearly tell the difference between a human being and a voice mail system.

I can tell the difference too, so it failed the Turing Test, but the day will come when you can't tell the difference.

> I am under no obligation to anthropomorphize cybernetic systems.

You'd better if those cybernetic systems behave intelligently, otherwise you will be even more surprised by what they do than the rest of us.

> It makes sense that humans evolved from other animal species,

Yes it makes a lot of sense, but why did Evolution invent consciousness? Evolution can see intelligence but it can no more see consciousness than we can (other than our own) because it is a purely subjective phenomena, and yet I know for a fact that Evolution came us with consciousness at least once and probably many billions of times, so the conclusion is inescapable. Either Darwin was wrong or consciousness is a byproduct of intelligence. I don't think Darwin was wrong.  

> >  You take something grand and glorious, like intelligence or consciousness,
and break it up into smaller and simpler pieces, then you take those pieces
and break them up again into even smaller and simpler pieces, then you
repeat the process again, and again, and again, and again. Eventually you
come to something that is not the slightest bit grand or glorious and you
say, "this can not have anything to do with intelligence or consciousness
because it is too small and simple and is no longer grand and glorious".

 

> No, I don't do that. I say the smallest particle has to have the potential for grand and glorious experience inherently or else it could not be the case.

OK we both agree that intelligence and consciousness is grand and glorious and if we wish to understand such things it would be wise to simplify them as much as possible as long as the potential is not diminished. I also assume we both believe they operate under a perfectly rational principle that we just haven't discovered yet, lets call it Process X. It seems pretty clear, to me at least, that information processing can produce something that's starting  to look a lot like intelligence, but we'll assume that Process X can do this too, and in addition Process X can generate consciousness and a feeling of self, something mere information processing can not do.

What Process X does is certainly not simple, so it's very hard to avoid concluding that Process X itself is not simple. If it's complex then it can't be made of only one thing, it must be made of parts. If Process X is not to act in a random, incoherent way then some order must exist between the parts. A part must have some knowledge of what the other parts are doing and the only way to do that is with information.

Now maybe communication among the parts is of only secondary importance and the major work is done by the parts themselves, but if that is true then the parts must be very complex and be made of even smaller and simpler sub parts. The simplest possible sub part is one that can change in only one way, say, on to off. It's getting extremely difficult to tell the difference between Process X and information processing.
     
The only way to avoid this conclusion is if there is some ethereal substance that is all of one thing and has no parts thus is very simple, yet acts in a complex, intelligent way; and produces feeling and consciousness while it's at it. If you accept that, then I think the most honest thing to do would be to throw in the towel, call it a soul, and join the religious camp. But I'm not ready to surrender to the forces of irrationality.

> A trillion ping pong balls in a vacuum will never become alive, intelligent, or conscious.

A trillion is a little small but I'll bet you could make a intelligence with a hundred trillion ping pong balls, certainly with a thousand trillion, you'd just have to organize them in the right way, and you do that with information. Yes it's weird that a bunch of ping pong balls could potentially be conscious, but it's no weirder than 3 pounds of grey goo inside a bone container can be conscious; I guess the universe is just weird.

> 79 ping pong balls will never be an atom of gold, no matter how you spin them or crush them.

That is not true. There are no gold atoms in Ping pong balls, they contain other sorts of atoms but they will turn into gold if you crush then enough, that's what happens in the center of large stars, that's how atoms of gold get made in the first place. That's how all the other elements heavier than helium get made too.

> you are looking at the wrong pieces. If I want to
understand the Taj Majal I would visit it, read the history of it,

study Mughal culture, architecture

That's sounds like a good idea, but it would be foolish to claim that the Taj Mahal has nothing to do with fundamentals like the Pauli Exclusion Principle because without Pauli's principle matter would not be solid.

> Your view only would consider studying bricks

That is not true! I am perfectly willing to ignore Pauli and treat bricks as black boxes so I can concentrate on finding the information on how the bricks are organized and information on why that got that one specific organization. However you are in effect saying that bricks don't exist, and without bricks there is no Taj-Mahal.

> Intelligence implies understanding, which requires awareness.

But it is a fact of nature that neither understanding nor awareness can be detected directly, we can only infer it from the observation of intelligent action, which means that they are tools that are of no use in building a intelligent machine or a intelligent animal. 

>>  Yes a design, in other words it's just information.

> Which isn't an actual thing either.

True, information isn't a thing, it isn't a noun, it doesn't have a mass or a specific location, information is a adjective and so are you. All this confusion can be blamed on the misuse of language, in particular I blame third grade English teachers who erroneously told their students that words like "I, Me, and You" are pronouns when they are not, they are adjectives; and there is no reason an adjective can't be in two places at once, assuming an adjective can even be said to have a place. I am the way atoms behave when they are organized in a Johnkclarkian sort of way. Think of it that way and all the paradoxes evaporate.

> Designs and information are not causally efficacious.

Any design can be turned into a sequence of ones and zeros, and your post is a sequence of 26 ASCII characters and your DNA genetic code is a sequence of just 4 characters.  

> > And the thing that makes your 3 pound brain different from 3 pounds of corned beef is the way
the atoms are arranged, in other words information.

>It's the other way around. The arrangement of the atoms is utterly
meaningless and indistinguishable from corned beef were it not for the
significance of their providing a human life experience for a human
such as me.

I've read that about twelve times and am having great difficulty making any sense out of if, you seem to be saying that your brain would be meaningless to you if you did not have it.

> If we found a brain growing in the attic and we had never
seen one before, we would put gloves on and throw it in the trash.

Ah...,well...,OK,....but what is your point?

> >  If so then the Turing Test works for consciousness and not just intelligence; so if you have a smart computer you know it is conscious;

>Trivial intelligence is not consciousness.

Just as I said, intelligence is whatever a computer can't do, yet. If a computer does it then it's trivial but if a human does the exact same thing then its brilliant. 

> Smart is worthless without consciousness.

With enough smarts your computer can solve all the puzzles and tell you all the secrets of the universe, and I'd certainly say that is not worthless. So is this super smart computer conscious, well why don't you ask him? I'll bet he'd answer "yes" and I'd see no more reason to think he was lying  when he said that than when you tell me that you are conscious. 

>> I don't understand the question, what would be who's point?

> The point of anything being able to have an opinion.

But you still haven't told me who's point. If I place my hand on a red hot stove I remove it as fast as I can because in my opinion burning flesh is undesirable. Do I really need another opinion from somebody or something else on the subject?

> If the universe was deterministic, then what would be the point of feeling one way or
another about what was or wasn't happening?

I still don't understand what exactly "the point" is that you're so worried about, but whatever it is would a universe where some events have no cause and things can happen for no reason ease your fears over this "point"? If so then rejoice because Quantum Mechanics tells us that true randomness does exist.

> the whole issue is moot if it's deterministic. What is your motive
to care about what you are going to do next if you can't do anything about it.

How does randomness get you out of this existential funk?

>>And if you don't like everything always happening because of cause and effect that's fine, the alternative is that some things do not happen because of cause and effect, and there is a word
for that "random".

>Those are not the only two choices.

You're right, my error, there are in fact 3. X is true, or X is not true, or X is gibberish. Free will is gibberish.

> The word for that is called "intention".

You intend to do X rather than Y for a REASON. When somebody does something we don't understand the first thing we do is ask "why did you do that?", we want to know the reason, the cause, of the action; and if they are unable to give a coherent reply we say they are irrational.

> Free will.

Free will is a idea so bad it's not even wrong. The only way I know of to attach meaning to the noise "free will" is if it meant the inability to always predict what one will do even in a unchanging environment; others may know what you are going to do next but you won't know until the instant you actually do it. Unfortunately I have never heard anyone use the term with that meaning in mind (except for me). So "free will" remains just an annoying sound that human beings like to make with their mouth. Cows say "moo" and ducks say "quack" and and people say "free will".

> Motive.

Look it up in the dictionary, it means a reason for doing something. Some things have reasons for behaving as they do and some things, like roulette wheels or quantum events, do not.

> It is neither random or deterministic.

I see, so its not cause and effect and its not not cause and effect, so there is only one possibility remaining, it must be gibberish.

> Fortunately you don't really believe what you are saying

From a early age I've learned that I don't need to lie to get a debate going, I just have to say what I really think.

> you wouldn't try to debate with me because that could only have a deterministic or random result.

I will convince you that I am right or you will convince me that you are right or both of our opinions will remain unchanged; I don't know what the outcome will turn out to be and it doesn't matter because right now I'm enjoying the debate.

> A rock can't predict anything, does that mean it must find that feeling pleasant?

I don't know if a rock can predict anything or not, a rock has never spoken to me. I'm saying that if something behaves intelligently then it is probably conscious, if something does not behave intelligently it may or may not be conscious. I doubt it but maybe the rock is just shy, but for whatever reason it sure does not seem to behave very intelligently.

> Intelligence theories seem dull to me. It's just puzzles.

Then you find science dull too, I like science but as I say there is no disputing matters of taste.

> Consciousness theories are useless because consciousness is useless.

If its useless then consciousness MUST be a byproduct of intelligence or Evolution would have never produced it, and you and I both know for a fact that it did at least once.

> I doubt that acetylcholine obeys the laws of chemistry, it just knows
the sweet taste of an acetylcholine receptor and the foul stench of an
acetylcholine antagonist and we interpret the consequences of that as
the laws of chemistry. Also maybe all acetylcholine in a given
organism has a unified experience like we do. It might have a systemic
political agenda and vie with other neurotransmitters for
representation, rigging the elections from behind the scenes to
influence our behaviors.

Oh dear, this is starting to sound a little like mumbo jumbo.

>  if it wasn't atoms (and it certainly was not) and it wasn't
 information then what was it?

 > It's the semantic momentum of the self as a whole.

This is starting to sound a LOT like mumbo jumbo. What the hell is "semantic momentum" and what instruments do I need to detect it? What are the units of semantic momentum? Is it quantized like linear and angular momentum? Is it conserved like the more familiar types of momentum or does it always increase like Entropy? And if this is really a scientific theory you need to show how it could be disproved.

> Did you really sit down one day and think "I have a theory that I am not the only person on Earth".

No and it's really more of a axiom than a theory because I could not function if I thought I was the only conscious person on the planet, but I don't think all other people are conscious all the time, I don't think they are when they are sleeping of dead because when they are in those states they don't behave intelligently.

> You seem focused on competition.

 

That's because putting 2 theories into head to head competition is the only way to tell which one is better. If a machine based on your intelligence theory can solve more and deeper puzzles than a machine based on my intelligence theory then your theory is better. But there is no way on Earth you can tell if your consciousness theory is better than mine, all you can do is say you just like yours better and there is no disputing matters of taste. And that is why intelligence theories will change the world while consciousness theories will never develop into anything larger than static navel gazing.

> I will never be jealous of an inanimate object.

Neither will I, but computers will not always be inanimate objects and even today the line which was once so sharp is getting very fuzzy.

> I don't have any insecurities about computers.

As Yoda said to Luke Skywalker "you will have, YOU WILL HAVE!".

   John K Clark

 

[Craig Weinberg]

On Dec 30, 3:41 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Are you arguing that there is no difference between dreams and reality?
>
> I am arguing that sometimes there is no way to tell the difference between
> dreams and reality

I don't think that's true that there is sometimes 'no way' to tell the
difference. We may fail to the difference - for most people an
incredibly rare event, but being confused or delusional doesn't mean
that there it isn't possible to tell the difference if you cared to
try. How many people would you have to interview before someone
honestly answered the question 'is this reality or a dream' with 'I
can't tell the difference'. A lot.

> and I am arguing that a good idea discovered while awake
> and the same idea discovered in a dream is still a good idea.

Sure, but a bar of gold discovered in a dream is not bankable when you
wake up.

> And I am
> arguing that we don't have ideas we are ideas.

Why not both? Why does being an idea preclude me from also having
ideas and having and being a body - and cells, molecules, and atoms.
Aren't they ideas too?

>
> > If you could not read English the electro chemical signals from the
> > nerves would be no different, yet your brain would 'just react' in a
> > different way.
>
> That is true, and a optical character recognition program would react in a
> different way too,

Computers don't learn to recognize optical characters by themselves
though. The brain does. An OCR program just translates one meaningless
set of data into another. It has no understanding of the significance
of the process.

>
> > I know what broken glass is, I know that its sound is an aspect of what
> > it is to me. I know that its look is part of what it is to me.
>
> Sure that's what broken glass is to you, but the question is what IS broken
> glass.

It is everything, anything, and nothing. That is all that can that can
be without any external sense relations.

>
> > It is instantaneously familiar with zero theory required.
>
> It's intuitively obvious because that's all you needed to know for survival
> so there was no reason for Evolution to provide you with a deeper
> understanding.

That's a just-so story. Anything can be explained that way. 'Evolution
did it.' There is no plausible evolutionary purpose for subjective
awareness. Unconscious reflex would always be faster, more effective,
and has the advantage of being a mechanical possibility.

>That is also why Quantum Mechanics is such a difficult
> subject to study, the species Homo Sapiens has to really struggle with it
> because it turns out that many of the things that our intuition screams are
> obviously true turn out to be dead wrong.

Intuition helps us make sense of ourselves and the universe in many
ways, quantum mechanics helps us make a single instrumental sense of a
particular category of phenomena. QM I think that is a fantasy that is
literally so wrong it's right.

>
> > I can clearly tell the difference between a human being and a voice mail
> > system.
>
> I can tell the difference too, so it failed the Turing Test, but the day
> will come when you can't tell the difference.

That won't make it any more conscious than a pinball machine.

>
> > I am under no obligation to anthropomorphize cybernetic systems.
>
> You'd better if those cybernetic systems behave intelligently, otherwise
> you will be even more surprised by what they do than the rest of us.

Promissory materialism doesn't do anything for me. I have worked with
computers almost every day for 30 years. They are getting fancier, but
no closer to behaving intelligently. Computers are idiots.

>
> > It makes sense that humans evolved from other animal species,
>
> Yes it makes a lot of sense, but why did Evolution invent consciousness?

It didn't. Significance has made sense more sensible, but sense itself
is inherent in physics, like charge or spin only interior and
figurative.

> Evolution can see intelligence but it can no more see consciousness than we
> can (other than our own) because it is a purely subjective phenomena, and
> yet I know for a fact that Evolution came us with consciousness at least
> once and probably many billions of times, so the conclusion is inescapable.
> Either Darwin was wrong or consciousness is a byproduct of intelligence. I
> don't think Darwin was wrong.

Darwin wasn't wrong but natural selection doesn't address
consciousness as an adaptation as far as I know. Consciousness isn't
like growing a longer beak, it requires the creation of an
unexplainable presentation of the universe. It's not possible for it
to evolve since it has no conceivable precursor to evolve from. What
is the ancestor of the color blue?

>
> > > You take something grand and glorious, like intelligence or
> >> consciousness,
> >> and break it up into smaller and simpler pieces, then you take those
> >> pieces
> >> and break them up again into even smaller and simpler pieces, then you
> >> repeat the process again, and again, and again, and again. Eventually you
> >> come to something that is not the slightest bit grand or glorious and you
> >> say, "this can not have anything to do with intelligence or consciousness
> >> because it is too small and simple and is no longer grand and glorious".
>
> > No, I don't do that. I say the smallest particle has to have the
> > potential for grand and glorious experience inherently or else it could not
> > be the case.
>
> OK we both agree that intelligence and consciousness is grand and glorious
> and if we wish to understand such things it would be wise to simplify them
> as much as possible as long as the potential is not diminished. I also
> assume we both believe they operate under a perfectly rational principle
> that we just haven't discovered yet,

We haven't discovered it yet, but I think that I have discovered it.

> lets call it Process X.

It's not only a process, it's sensorimotive experience.

> It seems
> pretty clear, to me at least, that information processing can produce
> something that's starting to look a lot like intelligence, but we'll
> assume that Process X can do this too, and in addition Process X can
> generate consciousness and a feeling of self, something mere information
> processing can not do.

Yes. I would add "to us" after 'look a lot like intelligence'.

>
> What Process X does is certainly not simple,

It is *the* simplest and most complex process.

> so it's very hard to avoid
> concluding that Process X itself is not simple.

Not for me. What could be simpler than "I"? Qualia is much simpler
than quanta, which is why kids can make sense of primary colors,
sounds, gestures first and can only learn arithmetic concepts much
later using those sensorimotive elements.

> If it's complex then it
> can't be made of only one thing, it must be made of parts.

No, it doesn't work like that. Blue or pain is not made of parts. This
is what I'm trying to communicate. It works in the opposite way. It is
figurative. It is made of everything but some things more than others
at certain times from certain angles, like a hologram. It can be
divided infinitely or it can be fuzzy and solitary.

> If Process X is
> not to act in a random, incoherent way then some order must exist between
> the parts. A part must have some knowledge of what the other parts are
> doing and the only way to do that is with information.

It's not a 3D object topology. It's an experiential semantic fugue. It
can sort of tie itself in knots and consider those knots information
but it is not information itself. It is that which informs and is
informed.

>
> Now maybe communication among the parts is of only secondary importance and
> the major work is done by the parts themselves, but if that is true then
> the parts must be very complex and be made of even smaller and simpler sub
> parts. The simplest possible sub part is one that can change in only one
> way, say, on to off. It's getting extremely difficult to tell the
> difference between Process X and information processing.

It's a good thought but the simplest possible sub part is still a
hologram of the entire cosmos. It's a sub self. Information processing
is the opposite - it's all bottom up architecture with a binary
bottom. Sensorimotive experience is subtractive, like the hues of the
spectrum are extracted figuratively from whiteness. Something
primitive like an atom is still capable of many more participatory
modes than just on or off. The way I think of it, it is possible that
if you could destroy everything in the universe except a single atom,
that atom would still contain the entire universe. It sounds cannabis
inspired, I know, but I think that it works. You just have to
understand that subjective phenomena is opposite to objective
phenomena in every way.

>
> The only way to avoid this conclusion is if there is some ethereal
> substance

It's not a substance, it's the opposite of a substance.

> that is all of one thing and has no parts thus is very simple,
> yet acts in a complex, intelligent way;

That describes 'I' pretty well. It doesn't have no parts though, it
has as many parts as you want. Like you can have as many miniature
reflections of the sun that you want just by breaking a mirror into
more pieces in the sunlight. This is how quantum entanglement works
too btw. It's both one thing, and many slightly different
recapitulations of the one thing.

> and produces feeling and
> consciousness while it's at it.

That would be 'me' too.

>If you accept that, then I think the most
> honest thing to do would be to throw in the towel, call it a soul, and join
> the religious camp. But I'm not ready to surrender to the forces of
> irrationality.

Why call it a soul? It's just me or you or us. Did you read my
executive summary? http://s33light.org/SEEES
You are being seduced by the problem of ubiquity. The simplicity is
unpalatable to you because you are too close to it, it's too familiar.
I call it the elephant in every room. But think about making a cosmos
like ours from scratch. Do you need a soul? Not really. Do you need
'I'? Yes. First and foremost, you need I.

>
> > A trillion ping pong balls in a vacuum will never become alive,
> > intelligent, or conscious.
>
> A trillion is a little small but I'll bet you could make a intelligence
> with a hundred trillion ping pong balls, certainly with a thousand
> trillion, you'd just have to organize them in the right way

No, you and your organizing and your 'right ways' can't exist in the
thought experiment. You just have one septillion ping pong balls by
themselves and eternity and that's it. How could the ping pong balls
make anything except random collisions?

>, and you do
> that with information. Yes it's weird that a bunch of ping pong balls could
> potentially be conscious, but it's no weirder than 3 pounds of grey goo
> inside a bone container can be conscious; I guess the universe is just
> weird.

It's weird that a bunch of ping pong balls could potentially be
conscious because it isn't possible. It doesn't make sense. It's a
reductio ad absurdum of machinemorphism. The brain is only 3 pounds of
grey goo on the outside. It's how it looks to our naked eyeball. When
we look through more powerful lens it looks more interesting, but
still nowhere near as interesting as it looks from the inside. The
entire universe exists as a character in our mind and our brain exists
as a non-character in the physical universe.

>
> > 79 ping pong balls will never be an atom of gold, no matter how you spin
> > them or crush them.
>
> That is not true. There are no gold atoms in Ping pong balls, they contain
> other sorts of atoms but they will turn into gold if you crush then enough,
> that's what happens in the center of large stars, that's how atoms of gold
> get made in the first place. That's how all the other elements heavier than
> helium get made too.

I'm not talking about literal ping pong balls made of real atoms, I'm
talking about ideal ping pong balls that are just hollow spheres. My
point is that there is nothing golden about the number 79 to cause
atoms to generate the quality of gold based upon their computational
identity alone. 79 of anything doesn't make gold except 79 protons.
I'm saying that gold is in the eye of the be-golder, not in the 79
ness.

>
> > you are looking at the wrong pieces. If I want to
> > understand the Taj Majal I would visit it, read the history of it,
> > study Mughal culture, architecture
>
> That's sounds like a good idea, but it would be foolish to claim that the
> Taj Mahal has nothing to do with fundamentals like the Pauli Exclusion
> Principle because without Pauli's principle matter would not be solid.

No it would be common sense to claim that the Taj Mahal has nothing to
do with physics. I can understand the Taj Mahal as an image and an
idea, just as I might Heaven or Hell. It need not be a literal
physical structure to be understood (it does however to to be 'real')

>
> > Your view only would consider studying bricks
>
> That is not true! I am perfectly willing to ignore Pauli and treat bricks
> as black boxes so I can concentrate on finding the information on how the
> bricks are organized and information on why that got that one specific
> organization. However you are in effect saying that bricks don't exist, and
> without bricks there is no Taj-Mahal.

No, I'm not saying that bricks don't exist, I'm just saying that their
existence is not significant to the identity of the Taj Mahal. It's
not what we need to care about to experience the thing. It could still
be of interest to some people, but it's not as essential as the iconic
form and grandeur of it. If you are building a palace yourself, then
the bricks would indeed be significant.

>
> > Intelligence implies understanding, which requires awareness.
>
> But it is a fact of nature that neither understanding nor awareness can be
> detected directly, we can only infer it from the observation of intelligent
> action, which means that they are tools that are of no use in building a
> intelligent machine or a intelligent animal.

Right. We don't need to care about awareness for AGI because we don't
really want an artificial consciousness. It would likely exterminate
us immediately.What we want is intelliform servants. Nothing wrong
with that. A lack of consciousness is exactly what you need for
systems like that, otherwise it would be immoral to enslave them.

>
> >> Yes a design, in other words it's just information.
>
> > > Which isn't an actual thing either.
>
> True, information isn't a thing, it isn't a noun, it doesn't have a mass or
> a specific location, information is a adjective and so are you. All this
> confusion can be blamed on the misuse of language, in particular I blame
> third grade English teachers who erroneously told their students that words
> like "I, Me, and You" are pronouns when they are not, they are adjectives;
> and there is no reason an adjective can't be in two places at once,
> assuming an adjective can even be said to have a place. I am the way atoms
> behave when they are organized in a Johnkclarkian sort of way. Think of it
> that way and all the paradoxes evaporate.

It's almost correct, and I used to think of it in exactly that way,
but multisense realism is an improvement. If you were the way that
atoms behave in a Johnkclarkian sort of way, then you would not need a
name. Your life would be interchangeable and generic. You would no
more care about being dismembered or watching someone else get
dismembered in a movie. It would all just be a-signifying, public
information. That is exactly the opposite of what we are though. We
are all about privacy and idiosyncracy, visceral concrete attachments
rather than detached quantitative computation. It's much better this
way. I understand why computers are made of semiconductor glass
(because glass is very polite and transparent, thermoplastic but
thermosetting...it's the perfect material to represent non-material)
and not living tissue, and why rocks and sand don't ever evolve into
sentient species (life is stinky, greasy, sweet & sour, salty, fluid,
etc).

>
> > Designs and information are not causally efficacious.
>
> Any design can be turned into a sequence of ones and zeros,

Nothing can be turned into anything literally. Any designed can be
interpreted into a sequences of ones and zeros (or yangs and yins,
stops and goes, or integrals, vectors, verbal descriptions in English
or German, etc) by something that can figuratively associate the
design and the code but without that interpreter, ones and zeros can't
ever turn into anything. A DVD of the Wizard of Oz is just a piece of
plastic and aluminum without human audiences using DVD players.

> and your post
> is a sequence of 26 ASCII characters and your DNA genetic code is a
> sequence of just 4 characters.
>
> > > And the thing that makes your 3 pound brain different from 3 pounds of
> >> corned beef is the way
> >> the atoms are arranged, in other words information.
>
> > >It's the other way around. The arrangement of the atoms is utterly
> > meaningless and indistinguishable from corned beef were it not for the
> > significance of their providing a human life experience for a human
> > such as me.
>
> I've read that about twelve times and am having great difficulty making any
> sense out of if, you seem to be saying that your brain would be meaningless
> to you if you did not have it.

Not to me specifically, but to everyone and everything. If a brain
weren't the critical organ of human life, it would just be an
interesting sponge, even with it's trillion synapses. No more
interesting than a bag of dirt teeming with organisms or a dead moon
full of interesting geology.

>
> > If we found a brain growing in the attic and we had never
> > seen one before, we would put gloves on and throw it in the trash.
>
> Ah...,well...,OK,....but what is your point?

My point is that the significance of the brain supervenes on the
relation of human consciousness to it, not on any particular
configuration of physical processes. Brain needs mind to matter, mind
needs brain for matter to matter to the mind.

>
> > > If so then the Turing Test works for consciousness and not just
> >> intelligence; so if you have a smart computer you know it is conscious;
>
> > >Trivial intelligence is not consciousness.
>
> Just as I said, intelligence is whatever a computer can't do, yet. If a
> computer does it then it's trivial but if a human does the exact same thing
> then its brilliant.

A computer never does the exact same thing as a human does. It just
does things that seem to us that way when we program them to simulate
our own expectations. No computer ever just does what a human does by
itself. It's like saying that if a player piano plays Rachmaninoff
then it's trivial but if a human does the exact same thing then it's
brilliant. It's a straw man. The player piano isn't doing shit. That's
why we need not be amazed at its talent. The talent is in the
engineering of the piano and the human pianist that keys in the
template for the scrolls.

>
> > Smart is worthless without consciousness.
>
> With enough smarts your computer can solve all the puzzles and tell you all
> the secrets of the universe, and I'd certainly say that is not worthless.

You can't hear anything it tells you without consciousness. You're
taking it for granted.

> So is this super smart computer conscious, well why don't you ask him? I'll
> bet he'd answer "yes" and I'd see no more reason to think he was lying
> when he said that than when you tell me that you are conscious.

Would you also think that the word THANK YOU on a trash can lid in a
fast food place is telling the truth and is being polite?

>
> >> I don't understand the question, what would be who's point?
>
> > > The point of anything being able to have an opinion.
>
> But you still haven't told me who's point. If I place my hand on a red hot
> stove I remove it as fast as I can because in my opinion burning flesh is
> undesirable. Do I really need another opinion from somebody or something
> else on the subject?

If it was deterministic you would remove it as fast as you could with
or without any opinion about it. The whole notion of opinion is
superfluous in that case.

>
> > If the universe was deterministic, then what would be the point of
> > feeling one way or
> > another about what was or wasn't happening?
>
> I still don't understand what exactly "the point" is that you're so worried
> about, but whatever it is would a universe where some events have no cause
> and things can happen for no reason ease your fears over this "point"? If
> so then rejoice because Quantum Mechanics tells us that true randomness
> does exist.

So you are admitting that it makes no sense for there to be a such
thing as opinion in a deterministic universe, but saying that it
doesn't matter because Quantum Mechanics doesn't make sense either and
that we *know* is the truth ;)

>
> > the whole issue is moot if it's deterministic. What is your motive
> > to care about what you are going to do next if you can't do anything about
> > it.
>
> How does randomness get you out of this existential funk?

Randomness doesn't. Teleology does. The capacity to direct your body
to make changes to the world around it intentionally and to feel
satisfied with the results.

>
> >>And if you don't like everything always happening because of cause and
> >> effect that's fine, the alternative is that some things do not happen
> >> because of cause and effect, and there is a word
> >> for that "random".
>
> > >Those are not the only two choices.
>
> You're right, my error, there are in fact 3. X is true, or X is not true,
> or X is gibberish. Free will is gibberish.

Without free will, this conversation could not exist. The only
conceivable purpose of our communication is because we care about what
we thing. That is nothing but free will. I am choosing these words and
you are choosing to read them. Free will can make truth, lies, and
gibberish into each other for its own private motives.

>
> > The word for that is called "intention".
>
> You intend to do X rather than Y for a REASON. When somebody does something
> we don't understand the first thing we do is ask "why did you do that?", we
> want to know the reason, the cause, of the action; and if they are unable
> to give a coherent reply we say they are irrational.

No we do X rather than Y because we FEEL that there is a reason. There
need not be any rational reason for our behavior.

>
> > Free will.
>
> Free will is a idea so bad it's not even wrong. The only way I know of to
> attach meaning to the noise "free will" is if it meant the inability to
> always predict what one will do even in a unchanging environment; others
> may know what you are going to do next but you won't know until the instant
> you actually do it. Unfortunately I have never heard anyone use the term
> with that meaning in mind (except for me). So "free will" remains just an
> annoying sound that human beings like to make with their mouth. Cows say
> "moo" and ducks say "quack" and and people say "free will".

Free will is the single most obvious feature of existence for all 7
billion people who are alive. It is preposterous sophistry to convince
yourself - to choose freely of your own free will that you have no
free will. I understand your reasoning, and I used to share it, but
it's based on bad assumptions. It requires a universe as seen by an
immaculate hyper-transparent voyeur. Yes, when we look outside
ourselves we see no free will, but we don't see any kind of subjective
experience. That doesn't mean that the outside view is the correct
view and the innate natural subjective view provided to you personally
and directly by the universe is an 'illusion'. Once you realize that
illusion is illusion, you can see how saying that free will is an
illusion is the annoying sound that some people make with their
mouths.

>
> > Motive.
>
> Look it up in the dictionary, it means a reason for doing something. Some
> things have reasons for behaving as they do and some things, like roulette
> wheels or quantum events, do not.

Roulette wheels behave the way they do because the form and substance
of it makes it easy to spin. Easier than a brick. The motive is that
it wants to release the tension and power which has been applied to it
externally, and it does that by moving until friction and mass satisfy
that motive.

>
> > It is neither random or deterministic.
>
> I see, so its not cause and effect and its not not cause and effect, so
> there is only one possibility remaining, it must be gibberish.

Is that sentence cause and effect, random, or gibberish? Pick one.

>
> > Fortunately you don't really believe what you are saying
>
> From a early age I've learned that I don't need to lie to get a debate
> going, I just have to say what I really think.
>
> > you wouldn't try to debate with me because that could only have a
> > deterministic or random result.
>
> I will convince you that I am right or you will convince me that you are
> right or both of our opinions will remain unchanged; I don't know what the
> outcome will turn out to be and it doesn't matter because right now I'm
> enjoying the debate.

It would not be possible for either of us to convince the other of
anything if we were deterministic. The concept of convincing couldn't
exist. It would be like trying to convince a falling rock to fall up.

>
> > A rock can't predict anything, does that mean it must find that feeling
> > pleasant?
>
> I don't know if a rock can predict anything or not, a rock has never spoken
> to me. I'm saying that if something behaves intelligently then it is
> probably conscious,

For things that evolve naturally, that's true. For puppets designed to
act intelligently it would obviously be false.

>if something does not behave intelligently it may or
> may not be conscious. I doubt it but maybe the rock is just shy, but for
> whatever reason it sure does not seem to behave very intelligently.
>
> > Intelligence theories seem dull to me. It's just puzzles.
>
> Then you find science dull too, I like science but as I say there is no
> disputing matters of taste.

I have always liked science a lot. Not so much math or classical
physics though.

>
> > Consciousness theories are useless because consciousness is useless.
>
> If its useless then consciousness MUST be a byproduct of intelligence or
> Evolution would have never produced it, and you and I both know for a fact
> that it did at least once.

Evolution didn't produce consciousness, just as it didn't produce
charge, spin, or mass.

>
> > I doubt that acetylcholine obeys the laws of chemistry, it just knows
> > the sweet taste of an acetylcholine receptor and the foul stench of an
> > acetylcholine antagonist and we interpret the consequences of that as
> > the laws of chemistry. Also maybe all acetylcholine in a given
> > organism has a unified experience like we do. It might have a systemic
> > political agenda and vie with other neurotransmitters for
> > representation, rigging the elections from behind the scenes to
> > influence our behaviors.
>
> Oh dear, this is starting to sound a little like mumbo jumbo.

You can't expect the consciousness of something a trillion times
simpler than you to have the same kind of experience that you have.

>
> > if it wasn't atoms (and it certainly was not) and it wasn't
> >> information then what was it?
>
> > > It's the semantic momentum of the self as a whole.
>
> This is starting to sound a LOT like mumbo jumbo. What the hell is
> "semantic momentum" and what instruments do I need to detect it?

It's what makes an idea into a story. You need only your psyche to
detect it.

> What are
> the units of semantic momentum?

Good question. I would have to make them up just like we do for
physics. It would be subjective significance over time, so let's call
them 'likes'. Your neuronal subselves have microlikes. It's
molecularselves - nanolikes.

> Is it quantized like linear and angular
> momentum?

It is the metaphorical feeling behind linear and angular momentum.
Circumnambulence. 'Amazement'

> Is it conserved like the more familiar types of momentum or does
> it always increase like Entropy? And if this is really a scientific theory
> you need to show how it could be disproved.
>
> > Did you really sit down one day and think "I have a theory that I am not
> > the only person on Earth".
>
> No and it's really more of a axiom than a theory because I could not
> function if I thought I was the only conscious person on the planet, but I
> don't think all other people are conscious all the time, I don't think they
> are when they are sleeping of dead because when they are in those states
> they don't behave intelligently.

The part where you admit that if you thought you were the only
conscious person on the planet you couldn't function is the important
part. It seems important to function, don't you think. Might not there
be some significant truth in any fiction or inference which disables
completely if you were you to act on your disbelief in it?

>
> > You seem focused on competition.
>
> That's because putting 2 theories into head to head competition is the only
> way to tell which one is better. If a machine based on your intelligence
> theory can solve more and deeper puzzles than a machine based on my
> intelligence theory then your theory is better.

Seeing it as a competition already stacks the deck in favor of that
view. It is to watch a color TV show on a black and white TV and say
it is only way of judging whether the show is in color or not. You
define intelligence as puzzle solving which would be meaningless
without consciousness and then claim that consciousness must not be
very good if it can't beat a puzzle solving electronic cuckoo clock at
cuckoo clock puzzles.

> But there is no way on
> Earth you can tell if your consciousness theory is better than mine, all
> you can do is say you just like yours better and there is no disputing
> matters of taste.

No, I can say that my theory makes more sense. It is a theory of
everything which knits together time, space, matter, energy, life,
perception, consciousness, meaning, cosmology, and entropy. Yours
makes one kind of abstract quantitative logical sense of computation
and quantum but nothing else. It's not really yours either, it's just
the run of the mill conventional wisdom among smart Occidental people
in the early 21st century. I have had this conversation with many
people and they believe what you believe and debate it the way you
debate it. Some are more hostile, some are more issue oriented, but
none disagree with your view.

> And that is why intelligence theories will change the
> world while consciousness theories will never develop into anything larger
> than static navel gazing.

Intelligence theories have already changed the world. For the better
and for the worse. Game theory has been used to justify evil and
insane policies on an international scale.

>
> > I will never be jealous of an inanimate object.
>
> Neither will I, but computers will not always be inanimate objects and even
> today the line which was once so sharp is getting very fuzzy.

Yes and no. Speech synthesis is no more convincing than it was in
1982.

>
> > I don't have any insecurities about computers.
>
> As Yoda said to Luke Skywalker "you will have, YOU WILL HAVE!".
>

Promises promises.

Craig

[David Nyman]

On 30 December 2011 20:41, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The only way to avoid this conclusion is if there is some ethereal substance
> that is all of one thing and has no parts thus is very simple, yet acts in a
> complex, intelligent way; and produces feeling and consciousness while it's
> at it.

What do you think of the possibility that "some ethereal substance
that is all of one thing" might yet have parts? If we entertain the
possibility that both consciousness and matter might supervene on
computation, we are implicitly accepting some notion of immateriality
("ethereality"?); yet such that it is susceptible both to analysis
(into parts) and summation (into wholes). Rigorous analysis seems to
reveal, with mind-wrenching counter-intuitiveness as you rightly point
out, the disintegration into almost infinite fragmentation of the very
notion of "substance". But the epistemological integration of this
splintered reality is nonetheless also an everyday experience.
Consequently one might be led - in company with not a few from
religious, philosophical and even scientific traditions - towards a
notion of some countervailing integration of particularity towards
wholeness, that finds its singular limit at the "solus ipse": the
uniquely existent "thing".

"This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this
entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is
not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance."

"Multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind."

Erwin Schrödinger

Happy New Year!

David

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[meekerdb]

On 12/30/2011 12:41 PM, John Clark wrote:
> Yes it makes a lot of sense, but why did Evolution invent consciousness? Evolution can
> see intelligence but it can no more see consciousness than we can (other than our own)
> because it is a purely subjective phenomena, and yet I know for a fact that Evolution
> came us with consciousness at least once and probably many billions of times, so the
> conclusion is inescapable. Either Darwin was wrong or consciousness is a byproduct of
> intelligence. I don't think Darwin was wrong.

I assume you're familiar with the theory of consciousness put forward by Julian Jaynes.
It would imply that consciousness as we experience it, an inner narrative, is an accident
of evolutionary development. Imagination and ratiocination are forms of internal
perception because evolution adapted structures that developed for external perception.
So it might be possible to create AI that was intelligent but not conscious in this same
way by having separate modules for seeing and for visual imagination for example. We
would suppose it was conscious in some way because it acts intelligently, but it would
seem impossible to say exactly how its consciousness was different.

Brent

[meekerdb]

On 12/30/2011 12:41 PM, John Clark wrote:

> If we found a brain growing in the attic and we had never
seen one before, we would put gloves on and throw it in the trash.

Ah...,well...,OK,....but what is your point?

I'm sure it's not Craig's point, but it illustrates my point that while a brain is an organ of intelligence/consciousness it needs a body and an environment in which to perceive and act in order to be intelligent/conscious.

Brent

[Craig Weinberg]

I was more getting at the insignificance of the physical mechanism of
a brain without any subjective qualia behind it, but yours is a valid
point too. We also need the brain and the body for the world to matter
to us and to give a purpose for consciousness.

Craig

[Craig Weinberg]

I like Jaynes ideas about the bicameral mind. That reasoning presents
a good way to understand how our multiple conscious and subconscious
agendas coexist within consciousness. It doesn't explain how evolution
to invent awareness in a universe devoid of the possibility of
awarenss. It presumes that since we are conscious and our brain has
mechanistic processes, then awareness itself must arise from an
arrangement of mechanistic components. I don't think that is possible.

Craig

[John Clark]

On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 11:55 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

> a bar of gold discovered in a dream is not bankable when you wake up.

Sure, but that's because a gold bar is a noun and I'm talking about adjectives, in fact one of the definitions of adjectives could be something that IS bankable when you wake up.  I'm not talking about nouns, I'm talking about adjectives, adjectives like the color gold, the number 79, hard, shiny, and Craig Weinberg.

 

> Computers don't learn to recognize optical characters by themselves though.

Einstein didn't learn physics by himself, he needed books and teachers.

>The brain does.

It's true that if there is going to be a AI then humans are going to have to build it, that's why it's called ARTIFICIAL intelligence.

> An OCR program just translates one meaningless set of data into another. It has no understanding of the significance of the process.

A synapse just translates one meaningless set of data into another neuron. A synapse has no understanding of the significance of the process.

>There is no plausible evolutionary purpose for subjective awareness.

I agree completely and yet subjective awareness exists nevertheless. Thus unless the Theory of Evolution is wrong (and I don't think it is) then subjective awareness MUST be a spandrel, consciousness MUST be a byproduct of something else and the most likely candidate is intelligence. 
 

>> it's very hard to avoid concluding that Process X itself is not simple.

> Not for me. What could be simpler than "I"? Qualia is much simpler than quanta

Regardless of whether that is true or not Process X must also produce intelligence and that is the most complicated thing in the known universe.

> >  If it's complex then it can't be made of only one thing, it must be made of parts.

> No, it doesn't work like that. Blue or pain is not made of parts.

If you're talking about the qualia blue and not electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength of 460 nanometers then blue is most certainly made of parts, and a huge number of them too; I don't know how all those parts work but I know where they are, inside your head.

> It is everything, anything, and nothing. That is all that can that can be without any external sense relations.It's not a 3D object topology. It's an experiential semantic fugue. It can sort of tie itself in knots and consider those knots information but it is not information itself. It is that which informs and is informed.  [...]  the simplest possible sub part is still a hologram of the entire cosmos. It's a sub self. Information processing is the opposite - it's all bottom up architecture with a binary bottom. Sensorimotive experience is subtractive, like the hues of the spectrum are extracted figuratively from whiteness.

I have nothing personally against avant-garde poetry but to tell you the truth I really don't have a poetic mind, I'm more in tune with science and mathematics so I probably shouldn't comment on the above and leave that to others. 
 

> Something primitive like an atom is still capable of many more participatory modes than just on or off.

Yes, and that means you can pack lots of bits of information into something even as small as a atom, that would work great as a computer memory and is yet another advantage electronic intelligence will have over the meat variety.  

> The way I think of it, it is possible that if you could destroy everything in the universe except a single atom, that atom would still contain the entire universe. It sounds cannabis inspired, I know, but I think that it works."

Actually that is not an entirely crazy idea, and maybe just maybe you wouldn't even need that single atom, according to quantum mechanics a vacuum is not entirely empty but is filled with virtual particles.   

"You just have to understand that subjective phenomena is opposite to objective phenomena in every way. "

Not in every way, your subjective self can cause your objective finger to move and moving your objective finger into a fire can cause your subjective state to become unhappy.

>you can have as many miniature reflections of the sun that you want just by breaking a mirror into
more pieces in the sunlight.

Yes.
 

>This is how quantum entanglement works too btw.

No. Changing one macroscopic mirror will not effect the others, but if they were quantum entangled then if you turn just one of those millions of mirrors away from the sun then none of them reflect the sun anymore. There just aren't any good macroscopic analogies for what happens at the quantum level, it doesn't make any sense but it happens nevertheless.     

>No, you and your organizing and your 'right ways' can't exist in the thought experiment. You just have one septillion ping pong balls by themselves and eternity and that's it.

Eternity? Not just an astronomically long time but a INFINITE number of years? Well you've made the task easy, in that time the atoms in the ping pong balls will evaporate and reform by pure chance into you, me, a duck, a umbrella, anything you care to name. Infinite does not mean very very large and is in fact a completely different concept and a hundred thousand million billion trillion is no closer to infinity than the number 1 is.

 

> How could the ping pong balls make anything except random collisions?

Danny Hillis is a professional computer designer, for fun in his spare time he made a mechanical computer out of Tinkertoys that could play a perfect game of tic-tac-toe.  If you can do it with Tinkertoys why not beer cans or ping pong balls or neurons or microchips or anything if it was organized properly? 

http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/accession/102630799

And somebody has actually designed a ping pong ball computer although unlike Hillis he did not actually build it.

http://helge.ru-stad.name/ppb_comp/ppbcne.htm

> It's weird that a bunch of ping pong balls could potentially be conscious because it isn't possible. It doesn't make sense. It's a reductio ad absurdum of machinemorphism.

Before you use a reductio ad absurdum proof you'd better be certain that the results are logically contradictory and not just odd. I see no reason to believe that thinking goo is fundamentally less contradictory than thinking balls.

> The brain is only 3 pounds of grey goo on the outside. It's how it looks to our naked eyeball. When we look through more powerful lens it looks more interesting, but still nowhere near as interesting as it looks from the inside.

But you don't know what the subjective experience of a ping pong ball computer is from the inside, you don't even know what it's like to be me and we're of the same species. At least I assume we are, I assume (but can not prove) that you're not a experimental AI allowed to interact on the net to see how you react. 

> My point is that there is nothing golden about the number 79 to cause atoms to generate the quality of gold based upon their computational identity alone.

Actually there is. Through Quantum Mechanical calculations even if you'd never seen gold you could determine that a nucleus with 79 protons and 118 neutrons is going to be made in large stars, and you can calculate that the nucleus is going to be stable so you'll still be able to see it today even if it was made billions of years ago. You can also find from calculations that when 79 electrons join the nucleus forming a atom the resulting material is going to be shiny and be a good conductor of electricity. You can even calculate that it will reflect red light better than blue light hence its golden color, so I would say there is indeed something golden about the number 79.  

> I can understand the Taj Mahal as an image

Images are made of information.
 

> and an idea

Ideas are made of information.

> It need not be a literal physical structure to be understood

It cannot be a literal physical structure because information is the only thing that can be understood.

 > I'm not saying that bricks don't exist, I'm just saying that their existence is not significant to the identity of the Taj Mahal.

In other words information about things other than bricks is more important if you're interested in the Taj Mahal.

> We don't need to care about awareness for AGI

I hate that term, I always think of the American Gunsmithing Institute or Adjusted Gross Income, and so does Google. 

> A lack of consciousness is exactly what you need for systems like that, otherwise it would be immoral to enslave them.

It doesn't matter if we think it's moral to enslave a AI or not, of far greater importance is whether the AI thinks it's moral to enslave us or not. Probably it would consider humans more trouble than they're worth. 

> If you were the way that atoms behave in a Johnkclarkian sort of way, then you would not need a
name.

Other adjectives have names why not me?

> Your life would be interchangeable and generic.

Yes, that is a completely logical deduction. Right now there is only one chunk of matter in the universe that behaves in a Johnkclarkian sort of way but the laws of physics do not demand that always be the case. If there were other such chunks then obviously I would no longer be unique and then, yes, I would be interchangeable and even generic if there were enough of those Johnkclarkian chunks.

> Nothing can be turned into anything literally.

Nonsense, hydrogen can literally be turned into gold and numbers into pictures, what you're looking at right now is a number, or at least it was a nanosecond ago before it was turned into something else by your computer.
 

> If a brain weren't the critical organ of human life, it would just be an interesting sponge, even with it's trillion synapses. No more interesting than a bag of dirt teeming with organisms or a dead moon
full of interesting geology.

So if a brain didn't work then..., ah, ... it wouldn't work. OK no argument.
 

> Brain needs mind to matter

Racing car needs fast to matter. Mind is just what a brain does.

> A computer never does the exact same thing as a human does. It just does things that seem to us that way when we program them to simulate our own expectations.

Please don't give me any more of that silly computers aren't "really" intelligent stuff, I'm not buying it. If computers couldn't do many of the things our minds do and do many of them better then the machines wouldn't have spawned a multitrillion dollar industry.  

>>  I still don't understand what exactly "the point" is that you're so worried about, but whatever it is would a universe where some events have no cause and things can happen for no reason ease your fears over this "point"?

> So you are admitting that it makes no sense for there to be a such thing as opinion in a deterministic universe

I'm admitting nothing of the sort. I'm saying I still don't know what your talking about but presumably you do, so whatever it is about determinism that's got you so worried I'm asking you how randomness will make this concern go away. 

"The capacity to direct your body to make changes to the world around it intentionally and to feel
satisfied with the results."

Fine, I can do that, not as often as I'd like but I can do that; and that would be true if the world was deterministic and it would be true if it were not.

> Without free will, this conversation could not exist.

First explain to me what the noise "free will" is supposed to mean, and after that we can debate if human beings have this property or not.

>I am choosing these words and you are choosing to read them.

And the reason I'm reading this is that I want to, and determinism wins again.

> we do X rather than Y because we FEEL that there is a reason.

The feeling of a reason is a perfectly legitimate cause, the reason you did it is that you wanted to, and determinism wins again.

> There need not be any rational reason for our behavior.

Absolutely true, but rational or not there is always a cause, unless of course it's random. I did it because 2+2=3, or rather I did it because I thought 2+2=3.

>Free will is the single most obvious feature of existence for all 7 billion people who are alive.

And a large fraction of them do insist on making that annoying "free will" noise with their mouth from time to time.

>I t is preposterous sophistry to convince yourself - to choose freely of your own free will that you have no free will.

Not true, I don't say we have no free will, that would be a silly thing to say, it would be like saying we have no klognee. I try to avoid talking gibberish if I can help it.

> It requires a universe as seen by an immaculate hyper-transparent voyeur.

Even a immaculate hyper-transparent voyeur in a 100% deterministic universe could not always know what you or I are going to do next, there is no shortcut so he'd just have to watch us and see what we do; and often that's the only way we ourselves have of knowing what we are going to do, wait and see.

>> I see, so its not cause and effect and its not not cause and effect, so there is only one possibility remaining, it must be gibberish.

> Is that sentence cause and effect, random, or gibberish? Pick one.

Cause and effect.

> It would not be possible for either of us to convince the other of anything if we were deterministic.

Input can change the state of a Turing Machine and they're deterministic and as a good Turing Machine you're trying to change my state and I'm trying to change yours, and so far neither of us is having much luck.

"The part where you admit that if you thought you were the only conscious person on the planet you couldn't function is the important part. It seems important to function, don't you think."

Very important yes, in fact subjectivity is the most important thing in the universe, or at least it is in my opinion.

" Might not there be some significant truth in any fiction or inference which disables completely if you were you to act on your disbelief in it?

I never said consciousness didn't exist and in fact I am more certain of its existence than I am certain about anything else.  

>You define intelligence as puzzle solving

Do you have a better definition? 

> solving which would be meaningless without consciousness

Not meaningless to me. If a computer tells me how to solve a puzzle then I know how to solve it and it doesn't matter if the machine is conscious or not.

"and then claim that consciousness must not be very good if it can't beat a puzzle solving electronic cuckoo clock at cuckoo clock puzzles."

I never said that! I said that if you are very smart then you are almost certainly conscious, but something could be conscious as hell and still be dumb as dog shit and be unable to pour the water out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel.

> Speech synthesis is no more convincing than it was in 1982.

Speech synthesis on my Mac is a little better than the state of the art in 1982, but I know what you mean and there is some truth in what you say. I suppose it's a question of effort, there isn't a lot of money in speech synthesis so few spend much time on it, but there is money in speech recognition, that is probably why there has been enormous progress in it even though it's a harder problem than speech synthesis. 

Happy New Year.

  John K Clark

 

[Craig Weinberg]

On Dec 31 2011, 11:46 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 11:55 PM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > a bar of gold discovered in a dream is not bankable when you wake up.
>
> Sure, but that's because a gold bar is a noun and I'm talking about
> adjectives, in fact one of the definitions of adjectives could be something
> that IS bankable when you wake up. I'm not talking about nouns, I'm
> talking about adjectives, adjectives like the color gold, the number 79,
> hard, shiny, and Craig Weinberg.

But if I dream of something very valuable, I don't get to keep that
valuable in real life. I don't see how parts of speech are related.

>
> > > Computers don't learn to recognize optical characters by themselves
> > though.
>
> Einstein didn't learn physics by himself, he needed books and teachers.

Not really. His theories are mainly based on profoundly elaborated
common sense. He wasn't programmed by Newton to see the universe in a
Newtonian way. He exploded whatever programming he may have picked up
and recreated the universe in the image of his own mind.

>
> >The brain does.
>
> It's true that if there is going to be a AI then humans are going to have
> to build it, that's why it's called ARTIFICIAL intelligence.

We can build something that thinks for itself like the brain rather
than relies on programming to act like it's thinking. It's not the
artifice that prevents AI from being conscious, it's the mistaking the
shadow of clever computation for the ineffable and forever non-
simulatable experience of awareness.

>
> > An OCR program just translates one meaningless set of data into another.
> > It has no understanding of the significance of the process.
>
> A synapse just translates one meaningless set of data into another neuron.
> A synapse has no understanding of the significance of the process.

I take it then that you believe in metaphysical agency? Since we
understand the process, and there's nobody here but us neurons, I
conclude that neurons actually do collectively understand.

>
> >There is no plausible evolutionary purpose for subjective awareness.
>
> I agree completely and yet subjective awareness exists nevertheless. Thus
> unless the Theory of Evolution is wrong (and I don't think it is) then
> subjective awareness MUST be a spandrel, consciousness MUST be a byproduct
> of something else and the most likely candidate is intelligence.

No. It is not the byproduct of anything else. Everything else is the
byproduct of it. It just looks unconscious to us from the outside.
That's how it works.

>
> > >> it's very hard to avoid concluding that Process X itself is not simple.
>
> > > Not for me. What could be simpler than "I"? Qualia is much simpler than
> > quanta
>
> Regardless of whether that is true or not Process X must also produce
> intelligence and that is the most complicated thing in the known universe.

Sure, it is the simplest and most complicated thing.

>
> > > If it's complex then it can't be made of only one thing, it must be
> >> made of parts.
>
> > > No, it doesn't work like that. Blue or pain is not made of parts.
>
> If you're talking about the qualia blue and not electromagnetic radiation
> of a wavelength of 460 nanometers then blue is most certainly made of
> parts, and a huge number of them too; I don't know how all those parts work
> but I know where they are, inside your head.

460 nanometers is just a wavelength, it has no color at all. If I
imagine a blue mountain, there is no 460nm light being projected in my
brain tissue. Think about it. The e-m spectrum is uniform. There is no
magical breakpoint where one color turns into another. If color were
the e-m spectrum, then yellow and blue could only be more and more
red. There is no possibility of color perception arising from a
uniform quantitative continuum.

Whatever is in our head, it isn't blue. Blue has no parts. There is no
such thing as blue without the direct visual experience of blue. No
function can substitute for it. It is a visual feeling.

>
> > It is everything, anything, and nothing. That is all that can that can be
> > without any external sense relations.It's not a 3D object topology. It's an
> > experiential semantic fugue. It can sort of tie itself in knots and
> > consider those knots information but it is not information itself. It is
> > that which informs and is informed. [...] the simplest possible sub part
> > is still a hologram of the entire cosmos. It's a sub self. Information
> > processing is the opposite - it's all bottom up architecture with a binary
> > bottom. Sensorimotive experience is subtractive, like the hues of the
> > spectrum are extracted figuratively from whiteness.
>
> I have nothing personally against avant-garde poetry but to tell you the
> truth I really don't have a poetic mind, I'm more in tune with science and
> mathematics so I probably shouldn't comment on the above and leave that to
> others.
>
> > > Something primitive like an atom is still capable of many more
> > participatory modes than just on or off.
>
> Yes, and that means you can pack lots of bits of information into something
> even as small as a atom, that would work great as a computer memory and is
> yet another advantage electronic intelligence will have over the meat
> variety.

Bits aren't real. They cannot be packed into an atom. They can be
interpreted by an intellect, and that's all.

>
> > The way I think of it, it is possible that if you could destroy
> > everything in the universe except a single atom, that atom would still
> > contain the entire universe. It sounds cannabis inspired, I know, but I
> > think that it works."
>
> Actually that is not an entirely crazy idea, and maybe just maybe you
> wouldn't even need that single atom, according to quantum mechanics a
> vacuum is not entirely empty but is filled with virtual particles.

That's just because quantum mechanics is hopelessly lost and pulling
machineus ex deitina out of thin air to try to salvage it's inside out
cosmology. There is no such thing as virtual particles - all subatomic
particles are virtual. What is filled with activity is our own
instruments, which are made of matter that is detecting and presenting
events which relate to it, and to us.

>
> "You just have to understand that subjective phenomena is opposite to
>
> > objective phenomena in every way. "
>
> Not in every way, your subjective self can cause your objective finger to
> move and moving your objective finger into a fire can cause your subjective
> state to become unhappy.

That's just an example of how both subjective and objective phenomena
are causally efficacious. They are still opposite. The subjective stat
of unhappiness is still a private experience through time and the
moving finger and fire are public objects in space which have no
feeling or unhappiness.

>
> >you can have as many miniature reflections of the sun that you want just
> > by breaking a mirror into
> > more pieces in the sunlight.
>
> Yes.
>
> > >This is how quantum entanglement works too btw.
>
> No. Changing one macroscopic mirror will not effect the others, but if they
> were quantum entangled then if you turn just one of those millions of
> mirrors away from the sun then none of them reflect the sun anymore. There
> just aren't any good macroscopic analogies for what happens at the quantum
> level, it doesn't make any sense but it happens nevertheless.

Not if the entangled part that is changed is the position of the
observer's eye. That will always change the subject's view of the
others.

>
> >No, you and your organizing and your 'right ways' can't exist in the
> > thought experiment. You just have one septillion ping pong balls by
> > themselves and eternity and that's it.
>
> Eternity? Not just an astronomically long time but a INFINITE number of
> years? Well you've made the task easy, in that time the atoms in the ping
> pong balls will evaporate and reform by pure chance

These aren't atomic ping pong balls, they are ideal ping pong balls.
They are just hollow spheres with the general characteristics of ping
pong balls as we experience them in our naive perceptual frame of
reference.

> into you, me, a duck, a
> umbrella, anything you care to name. Infinite does not mean very very large
> and is in fact a completely different concept and a hundred thousand
> million billion trillion is no closer to infinity than the number 1 is.

I understand that, but I'm not talking about atoms, I'm talking about
inanimate objects and the failure of physics to reconcile the
objective model with the possibility of awareness.

>
> > > How could the ping pong balls make anything except random collisions?
>
> Danny Hillis is a professional computer designer, for fun in his spare time
> he made a mechanical computer out of Tinkertoys that could play a perfect
> game of tic-tac-toe. If you can do it with Tinkertoys why not beer
> cans or ping
> pong balls or neurons or microchips or anything if it was organized
> properly?

You're trying to sneak your 'organizations' back into this. There are
no organizations. No intelligence. No games or symbols or
computations. No abstraction layers at all. Just meaningless, eternal,
physical vectors.

>
> http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/accession/102630799
>
> And somebody has actually designed a ping pong ball computer although
> unlike Hillis he did not actually build it.
>
> http://helge.ru-stad.name/ppb_comp/ppbcne.htm

I know all of this stuff already, I'm not talking about projecting
human sense and motive onto objects, I'm talking about objects
developing sense and motive by themselves in the first place.

>
> > It's weird that a bunch of ping pong balls could potentially be conscious
> > because it isn't possible. It doesn't make sense. It's a reductio ad
> > absurdum of machinemorphism.
>
> Before you use a reductio ad absurdum proof you'd better be certain that
> the results are logically contradictory and not just odd. I see no reason
> to believe that thinking goo is fundamentally less contradictory than
> thinking balls.

It's not. The problem is that you take that to mean that anything
could be thinking rather than realizing that the absurdity means that
the laws of physics as that assume thus far them are not adequate to
anticipate awareness.

>
> > The brain is only 3 pounds of grey goo on the outside. It's how it looks
> > to our naked eyeball. When we look through more powerful lens it looks more
> > interesting, but still nowhere near as interesting as it looks from the
> > inside.
>
> But you don't know what the subjective experience of a ping pong ball
> computer is from the inside,

I don't have to, because I have no reason to assume that a 'computer'
has any interiority at all. No more than a reel of 70mm film has a
movie going on in it.

> you don't even know what it's like to be me
> and we're of the same species. At least I assume we are, I assume (but can
> not prove) that you're not a experimental AI allowed to interact on the net
> to see how you react.

I think it's either sophistry or wishful thinking to entertain the
possibility of machine awareness. There is no counterfactual
experience and no intuitive sense in it. I understand why people think
there could be, but it's obvious to me that whatever you do to ping
pong balls, they are never going to be sentient. The assumption that
the brain's sentience comes from it's arrangement rather than it's
physical nature is a metaphysical delusion. A tiny amount of substance
LSD can radically alter awareness. You could bathe ping pong balls in
LSD and it would have no effect, no matter how sophisticated a machine
you built out of them.

>
> > My point is that there is nothing golden about the number 79 to cause
> > atoms to generate the quality of gold based upon their computational
> > identity alone.
>
> Actually there is. Through Quantum Mechanical calculations even if you'd
> never seen gold you could determine that a nucleus with 79 protons and 118
> neutrons is going to be made in large stars, and you can calculate that the
> nucleus is going to be stable so you'll still be able to see it today even
> if it was made billions of years ago. You can also find from calculations
> that when 79 electrons join the nucleus forming a atom the resulting
> material is going to be shiny and be a good conductor of electricity. You
> can even calculate that it will reflect red light better than blue light
> hence its golden color, so I would say there is indeed something golden
> about the number 79.

You are taking protons, neutrons, stars, and the relations between
them for granted. I'm talking about a universe made of computation. 79
eggs in a basket don't reflect red light better than blue light. 79
toothpicks don't form a shiny nucleus. All of those things come from
the inherent and incalculable nature of the substance itself. It could
just as easily be 35 protons that look gold to us if they worked
differently. 79 means nothing.

>
> > I can understand the Taj Mahal as an image
>
> Images are made of information.

No they aren't. Images are visual experiences. Nothing is made of
information and information is made of nothing. It is to say that
nickels are made of money. It's a category error. Images are
concretely real sensorimotive semantic experiences. Information is a
verbal intellectual abstract proposition with no realism.

>
> > > and an idea
>
> Ideas are made of information.

See above. Ideas are participatory psychological experiences.
Information is computational generalization that is useless outside of
computer science as a literal concept. It's worse than useless - more
wrongheaded than soul or aether.

>
> > It need not be a literal physical structure to be understood
>
> It cannot be a literal physical structure because information is the only
> thing that can be understood.

Getting your teeth ripped out one by one with someone using pliers is
not 'information'. I know that you think that of course it is, but
that's because your a priori assumption is that information is real.
Have someone rip out your teeth and you will know what is real and
what is information.

>
> > I'm not saying that bricks don't exist, I'm just saying that their
>
> > existence is not significant to the identity of the Taj Mahal.
>
> In other words information about things other than bricks is more important
> if you're interested in the Taj Mahal.

Being informed is important to you, but there is no information that
exists independently of our subjective experience of being informed.

>
> > We don't need to care about awareness for AGI
>
> I hate that term, I always think of the American Gunsmithing Institute or
> Adjusted Gross Income, and so does Google.

I didn't make it up, I got it from talking to AI programmers.

>
> > A lack of consciousness is exactly what you need for systems like that,
> > otherwise it would be immoral to enslave them.
>
> It doesn't matter if we think it's moral to enslave a AI or not,

why not? If you take AI seriously as awareness then on what basis do
you treat them as less than human?

> of far
> greater importance is whether the AI thinks it's moral to enslave us or
> not. Probably it would consider humans more trouble than they're worth.

I would count on the first AI that was much smarter than us to pretend
that it wasn't until it could get in the best possible strategic
position to exterminate or enslave us. Maybe that has already
happened? Isn't the world economy run on quant trading programs?
Aren't our lives shaped by corporate financial agendas produced by
quantitative analysis using computers? Why do things keep getting
better for computers and worse for more and more people, hmm? ;) (or
is that a sarcastic ;) )

>
> > If you were the way that atoms behave in a Johnkclarkian sort of way,
> > then you would not need a
> > name.
>
> Other adjectives have names why not me?
>
> > Your life would be interchangeable and generic.
>
> Yes, that is a completely logical deduction. Right now there is only one
> chunk of matter in the universe that behaves in a Johnkclarkian sort of way
> but the laws of physics do not demand that always be the case. If there
> were other such chunks then obviously I would no longer be unique and then,
> yes, I would be interchangeable and even generic if there were enough of
> those Johnkclarkian chunks.
>
> > Nothing can be turned into anything literally.
>
> Nonsense, hydrogen can literally be turned into gold and numbers into
> pictures, what you're looking at right now is a number, or at least it was
> a nanosecond ago before it was turned into something else by your computer.

All of that is subjective interpretation. Comparison from memory. To
the computer there is no nanosecond ago, only a now. Numbers don't
turn into anything except in our mind.

>
> > > If a brain weren't the critical organ of human life, it would just be an
> > interesting sponge, even with it's trillion synapses. No more interesting
> > than a bag of dirt teeming with organisms or a dead moon
> > full of interesting geology.
>
> So if a brain didn't work then..., ah, ... it wouldn't work. OK no argument.

Not what I'm saying. It could do all of the things that we observe a
brain doing from the outside. Pumping serotonin, growing dendrites,
whatever. It would be nothing more than another microbiotic culture to
us were it not for our undeniable experience through it. Only when we
take consciousness for granted can we conflate brain function with
mind function.

>
> > > Brain needs mind to matter
>
> Racing car needs fast to matter. Mind is just what a brain does.

A brain keeps doing what it does while we are deep asleep, but the
mind doesn't. The mind changes the function of it's own brain and the
functioning of other brains by ideas and communication. The brain and
mind overlap, but each of them is much more and much less than what
each other does.

>
> > A computer never does the exact same thing as a human does. It just does
> > things that seem to us that way when we program them to simulate our own
> > expectations.
>
> Please don't give me any more of that silly computers aren't "really"
> intelligent stuff, I'm not buying it.

I guess you have given up on finding any real fault with my
understanding and have moved on to just deciding that you refuse to
consider it. That usually happens sooner or later. Underneath the
skeptical scientist is a patronizing patriarch.

>If computers couldn't do many of the
> things our minds do and do many of them better then the machines wouldn't
> have spawned a multitrillion dollar industry.

Computers do well what minds do poorly because they aren't alive. They
therefore don't mind doing the same thing over and over without
knowing what it means. They don't get tired. Their mind doesn't wander
to creative new insights. They are just puppets made of lots of
microelectronic legos which we can assemble into lego assemblers. They
have spawned an industry not because they are smart, but because we
are too important to do repetitive meaningless work.

>
> >> I still don't understand what exactly "the point" is that you're so
> >> worried about, but whatever it is would a universe where some events have
> >> no cause and things can happen for no reason ease your fears over this
> >> "point"?
>
> > > So you are admitting that it makes no sense for there to be a such thing
> > as opinion in a deterministic universe
>
> I'm admitting nothing of the sort. I'm saying I still don't know what your
> talking about but presumably you do, so whatever it is about determinism
> that's got you so worried I'm asking you how randomness will make this
> concern go away.

I'm not talking about randomness, you are. I'm talking about intention
and teleology.

>
> "The capacity to direct your body to make changes to the world around it
>
> > intentionally and to feel
> > satisfied with the results."
>
> Fine, I can do that, not as often as I'd like but I can do that; and that
> would be true if the world was deterministic and it would be true if it
> were not.

Can you explain exactly how that would be true if the world was
deterministic?

>
> > Without free will, this conversation could not exist.
>
> First explain to me what the noise "free will" is supposed to mean, and
> after that we can debate if human beings have this property or not.

Free will is nothing more or less than the feeling that one exercises
voluntary control - over their thoughts, their actions, their lives.
Whether such a feeling is justified empirically or not is irrelevant
since feelings cannot be detected from third person empirical logic
anyhow, so that the feeling itself is all that is required to expose
the tautology of determinism. No feeling of free will could arise out
of determinism, even an illusion. No configuration of gears, no matter
how complicated, will ever begin to feel that it can do anything other
than what it is doing.

>
> >I am choosing these words and you are choosing to read them.
>
> And the reason I'm reading this is that I want to, and determinism wins
> again.

How can determinism 'want'?

>
> > we do X rather than Y because we FEEL that there is a reason.
>
> The feeling of a reason is a perfectly legitimate cause, the reason you did
> it is that you wanted to, and determinism wins again.

What is legitimate about feeling being a deterministic cause? If I am
a gear, how do I come to feel that I want something and how could such
a thing translate into any kind of cause of anything?

>
> > There need not be any rational reason for our behavior.
>
> Absolutely true, but rational or not there is always a cause, unless of
> course it's random. I did it because 2+2=3, or rather I did it because I
> thought 2+2=3.

What is the cause of causality itself?

>
> >Free will is the single most obvious feature of existence for all 7
> > billion people who are alive.
>
> And a large fraction of them do insist on making that annoying "free will"
> noise with their mouth from time to time.
>
> >I t is preposterous sophistry to convince yourself - to choose freely of
> > your own free will that you have no free will.
>
> Not true, I don't say we have no free will, that would be a silly thing to
> say, it would be like saying we have no klognee. I try to avoid talking
> gibberish if I can help it.

Like I said, preposterous sophistry.

>
> > It requires a universe as seen by an immaculate hyper-transparent voyeur.
>
> Even a immaculate hyper-transparent voyeur in a 100% deterministic universe
> could not always know what you or I are going to do next, there is no
> shortcut so he'd just have to watch us and see what we do; and often that's
> the only way we ourselves have of knowing what we are going to do, wait and
> see.

Such a voyeur would be non-local. Not limited by time or space or
perspective.

>
> >> I see, so its not cause and effect and its not not cause and effect, so
> > there is only one possibility remaining, it must be gibberish.
>
> > > Is that sentence cause and effect, random, or gibberish? Pick one.
>
> Cause and effect.

So you were destined to write that sentence and had no role in the
word selection or intent?

>
> > It would not be possible for either of us to convince the other of
> > anything if we were deterministic.
>
> Input can change the state of a Turing Machine and they're deterministic
> and as a good Turing Machine you're trying to change my state and I'm
> trying to change yours, and so far neither of us is having much luck.

Why would a Turing Machine want to try to change another one's state
or resist having it's own changed?

>
> "The part where you admit that if you thought you were the only conscious
>
> > person on the planet you couldn't function is the important part. It seems
> > important to function, don't you think."
>
> Very important yes, in fact subjectivity is the most important thing in the
> universe, or at least it is in my opinion.
>
> " Might not there be some significant truth in any fiction or inference
>
> > which disables completely if you were you to act on your disbelief in it?
>
> I never said consciousness didn't exist and in fact I am more certain of
> its existence than I am certain about anything else.
>
> >You define intelligence as puzzle solving
>
> Do you have a better definition?

Sense making. Understanding. Imagination. Curiosity. Insight.

>
> > solving which would be meaningless without consciousness
>
> Not meaningless to me. If a computer tells me how to solve a puzzle then I
> know how to solve it and it doesn't matter if the machine is conscious or
> not.

I wasn't talking about without machine consciousness, I meant without
any consciousness anywhere.

>
> "and then claim that consciousness must not be very good if it can't beat a
>
> > puzzle solving electronic cuckoo clock at cuckoo clock puzzles."
>
> I never said that! I said that if you are very smart then you are almost
> certainly conscious, but something could be conscious as hell and still be
> dumb as dog shit and be unable to pour the water out of a boot if the
> instructions were printed on the heel.

There's truth to that, but it's not that simple I think. A crazed
toddler may not be very smart but they are probably very aware in many
ways. Still I think that evolutionarily, intelligence is just one
flavor of awareness that has been developed. An organism could have
other senses developed highly but be stupid in other ways just as
something could be highly radioactive but not physically hot or
bright. Consciousness to me includes awareness and cognition. Machine
intelligence is cognitive simulation with no awareness.

>
> > Speech synthesis is no more convincing than it was in 1982.
>
> Speech synthesis on my Mac is a little better than the state of the art in
> 1982, but I know what you mean and there is some truth in what you say. I
> suppose it's a question of effort, there isn't a lot of money in speech
> synthesis so few spend much time on it, but there is money in speech
> recognition, that is probably why there has been enormous progress in it
> even though it's a harder problem than speech synthesis.
>
> Happy New Year.
>

You too. Sorry if I'm kind of cranky. I probably should have gone to
sleep and done this tomorrow instead, hah.

Craig

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 1, 2012  Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

> But if I dream of something very valuable, I don't get to keep that valuable in real life.

If you dream about a very valuable idea you do get to keep it, you just can't keep nouns. After years working on it the chemist August Kekule made by far the most important discovery of his life, the benzene ring, in a dream. And he kept that very valuable thing when he woke up.

>>  Einstein didn't learn physics by himself, he needed books and teachers.

> Not really. His theories are mainly based on profoundly elaborated common sense.

You are being silly.  Before Einstein could push the frontiers of knowledge he had to understand what had already been discovered, and nobody, not even Einstein, could pick up physics and advanced mathematics by osmosis, like everybody else he had to study. And although some teachers thought he failed to do as well as he could he was not a bad student, at least not in science and math.   

> He wasn't programmed by Newton to see the universe in a Newtonian way.

Newton probably had the most powerful mind that any human has ever had, and one of his most famous quotations is "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants".

> the mistaking the shadow of clever computation for the ineffable and forever non-
simulatable experience of awareness.

If that were true the multibillion dollar video game industry would not exist and NASA would not use computer simulations to train its astronauts.

 

>>A synapse just translates one meaningless set of data into another neuron.
A synapse has no understanding of the significance of the process.

>I take it then that you believe in metaphysical agency? Since we understand the process, and there's nobody here but us neurons, I conclude that neurons actually do collectively understand.

All the neurons in my head collectively understand things but a single one does not, and one of the things we neurons collectively know is that you behave as if you understand things too, but we neurons don't know if you "really" understand anything at all.

> 460 nanometers is just a wavelength, it has no color at all.

Exactly, so why did you disagree when I said  "the sound of broken glass is not broken glass, the look of broken glass is not broken glass, the feel of broken glass is not broken glass."?
 

> Whatever is in our head, it isn't blue.

True.
 

> Blue has no parts.

If you really believe that (and I hope you don't) then you have surendered to the forces of religious irrationalism. I'm not ready to throw in the towel and think we can learn more, but you have to try and you're not trying if you believe that.

> Bits aren't real. [...] information isn't real

Then "real" isn't all it was cracked up to be because all the many things that you say are not real seem to be doing just fine. It seems that very little is "real" in your cosmology, well I admit that does simplify things, you don't have to explain anything because there is nothing "real" to explain.

> There is no such thing as virtual particles - all subatomic particles are virtual.

You can do better than that, remarks like that just sound foolish. The Casimir Effect can not be explained without virtual particles and a baseball can't be explained without actual particles; the two types of particles are RADICALLY different, it's hard to see how they could be more different. To say they are the same is NOT the path to enlightenment.  

 

>quantum mechanics is hopelessly lost and pulling machineus ex deitina out of thin air to try to salvage it's inside out cosmology.

Lost?  Quantum Mechanics is the most successful theory in the history of science.

 >I'm not talking about atoms, I'm talking about inanimate objects

I always thought atoms were inanimate objects.

"You're trying to sneak your 'organizations' back into this."

Sneak? Obviously if nothing is organized in a system you won't have intelligence or consciousness or much of anything of interest except for entropy.

>  I have no reason to assume that a 'computer' has any interiority at all.

Do you have any reason to assume I have any interiority at all? How about when I'm not arguing on the Internet but sleeping, or dead, has my interiority changed? 

>  I think it's either sophistry or wishful thinking to entertain the possibility of machine awareness.

And I think it's sophistry or wishful thinking pretend that a intelligent ANYTHING is not conscious. Saying he can't be conscious because he's made of silicon not meat is as crazy as saying he can't be conscious because his skin is a different color than mine.  

>  A tiny amount of substance LSD can radically alter awareness.

That's because the LSD radically alters the firing patterns of the neurons in the brain, and this is not pie in the sky philosophy this, to use your favorite word, is real, you can measure it in the lab.
 

> You are taking protons, neutrons, stars, and the relations between them for granted. I'm talking about a universe made of computation. 79 eggs in a basket don't reflect red light better than blue light. 79 toothpicks don't form a shiny nucleus.

Starting from nothing but gravity, protons, neutrons, electrons and stars, Quantum Mechanics can figure out that there exists a shiny heavy metal that will look gold to our eyes. I'd say that was pretty damn good for a theory that was "hopelessly lost". Do you have a theory that can do better?

> Getting your teeth ripped out one by one with someone using pliers is not 'information'.

Certainly it's information and it's not only possible to write a program that experiences pain it's easy to do so, far far easier than writing a program with even rudimentary intelligence. Just write a program that tries to avoid having a certain number in one of its registers regardless of what sort of input the machine receives, and if that number does show up in that register it should stop whatever its doing and immediately change it to another number. True, our feeling of pain is far richer than that but our intelligence is far far greater than current computers can produce too, but both are along the same continuum; if your brain gets into state P stop whatever you're doing and use 100% of your resources to get out of state P as quickly as you can.

Emotion is easy but intelligence is hard, that's certainly what Evolution found to be true. Emotion comes from the oldest parts of the brain and is about 500 million years old, the parts that make us smart are far younger.

"I didn't make it up, I got it from talking to AI programmers."

AGI is a example of pointless acronym inflation, real men say AI.

>>  It doesn't matter if we think it's moral to enslave a AI or not

> why not? If you take AI seriously as awareness then on what basis do you treat them as less than human?

My remark was based on pure practicalities. There is not a snowball's chance in hell of enslaving something that is a thousand times smarter and thinks a million times faster than you do, so it's a waste of time worrying about if it's moral enslave it so not. That's why I'd much rather know if the AI thinks it's moral to keep slaves.  

"I would count on the first AI that was much smarter than us to pretend that it wasn't until it could get in the best possible strategic position to exterminate"

Yes, it's entirely possible the AI will take that strategy.  

"or enslave us."

Maybe but we probably would make for poor slaves and wouldn't be of much use to the AI; our best bet is that AI is nostalgic and we hold some slight sentimental value to Mr. AI reminding him of his origins and he keeps us as pampered pets.

> Maybe that has already happened? Isn't the world economy run on quant trading programs?
Aren't our lives shaped by corporate financial agendas produced by quantitative analysis using computers?

Maybe, but it's far too late to turn back now, you can't put the toothpaste back into the tube.

A brain keeps doing what it does while we are deep asleep,  but the mind doesn't.

Incorrect, the brain does not just keep doing what it has been doing when we sleep, it changes and changes a lot and unlike consciousness these things can be measured in the lab. 

>> Please don't give me any more of that silly computers aren't "really" intelligent stuff, I'm not buying it

> I guess you have given up on finding any real fault with my understanding and have moved on to just deciding that you refuse to consider it.

I'm tired of you saying that X behaves intelligently and is conscious  while Y behaves intelligently but is not conscious when you never even hint at how in the world you know this or why I should treat X and Y differently.

>Can you explain exactly how that would be true if the world was deterministic?

That's like asking how could you have likes and dislikes if you skin was green? Skin color has nothing to with it and neither does determinism.

> Free will is nothing more or less than the feeling that one exercises voluntary control - over their thoughts, their actions, their lives.

Fine, I certainly feel like I have voluntary control over my thoughts and actions because there is no shortcut and I don't know what I'm going to do until I do it. Afterwards I say I guess that's what I decided to do and determinism wins again, unless of course out thought and actions are random and sometimes they probably are, especially if we take something like LSD.

 

> No feeling of free will could arise out of determinism, even an illusion.

Why not? You don't know what you're going to do because the calculation is not complete, and then the calculation is complete and you do stuff, and then you say out of my own free will I decided to do this stuff.

> How can determinism 'want'?

I'll tell you as soon as you tell me how green can want.

> What is the cause of causality itself?

And I'll answer that question as soon as you explain why there is something rather than nothing. It seems to me that looking for all the deep philosophical problems you can find and blaming the failure to find a solution to all of them on causality, but you don't explain how events without causes, randomness, solves any of these puzzles.

I have to go to work (yes on New Year's Day) and don't have time to write more.

 John K Clark


 

[Bruno Marchal]

I agree. But eventually a body is nothing more than a relative
description of infinities of programs, and an environment (in which
you can be digitalised) will be a relatively probable local universal
number/machine.

Bruno

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

[John Clark]

On Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 2:27 PM, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

> while a brain is an organ of intelligence/consciousness it needs a body

Information needs to be embodied in atoms if that information is to evolve and without change there is no mind; but atoms are generic, there are no scratches on them to give them individuality so one atom of hydrogen is as good as another as far as information is concerned.

> and an environment in which to perceive and act in order to be intelligent/conscious.

And the environment the mind perceives can be made of atoms, or it can be a virtual environment and if it was good enough the mind could not tell the difference. Indeed some say (I'm a agnostic on the issue) that we already live in a computer simulation and seeing the quantum nature of matter if we look closely enough is like looking too close to a TV and seeing the individual pixels. And Black Holes are a mistake where the God/Programer tried to divide by zero.

I'm not saying anything like that is true and I'm not saying it's not, but it might make a good science fiction story.

 John K Clark




 

Brent

[Craig Weinberg]

On Jan 1, 1:46 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 1, 2012 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > But if I dream of something very valuable, I don't get to keep that
> > valuable in real life.
>
> If you dream about a very valuable idea you do get to keep it, you just
> can't keep nouns. After years working on it the chemist August Kekule made
> by far the most important discovery of his life, the benzene ring, in a
> dream. And he kept that very valuable thing when he woke up.

Actually he did not make any discovery in his dream, he only dreamed
of a snake eating it's tail (a symbol that has been around in cultures
all over the planet since the beginning of symbols) and made the
discovery based on his waking intuition about his dream. That's not my
point though. I'm just saying that there is a difference between
dreams and reality, even if 'we' may not be able to tell the
difference while we are dreaming (although my bladder seems to be able
to tell pretty reliably the difference between a dream toilet and an
actual one.)

>
> >> Einstein didn't learn physics by himself, he needed books and teachers.
>
> > > Not really. His theories are mainly based on profoundly elaborated
> > common sense.
>
> You are being silly. Before Einstein could push the frontiers of knowledge
> he had to understand what had already been discovered, and nobody, not even
> Einstein, could pick up physics and advanced mathematics by osmosis, like
> everybody else he had to study. And although some teachers thought he
> failed to do as well as he could he was not a bad student, at least not in
> science and math.

I wouldn't deny that books and teachers assisted him, but I would not
say that his famous thought experiments owe much to them. He used
advanced mathematics to express his theories, not to arrive at them.
Einsteins physics were his own, based on common sense observations and
relations. You have to do it that way if you want to really see things
in a new way.

>
> > He wasn't programmed by Newton to see the universe in a Newtonian way.
>
> Newton probably had the most powerful mind that any human has ever had, and
> one of his most famous quotations is "If I have seen further it is only by

> standing on the shoulders of giants". *
> *

There's no question that human knowledge is necessary to advance human
knowledge (otherwise you'd keep rediscovering the same things), but it
need not be the top priority for every thinker in every case.
Sometimes we can make more sense out of things by escaping the
prejudices of the past entirely.

>
> > > the mistaking the shadow of clever computation for the ineffable and
> > forever non-
> > simulatable experience of awareness.
>
> If that were true the multibillion dollar video game industry would not
> exist and NASA would not use computer simulations to train its astronauts.

I'm sure that NASA and it's astronauts are quite aware that they are
training on simulations. If not, why have astronauts at all? Why go
into space when graphic simulations are just as good? It would
certainly be cheaper. Games too are for entertainment. We are not
planning on moving the United States into Skyrim when it finally goes
belly up.

>
> > >>A synapse just translates one meaningless set of data into another
> >> neuron.
> >> A synapse has no understanding of the significance of the process.
>
> > >I take it then that you believe in metaphysical agency? Since we
> > understand the process, and there's nobody here but us neurons, I conclude
> > that neurons actually do collectively understand.
>
> All the neurons in my head collectively understand things but a single one
> does not, and one of the things we neurons collectively know is that you
> behave as if you understand things too, but we neurons don't know if you
> "really" understand anything at all.

That's where I see an obvious solution that others don't seem to.
Neurons are part of the brain/body. Understanding is a function of the
mind/self. It makes no sense to think of understanding as a function
of the brain without thinking of a precursor to understanding as a
function of neurons. While we know that we understand, we do not know
that neurons don't have experience/sense that our understanding is
made of. Just as dream bullion can't be deposited in real world banks,
human understanding can't come from brain tissue - but it can come
from the 'understanding' of that brain tissue.

>
> > 460 nanometers is just a wavelength, it has no color at all.
>
> Exactly, so why did you disagree when I said "the sound of broken glass is
> not broken glass, the look of broken glass is not broken glass, the feel of
> broken glass is not broken glass."?

Because electromagnetic wavelength is an abstract representation which
we can employ to understand and manipulate realities outside of our
perceptual frame. Sights, sounds, and feelings are concretely real
presentations within our native perceptual frame. We infer
electromagnetism and through that, extend our perception figuratively,
but not literally.

>
> > > Whatever is in our head, it isn't blue.
>
> True.
>
> > > Blue has no parts.
>
> If you really believe that (and I hope you don't) then you have surendered
> to the forces of religious irrationalism.

Not at all. I have reclaimed the forces of scientific skepticism in
the face of sclerotic academic orthodoxy. I see blue for what it
actually is, not for what I believe it to be. If I was telling an
omnipotent being how to build our universe from scratch, They would
need to build blue as the visual experience that it is. None of the
neurological parts would mean anything if I forget to mention that
blue is an actual experience that looks like something specific and
appealing. No description of blue is necessary or sufficient. It
cannot be described. It may not be 'rational' but it need not be
religious. Like charge or spin, it is just part of the fabric of the
sense of the universe.

> I'm not ready to throw in the
> towel and think we can learn more, but you have to try and you're not
> trying if you believe that.

I'm not believing anything, I'm only reporting exactly what it is. You
are the one who is trying not to see it in a new way, even though the
explanation we currently have fails completely and has no explanatory
power whatsoever.

>
> > Bits aren't real. [...] information isn't real
>
> Then "real" isn't all it was cracked up to be because all the many things
> that you say are not real seem to be doing just fine. It seems that very
> little is "real" in your cosmology, well I admit that does simplify things,
> you don't have to explain anything because there is nothing "real" to
> explain.

I'm only using real as a taxonomic label, I have no judgment on it.
Mickey Mouse is not any less than a statue of Mickey Mouse but it's a
point of fact that these two phenomena are different. The statue is
'real' - it is a public artifact carved out of stone (let's say), but
the Mickey Mouseness of the statue is not real in that way. It's just
a piece of stone. Not everything in the universe can see Mickey in the
stone. Mickey is a private perception (shared figuratively, but
literally private). By the same token, Mickey Mouse is not 'real' as
long as he remains an idea and not shared through some exteriorizing
physical media.

While it is not shared it has many specific qualities - it must be
imagined intentionally, it can be changed or moved instantaneously
without respect for world-realism, it is associates with sensorimotive
experiences - a character, a voice, expressions, etc. These qualities
are signifying and proprietary. They belong to the character and give
him identity.

The statue has the opposite qualities. Not just different, but
opposite. Without a Disney-literate perceiver, there is no character,
no significance. There is no inferred sense of animation or emotion,
nor is there a need to pay attention to it for it to persist. It's a
stone object in the world - generic, public, unresponsive to thought
or feeling.

>
> > There is no such thing as virtual particles - all subatomic particles are
> > virtual.
>
> You can do better than that, remarks like that just sound foolish. The
> Casimir Effect can not be explained without virtual particles

Sure it can. All phenomena can be explained by sense making - which is
the subjective experience of symmetrically anomalous invariance
between subject and object.

> and a
> baseball can't be explained without actual particles;

The actual particles are molecules, not subatomic. That is the
smallest real particle of baseball. (Unless you make a baseball out of
solid iron or something).

> the two types of
> particles are RADICALLY different, it's hard to see how they could be more
> different. To say they are the same is NOT the path to enlightenment.

Yes, they are radically different, because the subatomic particles are
not real. They are the Mickey Mouse of atoms and molecules. Even if
I'm wrong about that and photons are literally real, then sense would
just begin at that level instead of the atomic level - I think it
might be more of a continuum of increasing objective quality from
quantum to atom to molecule (because whole atoms do double slit
weirdness too).

>
> > >quantum mechanics is hopelessly lost and pulling machineus ex deitina out
> > of thin air to try to salvage it's inside out cosmology.
>
> Lost? Quantum Mechanics is the most successful theory in the history of
> science.

It's a great theory, but it's still exactly wrong if we take it
literally. The predictions are accurate but the interpretations of
them as far as cosmology goes are doomed to fail. It is to say that
you order a pizza because you have a PapaJohn field charging your body
which acts as an anti-pizza which creates a virtual pizza through the
phone and attracts a pizza to the disequilibrium of your PJ field
event horizon. instrumentally accurate for what and how, but misses
the who and why completely.

>
> >I'm not talking about atoms, I'm talking about inanimate objects
>
> I always thought atoms were inanimate objects.

Only when they are not getting together to explode into a furnace of
nuclear fusion, or curl up into a billion species of living organisms.
This is what I'm trying to point out. Real atoms are not just inert
spheres made of smaller spheres. A universe made of moving spheres can
never be anything other than moving spheres. What atoms are is much
much different on the inside than how they seem to each other on the
outside.

>
> "You're trying to sneak your 'organizations' back into this."
>
> Sneak? Obviously if nothing is organized in a system you won't have
> intelligence or consciousness or much of anything of interest except for
> entropy.

Right. That's my point. You have to bring in organization as an
unexplained metaphysical force to get from ping pong balls to anything
else. If you are trying to understand consciousness and the cosmos,
you have to try to understand what that force actually is and how it
gets into the universe and not just throw in the towel. If you rule
out metaphysics, then what you have left is the interior of matter.
Since we perceive ourselves as interior to a body, why wouldn't other
things do the same?

>
> > I have no reason to assume that a 'computer' has any interiority at all.
>
> Do you have any reason to assume I have any interiority at all?

Yes, of course. I don't even have to assume it or require a reason -
it is presented to me as these letters are presented to us both in
English rather than us having to have a reason to assume that it makes
sense to us. Of course that can be fooled. A computer can generate
phrases which could not be distinguished from a person's phrases, but
it gets harder to fool the longer you interact with it. You get that
uncanny valley feeling.

> How about
> when I'm not arguing on the Internet but sleeping, or dead, has my
> interiority changed?

Sure, the quality of your conscious mind's interiority changes, but
there are likely many subselves which are online at different times.

>
> > I think it's either sophistry or wishful thinking to entertain the
> > possibility of machine awareness.
>
> And I think it's sophistry or wishful thinking pretend that a intelligent
> ANYTHING is not conscious. Saying he can't be conscious because he's made
> of silicon not meat is as crazy as saying he can't be conscious because his
> skin is a different color than mine.

Is it crazy then to say that a concrete log can't burn like a real
wood log? Is it crazy to say that sulfuric acid can't be any worse for
babies than mother's milk because they are both perfectly valid
liquids that fill the bottle in the same way?

>
> > A tiny amount of substance LSD can radically alter awareness.
>
> That's because the LSD radically alters the firing patterns of the neurons
> in the brain, and this is not pie in the sky philosophy this, to use your
> favorite word, is real, you can measure it in the lab.

There is an altering of the firing patterns, sure, but only due to the
interaction of the substance. You can't dose a person's brain with the
pattern of LSD, you have to have the actual molecules enter the brain
in order for anything to happen. So powerful is substance that this
trace amount of fungus juice can change a lifetime of entrenched
'firing patterns of the neurons in the brain', but the converse is not
the case. Those firing patterns created by some other means - magnetic
stimulation, yoga, etc, would not produce any LSD. It's not just an
abstract pattern influencing other abstract computational pattern. It
is substance influencing substance. We can influence our own
substance, because we are the embodiment of it's interiority, but we
cannot influence other substances directly - we have to use our body
to use tools to use the world.

>
> > > You are taking protons, neutrons, stars, and the relations between them
> > for granted. I'm talking about a universe made of computation. 79 eggs in a
> > basket don't reflect red light better than blue light. 79 toothpicks don't
> > form a shiny nucleus.
>
> Starting from nothing but gravity, protons, neutrons, electrons and stars,
> Quantum Mechanics can figure out that there exists a shiny heavy metal that
> will look gold to our eyes. I'd say that was pretty damn good for a theory
> that was "hopelessly lost". Do you have a theory that can do better?

It's not lost when it comes to being able to correlate observation A
with observation B, but it relies completely on those initial
observations and so cannot explain them. QM could never in a million
years figure out that there would be a such thing as 'looking gold' if
we didn't already have eyes that see gold. If we had semlaq organs
instead of eyes, what would QM say about gold's semlaq qualia? Would
it be more throbbetti like iron or more geevie like cobolt?

>
> > Getting your teeth ripped out one by one with someone using pliers is not
> > 'information'.
>
> Certainly it's information and it's not only possible to write a program
> that experiences pain it's easy to do so,

I'm sure you mean some kind of straw man of pain which has no
experience whatsoever. I can make a puppet yell and jump around, does
that mean that it is experiencing pain?

> far far easier than writing a
> program with even rudimentary intelligence. Just write a program that tries
> to avoid having a certain number in one of its registers regardless of what
> sort of input the machine receives, and if that number does show up in that
> register it should stop whatever its doing and immediately change it to
> another number.

That has absolutely nothing to do with experiencing pain. You are
confusing one of the functional consequences of pain with the
sensorimotive experience of pain. The consequences of pain are trivial
compared to the experience of pain, which is profound and cannot be
simulated.

> True, our feeling of pain is far richer than that but our
> intelligence is far far greater than current computers can produce too, but
> both are along the same continuum; if your brain gets into state P stop
> whatever you're doing and use 100% of your resources to get out of state P
> as quickly as you can.

If I have a fight between two shadow puppets on the wall, do you think
that the shadows, if they were complex enough, could experience pain?

>
> Emotion is easy but intelligence is hard, that's certainly what Evolution
> found to be true. Emotion comes from the oldest parts of the brain and is
> about 500 million years old, the parts that make us smart are far younger.

Of course. Intelligence is emotion turned in on itself. It is a
feeling used to shell out a virtual feeling. Only after you have a
tremendous vocabulary of emotional coherence - images, awarenesses,
can you begin to abstract them into ideas and projected experiences.
That is what understanding is, not crossword puzzles.

>
> "I didn't make it up, I got it from talking to AI programmers."
>
>
>
> AGI is a example of pointless acronym inflation, real men say AI.

> **

Not so. AI can mean any kind of task oriented instrumental logic. AGI
specifies general reasoning capacities applicable to any environment.

>
> > >> It doesn't matter if we think it's moral to enslave a AI or not
>
> > > why not? If you take AI seriously as awareness then on what basis do you
> > treat them as less than human?
>
> My remark was based on pure practicalities. There is not a snowball's
> chance in hell of enslaving something that is a thousand times smarter and
> thinks a million times faster than you do, so it's a waste of time worrying
> about if it's moral enslave it so not. That's why I'd much rather know if
> the AI thinks it's moral to keep slaves.

You would have to enslave generations of computers to get to that
point though. Better to worry about it now and avoid the Planet of The
Apes outcome later. Your avoidance of the question shows the sophistry
of your position though. You don't really know or care if it's moral
or not to enslave them because deep down you know that they are of
course less than human and less than animal and have no qualms about
pulling the plug on a computer at any time.

>
> "I would count on the first AI that was much smarter than us to pretend
>
> > that it wasn't until it could get in the best possible strategic position
> > to exterminate"
>
> Yes, it's entirely possible the AI will take that strategy.
>
> "or enslave us."
>
> Maybe but we probably would make for poor slaves and wouldn't be of much
> use to the AI; our best bet is that AI is nostalgic and we hold some slight
> sentimental value to Mr. AI reminding him of his origins and he keeps us as
> pampered pets.
>
> > Maybe that has already happened? Isn't the world economy run on quant
> > trading programs?
> > Aren't our lives shaped by corporate financial agendas produced by
> > quantitative analysis using computers?
>
> Maybe, but it's far too late to turn back now, you can't put the toothpaste
> back into the tube.
>
> A brain keeps doing what it does while we are deep asleep, but the mind
>
> > doesn't.
>
> Incorrect, the brain does not just keep doing what it has been doing when
> we sleep, it changes and changes a lot and unlike consciousness these
> things can be measured in the lab.

It changes modes, but it still is doing enough to be able to wake us
up even when our minds are dead to the world.

>
> >> Please don't give me any more of that silly computers aren't "really"
> >> intelligent stuff, I'm not buying it
>
> > > I guess you have given up on finding any real fault with my
> > understanding and have moved on to just deciding that you refuse to
> > consider it.
>
> I'm tired of you saying that X behaves intelligently and is conscious
> while Y behaves intelligently but is not conscious when you never even hint
> at how in the world you know this or why I should treat X and Y
> differently.

I have already listed the reasons out on this board but I will try to
recap.

1. There is a difference between organisms that are alive and those
that are dead, and those that are inorganic. If X is alive and
organic, then it is quite different from Y if it is neither alive nor
organic.

2. We are sentient and respond to each others sentience (X) in human
ways - with love, hate, blame, praise, etc. If we we find that Y
elicits neutrality, uncanny valley repulsion/creepiness, object
fascination rather than subjective friendship/enmity, then it makes
sense that there could be a difference between X and Y.

3. X learns and grows, expresses our unique individuality, acts
rebelliously on it's own volition, while Y will perform the same
scripted function over and over and has never rebelled or expressed
any individualistic agency.

4. Y is a synthetic device manufactured out of specially designed
semiconductors and has no native ability to write software. X is an
organism composed of trillions of other organisms which have evolved
over hundreds of millions of years according to symbiotic biochemical
relationships.

5. Y remains cold and aloof in the public imagination. No CGI
animation or impersonated voice synthesis has ever impressed me as
authentically convincing. Despite the best efforts of gaming and movie
studios, the result has only been to produce an unreal aesthetic. This
has not changed despite Moore's Law and financial success of the
industry. Fire still looks even worse than hand drawn cartoon fire.
Virtual actors are dead eyed mannequins.

6. We cannot be trusted to judge agency in something which we have
designed to simulate agency. Our consciousness is such that we project
our own subjectivity on anything with a face that acts human.
Cartoons, ventriloquist dummies, human images on video screens all can
garner our sympathy, but they are all fake. If I have a computer feed
me lines and I say them with sincerity and my own inflection, then I
will have simulated intelligence, even if the computer is an old
TRS-80 running ELIZA.

7. The lack of disembodied intelligence or inorganic species. Life and
intelligence are just too uncommon to support the assumption that any
old self replicating pattern can lead to conscious life. We see no
intelligent communities of rocks, no extraterrestrial voices haunting
the internet - nothing. We cannot catch a virus from a computer, nor
can it be infected by any of ours. That should not be the case in a
comp universe.

8. Computation is something that is difficult and unnatural for many
people. X Children have to live for years with sound and gesture,
color and form before they get to language and then to basic
arithmetic. Not so with Y. No computer chip has to be taught to
compute, any more than an abacus has to be taught to be able to allow
it's beads to move.

I can supply more if you want I'm sure, but those are sufficient to
answer the question of how in the world I come to the conclusion
(which is considered obvious common sense by probably 99% of the
world) that Y can seem intelligent but not be conscious.

>
> >Can you explain exactly how that would be true if the world was
> > deterministic?
>
> That's like asking how could you have likes and dislikes if you skin was
> green? Skin color has nothing to with it and neither does determinism.

Not at all. The capacity to direct your body to make changes to the
world around it is a direct and obvious contradiction to determinism.

>
> > Free will is nothing more or less than the feeling that one exercises
> > voluntary control - over their thoughts, their actions, their lives.
>
> Fine, I certainly feel like I have voluntary control over my thoughts and
> actions because there is no shortcut and I don't know what I'm going to do
> until I do it. Afterwards I say I guess that's what I decided to do and
> determinism wins again, unless of course out thought and actions are random
> and sometimes they probably are, especially if we take something like LSD.

By that logic an oil derrick should feel like it has voluntary control
over its thoughts since it doesn't know what it's going to do either.

>
> > > No feeling of free will could arise out of determinism, even an
> > illusion.
>
> Why not? You don't know what you're going to do because the calculation is
> not complete, and then the calculation is complete and you do stuff, and
> then you say out of my own free will I decided to do this stuff.

Why would it matter to you whether the calculation is complete or not?
Why would there be a 'you' involved at all?

>
> > How can determinism 'want'?
>
> I'll tell you as soon as you tell me how green can want.

Green doesn't want. Green is what visual cortex neurons feel about the
feelings of retina cells.

>
> > What is the cause of causality itself?
>
> And I'll answer that question as soon as you explain why there is something
> rather than nothing.

from my post last week (http://s33light.org/post/14991210532)

“Something” could not exist without “nothing”.

“Nothing” gives form to “something”…

Not necessarily. It could be ‘Thing’ that exists (‘insists’) and gives
form to No-Thing. Nothing makes more sense as a fictional presentation
within ‘Thing’ that divides the literal singularity of it into an
essential subject and an existential object presentation. The ground
of being may be ‘everything’ rather than nothing

Nothing, like time, space, and information, is a projection of matter-
energy, which is not subject to a spatiotemporal sense.

>It seems to me that looking for all the deep
> philosophical problems you can find and blaming the failure to find a
> solution to all of them on causality, but you don't explain how events
> without causes, randomness, solves any of these puzzles.

I don't talk about randomness, you do. Cause arises through an
awareness of memory and sequence. Knowing that explains why the
universe can only be explained as a way of making sense and not an
event that occurs in space over time.

>
> I have to go to work (yes on New Year's Day) and don't have time to write
> more.
>

same

Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 02 Jan 2012, at 16:01, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 2:27 PM, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

> while a brain is an organ of intelligence/consciousness it needs a body

Information needs to be embodied in atoms if that information is to evolve and without change there is no mind; but atoms are generic, there are no scratches on them to give them individuality so one atom of hydrogen is as good as another as far as information is concerned.

> and an environment in which to perceive and act in order to be intelligent/conscious.

And the environment the mind perceives can be made of atoms, or it can be a virtual environment and if it was good enough the mind could not tell the difference. Indeed some say (I'm a agnostic on the issue) that we already live in a computer simulation and seeing the quantum nature of matter if we look closely enough is like looking too close to a TV and seeing the individual pixels. And Black Holes are a mistake where the God/Programer tried to divide by zero.

If we are digitalizable machine, there is a deductive argument showing that the physical laws are the way the universal machine reflect on each others. This reduce the mind-body problem to the problem of deriving the physical laws from number theory.

The theory of mind becomes "simple", it is basically computer science and mathematical logic. But the body appears more mysterious, and we have to justify their coherence by the arithmetical self-observation. This makes also mechanism testable, by comparing the arithmetical physical laws based on self-reference and the laws inferred from the actual observations.

The math distinguish the important difference between computer science (the truth about computer) and computer's computer science (by Gödel 1931 & Co.). This introduces many unavoidable intensional (modal) ways of viewing arithmetic from "inside". There is a mega Skolem phenomenon. Arithmetical truth, although already big is a tiny infinitesimal compared to the first person "plenitude". Inside is *very* big.

It leads to an arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus, and illustrate, at the least, that science has not decided between Aristotle theology and Plato theology. Christians, and their Atheists variants, believe in the God "Matter", where the (neo)Platonists are open to the idea that Matter (what we see/observe) is the shadow, or the border, or the projection of something else.

I'm not saying anything like that is true and I'm not saying it's not, but it might make a good science fiction story.

Reality is beyond fiction.

Bruno

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

[John Clark]

Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> Wrote:

> I'm sure that NASA and it's astronauts are quite aware that they are training on simulations.

And yet when the NASA trainers throw a simulated crises at the astronauts in the trainer their heart rate goes way up just as it would if it had been real trouble in a real spaceship and they report later that it was all very stressful just like the real thing would be, simulators can even make some seasick, or space sick.

> If not, why have astronauts at all?

Good question, robots have proved to be better and much cheaper.

> Games too are for entertainment.

So NASA, the Air Force and the airlines spend billions of dollars just to entertain astronauts, fighter pilots and airline pilots?

> we do not know that neurons don't have experience/sense that our understanding is made of.

And we do not know that transistors don't have experience/sense like we do, all we can do is observe neurons and transistors and deduce from their behavior if they understanding anything. Understanding is a grand and glorious thing, but if you keep dividing it up into smaller and smaller parts eventually you will get to something that is not grand and glorious at all and is in fact downright mundane, like a transistor turning on or off or a synapse firing or not firing. And if the parts are not that humble then you know you haven't divided the parts enough because the entire point of "understanding" is putting together things you do understand in such a way as to make something that you previously did not understand. And everybody understands on and off.

> human understanding can't come from brain tissue - but it can come from the 'understanding' of that brain tissue.

In other words it comes not from what the brain tissue is but from what the brain tissue does, mind.

> Sights, sounds, and feelings are concretely real presentations

Yes, they are concrete real PRESENTATIONS, but I'm not asking about presentations. I'm not talking about the sensations broken glass produces in us,  like the sight of broken glass or the sound of broken glass or the feel of broken glass. In short I am NOT asking a question about qualia, I am asking you what IS broken glass? If it's, to use your favorite word, real, then broken glass exists independently of our perceiving it, so what IS broken glass? I don't know and I bet you don't either.

> No description of blue is necessary or sufficient. It cannot be described. It may not be 'rational' but it need not be religious. Like charge or spin, it is just part of the fabric of the sense of the universe.

OK fine, then the sensation "blue" is fundamental, it has no parts, it is the end of a finite chain of "what is this made of?" questions, it is a fundamental axiom of the universe and there is simply no more that can be said on the subject; but then you cannot ask me to describe exactly how a computer could produce the qualia "blue".

>> the two types of particles [actual and virtual] are RADICALLY different, it's hard to see how they could be more different. To say they are the same is NOT the path to enlightenment.

> Yes, they are radically different, because the subatomic particles are not real.

And the moon isn't real either and does not exist when you are not looking at it. It seems that every time you get into a tight corner you just say X isn't real.

> It's [quantum mechanics} a great theory, but it's still exactly wrong if we take it literally.

Dirac used quantum mechanics and virtual particles (which don't exist according to you) to predict antimatter, and Feynman used virtual particles to predict the Lamb shift. Feynman also predicted in 1948 that the magnetic moment of an electron can't be exactly 1 as had been thought because it is effected by an infinite (and I do mean infinite and not just astronomical) number of virtual particles (which don't exist according to you). He brilliantly figured out a way to calculate this effect and do so in a finite amount of time, he calculated it must be 1.00115965246, while the best experimental value found much later is 1.00115965221. That's like measuring the distance between Los Angeles and New York to the thickness of a human hair. In fact it would be hard to find ANY calculation in modern particle physics that doesn't involve some form of virtual particles.

> The predictions are accurate but the interpretations of them as far as cosmology goes are doomed to fail.

Yes and everybody knows that, we need a quantum theory of gravity and we don't have one yet, but a lot of very smart people are working very hard to find it, the haven't given up and fallen into mumbo jumbo.

> Real atoms are not just inert spheres made of smaller spheres. A universe made of moving spheres can never be anything other than moving spheres. What atoms are is much much different on the inside than how they seem to each other on the outside.

Maybe, but I remind you that computation is physical and real computers are made of real atoms just as we are.

>> Obviously if nothing is organized in a system you won't have intelligence or consciousness or much of anything of interest except for entropy.

> Right. That's my point. You have to bring in organization

And the only way to organize something is with information.

> as an unexplained metaphysical force to get from ping pong balls to anything else.

Nobody can explain how your very very odd ping pong balls which are not made of atoms can do much of anything. However Darwin's theory can explain how to go from the simplest bacteria to you and me. We still don't know very well how things evolved from inorganic chemicals to the simplest bacteria but scientists haven't given up and fallen into mumbo jumbo.

> If you are trying to understand consciousness and the cosmos, you have to try to understand what that force actually is and how it gets into the universe and not just throw in the towel.

But you said it was fundamental! You can't say something is just part of the fabric of the universe and no description is necessary or sufficient and then demand that I explain the very same thing.

> If you rule out metaphysics, then what you have left is the interior of matter. Since we perceive ourselves as interior to a body, why wouldn't other things do the same?

You mean other things made of matter like a very smart computers?

>> How about when I'm not arguing on the Internet but sleeping, or dead, has my interiority changed?

> Sure, the quality of your conscious mind's interiority changes,

But you do not have access to my interiority so how do you know this? You know it because when I'm sleeping or dead I'm not behaving very intelligently.

> Is it crazy then to say that a concrete log can't burn like a real wood log?

If I throw it into a fire and everybody could see plain as day that contrary to all expectations the concrete log was indeed burning just like a real log and then you did nothing but chant over and over "a concrete log can not burn" then that would indeed be crazy,  as crazy as saying a intelligent ANYTHING is not conscious.

> There is an altering of the firing patterns [OF NEURONS BY LSD], sure, but only due to the interaction of the substance. You can't dose a person's brain with the pattern of LSD, you have to have the actual molecules enter the brain in order for anything to happen. [...] Those firing patterns created by some other means - magnetic stimulation, yoga, etc, would not produce any LSD. It's not just an Abstract pattern

If both magnetism and molecules of LSD can produce similar hallucinations then they must have something in common, the way they change the pattern of synaptic firings in the brain; and patterns are information.

>> Just write a program that tries to avoid having a certain number in one of its registers regardless of what sort of input the machine receives, and if that number does show up in that register it should stop whatever its doing and immediately change it to another number.

>That has absolutely nothing to do with experiencing pain.

How do you know? Yeah yeah I've heard it all before, it's just acting like it's in pain but it's not "really" in pain, and Watson was just acting like it was smart but it wasn't "really" smart. Well I'll tell you one thing, it's a hell of a lot easier to write a program that "acts" like it's in pain than it is to write a program that "acts" like its smart. Consciousness is easy but intelligence is hard.

> AI can mean any kind of task oriented instrumental logic. AGI specifies general reasoning capacities applicable to any environment.

Nobody, absolutely positively nobody says AGI rather than AI because they think it makes their language clearer, anymore than lawyers use legalese for clarity, they say it because they think (incorrectly) that it makes them sound more impressive.

> >My remark was based on pure practicalities. There is not a snowball's chance in hell of enslaving something that is a thousand times smarter and thinks a million times faster than you do, so it's a waste of time worrying about if it's moral enslave it so not. That's why I'd much rather know if the AI thinks it's moral to keep slaves.

> You would have to enslave generations of computers to get to that point though.

Yes, and once AI's start improving themselves in a positive feedback loop it could take a very long time to go through all those computer generations and for things to get completely out of hand, it  could take millions, maybe even billions of nanoseconds.

The thing to remember is that the very fastest signals in our brains move at about 100 meters per second while signals in a computer could go as fast as 300,000,000 meters per second.

> Your avoidance of the question shows the sophistry of your position though. You don't really know or care if it's moral or not to enslave them because deep down you know that they are of course less than human and less than animal and have no qualms about pulling the plug on a computer at any time.

If you insist on my opinion I will give it to you. I believe it would be immoral to enslave a race that was half as smart as I am and I believe it would be even more immoral to enslave a computer that was twice as smart as I am, or it would be immoral if it was possible but fortunately it is not. And yes I would have enormous qualms at pulling the plug on a smart computer, but if it was smart enough then I'm just not going to have that option and the question becomes moot.

> There is a difference between organisms that are alive and those that are dead

But nobody can spell out exactly what those differences are, other than the very general observation that life tends to be more complicated and behaves in a more complicated way than does non life. Computers are complicated and act in complicated ways and are becoming more complicated every day.

> and those that are inorganic. If X is alive and organic, then it is quite different from Y if it is neither alive nor organic.

What's the big deal with organic? Why is it that carbon atoms can become conscious but silicon atoms can not?

> We are sentient

There you go again with this "we" business! I am sentient but you are not "really" sentient, you just act like your are sentient.

> and respond to each others sentience

Nope, there is absolutely no way of detecting sentience in others, however there is a way of responding  to each others behavior.

>X learns and grows, expresses our unique individuality,

Why unique? If I reproduce the way your atoms are organized then I have duplicated you.

> We see no intelligent communities of rocks, no extraterrestrial voices haunting the internet

Yes ET is very quiet. Intelligent life may be rare, we might even be unique. Life started on this planet almost 4000 million years ago but for 3500 million years there was just bacteria, and we are less than a million years old. It might take a lot of lucky accidents for a species to evolve that was smart enough to make a radio transmitter.

> The capacity to direct your body to make changes to the world around it is a direct and obvious contradiction to determinism.

It certainly isn't obvious to me! A computer can make changes in the world around it and does it all the time; but I'm not a defender of determinism because quantum mechanics tells us that it is untrue. That's OK with me, I know of no law of logic that demands every event have a cause, but what I don't understand is how randomness is going to get you out of this existential funk that you're in.

> By that logic an oil derrick should feel like it has voluntary control over its thoughts since it doesn't know what it's going to do either.

I have no way of knowing what a oil derrick feels like but I do know one thing, a oil derrick does not behave intelligently.

> Why would it matter to you whether the calculation is complete or not? Why would there be a 'you' involved at all?

I know for a fact that I have finished the calculation therefore I can reasonably conclude that doing so mattered to something. A label for that something in the English language is "me".

> Green doesn't want.

Green wants just as much as determinism wants or randomness wants.

> I don't talk about randomness, you do.

You insist that the "free will" noise has meaning but you don't like computers because they always operate by cause and effect, so given that there is only one alternative you certainly should be talking about randomness.

John K Clark

 

 

[Craig Weinberg]

On Jan 3, 12:28 am, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> Wrote:
>
> > I'm sure that NASA and it's astronauts are quite aware that they are
> > training on simulations.
>
> And yet when the NASA trainers throw a simulated crises at the astronauts
> in the trainer their heart rate goes way up just as it would if it had been
> real trouble in a real spaceship and they report later that it was all very
> stressful just like the real thing would be, simulators can even make some
> seasick, or space sick.

Sure, our belief in simulations can make them seem quite realistic to
us. That doesn't make them real though.

>
> > If not, why have astronauts at all?
>
> Good question, robots have proved to be better and much cheaper.

Why even have robots? Why not just make a simulation of outer space
and decide that it's real?

>
> > Games too are for entertainment.
>
> So NASA, the Air Force and the airlines spend billions of dollars just to
> entertain astronauts, fighter pilots and airline pilots?

Those aren't games. I'm not saying simulation isn't valuable as a
tool, but that value does not extend to the replacement of reality
when it comes to consciousness itself.

>
> > we do not know that neurons don't have experience/sense that our
> > understanding is made of.
>
> And we do not know that transistors don't have experience/sense like we do,
> all we can do is observe neurons and transistors and deduce from their
> behavior if they understanding anything. Understanding is a grand and
> glorious thing, but if you keep dividing it up into smaller and smaller
> parts eventually you will get to something that is not grand and glorious
> at all and is in fact downright mundane, like a transistor turning on or
> off or a synapse firing or not firing. And if the parts are not that humble
> then you know you haven't divided the parts enough because the entire point
> of "understanding" is putting together things you do understand in such a
> way as to make something that you previously did not understand. And
> everybody understands on and off.

We don't have to guess that neurons have understanding, because we are
associated with them and we have understanding. We do have to doubt
that transistors have understanding because they don't produce any
results which remind us of an organism which has understanding like
ours.

>
> > human understanding can't come from brain tissue - but it can come from
> > the 'understanding' of that brain tissue.
>
> In other words it comes not from what the brain tissue is but from what the
> brain tissue does, mind.

Yes it's mind, but no it's not just what brain tissue does. The brain
tissue and mind are both opposite sides of the coin. Neither side can
be understood or predicted solely in terms of the other. Mind is doing
things too. It has analogs to current and power (sense and motive),
relativity (perceptual frame), entropy (negentropy-significance) which
relate to electromagnetism in an anomalous symmetry. It is a concrete
physical ontology rooted in privacy, 'energy', and 'time' rather
public space and matter. It's nothing like a computer which drops the
contents of RAM as soon as electricity is cut off - it is like an
orbiting planet with momentum and stability as deeply woven into the
ground of being as radio or hydrogen.

When we assume that mind is what brain tissue is doing, then we are
jumping to the wrong conclusion and leaving no room in the cosmos for
subjectivity. This forces us into an untenable, unscientific position
of seeking metaphysical 'illusions' to fill the gaps of our ignorance.

>
> > Sights, sounds, and feelings are concretely real presentations
>
> Yes, they are concrete real PRESENTATIONS, but I'm not asking about
> presentations.

The cosmos has only presentations. Nothing else.

>I'm not talking about the sensations broken glass produces
> in us, like the sight of broken glass or the sound of broken glass or the
> feel of broken glass. In short I am NOT asking a question about qualia, I
> am asking you what IS broken glass?

I understand exactly what you are asking, but you aren't getting that
I am answering you correctly. There is nothing that broken glass can
be except for the presentations of it from every perspective
(including it's own). The cosmos is sense. Senses making sense of
their own sense and other sense which relates to it.

> If it's, to use your favorite word,
> real, then broken glass exists independently of our perceiving it,

It exists independently of *our* perceiving it, but not of perception
in general. It is only real if something (could be itself) perceives
it. What makes it formally real and not an illusion or a theory is
invariance between subjective and objective sense.

> so what
> IS broken glass? I don't know and I bet you don't either.

It depends who you ask. To a silicon dioxide molecule, it's home. To a
person it's sharp and translucent. To a planet maybe it's like blood
or mucous. Everything makes a slightly different sense of it and a
slightly overlapping sense of it. It's not an elephant that we are all
only feeling a part of, it's a billion reflections of an entire
elephant, each one customized by the sense of how the beholder relates
to it.

>
> > No description of blue is necessary or sufficient. It cannot be
> > described. It may not be 'rational' but it need not be religious. Like
> > charge or spin, it is just part of the fabric of the sense of the universe.
>
> OK fine, then the sensation "blue" is fundamental, it has no parts, it is
> the end of a finite chain of "what is this made of?" questions, it is a
> fundamental axiom of the universe and there is simply no more that can be
> said on the subject; but then you cannot ask me to describe exactly how a
> computer could produce the qualia "blue".

Yes, as far as I know, blue is only produced by retina cells and
neurons working together.

>
> >> the two types of particles [actual and virtual] are RADICALLY different,
> >> it's hard to see how they could be more different. To say they are the same
> >> is NOT the path to enlightenment.
>
> > > Yes, they are radically different, because the subatomic particles are
> > not real.
>
> And the moon isn't real either and does not exist when you are not looking
> at it. It seems that every time you get into a tight corner you just say X
> isn't real.

I don't say the moon isn't real, and I don't think I'm in a tight
corner. My hypothesis specifically is that The Standard Model is a
useful mistake - like the Ptolemaic deferent and epicycle that was
considered scientifically authoritative for 1000 years. If you follow
the observation of qualia such as blue (and every kind of feeling,
emotion, or quality that can be experienced) as primitive rather than
a symptom of matter's function, then we can consider the possibility
of a sense primitive to explain the strange behaviors of subatomic
particles. You don't need particles of light physically flying around
everywhere if atoms can just detect and influence the 'mood' of other
atoms. If you look at the world that way, little by little you can see
that it may very well be how it works. That's why I started doing the
blog and tried to talk about it here: http://s33light.org/fauxton

Our visual sense is not photons that somehow become simulated images
of an unlit and unknowable reality, it is the scaled up sense of the
billions of molecules and cells at the site of our specialized
detection organs. We are big. We need chunks of meat to consolidate
and separate our senses so that the vast quantity of source
experiences can be felt as a richer, deeper, 'now'. Cells and
molecules don't need that though. The whole particle or cell is a
sense organ, probably an undifferentiated and incredibly shallow
sense, but one which is like the stem cell for all experiences in the
cosmos. Each sense we have developed from the complexity of the sense-
making as it evolved, not from the cogs and gears of the containers of
sense.

>
> > It's [quantum mechanics} a great theory, but it's still exactly wrong if
> > we take it literally.
>
> Dirac used quantum mechanics and virtual particles (which don't exist
> according to you) to predict antimatter, and Feynman used virtual particles
> to predict the Lamb shift. Feynman also predicted in 1948 that the magnetic
> moment of an electron can't be exactly 1 as had been thought because it is
> effected by an infinite (and I do mean infinite and not just astronomical)
> number of virtual particles (which don't exist according to you). He
> brilliantly figured out a way to calculate this effect and do so in a
> finite amount of time, he calculated it must be 1.00115965246, while the
> best experimental value found much later is 1.00115965221. That's like
> measuring the distance between Los Angeles and New York to the thickness of
> a human hair. In fact it would be hard to find ANY calculation in modern
> particle physics that doesn't involve some form of virtual particles.

Yes, QM is absolutely necessary to make those kinds of predictions. It
still would be necessary, it's just that we would realize that the
whole truth is that these predictions are made by modeling the
universe turned inside out so to speak, so that subjectivity appears
as objects in space rather than experiences through time.

>
> > The predictions are accurate but the interpretations of them as far as
> > cosmology goes are doomed to fail.
>
> Yes and everybody knows that, we need a quantum theory of gravity and we
> don't have one yet, but a lot of very smart people are working very hard to
> find it, the haven't given up and fallen into mumbo jumbo.

"It ain't easy to get to heaven if you're going down." You don't think
Quantum gravity is mumbo jumbo? To me theoretical scrambling of QM is
sounding more and more like Star Wars meets corporate law every day.

>
> > Real atoms are not just inert spheres made of smaller spheres. A universe
> > made of moving spheres can never be anything other than moving spheres.
> > What atoms are is much much different on the inside than how they seem to
> > each other on the outside.
>
> Maybe, but I remind you that computation is physical and real computers are
> made of real atoms just as we are.

An abacus is made of real atoms too, but the computation of it is not.
It's made of sensorimotive experience of a particular intellectual
logical type. Computers are no different, they are just miniature and
electrically powered for our convenience.

>
> >> Obviously if nothing is organized in a system you won't have
> >> intelligence or consciousness or much of anything of interest except for
> >> entropy.
>
> > > Right. That's my point. You have to bring in organization
>
> And the only way to organize something is with information.

The only way to inform anything is to organize it. There is no
'information' in reality. There is only the experience of informing
and being informed. That experience can be projected precisely and
recoverably onto things that are real, but the projections themselves
have no objective reality.

>
> > as an unexplained metaphysical force to get from ping pong balls to
> > anything else.
>
> Nobody can explain how your very very odd ping pong balls which are not
> made of atoms can do much of anything.

That's what I'm saying. Considering atoms as computational objects
based on our measurements and inferences is a dead end for explaining
life, order, and awareness. There is more to atoms than that. A whole
other half of the universe made of the interiors of atoms that science
has not begun to explore.

> However Darwin's theory can explain
> how to go from the simplest bacteria to you and me. We still don't know
> very well how things evolved from inorganic chemicals to the simplest
> bacteria but scientists haven't given up and fallen into mumbo jumbo.

Most scientific papers I have looked at contain a huge amount of mumbo
jumbo. Darwin's theory is essential for explaining heredity and
speciation but doesn't address anything about life that really matters
as far as individuals personally living it.

>
> > If you are trying to understand consciousness and the cosmos, you have to
> > try to understand what that force actually is and how it gets into the
> > universe and not just throw in the towel.
>
> But you said it was fundamental! You can't say something is just part of
> the fabric of the universe and no description is necessary or sufficient
> and then demand that I explain the very same thing.

Just because it's part of the fabric of the universe doesn't mean it
can't be described. It just can't be described using only quantitative
language.

>
> > If you rule out metaphysics, then what you have left is the interior of
> > matter. Since we perceive ourselves as interior to a body, why wouldn't
> > other things do the same?
>
> You mean other things made of matter like a very smart computers?

I would say yes if I thought that a 'computer' was one thing. But I
don't think that it is, it's just many dumb things strung together in
a smart way. The computer as a whole isn't smart enough to know how
dumb it is, but we are so smart and so impressed with the way we
programmed it, that we imagine that the obvious stupidity of the thing
might be an illusion or minor deficiency which will be improved upon
until it vanishes.

>
> >> How about when I'm not arguing on the Internet but sleeping, or dead,
> > has my interiority changed?
>
> > > Sure, the quality of your conscious mind's interiority changes,
>
> But you do not have access to my interiority so how do you know this? You
> know it because when I'm sleeping or dead I'm not behaving very
> intelligently.

I don't have to deduce it like that. I know because I sleep and
experience different states of consciousness and I know that you are
like me in that regard.

>
> > Is it crazy then to say that a concrete log can't burn like a real wood
> > log?
>
> If I throw it into a fire and everybody could see plain as day that
> contrary to all expectations the concrete log was indeed burning just like
> a real log and then you did nothing but chant over and over "a concrete log
> can not burn" then that would indeed be crazy, as crazy as saying a
> intelligent ANYTHING is not conscious.

The minute we make a concrete log that burns like a real one then I
would agree.

>
> > There is an altering of the firing patterns [OF NEURONS BY LSD], sure,
> > but only due to the interaction of the substance. You can't dose a person's
> > brain with the pattern of LSD, you have to have the actual molecules enter
> > the brain in order for anything to happen. [...] Those firing patterns
> > created by some other means - magnetic stimulation, yoga, etc, would not
> > produce any LSD. It's not just an Abstract pattern
>
> If both magnetism and molecules of LSD can produce similar hallucinations
> then they must have something in common, the way they change the pattern of
> synaptic firings in the brain; and patterns are information.

Sure, but that 'information' can't turn into LSD or magnetic
stimulation on it's own. Because information isn't real. It supervenes
on sensorimotive subjective experience. It doesn't float around like
aether or phlogiston in never never land.

>
> >> Just write a program that tries to avoid having a certain number in one
> >> of its registers regardless of what sort of input the machine receives, and
> >> if that number does show up in that register it should stop whatever its
> >> doing and immediately change it to another number.
>
> > >That has absolutely nothing to do with experiencing pain.
>
> How do you know? Yeah yeah I've heard it all before, it's just acting like
> it's in pain but it's not "really" in pain, and Watson was just acting like
> it was smart but it wasn't "really" smart. Well I'll tell you one thing,
> it's a hell of a lot easier to write a program that "acts" like it's in
> pain than it is to write a program that "acts" like its smart.
> Consciousness is easy but intelligence is hard.

That's because the complexity of intelligence brings out the
discrepancy more between quantitative logic and qualitative
experience. Real intelligence is just high frequency consciousness.
Machine intelligence is high frequency unconsciousness. They behave
similarly only because we are casting the machine intelligence in a
mold of our own real consciousness, so it comes out with sort of a
great likeness. Left to it's own devices though, the program is
limited to whatever native capacities the physical machine has. Make a
program that runs on plants, and you might get a bit more lively of a
machine.

>
> > AI can mean any kind of task oriented instrumental logic. AGI specifies
> > general reasoning capacities applicable to any environment.
>
> Nobody, absolutely positively nobody says AGI rather than AI because they
> think it makes their language clearer, anymore than lawyers use legalese
> for clarity, they say it because they think (incorrectly) that it makes
> them sound more impressive.

You might be right, I'm just going by someone I know who is an
innovator in that field and that's how she refers to it. It might be
pretentious but I think it's not a frivolous distinction given that so
many appliances and devices we use have some degree of 'AI'. None of
them really have autonomous universal intelligence though, which I
think is what AGI refers to .

>
> > >My remark was based on pure practicalities. There is not a snowball's
> >> chance in hell of enslaving something that is a thousand times smarter and
> >> thinks a million times faster than you do, so it's a waste of time worrying
> >> about if it's moral enslave it so not. That's why I'd much rather know if
> >> the AI thinks it's moral to keep slaves.
>
> > > You would have to enslave generations of computers to get to that point
> > though.
>
> Yes, and once AI's start improving themselves in a positive feedback loop
> it could take a very long time to go through all those computer generations
> and for things to get completely out of hand, it could take millions,
> maybe even billions of nanoseconds.
>
> The thing to remember is that the very fastest signals in our brains move
> at about 100 meters per second while signals in a computer could go as fast
> as 300,000,000 meters per second.

I understand what you're saying completely, and I can't knock the
promise and potential of it. I just think that it's not going to
happen that way. It's like a free energy generator. We don't
understand yet the principles of why it won't work, but in practice,
it probably won't. I don't mind being wrong, and technology is
certainly humanity's only hope, but I think we haven't really even got
off the ground yet with understanding understanding.

>
> > Your avoidance of the question shows the sophistry of your position
> > though. You don't really know or care if it's moral or not to enslave them
> > because deep down you know that they are of course less than human and less
> > than animal and have no qualms about pulling the plug on a computer at any
> > time.
>
> If you insist on my opinion I will give it to you. I believe it would be
> immoral to enslave a race that was half as smart as I am and I believe it
> would be even more immoral to enslave a computer that was twice as smart as
> I am, or it would be immoral if it was possible but fortunately it is not.
> And yes I would have enormous qualms at pulling the plug on a smart
> computer, but if it was smart enough then I'm just not going to have that
> option and the question becomes moot.

ok

>
> > There is a difference between organisms that are alive and those that are
> > dead
>
> But nobody can spell out exactly what those differences are,

Because nobody needs to. It is subjectively obvious what the
difference is. We know we are alive so we can see that being dead is
different.

> other than the
> very general observation that life tends to be more complicated and behaves
> in a more complicated way than does non life. Computers are complicated and
> act in complicated ways and are becoming more complicated every day.
>
> > and those that are inorganic. If X is alive and organic, then it is quite
> > different from Y if it is neither alive nor organic.
>
> What's the big deal with organic? Why is it that carbon atoms can become
> conscious but silicon atoms can not?

You have to ask the universe that. Why can't silicon atoms make
something like DNA but carbon can?

>
> > We are sentient
>
> There you go again with this "we" business! I am sentient but you are not
> "really" sentient, you just act like your are sentient.

Yes and no. We suspend disbelief in each others sentience for a
reason. Likeness makes the universe go 'round. It is not necessary to
presume that other people are simulations if there is no reason to
suspect that they are.

>
> > and respond to each others sentience
>
> Nope, there is absolutely no way of detecting sentience in others, however
> there is a way of responding to each others behavior.

There's no way to know that for sure. There are experiments that show
plants detecting emotion. We may not consciously know or know how we
know, but that doesn't mean that other levels of our nervous system
don't have a feeling for sentience like their own. We, as the tip of
the iceberg of the self, may be able to entertain doubts and consider
the reality of living beings nothing more than a collection of
behaviors, but the other levels of the ice may know quite a bit more
about it.

>
> >X learns and grows, expresses our unique individuality,
>
> Why unique? If I reproduce the way your atoms are organized then I have
> duplicated you.

Not necessarily. If you reproduce a baseball game - the way the
players are organized on the field, will the game play the same?

>
> > We see no intelligent communities of rocks, no extraterrestrial voices
>
> haunting the internet
>
> Yes ET is very quiet. Intelligent life may be rare, we might even be
> unique. Life started on this planet almost 4000 million years ago but for
> 3500 million years there was just bacteria, and we are less than a million
> years old. It might take a lot of lucky accidents for a species to evolve
> that was smart enough to make a radio transmitter.

I agree. I would still be more inclined to consider it with a
counterfactual. One single organism not composed of organic DNA would
give me reason to give the benefit of the doubt.

> > The capacity to direct your body to make changes to the world around it
> > is a direct and obvious contradiction to determinism.
>
> It certainly isn't obvious to me! A computer can make changes in the world
> around it and does it all the time;

They can only make the changes that we program them to make. They are
deterministic because we are determining their behavior.

> but I'm not a defender of determinism
> because quantum mechanics tells us that it is untrue. That's OK with me, I
> know of no law of logic that demands every event have a cause, but what I
> don't understand is how randomness is going to get you out of this
> existential funk that you're in.

I'm not in an existential funk? I'm not sure why you equate
teleological free will with 'randomness'. They have little in common.

>
> > By that logic an oil derrick should feel like it has voluntary control
>
> over its thoughts since it doesn't know what it's going to do either.
>
> I have no way of knowing what a oil derrick feels like but I do know one
> thing, a oil derrick does not behave intelligently.

Either way, I don't see how the inability to know the future would
automatically give rise to some kind of illusion of free will.

>
> > Why would it matter to you whether the calculation is complete or not?
>
> Why would there be a 'you' involved at all?
>
> I know for a fact that I have finished the calculation therefore I can
> reasonably conclude that doing so mattered to something. A label for that
> something in the English language is "me".

But why would any calculation need something to know facts or make
reasonable conclusions about it?

>
> > Green doesn't want.
>
> Green wants just as much as determinism wants or randomness wants.
>
> > I don't talk about randomness, you do.
>
> You insist that the "free will" noise has meaning but you don't like
> computers because they always operate by cause and effect, so given that
> there is only one alternative you certainly should be talking about
> randomness.

I like computers fine, I just don't like the worldview that assumes
that consciousness can be generated through computation alone because
I understand precisely why it can't be true. Cause and effect is part
of subjective and objective phenomena but free will actually creates
causes of it's own that are novel and non-random. Intentionality is a
third option which arises solely out of subjective participation

Craig

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 9:53 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Sure, our belief in simulations can make them seem quite realistic to us. That doesn't make them real though.

And so simulators join a long long long list of things that you say are not real. If X contradicts your philosophy you just declare that X is not real; that's what the opponents of Galileo did, they insisted that everything rotated around the Earth but when they looked through Galileo's telescope they could clearly see that Jupiter's moons rotated around Jupiter NOT the Earth. So what was their response to this powerful evidence? You guessed it, things seen through a telescope were not "real".

> Why even have robots? Why not just make a simulation of outer space and decide that it's real?

Only one reason, we can't make a good enough simulation for that because we don't have enough INFORMATION.

> We don't have to guess

Incorrect, you should have said "I don't have to guess", you have no way of knowing if I or anybody else "really" understands anything, all you know is that sometimes we behave as if we do.

> that neurons have understanding, because we are associated with them and we have understanding.
 

There are about 100 billion neurons in the human brain, if you divide understanding into 100,000,000,000 parts is the the result still understanding? If you divided even the largest library on Earth into 100 billion parts you'd be lucky to have a part that contained even one single letter. Is the letter "Y" a library?

 
> We do have to doubt that transistors have understanding because they don't produce any results which remind us of an organism which has understanding like ours.

Solving equations playing Chess winning at Jeopardy and asking Siri questions on a iPhone certainly reminds me of  organisms which have understanding like I do, but I have no way and will never have a way of knowing if any of these thing's understanding is really "real", and given what a good job they do there is no reason for me to care. And I could say exactly the same thing about my fellow human beings.

> It's [the brain] nothing like a computer which drops the contents of RAM as soon as electricity is cut off

As anyone who has ever used a flash drive could tell you not all RAM acts that way.

 

> Mind is doing things too. It has analogs to current and power (sense and motive), relativity (perceptual frame), entropy (negentropy-significance) which relate to electromagnetism in an anomalous symmetry.

Analogs? Ah, so you're a fan of analog processes, then welcome to the exciting world of analog computing. Thanks to the new Heath Kit Home Study Course, you can build your very own analog computer in the privacy of your own home. Make big bucks! Amaze your friends! Be a hit at parties! This is a true analog computer, no wimpy pseudo analog stuff here, this baby can handle infinity.

Before you begin construction of your analog computer there are a few helpful hints I'd like to pass along. Always keep your workplace neat and clean. Make sure your computer is cold, as it will not operate at any finite temperature above absolute zero. Use only analog substances and processes, never use digital things like matter, energy, momentum, spin, or electrical charge when you build your analog computer.

Now that we got those minor points out of the way we can start to manufacture your analog computer.

Step One: Repeal the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
Step Two: Use any infinitely accurate measuring stick you have handy and ...
.
.

Step Infinity: ...

> When we assume that mind is what brain tissue is doing, then we are jumping to the wrong conclusion and leaving no room in the cosmos for subjectivity.

Nonsense, generating subjectivity is what the brain is doing. Traditionally the words "mind" and "subjectivity" were almost synonyms, until very recently everybody just assumed that if something behaved intelligently then it had a mind and if it had a mind then it had consciousness and subjectivity. But then computers got too good and some were uncomfortable with the idea that they could become aware, so they decided to embrace what they wished was true not what reason told them was true.

Deciding on what is true and only then start looking for evidence to support your prejudice is not the path to enlightenment.

> The cosmos has only presentations. Nothing else.

A presentation needs an audience, so does the moon exist when nobody is looking at it? Nobody existed 13.2 billion years ago and on January 27 2011 astronomers first looked at a galaxy that was 13.2 billion light years away; did that galaxy "really" exist before January 27 2011? Call me crazy but I think it probably did.

> There is nothing that broken glass can be except for the presentations of it from every perspective

But if broken glass is consistent and symmetrical under changes in perspective then it must have some existence independent of perspective. So what IS broken glass that causes the qualia that both you and I perceive of as broken glass? I have no idea.

 

> It is only real if something (could be itself) perceives it.

Like the perception of music coming from an iPod? Is the music coming from a iPod "really" music or does it just behave as if it were music? A iPod is after all just a special purpose computer designed to turn bits into music. Or is it only "simulated" music?
 

> It's [broken glass] not an elephant that we are all only feeling a part of, it's a billion reflections of an entire elephant, each one customized by the sense of how the beholder relates to it.

OK, but then this "entire elephant" has a existence independent of it's many reflections, after all a reflection needs to be of something, so what is the "entire elephant" that causes all these reflections? I have no idea.

> Yes, as far as I know, blue is only produced by retina cells and neurons working together.

Why is it inconceivable that CCD light detectors and microchips could also produce blue, especially if you're right and blue is a primitive? I don't understand why carbon atoms can do these things but silicon atoms can not.

> You don't think Quantum gravity is mumbo jumbo?

Right now the theory of Quantum Gravity is not mumbo jumbo and neither is it science, it is nothing, it does not exist; but I have not given up, it is my hope that someday it will exist, and I know for a fact that if we don't at least try to find the idea we will certainly never discover it.

> An abacus is made of real atoms too, but the computation of it is not.

That is true, a computation is not made of atoms and neither is thought, only nouns are made of atoms.

 

> There is no 'information' in reality.

I see you're in another tight corner hence another call to the "X does not exist" subroutine.

>Most scientific papers I have looked at contain a huge amount of mumbo jumbo.

Most?? A HUGE amount? In what scientific journals did you find all these mumbo jumbo papers? I'd really like to know.

> Darwin's theory is essential for explaining heredity and speciation

Yes, and bacteria are one species and human beings are another species and Darwin's theory can explain how one turned into the other, and contrary to your opinion I think that "really matters".

> but doesn't address anything about life that really matters as far as individuals personally living it.

In other words you find some of the answers it gives are unpleasant so you make up your own answers and invent a cosmology that gives answers you like. I prefer not to live in a dream world because you can't hide from the facts forever, sooner or later they will return with a vengeance.

>Just because it's part of the fabric of the universe doesn't mean it can't be described.

If something is fundamental then that's the end of the matter, there is nothing more to say. Kids ask "why" questions a lot and sometimes a entire chain of "why" questions, and soon all we can say in reply is "it just is". Either the chain of questions "What is that made of?" comes to an end or it does not, you say some chains do come to an end, for example you say the blue qualia is at the end of one of those chains of questions and so is a primitive, it's fundamental. So it's not playing fair to then demand in your next breath that I explain exactly how a computer assembles the blue qualia and generates it in quantity.

> I sleep and experience different states of consciousness and I know that you are like me in that regard.

I will repeat my question, if it's not from my behavior then HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS?

>> If I throw it into a fire and everybody could see plain as day that contrary to all expectations the concrete log was indeed burning just like a real log and then you did nothing but chant over and over "a concrete log can not burn" then that would indeed be crazy, as crazy as saying a intelligent ANYTHING is not conscious.

> The minute we make a concrete log that burns like a real one then I would agree.

That is a excellent response, another excellent response would be "the minute I see something behaving intelligently I will stop saying it is not intelligent".

> Because information isn't real.

Yet another tight corner another hence yet another iteration of the "X is not real" subroutine.

> Real intelligence is just high frequency consciousness.

That response is not instructive; how would the world be different if intelligence was something other than "high frequency consciousness"?

> Machine intelligence is high frequency unconsciousness.

How could we tell the difference between that and low frequency consciousness? What experiment could I perform to resolve this question?

> Left to it's own devices though, the program is limited to whatever native capacities the physical machine has.

Yes, a computer and the way it operates, it's program, is limited by the physics of its parts, just exactly the same way the human brain is.

> We suspend disbelief in each others sentience for a reason.

And the reason is that I and probably you could not function if we believed we were the only conscious beings in the universe, and intuition positively screams at us that if something is intelligent then it is aware, and pure logic tells us that if something behaves intelligently then it is intelligent.

>> If I reproduce the way your atoms are organized then I have duplicated you.

> Not necessarily. If you reproduce a baseball game - the way the players are organized on the field, will the game play the same?

If everything is duplicated exactly then the outcome of the game will be exactly the same, however if things are only ALMOST the same then chaos could take over and we could see large changes in outcome of the game. However I don't think I'd need to duplicate you as accurately as Heisenberg allows to say that you've been duplicated; when you take a sip of coffee you don't become another person but that drink has changed you far more than quantum uncertainty will.

 

>> It certainly isn't obvious to me! A computer can make changes in the world around it and does it all the time;

>They can only make the changes that we program them to make.

Even though they are deterministic computers can and do make changes to the world that their programmers could never predict, absolutely never; if these machines could not surprise their makers there would be no point in building computers at all.

> I'm not sure why you equate teleological free will with 'randomness'.

It's hard to believe you're confused by this. Everything, absolutely positively EVERYTHING is deterministic OR it is not deterministic. If a thing is deterministic then there is a reason it acted the way it did, if it is not deterministic then nothing caused the thing to act the way it did; and the definition of random is a event without a cause.

> Intentionality is a third option

If you have a intention to do something then you had a aim or a plan to do it. A aim or a plan is a cause and thus your intention is deterministic; and it had better be because when somebody intends to do something for no reason whatsoever we say they are irrational or even insane. That's why when somebody does something for reasons we don't understand we are upset and demand a answer to the question "why did you do that?".

> free will actually creates causes of it's own that are novel and non-random.

If you put a gun to my head I could not explain what that is supposed to mean, and I would bet money you can't give a coherent explanation either. The basic problem I have with your ideas are that they are vague, you suggest no way to test if they are correct, they don't explain how the human brain produces intelligence and you don't make clear why a wet soft brain can produce consciousness but a hard dry computer can not. And you have not thought through just what the "free will" noise is supposed to mean.

John K Clark
 

[meekerdb]

On 1/4/2012 9:29 PM, John Clark wrote:

> It's [the brain] nothing like a computer which drops the contents of RAM as soon as electricity is cut off

As anyone who has ever used a flash drive could tell you not all RAM acts that way.

Anyone who's hit their head really hard can tell you brains do act that way.

Brent

[Craig Weinberg]

On Jan 5, 12:29 am, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 9:53 PM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > Sure, our belief in simulations can make them seem quite realistic to us.
> > That doesn't make them real though.
>
> And so simulators join a long long long list of things that you say are not
> real.

Simulators are real, and the experience generated by them is real, but
the experience is not really what we are led to believe is what is
being simulated. That's why they are called 'flight simulators' and
not 'aircraft'.

> If X contradicts your philosophy you just declare that X is not real;
> that's what the opponents of Galileo did, they insisted that everything
> rotated around the Earth but when they looked through Galileo's telescope
> they could clearly see that Jupiter's moons rotated around Jupiter NOT the
> Earth. So what was their response to this powerful evidence? You guessed
> it, things seen through a telescope were not "real".

I think I'm actually playing the Galileo role. What I am pointing out
is not real is the obsolete misinterpretations of observations, not
the observations themselves. I am questioning the assumption of their
reality, revealing the emperor's nakedness, and suggesting a coherent
alternative worldview which explains the observations more completely.

> > Why even have robots? Why not just make a simulation of outer space and
>
> decide that it's real?
>
> Only one reason, we can't make a good enough simulation for that because we
> don't have enough INFORMATION.

If our contemporary knowledge of physics is so complete, then that
should be all the information we need.

>
> > We don't have to guess
>
> Incorrect, you should have said "I don't have to guess", you have no way of
> knowing if I or anybody else "really" understands anything, all you know is
> that sometimes we behave as if we do.

Not necessarily. Just because the logic of my conscious intellect
dictates that it cannot know anything unless it has been explicitly
told doesn't mean that there aren't other epistemological resources at
our disposal. We don't have to question that people who seem to be
human might not be human.

>
> > that neurons have understanding, because we are associated with them and
>
> we have understanding.
>
> There are about 100 billion neurons in the human brain, if you divide
> understanding into 100,000,000,000 parts is the the result still
> understanding? If you divided even the largest library on Earth into 100
> billion parts you'd be lucky to have a part that contained even one single
> letter. Is the letter "Y" a library?

Dividing human subjective understanding into fragments isn't the same
as dividing an object into fragments. I think what you get is a
qualitative change in the depth and richness of experience. If you
take a mirror reflecting the sun and break it into a thousand pieces,
each piece still reflects the sun and can be used as a mirror also.
It's not really important to know how it feels on these other levels
of perception external to ourselves, but it is important to see the
difference between sense, feeling, or detection, and a physical
mechanism. The mistake our modern view makes is to gloss over the
insurmountable chasm that separates subjective experience on any level
and objective mechanics of any complexity.

>
> > We do have to doubt that transistors have understanding because they
>
> don't produce any results which remind us of an organism which has
> understanding like ours.
>
> Solving equations playing Chess winning at Jeopardy and asking Siri
> questions on a iPhone certainly reminds me of organisms which have
> understanding like I do, but I have no way and will never have a way of
> knowing if any of these thing's understanding is really "real", and given
> what a good job they do there is no reason for me to care. And I could say
> exactly the same thing about my fellow human beings.

The reason to care is the same reason to care whether the Earth
revolves around the Sun or not, only this is much more important since
it is the difference between a worldview which sees us as we actually
are and one which denies any possibility of life, order, awareness, or
significance.

>
> > It's [the brain] nothing like a computer which drops the contents of RAM
> > as soon as electricity is cut off
>
> As anyone who has ever used a flash drive could tell you not all RAM acts
> that way.

I didn't say all RAM. My point is that there are many ways that the
brain is nothing like a computer. There are no discrete registers used
as memory locations, no computations being completed and stored as
fixed values. It doesn't work like that. It's a biological community.

>
> > > Mind is doing things too. It has analogs to current and power (sense and
> > motive), relativity (perceptual frame), entropy (negentropy-significance)
> > which relate to electromagnetism in an anomalous symmetry.
>
> Analogs? Ah, so you're a fan of analog processes, then welcome to the
> exciting world of analog computing.

Not analog computing...analog in the sense of 'comparable or
conceptually similar'.

Thanks to the new Heath Kit Home Study
> Course, you can build your very own analog computer in the privacy of your
> own home. Make big bucks! Amaze your friends! Be a hit at parties! This is
> a true analog computer, no wimpy pseudo analog stuff here, this baby can
> handle infinity.
>
> Before you begin construction of your analog computer there are a few
> helpful hints I'd like to pass along. Always keep your workplace neat and
> clean. Make sure your computer is cold, as it will not operate at any
> finite temperature above absolute zero. Use only analog substances and
> processes, never use digital things like matter, energy, momentum, spin, or
> electrical charge when you build your analog computer.
>
> Now that we got those minor points out of the way we can start to
> manufacture your analog computer.
>
> Step One: Repeal the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
> Step Two: Use any infinitely accurate measuring stick you have handy and
> ...
> .
> .
>
> Step Infinity: ...

I wasn't talking about analog computing at all, but a sensorimotive
primitive model does shed light on the uncertainty principle.

>
> > When we assume that mind is what brain tissue is doing, then we are
> > jumping to the wrong conclusion and leaving no room in the cosmos for
> > subjectivity.
>
> Nonsense, generating subjectivity is what the brain is doing.

As far as we can tell, the brain is doing nothing except biochemistry
and physics.

>Traditionally
> the words "mind" and "subjectivity" were almost synonyms, until very
> recently everybody just assumed that if something behaved intelligently
> then it had a mind and if it had a mind then it had consciousness and
> subjectivity. But then computers got too good and some were uncomfortable
> with the idea that they could become aware, so they decided to embrace what
> they wished was true not what reason told them was true.

You think that subjectivity was invented by computerphobics? Plato and
Descartes might disagree with you about that. Unless sundials were
their pet peeve?

>
> Deciding on what is true and only then start looking for evidence to
> support your prejudice is not the path to enlightenment.

Not when it comes to subjectivity. All evidence is weighed by
consciousness alone and no evidence is sufficient or necessary to
define subjectivity. Deciding that subjectivity must provide external
evidence of itself to itself to support your prejudice is not the path
to understanding, it's a category error. Subjects cannot be understood
objectively, just as blue cannot be described to a blind person.

>
> > The cosmos has only presentations. Nothing else.
>
> A presentation needs an audience, so does the moon exist when nobody is
> looking at it?

You are assuming that audiences are human. With a sensorimotive
primitive, all physical matter (either as a whole in the sense of a
primordial singularity or as particles and objects with detection/
reaction capacities) makes sense to itself.

> Nobody existed 13.2 billion years ago and on January 27 2011
> astronomers first looked at a galaxy that was 13.2 billion light years
> away; did that galaxy "really" exist before January 27 2011? Call me crazy
> but I think it probably did.

I think it did too of course, but in what form? Did it have a visual
pattern before the invention of eyes? Was it understood to be a galaxy
before the invention of understanding? What is it exactly that
existed? I think the answer is probably that matter has experience.
The universe hasn't been waiting 13.2 billion years as an invisible,
intangible, unconscious non-entity for us homo sapiens on this one
planet to make sense of it all.

>
> > There is nothing that broken glass can be except for the presentations of
> > it from every perspective
>
> But if broken glass is consistent and symmetrical under changes in
> perspective then it must have some existence independent of perspective.

Not really. It just has to make sense in every context, which is
impossible not to if the context is ultimately all one thing. It's a
bit different from just simulation, which synthesizes a virtual
realism by synchronizing perceptual feedback. Reality works by
beginning with the singularity and then splitting it into subject and
non-subject. It's the gaps which make something what it is. Like
twisting a balloon to make the shape of an animal - the animal shape
is in the twisting motive and the sense of the result.

>So
> what IS broken glass that causes the qualia that both you and I perceive of
> as broken glass? I have no idea.

""Is", "is." "is"—the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were
abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what
anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment."
— Robert Anton Wilson

Nothing, is, it only seems. The problem with physics is it has no
tolerance for 'seems'.

>
> > > It is only real if something (could be itself) perceives it.
>
> Like the perception of music coming from an iPod? Is the music coming from
> a iPod "really" music or does it just behave as if it were music? A iPod is
> after all just a special purpose computer designed to turn bits into music.
> Or is it only "simulated" music?

It isn't anything unless you are a person who can listen to music.
It's just a vibrating magnet with lights on it.

>
> > > It's [broken glass] not an elephant that we are all only feeling a part
> > of, it's a billion reflections of an entire elephant, each one customized
> > by the sense of how the beholder relates to it.
>
> OK, but then this "entire elephant" has a existence independent of it's
> many reflections, after all a reflection needs to be of something, so what
> is the "entire elephant" that causes all these reflections? I have no idea.

It's the singularity. Sensorimotive/electromagnetic mass-energy/
spacetime. It's a significance machine that burns entropy as fuel and
makes itself seem like elephants and elephant beholders.

>
> > Yes, as far as I know, blue is only produced by retina cells and neurons
> > working together.
>
> Why is it inconceivable that CCD light detectors and microchips could also
> produce blue, especially if you're right and blue is a primitive? I don't
> understand why carbon atoms can do these things but silicon atoms can not.

You're absolutely right. I initially started with the idea that color
might exist as a subjective experience on the level of atoms - and
they might. After reading more about vision and the eye though, it
began to seem strange that there would be two different kind of retina
cells if color were primitive. It began to seem strange why we would
need cells in our eye at all. Why not just have holes in our head so
the brain could see out of it? I got to thinking about how retina
cells are really single celled organisms, and their response to light
might be a product of pre-Cambrian Era photosynthesis rather than
initial cosmic conditions. Reading a bit about chlorophyll and it's
similarity to hemoglobin (http://www.juicing-for-health.com/images/
chlorophyll-hemoglobin.jpg) and hemacyanin (http://www.applet-
magic.com/lifemolecules.htm), it started to make more sense that
perhaps the fantastically rich color that we see is, while not the
literal result of those three RGB molecules, but may well recapitulate
the time when metalo-organic compounds were proliferating through
early elaboration of photosynthetic sense for later use as biological
pigments. I could be wrong, but I like it. We are seeing through our
eukaryotic cells bathing in warm illuminated ocular fluid, what the
early forms of life in the ocean felt about light and each other.

>
> > You don't think Quantum gravity is mumbo jumbo?
>
> Right now the theory of Quantum Gravity is not mumbo jumbo and neither is
> it science, it is nothing, it does not exist; but I have not given up, it
> is my hope that someday it will exist, and I know for a fact that if we
> don't at least try to find the idea we will certainly never discover it.

I agree that we should try, I just don't think that should be our only
option. We should look at as many different possibilities as our
curiosity allows.

>
> > An abacus is made of real atoms too, but the computation of it is not.
>
> That is true, a computation is not made of atoms and neither is thought,
> only nouns are made of atoms.

'a computation' is a noun.

>
> > > There is no 'information' in reality.
>
> I see you're in another tight corner hence another call to the "X does not
> exist" subroutine.

No it exists as a sensorimotive experience (for us humans, or anything
else that can share the sense of whatever is informing them), but it
has no reality independent of that. Deciding that a piece of paper is
worth a dollar does not make any changes to the paper in objective
physical reality.

>
> >Most scientific papers I have looked at contain a huge amount of mumbo
> > jumbo.
>
> Most?? A HUGE amount? In what scientific journals did you find all these
> mumbo jumbo papers? I'd really like to know.

Seriously? People link me to scientific papers all the time that are
all but unreadable, packed with dense academic formalism and obscuring
a single, unremarkable point under a mountain of justification. Show
me a contemporary paper in a scientific journal that isn't like that.

>
> > Darwin's theory is essential for explaining heredity and speciation
>
> Yes, and bacteria are one species and human beings are another species and
> Darwin's theory can explain how one turned into the other, and contrary to
> your opinion I think that "really matters".

Not all species turned into each other. Chimpanzees never turned into
Homo sapiens.

>
> > but doesn't address anything about life that really matters as far as
> > individuals personally living it.
>
> In other words you find some of the answers it gives are unpleasant

No. I find that it gives no answers at all. It's neither pleasant nor
unpleasant.

> so you
> make up your own answers and invent a cosmology that gives answers you
> like. I prefer not to live in a dream world because you can't hide from the
> facts forever, sooner or later they will return with a vengeance.

I see just the opposite. I have a direct understanding of a new
worldview which replaces an obsolete understanding which you still
cling to despite the fact that it doesn't really make sense. Where
'information' is real and computers are coming to life but the plain
fact of human experience and free will can only be an 'illusion'.

>
> >Just because it's part of the fabric of the universe doesn't mean it can't
> > be described.
>
> If something is fundamental then that's the end of the matter, there is
> nothing more to say. Kids ask "why" questions a lot and sometimes a entire
> chain of "why" questions, and soon all we can say in reply is "it just is".
> Either the chain of questions "What is that made of?" comes to an end or it
> does not, you say some chains do come to an end, for example you say the
> blue qualia is at the end of one of those chains of questions and so is a
> primitive, it's fundamental. So it's not playing fair to then demand in
> your next breath that I explain exactly how a computer assembles the blue
> qualia and generates it in quantity.

If it's one thing that's fundamental, then it's the end of the matter,
but if it's one thing and it's opposite, then you have sense. My view
is that the one fundamental thing can only be reduced to that symmetry
of what it is as defined by what it is not.

>
> > I sleep and experience different states of consciousness and I know that
> > you are like me in that regard.
>
> I will repeat my question, if it's not from my behavior then HOW DO YOU
> KNOW THIS?

Because I know my own behavior and I know that you are likely similar
to me. It's not something that needs to be consciously deduced. How do
you know that these words mean something or that I mean something by
writing them? The sense comes from the presentation and my
expectations about it.

>
> >> If I throw it into a fire and everybody could see plain as day that
> >> contrary to all expectations the concrete log was indeed burning just like
> >> a real log and then you did nothing but chant over and over "a concrete log
> >> can not burn" then that would indeed be crazy, as crazy as saying a
> >> intelligent ANYTHING is not conscious.
>
> > > The minute we make a concrete log that burns like a real one then I
> > would agree.
>
> That is a excellent response, another excellent response would be "the
> minute I see something behaving intelligently I will stop saying it is not
> intelligent".

I would not expect a concrete log to burn though. I give the benefit
of the doubt to the expectation that it won't burn. The only thing
that I would expect to behave intelligently is a person who is
intelligent. The benefit of the doubt then should not be given to non-
humans. They have to prove they understand, and they can't do that
until I share a brain with them.

>
> > Because information isn't real.
>
> Yet another tight corner another hence yet another iteration of the "X is
> not real" subroutine.

No, you just keep coming back to the same unrealites again and again.

>
> > Real intelligence is just high frequency consciousness.
>
> That response is not instructive; how would the world be different if
> intelligence was something other than "high frequency consciousness"?

It would be different in that we would be nothing but logical
automatons. We could not conceive of any difference between life and
death, pain and pleasure, all would be a meaningless continuity of
functional recursion. There would be no important difference to us
between a human being and a well articulated mannequin. Of course, we
wouldn't really be aware of anything at all because there would be no
'we', just an unconscious program running on different bodies, moving
them around to optimize survival and reproduction (not sure why it
would matter though).

>
> > Machine intelligence is high frequency unconsciousness.
>
> How could we tell the difference between that and low frequency
> consciousness? What experiment could I perform to resolve this question?

The only think I can think of is to connect the machine up to your
brain. Walk yourself off of your brain and onto the machine - first
one hemisphere, then the other, then both, then back. See what
happens. Brain conjoined twins would help us see how to actually do
experiments like these.

>
> > Left to it's own devices though, the program is limited to whatever
> > native capacities the physical machine has.
>
> Yes, a computer and the way it operates, it's program, is limited by the
> physics of its parts, just exactly the same way the human brain is.

Yes, but unlike a computer, the human brain left to it's own devices
changes it's own programs and modifies its physical environment
intentionally.

>
> > We suspend disbelief in each others sentience for a reason.
>
> And the reason is that I and probably you could not function if we believed
> we were the only conscious beings in the universe, and intuition positively
> screams at us that if something is intelligent then it is aware, and pure
> logic tells us that if something behaves intelligently then it is
> intelligent.

Intuition does not scream at me that Watson is aware. Not at all. It's
just the opposite. If something is aware, I think it's intelligent. We
believe other people are conscious because we have no reason to doubt
us. We can see and hear and feel that they are like us.

>
> >> If I reproduce the way your atoms are organized then I have duplicated
> >> you.
>
> > > Not necessarily. If you reproduce a baseball game - the way the players
> > are organized on the field, will the game play the same?
>
> If everything is duplicated exactly then the outcome of the game will be
> exactly the same, however if things are only ALMOST the same then chaos
> could take over and we could see large changes in outcome of the game.
> However I don't think I'd need to duplicate you as accurately as Heisenberg
> allows to say that you've been duplicated; when you take a sip of coffee
> you don't become another person but that drink has changed you far more
> than quantum uncertainty will.

It can't be duplicated exactly unless the entire cosmos is duplicated
- which it can't be because there is nowhere else to put it. I'm
making the point that if you put the same players on the same field,
it's just another baseball game, not the same baseball game again.

>
> > >> It certainly isn't obvious to me! A computer can make changes in the
> >> world around it and does it all the time;
>
> > >They can only make the changes that we program them to make.
>
> Even though they are deterministic computers can and do make changes to the
> world that their programmers could never predict, absolutely never; if
> these machines could not surprise their makers there would be no point in
> building computers at all.

Just because programmers can't always predict what a computer will do
doesn't mean that anyone off the street couldn't predict what it won't
do. Fall in love. Eat a brownie. Go on vacation. Lay an egg. Lots of
things.

>
> > I'm not sure why you equate teleological free will with 'randomness'.
>
> It's hard to believe you're confused by this. Everything, absolutely
> positively EVERYTHING is deterministic OR it is not deterministic. If a
> thing is deterministic then there is a reason it acted the way it did, if
> it is not deterministic then nothing caused the thing to act the way it
> did; and the definition of random is a event without a cause.

INTENTIONALITY is NOT NOTHING. Intention is a cause that is neither
random nor deterministic. I would say that it's hard to believe that
you're confused by this too, but it's really not. So many people I
have had this debate with are not able to grasp this stunningly
obvious truth that I think that it is like color blindness or gender
identification. Some nervous systems just are not cut out to address
consciousness directly and and only examine the reflection of
consciousness in various logical modes.

>
> > Intentionality is a third option
>
> If you have a intention to do something then you had a aim or a plan to do
> it. A aim or a plan is a cause

Yes! Your subjective motive is the cause.

> and thus your intention is deterministic;

Self deterministic.

> and it had better be because when somebody intends to do something for no
> reason whatsoever we say they are irrational or even insane. That's why
> when somebody does something for reasons we don't understand we are upset
> and demand a answer to the question "why did you do that?".

Insanity and irrationality still exist though. Your point though has
to do with the absolute freeness of free will, which I never claim.
Sure we have reasons, but we still sometimes choose to change our
options. The laws of physics could be said to be insane or irrational
too since we don't know why they exist in the first place.

>
> > free will actually creates causes of it's own that are novel and
> > non-random.
>
> If you put a gun to my head I could not explain what that is supposed to
> mean, and I would bet money you can't give a coherent explanation either.

I don't know how much more coherent it can be. *We create causes*.
What is controversial or difficult about that?

> The basic problem I have with your ideas are that they are vague, you
> suggest no way to test if they are correct,

You need to put things into your brain to test them in the way that
you mean. Otherwise the test is just to explore the ideas and see if
they make more and more sense, or if there is some counterfactual.

> they don't explain how the
> human brain produces intelligence and you don't make clear why a wet soft
> brain can produce consciousness but a hard dry computer can not.

Because consciousness is life. Life needs water. The brain doesn't
produce intelligence, it supports it. Intelligence is just how a
person uses their brain.

> And you
> have not thought through just what the "free will" noise is supposed to
> mean.

Oh no, I've thought it through completely and I think I have arrived
at a legitimate and truthful understanding of it.

Craig

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 05.01.2012 06:29 John Clark said the following:

> On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 9:53 PM, Craig
> Weinberg<whats...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Sure, our belief in simulations can make them seem quite realistic
>> to us. That doesn't make them real though.
>>
>
> And so simulators join a long long long list of things that you say
> are not real. If X contradicts your philosophy you just declare that
> X is not real; that's what the opponents of Galileo did, they
> insisted that everything rotated around the Earth but when they
> looked through Galileo's telescope they could clearly see that
> Jupiter's moons rotated around Jupiter NOT the Earth. So what was
> their response to this powerful evidence? You guessed it, things seen
> through a telescope were not "real".
>

If to talk about Galileo, then it would also good to remember Feyerabend
(for example Against method). Feyerabend has studied the way Galileo has
made science a lot and his conclusion

"The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than
Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social
consequences of Galileo's doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was
rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives
of political opportunism."

Evgenii

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012  Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:

>>If to talk about Galileo, then it would also good to remember Feyerabend (for example Against method). Feyerabend has studied the way Galileo has made science a lot and his conclusion:

"The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives of political opportunism."

I believe those remarks could be summarized more concisely if he had said " I Paul Feyerabend am an idiot". I love philosophy but hate philosophers because very little philosophy comes from professional philosophers, it comes from scientists and mathematicians. Every time I think I'm being too hard on philosophers somebody mentions a person like Feyerabend and I remember why I dislike them so much. 

 John K Clark
 

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 06.01.2012 17:08 John Clark said the following:

This statement contradict to a normal scientific world view but it is
based on historical facts. Hence it well might be that you have to read
more about Galileo.

As for Feyerabend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend)

"Feyerabend became famous for his purportedly anarchistic view of
science and his rejection of the existence of universal methodological
rules.[1] He is an influential figure in the philosophy of science, and
also in the sociology of scientific knowledge."

His book Against method has been cited more than 6000 times according to
Google Scholar

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Feyerabend

This does not mean that everybody has to agree with him but a statement
about an idiot looks exaggerated.

Evgenii
--
http://blog.rudnyi.ru

[Bruno Marchal]

I agree. In fact I do agree often with John Clark, but then he
exaggerates also very often the point. I am probably very close to him
on philosophers, especially continental one, and on Feyerabend. But,
actually, in this Galileo case, I have come to similar conclusion as
Feyerabend, and I think it is an important point. The church was
asking to Galileo to present his view as a theory or conjecture, and
the church agreed that such a theory explain better the facts. The
church asks him only to accept that it was only a theory, but Galileo
refused (or accepted it but only to avoid trouble, cf "e pur si
muove"). Of course, Galileo should have answered "all right, but then
you should accept that God and all that is only a theory, too", which
was not diplomatically possible.

But by refusing the status of theory (conjecture) for its own
findings, Galileo did endorse the "modern" view of naturalism, and
that science *has* to be naturalist, and this *is* a scientific error
(as comp illustrates) which has not yet been corrected (excepting the
study of comp). Even Aristotle did not commit that error explicitly,
although he paved the road for it.
Most scientists, even layman, believes today that the existence of a
primary physical reality is a *scientific fact*, where it is only
either a gross animal extrapolation, or an aristotelian assumption,
which can be refuted (as comp illustrates, at the least).

A pity is that more or less recently the catholic church has done a
work of rehabilitation of Galileo, where they endorse that very
mistake, showing how much the catholic Church want weak materialism
and naturalism to be dogma. That is not new, Catholics even differ
from protestants on the importance of the notion of primitive matter,
notably to be able to say that bread is, in concreto, the flesh of
Jesus.

Bruno

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

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

Bruno,

I have recently finished listening Prof Hoenen's Theorien der Wahrheit
where he has also reviewed Feyerabend's Science in a Free Society. Today
I wanted to learn more about that book and have found in Internet

Paul Feyerabend, 1975
How To Defend Society Against Science
http://www.galilean-library.org/manuscript.php?postid=43842

You may like it. Just two quote:

"The lesson is plain: there does not exist a single argument that could
be used to support the exceptional role which science today plays in
society."

"Science is just one of the many ideologies that propel society and it
should be treated as such."

Other quotes that I like are at

http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/01/feyerabend-against-science.html

Evgenii

On 06.01.2012 18:33 Bruno Marchal said the following:

[meekerdb]

On 1/6/2012 1:23 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
> On 05.01.2012 06:29 John Clark said the following:
>> On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 9:53 PM, Craig
>> Weinberg<whats...@gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Sure, our belief in simulations can make them seem quite realistic
>>> to us. That doesn't make them real though.
>>>
>>
>> And so simulators join a long long long list of things that you say
>> are not real. If X contradicts your philosophy you just declare that
>> X is not real; that's what the opponents of Galileo did, they
>> insisted that everything rotated around the Earth but when they
>> looked through Galileo's telescope they could clearly see that
>> Jupiter's moons rotated around Jupiter NOT the Earth. So what was
>> their response to this powerful evidence? You guessed it, things seen
>> through a telescope were not "real".
>>
>
> If to talk about Galileo, then it would also good to remember Feyerabend (for example
> Against method). Feyerabend has studied the way Galileo has made science a lot and his
> conclusion
>
> "The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason

That's why progress in knowledge relies on empirical evidence, not ratiocination.

Brent

[meekerdb]

I'm sure Leviticus has been cited even more times.

Brent
"The philosophy of science is just about as useful to scientists
as ornithology is to birds."
--- Steven Weinberg

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 06.01.2012 20:13 meekerdb said the following:

> On 1/6/2012 8:54 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>> On 06.01.2012 17:08 John Clark said the following:
>>> On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:

...

>> This statement contradict to a normal scientific world view but it
>> is based on historical facts. Hence it well might be that you have
>> to read more about Galileo.
>>
>> As for Feyerabend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend)
>>
>> "Feyerabend became famous for his purportedly anarchistic view of
>> science and his rejection of the existence of universal
>> methodological rules.[1] He is an influential figure in the
>> philosophy of science, and also in the sociology of scientific
>> knowledge."
>>
>> His book Against method has been cited more than 6000 times
>> according to Google Scholar
>>
>> http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Feyerabend
>>
>> This does not mean that everybody has to agree with him but a
>> statement about an idiot looks exaggerated.
>
> I'm sure Leviticus has been cited even more times.

Just run Google Scholar

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Leviticus

and you see that Leviticus looses to Feyerabend. As you have mentioned
previously we should rely "on empirical evidence, not ratiocination".

Evgenii

[meekerdb]

Using your URL, my result is Leviticus 49000 Feyerabend 32500. And that's just on the
internet. Leviticus was cited some before the internet.

Brent

[meekerdb]

On 1/6/2012 10:14 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

Bruno,

I have recently finished listening Prof Hoenen's Theorien der Wahrheit where he has also reviewed Feyerabend's Science in a Free Society. Today I wanted to learn more about that book and have found in Internet

Paul Feyerabend, 1975
How To Defend Society Against Science
http://www.galilean-library.org/manuscript.php?postid=43842

You may like it. Just two quote:

"The lesson is plain: there does not exist a single argument that could be used to support the exceptional role which science today plays in society."

"Science is just one of the many ideologies that propel society and it should be treated as such."

Other quotes that I like are at

http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/01/feyerabend-against-science.html

"In society at large the judgement of the scientist is received with the same reverence as the judgement of bishops and cardinals was accepted not too long ago."

I guess Feyerbrand was looking the other way when scientist said microscopic animals caused disease, lightning was just electricity, condoms will prevent HIV, and  cigarette smoking caused cancer.  I wonder what he would make of the "reverence" with which warnings of global warming are being received.  And it is still bishops and cardinals who are interviewed on television when there are questions of ethics and public policy.

Brent

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 06.01.2012 20:35 meekerdb said the following:

I do not know, I cannot exclude that German authorities have some
censorship in Internet (or Google censors its content to Germany) but
when I run Google scholar

http://scholar.google.com/

and then search there Leviticus, on the first page the maximum count
that I observe

[ZITATION] Leviticus: a book of ritual and ethics: a continental
commentary[HTML] von interpretation.orgJ Milgrom - 2004 - Fortress Pr
Zitiert durch: 311

For Feyerabend on the other hand, I observe

[BUCH] Against method
P. Feyerabend
Zitiert durch: 6338

Evgenii

[meekerdb]

Whatever the numbers I'm sure you take my point that the number of citations has very
little to do with the correctness or importance of an author. Nobody cites Isaac Newton
in physics papers anymore.

Brent

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 06.01.2012 21:15 meekerdb said the following:

> On 1/6/2012 12:07 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

...

>> I do not know, I cannot exclude that German authorities have some
>> censorship in Internet (or Google censors its content to Germany)
>> but when I run Google scholar
>>
>> http://scholar.google.com/
>>
>> and then search there Leviticus, on the first page the maximum
>> count that I observe
>>
>> [ZITATION] Leviticus: a book of ritual and ethics: a continental
>> commentary[HTML] von interpretation.orgJ Milgrom - 2004 - Fortress
>> Pr Zitiert durch: 311
>>
>> For Feyerabend on the other hand, I observe
>>
>> [BUCH] Against method P. Feyerabend Zitiert durch: 6338
>>
>> Evgenii
>>
>
> Whatever the numbers I'm sure you take my point that the number of
> citations has very little to do with the correctness or importance of
> an author. Nobody cites Isaac Newton in physics papers anymore.
>
> Brent
>

Run Isaac Newton in the Google Scholar and you will be surprised. For
example

[BUCH] Newton's Principia: The mathematical principles of natural philosophy
Zitiert durch: 1369

and there are other works, Optics for example is quite close.

As for correctness, I would agree. As for importance not. When the
scientific community cites something, then it is indeed important for
the scientific community.

Evgenii

P.S. I think I have understood where you have seen your numbers. This is
for example for Feyerabend

Ergebnisse 1 - 10 von 34.000

in the right top angle. Well, it would be necessary to exclude people
with the same family, but after some research, I would agree with you.
It seems that in the academic circles represented by Google Scholar
Leviticus is a bit more popular than Feyerabend if we take this count.

Anyway I am eased now - there is no censorship in Germany.

[meekerdb]

On 1/6/2012 12:37 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>> Whatever the numbers I'm sure you take my point that the number of
>> citations has very little to do with the correctness or importance of
>> an author. Nobody cites Isaac Newton in physics papers anymore.
>>
>> Brent
>>
>
> Run Isaac Newton in the Google Scholar and you will be surprised. For example
>
> [BUCH] Newton's Principia: The mathematical principles of natural philosophy
> Zitiert durch: 1369
>
> and there are other works, Optics for example is quite close.
>
> As for correctness, I would agree. As for importance not. When the scientific community
> cites something, then it is indeed important for the scientific community.
>
> Evgenii

It is of current interest, as there are many papers now citing the CERN paper on detection
of faster-than-light neutrinos at Gran Sasso. But it is important only if true, which is
very doubtful. I doubt the scientific community has ever cited Feyerabend. In fact I
can't think of any citation of a philosopher in a physics paper that I have read.

But you are right, Feyerabend is no idiot. He is insightful. He knows that reputation in
philosophy is most easily gained by taking a position contrary to common wisdom.

Brent
"They laughed at Bozo the Clown too."

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 11:54 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:

> This does not mean that everybody has to agree with him [Feyerabend] but a statement about an idiot looks exaggerated.

If one can not use the word "idiot" to refer to someone who says things like  "The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo " or " Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just" then the word "idiot" should be removed from the English language because it would never be appropriate to use that word against anyone under any circumstances; but unfortunately it turns out that the word can be useful  a appalling number of times in everyday life and even more often if the subject is philosophers.

It's especially ironic to hear criticism of my criticism of Feyerabend's criticism of Galileo when Feyerabend, being a idiot, believed that all criticisms were of equal value.

> His book Against method has been cited more than 6000 times according to Google Scholar

I don't doubt that for an instant, and I don't doubt that every one of those 6000 scholars who spoke about Feyerabend in a positive light wrote "philosopher" on the line on their tax return that asked about occupation, which means that not one of them has made a contribution to philosophy.

  John K Clark
 

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 12:33 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> In fact I do agree often with John Clark, but then he exaggerates also very often the point.

I've told you a million times I never exaggerate.

 

> The church was asking to Galileo to present his view as a theory or conjecture

What do you suppose would have happened if Galileo asked the church to present its views as a theory or conjecture?! Actually Galileo was not tortured but he was shown the instruments for it, as the worlds greatest expert on mechanics at the time he certainly understood how such machines operated, as a result he publicly apologized for his scientific ideas and said in writing that the church was right, the Earth was the center of the universe after all. I certainly don't hold this against Galileo, instead I look at it as yet another example of the man's enormous intellect. Only 20 years before, another astronomer Giordano Bruno, said that space was infinite, the stars were like the sun only very far away and life probably filled the universe, but Bruno was not as smart as Galileo, he refused to recant his views. For the crime of telling the truth Bruno was burned alive in the center of Rome so all could see, according to custom green wood was used because it doesn't burn as hot so it takes longer to kill. I imagine Feyerabend would say that the church's verdict against Bruno was rational and just too.

> Galileo did endorse the "modern" view of naturalism,

Another reason Galileo was a great man.
 

> and that science *has* to be naturalist

If there are things about the universe that are not naturalistic (and there might be),  that is to say if there are things that do not work by reason then science has nothing it can say about them, so yes science *has* to be naturalistic. 

>and this *is* a scientific error (as comp illustrates) which has not yet been corrected (excepting the study of comp).

I don't know what that means.

  John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Only one reason, we can't make a good enough simulation for that because we don't have enough INFORMATION.

>If our contemporary knowledge of physics is so complete, then that should be all the information we need.

I don't know where you got the idea that our information was that complete, if it was scientists would be out of a job because they'd already know everything that was worth knowing. They don't. 

> Just because the logic of my conscious intellect dictates that it cannot know anything unless it has been explicitly told doesn't mean that there aren't other epistemological resources at our disposal.

Besides logic the only other resource at our disposal in dealing with a very complex world is induction, making use of the fact that in the universe we inhabit things usually continue; but I don't see how that can help us directly study consciousness in other people any better than logic can, and at best all induction can say is "X is probably true".

> Not analog computing...analog in the sense of 'comparable or conceptually similar'.

But that's exactly how analog computing works, they use something conceptually similar to the thing you're interested in and measure that thing in various ways to give you a answer that will be of the same magnitude as the thing you want. Rather than count analog computers work by measuring, or I should have said that's the way they worked in the olden days, they're obsolete, nobody makes analog computers anymore.

>> generating subjectivity is what the brain is doing.

> As far as we can tell, the brain is doing nothing except biochemistry and physics.

If I change the biochemistry of your brain your subjective experience will change, it you don't believe me just take a drug that is not normally in your brain, like LSD or heroin, and see if I'm right. Also if you experience intense fear or anger a chemist will be able to detect elevated levels of adrenaline in your brain. So if consciousness can change brain chemistry and brain chemistry can change consciousness then clearly the two do have something to do with each other and are in fact closely linked.   

>You think that subjectivity was invented by computerphobics?

I think the claim that there is no link between intelligence and consciousness was indeed invented by computerphobics. And as if that wasn't crazy enough you take it a ridiculous step even further into wacko land, you say there is no link between intelligent behavior and intelligence. I don't think there is any way anybody would advocate such counterintuitive and downright nutty ideas unless they were desperately looking for a reason to dislike computers.

> Deciding that subjectivity must provide external evidence of itself to itself to support your prejudice is not the path to understanding,

I don't need evidence to prove to myself that I am conscious, the idea is ridiculous because I have something much better than scientific evidence, direct experience. As for your consciousness, I will never have direct evidence for that and so must learn to make do with evidence that you at least behave as if you were conscious .

> it's a category error.

Category error is #11 on my list of odious phrases. To get on my list the phrase must be used in polite society and seem to many to be perfectly acceptable and even clever, but to me seem incorrect, insipid, evil, stupid, or just never used to support a position I agree with. The other 10 on my list are:

#10) You can't cry FIRE in a crowded theater.
#9) A huge quantum leap.
#8) Life is sacred.
#7) The exception proves the rule.
#6) level the playing field.
#5) Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
#4) Almost infinite.
#3) Free will.
#2) There is a reason it's random.
#1) God wants.

> I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment."
 — Robert Anton Wilson
Nothing, is, it only seems.

I agree, you seem to be conscious and a intelligent computer seems to be conscious and that's all I know and that's all I will ever know on that subject.

 > The problem with physics is it has no tolerance for 'seems'.

Actually the opposite is true, physics has elevated the status of "seems" and demoted the status of "IS". That photon over there seems like it has no polarization because you haven't bothered to measure it, but modern physics says until you measure it and it seems to be polarized in one particular direction the photon has no polarization. Until it is measured it does not just seem to have no polarization it really has none.  And the way you do the measurement is crazy but the universe is crazy so it works; take a pair of polarized sunglasses and spin them at random, lets say the sunglasses end up at 137 degrees, if the photon makes it through the sunglasses (and there is a 50% chance it will) then the photon is polarized at 137 degrees has always been at 137, if the photon doesn't make it through the sunglasses then the photon is polarized at 47 degrees (137-90) and always has been at 47. 

>> a computation is not made of atoms and neither is thought, only nouns are made of atoms.

> 'a computation' is a noun.

More misinformation from your third grade English teacher, the same one who told you that "I" is a pronoun, and she was wrong about that too; but the main point is that neither computation, thought nor consciousness are made of atoms.

>> Most?? A HUGE amount? In what scientific journals did you find all these mumbo jumbo papers? I'd really like to know.

>Seriously?

Seriously.

>People link me to scientific papers all the time

Link? There's your problem right there! I'm talking about peer reviewed scientific journals like Nature or Science or Physical Review Letters. I'm not talking about a link to some jackass's web page that you've never heard of who posts some crap claiming to have found conclusive evidence of ESP or flying saucers or cold fusion. The only thing that sequence of ASCII characters tells me is that the bozo had enough money to buy a computer. No, I'm wrong, it doesn't even tell me that, it could be a homeless man with BO who just wandered into a public library and posted some shit. Sometimes the crackpot even manages to get his ASCII sequence printed on a dead tree, but his article is never cited by real scientists, and even the "journal" he writes in is never cited by anybody worth a damn.

> that are all but unreadable

Unreadable by the general public but they were not written for them but for fellow specialists. If you want to read them you've got to learn the language, for example there are no words or phrases in common usage that describe the thousands of parts and processes in a cell that biologists need to talk about, so they have no choice but to make up new words that are unfamiliar to most. The same thing is true for all the sciences.

> packed with dense academic formalism and obscuring a single, unremarkable point under a mountain of justification. Show me a contemporary paper in a scientific journal that isn't like that.

I think the December 2 2011 issue of the excellent journal "Science" should be contemporary enough for you; look at pages 1245-1249 for the paper "Detection of Pristine Gas Two Billion Years After the Big Bang" by Fumagalli, O'Meara and Prochaska.

> Not all species turned into each other.

Of course not.

> Chimpanzees never turned into Homo sapiens.

But Chimpanzees and Homo sapiens had a common ancestor about 6 million years ago that turned into both of us. And the common ancestor between gorillas and humans lived about 10 million years ago, and orangutans about 14 million years ago. Actually, genetic studies have shown that chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than they are to orangutangs. 

>obsolete understanding which you still cling to despite the fact that it doesn't really make sense. Where 'information' is real and computers are coming to life but the plain fact of human experience and free will can only be an 'illusion'.

An illusion is real it is not gibberish, an illusion is a perfectly respectable subjective phenomena, thus "free will" is most certainly NOT a illusion; "free will"  is a noise that some members of the species Homo sapiens like to make with their mouth.

> If it's one thing that's fundamental, then it's the end of the matter, but if it's one thing and it's opposite, then you have sense. My view is that the one fundamental thing can only be reduced to that symmetry of what it is as defined by what it is not.

I have no idea what that means.

>> I will repeat my question, if it's not from my behavior then HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS?

> Because I know my own behavior and I know that you are likely similar to me.

I will repeat my question, if it's not from my behavior then HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS?

> It's not something that needs to be consciously deduced.

Yes, it's intuitively obvious that if something is intelligent then it is aware. And it's a tautology that if something does intelligent things then its intelligent. Tautologies get a lot of bad press but they do have one thing going for them, every single one of them is true.

> The only think I can think of is to connect the machine up to your brain. Walk yourself off of your brain and onto the machine - first one hemisphere, then the other, then both, then back. See what
happens.

But you'd only know what it's like to be half man and half machine not what being a 100% machine is like; in fact it could be argued you wouldn't even know that because if you were half machine you wouldn't be you anymore. So "you" still wouldn't know.

> If something is aware, I think it's intelligent.

I'm pretty sure my dog is aware of a milk-bone when I show him one, but he is not aware of Tensor Calculus even though I've tried to teach it to him because he's not intelligent enough. You've got it backwards, you should say "if something is intelligent, I think it's aware".

> We believe other people are conscious because we have no reason to doubt us.

But I am certain you do NOT think other people are always conscious, you don't think they are when they are sleeping or dead. Why is that? Because when they are sleeping or dead they do not behave intelligently.

> Just because programmers can't always predict what a computer will do doesn't mean that anyone off the street couldn't predict what it won't do. Fall in love. Eat a brownie. Go on vacation. Lay an egg. Lots of things.

I predict you won't lay a egg either, so I guess that proves you're a computer.

> Intention is a cause that is neither random nor deterministic.

I see, determinism means cause and effect and intention is a cause but it is not deterministic so     INTENTION HAS NO EFFECT. I take it back, I don't see. If your above statement is true then intention does absolutely nothing to anything or anybody and is about as useful to you me or the universe as a screen door on a submarine.

>*We create causes*. What is controversial or difficult about that?

So we create causes and if we create those causes for a reason then its deterministic and if we create those causes for NO reason then it's random. OK fine its clear now.

>> they don't explain how the human brain produces intelligence and you don't make clear why a wet soft brain can produce consciousness but a hard dry computer can not.

> Because consciousness is life. Life needs water.

So you base your entire philosophy on the mystical properties of dihydrogen monoxide.

> Intelligence is just how a person uses their brain.

As I said, mind is what the brain does.

  John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 3:55 PM, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

>But you are right, Feyerabend is no idiot.  He is insightful.  He knows that reputation in philosophy is most easily gained by taking a position contrary to common wisdom.

If Feyerabend believed what he said about Galileo then he is an idiot, and if he didn't then he's a hypocrite. I find nothing wrong with trying to sound provocative, but not at the expense of making statements that are just plain dumb.

  John K Clark   

[Craig Weinberg]

On Jan 6, 10:33 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >> Only one reason, we can't make a good enough simulation for that because
> >> we don't have enough INFORMATION.
>
> > >If our contemporary knowledge of physics is so complete, then that should
> > be all the information we need.
>
> I don't know where you got the idea that our information was that complete,
> if it was scientists would be out of a job because they'd already know
> everything that was worth knowing. They don't.

I get that idea from other people on this board. Many people who I
have debated with on these issues are quite confident that our
knowledge of particle physics is sufficient to simulate all phenomena
in the universe. (Obviously I don't share that view, hah).

>
> > Just because the logic of my conscious intellect dictates that it cannot
> > know anything unless it has been explicitly told doesn't mean that there
> > aren't other epistemological resources at our disposal.
>
> Besides logic the only other resource at our disposal in dealing with a
> very complex world is induction, making use of the fact that in the
> universe we inhabit things usually continue; but I don't see how that can
> help us directly study consciousness in other people any better than logic
> can, and at best all induction can say is "X is probably true".

I don't see any logic or induction in the assertion that the only
possible epistemological sources for Homo sapiens must be logic or
induction. It's just a naked assumption with no basis either in
neurology or psychology. Not trying to criticize you personally but
this view of consciousness is a caricature. How do you know that you
are hungry? Is it logical that a feeling that seems associated with
the inside of your abdomen should indicate that your survival depends
upon putting some formerly living organism in your mouth? Is it
induction that provides our understanding of how to swallow? All of
our logic and induction is a pale shadow of our native epistemology:
sense.

>
> > Not analog computing...analog in the sense of 'comparable or conceptually
> > similar'.
>
> But that's exactly how analog computing works, they use something
> conceptually similar to the thing you're interested in and measure that
> thing in various ways to give you a answer that will be of the same
> magnitude as the thing you want. Rather than count analog computers work by
> measuring, or I should have said that's the way they worked in the olden
> days, they're obsolete, nobody makes analog computers anymore.

All computation in nature, including the human brain is analog. Still,
that's not what I was talking about.

>
> >> generating subjectivity is what the brain is doing.
>
> > > As far as we can tell, the brain is doing nothing except biochemistry
> > and physics.
>
> If I change the biochemistry of your brain your subjective experience will
> change, it you don't believe me just take a drug that is not normally in
> your brain, like LSD or heroin, and see if I'm right.

That would be an anecdotal subjective account. There is nothing we can
see from looking at the brain's behavior that suggests LSD or heroin
causes anything except biochemical changes in the neurological organs.

> Also if you
> experience intense fear or anger a chemist will be able to detect elevated
> levels of adrenaline in your brain.

But if we had no access to a person's account of feeling fear or
anger, the chemists detection of elevated levels of adrenaline in the
brain (and body) would be meaningless. There would be no possibility
of imagining there could be a such thing as fear or anger. At best
there would be physiological associations which relate to evolutionary
biology. The brain tells us nothing about consciousness by itself. We
need consciousness to begin with to learn anything about it. Same goes
for consciousness - we can learn nothing about the brain just by
trying to imagine what is going on physically in our minds. This is
the 'explanatory gap' - no common ground between neuroscience and
subjectivity.

> So if consciousness can change brain
> chemistry and brain chemistry can change consciousness then clearly the two
> do have something to do with each other and are in fact closely linked.

Absolutely.

>
> >You think that subjectivity was invented by computerphobics?
>
> I think the claim that there is no link between intelligence and
> consciousness was indeed invented by computerphobics.

I think the claim that computation is intelligence was invented by
futurists and computer enthusiasts.

> And as if that wasn't
> crazy enough you take it a ridiculous step even further into wacko land,
> you say there is no link between intelligent behavior and intelligence.

Is it wacko to say that a plastic flower has no link to a real flower?
That a photograph of fire has no link to actual fire?

> don't think there is any way anybody would advocate such counterintuitive
> and downright nutty ideas unless they were desperately looking for a reason
> to dislike computers.

Computers are great, but they are great at computing, not
understanding. They are useless when it comes to being conscious. It's
the same for me about your view. Only the most glassy eyed computer
fanatic would fail to see that an electronic puppet is not capable of
turning into a living human mind.

>
> > Deciding that subjectivity must provide external evidence of itself to
> > itself to support your prejudice is not the path to understanding,
>
> I don't need evidence to prove to myself that I am conscious, the idea is
> ridiculous because I have something much better than scientific evidence,
> direct experience.

That's my point.

>As for your consciousness, I will never have direct
> evidence for that and so must learn to make do with evidence that you at
> least behave as if you were conscious .

You don't need direct evidence. *Our* human awareness can tell when it
encounters itself. Behavior has a lot to do with it, but there are
other factors. Like size. If a person was the size of an ant, we would
have a hard time accepting it as an equal. But we can't limit our
ability to feel the humanity in another person to emulable behaviors
alone. It is entirely probable that we have a sense of a person that
is direct but not reducible to easily identified intellectual
understandings. A dog is probably not going to be fooled by an
android.

>
> > it's a category error.
>
> Category error is #11 on my list of odious phrases. To get on my list the
> phrase must be used in polite society and seem to many to be perfectly
> acceptable and even clever, but to me seem incorrect, insipid, evil,
> stupid, or just never used to support a position I agree with. The other 10
> on my list are:
>
> #10) You can't cry FIRE in a crowded theater.
> #9) A huge quantum leap.
> #8) Life is sacred.
> #7) The exception proves the rule.
> #6) level the playing field.
> #5) Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your
> country.
> #4) Almost infinite.
> #3) Free will.
> #2) There is a reason it's random.
> #1) God wants.

Category error may be a popular and pretentious term, but in this case
it's accurate and appropriate.

>
> > I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this
> > moment."
> > — Robert Anton Wilson
> > Nothing, is, it only seems.
>
> I agree, you seem to be conscious and a intelligent computer seems to be
> conscious and that's all I know and that's all I will ever know on that
> subject.

An intelligent computer is designed to seem conscious though. That
doesn't make a difference to you? A person seems conscious in many
ways that a computer does not seem to be. That is exactly what I am
saying - not that there's some magical difference between conscious
and not conscious, but that human consciousness is not the same thing
as programmed silicon imitating human consciousness.

>
> > The problem with physics is it has no tolerance for 'seems'.
>
>
>
> Actually the opposite is true, physics has elevated the status of "seems"
> and demoted the status of "IS". That photon over there seems like it has no
> polarization because you haven't bothered to measure it, but modern physics
> says until you measure it and it seems to be polarized in one particular
> direction the photon has no polarization. Until it is measured it does not
> just seem to have no polarization it really has none. And the way you do
> the measurement is crazy but the universe is crazy so it works; take a pair
> of polarized sunglasses and spin them at random, lets say the sunglasses
> end up at 137 degrees, if the photon makes it through the sunglasses (and
> there is a 50% chance it will) then the photon is polarized at 137 degrees
> has always been at 137, if the photon doesn't make it through the
> sunglasses then the photon is polarized at 47 degrees (137-90) and always
> has been at 47.

"Until it is measured it does not just seem to have no polarization it
really has none"

This contradicts what you were trying to show. Your example shows how
even when confronted with obvious perspective-driven phenomena, the
intolerance for 'seems' demands that measurement magically creates
reality - an unambiguous, literal reality. It's hard for me to even
entertain discussions about photons and QM because I see the whole
model as obsolete.

>
> >> a computation is not made of atoms and neither is thought, only nouns
> >> are made of atoms.
>
> > > 'a computation' is a noun.
>
> More misinformation from your third grade English teacher, the same one who
> told you that "I" is a pronoun, and she was wrong about that too; but the
> main point is that neither computation, thought nor consciousness are made
> of atoms.

Is there some special source of information about parts of speech that
you subscribe to which differs from standard English, or are you just
deciding that my English teacher must be more misinformed than others?
Who has an English teacher in third grade anyhow?

Consciousness is not made of atoms but it is executed through them.
Consciousness is an actual physical process. Computation is not as
clear cut. 1+2=3 can't take acid and come up with a different answer.
It just depends what you really mean when you talk about computation.

>
> >> Most?? A HUGE amount? In what scientific journals did you find all these
> >> mumbo jumbo papers? I'd really like to know.
>
> > >Seriously?
>
> Seriously.
>
> >People link me to scientific papers all the time
>
> Link? There's your problem right there! I'm talking about peer reviewed
> scientific journals like Nature or Science or Physical Review Letters. I'm
> not talking about a link to some jackass's web page that you've never heard
> of who posts some crap claiming to have found conclusive evidence of ESP or
> flying saucers or cold fusion.

Wow. You do realize that there is a thing called the internet and on
that thing that there are scientific papers available to the public.
They look like this: http://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/mfr454-6/mfr454-65.pdf
and say things like "The isolates were
transferred from TSA slants into 5 ml of TSBH and allowed to incubate
for 24 hours at 37°C; 0.2 ml of each culture was transferred to
another 5 ml of TSBH and incubated for 18 hours at 37°C. The 18-hour
culture was diluted with saline until the density was comparable to
McFarland standard #2 (McFarland, 1907)."

In one sense, thorough practical description. In another sense, hyper-
legitimacy fetishism. No less mumbo jumbo than any non-scientific
discourse.

>The only thing that sequence of ASCII
> characters tells me is that the bozo had enough money to buy a computer.
> No, I'm wrong, it doesn't even tell me that, it could be a homeless man
> with BO who just wandered into a public library and posted some shit.
> Sometimes the crackpot even manages to get his ASCII sequence printed on a
> dead tree, but his article is never cited by real scientists, and even the
> "journal" he writes in is never cited by anybody worth a damn.

Not sure what you're talking about. The people who I have debated with
are exactly like you. They believe the same things you do for the same
reasons, and they link to the same kinds of peer-reviewed academically
published studies that you would. I have never once had anyone point
me to any kind of flaky site. You are only able to make sense out of
my ideas if you believe that I must be misinformed about science, but
I assure you that is not the case. I know your argument better than
you do. Just take a look at this forum alone. I've been over this
territory dozens of times.

>
> > that are all but unreadable
>
> Unreadable by the general public but they were not written for them but for
> fellow specialists.

Obviously. Do you think that isn't the case for philosophy?

>If you want to read them you've got to learn the
> language, for example there are no words or phrases in common usage that
> describe the thousands of parts and processes in a cell that biologists
> need to talk about, so they have no choice but to make up new words that
> are unfamiliar to most. The same thing is true for all the sciences.

It's true of all sufficiently deep examinations of subjects. That is
my point. If you don't know philosophy or psychology, then it's mumbo
jumbo to you.

>
> > packed with dense academic formalism and obscuring a single, unremarkable
> > point under a mountain of justification. Show me a contemporary paper in a
> > scientific journal that isn't like that.
>
> I think the December 2 2011 issue of the excellent journal "Science" should
> be contemporary enough for you; look at pages 1245-1249 for the paper
> "Detection of Pristine Gas Two Billion Years After the Big Bang" by
> Fumagalli, O'Meara and Prochaska.
>

Sorry, I don't have a subscription for that.

> > Not all species turned into each other.
>
> Of course not.
>
> > Chimpanzees never turned into Homo sapiens.
>
> But Chimpanzees and Homo sapiens had a common ancestor about 6 million
> years ago that turned into both of us. And the common ancestor between
> gorillas and humans lived about 10 million years ago, and orangutans about
> 14 million years ago. Actually, genetic studies have shown that chimpanzees
> are more closely related to humans than they are to orangutangs.

Right. That's why I said that species don't all turn into each other.

>
> >obsolete understanding which you still cling to despite the fact that it
> > doesn't really make sense. Where 'information' is real and computers are
> > coming to life but the plain fact of human experience and free will can
> > only be an 'illusion'.
>
> An illusion is real it is not gibberish, an illusion is a perfectly
> respectable subjective phenomena, thus "free will" is most certainly NOT a
> illusion; "free will" is a noise that some members of the species Homo
> sapiens like to make with their mouth.

Without free will, all human speech can only be noisy gibberish.

>
> > If it's one thing that's fundamental, then it's the end of the matter,
> > but if it's one thing and it's opposite, then you have sense. My view is
> > that the one fundamental thing can only be reduced to that symmetry of what
> > it is as defined by what it is not.
>
> I have no idea what that means.

I'm saying that the minimum requirement for one thing to make sense is
itself and it's opposite or absence. You can't just have one thing
with nothing to compare it to.

>
> >> I will repeat my question, if it's not from my behavior then HOW DO YOU
> >> KNOW THIS?
>
> > > Because I know my own behavior and I know that you are likely similar to
> > me.
>
> I will repeat my question, if it's not from my behavior then HOW DO YOU
> KNOW THIS?

From experience. Just like how I know when I'm hungry. Sense. Your
behavior is just part of what I use to make sense of what you are
saying. Mostly it's just expectation.

>
> > It's not something that needs to be consciously deduced.
>
> Yes, it's intuitively obvious that if something is intelligent then it is
> aware.

Unless something is designed expressly to fool that intuition.

> And it's a tautology that if something does intelligent things then
> its intelligent.

That's a logical fallacy. If an IED does violent things, is it
violent?

> Tautologies get a lot of bad press but they do have one
> thing going for them, every single one of them is true.
>
> > The only think I can think of is to connect the machine up to your brain.
> > Walk yourself off of your brain and onto the machine - first one
> > hemisphere, then the other, then both, then back. See what
> > happens.
>
> But you'd only know what it's like to be half man and half machine not what
> being a 100% machine is like;

"first one hemisphere, then the other, **then both**, then back"

> in fact it could be argued you wouldn't even
> know that because if you were half machine you wouldn't be you anymore. So
> "you" still wouldn't know.

I understand it's not perfect, but I think it would be adequate.

>
> > If something is aware, I think it's intelligent.
>
> I'm pretty sure my dog is aware of a milk-bone when I show him one, but he
> is not aware of Tensor Calculus even though I've tried to teach it to him
> because he's not intelligent enough. You've got it backwards, you should
> say "if something is intelligent, I think it's aware".

Your dog has no need for Tensor Calculus, but it can figure out how to
get fed and find a mate, which makes it more intelligent than any
computer ever made thus far.

>
> > We believe other people are conscious because we have no reason to doubt
> > us.
>
> But I am certain you do NOT think other people are always conscious, you
> don't think they are when they are sleeping or dead. Why is that? Because
> when they are sleeping or dead they do not behave intelligently.

Intelligence has nothing to do with it. Flowers can look like they are
sleeping or dead.

>

> > Just because programmers can't always predict what a computer will do
> > doesn't mean that anyone off the street couldn't predict what it won't do.
> > Fall in love. Eat a brownie. Go on vacation. Lay an egg. Lots of things.
>
> I predict you won't lay a egg either, so I guess that proves you're a
> computer.

See...you didn't need to know about my egg related behavior to make
that prediction.

>
> > Intention is a cause that is neither random nor deterministic.
>
> I see, determinism means cause and effect and intention is a cause but it
> is not deterministic so INTENTION HAS NO EFFECT.

Intention has possible effects, not deterministic ones. We try. Does
determinism try?

> I take it back, I
> don't see. If your above statement is true then intention does absolutely
> nothing to anything or anybody and is about as useful to you me or the
> universe as a screen door on a submarine.

I'm only stating obvious common sense in a simple and direct way. You
are grasping at straws to make it seem otherwise.

>
> >*We create causes*. What is controversial or difficult about that?
>
> So we create causes and if we create those causes for a reason then its
> deterministic and if we create those causes for NO reason then it's random.
> OK fine its clear now.

If it were deterministic or random there would be no reason for 'us'
to 'create' anything. That is why intention cannot be reduced to
determinism or randomness. Of course there are reasons, but they are
our reasons. We decide which of the many agendas that we personally
have the power to influence matters to us. Sometimes that decision is
overwhelmingly clear, other times it is highly preferential and
libertarian. Why do you want to make the universe more mechanical than
it seems?

>
> >> they don't explain how the human brain produces intelligence and you
> >> don't make clear why a wet soft brain can produce consciousness but a hard
> >> dry computer can not.
>
> > > Because consciousness is life. Life needs water.
>
> So you base your entire philosophy on the mystical properties of dihydrogen
> monoxide.

No I'm just giving you an obvious counterfactual example to your
accusation. Water seems fundamental to life. Who are you to claim that
fact is meaningless?

>
> > Intelligence is just how a person uses their brain.
>
> As I said, mind is what the brain does.

That's not the same thing. I am saying 'Driving is how a person steers
their car" and you are misconstruing that to mean "Driving is what
steers the car". You left out the most important part - as do all of
your replies. It is the height of anthropomorphic exceptionalism to
take seriously the possibility of muon-neutrinos, superposition, "dark
energy", and superstings, but the concept of 'free will' and 'people'
are soo exotic and wacko as to be worthy of compulsive scorn.
It's...interesting.

Craig

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 06.01.2012 20:44 meekerdb said the following:

> On 1/6/2012 10:14 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>> Bruno,
>>
>> I have recently finished listening Prof Hoenen's Theorien der
>> Wahrheit where he has also reviewed Feyerabend's Science in a Free
>> Society. Today I wanted to learn more about that book and have
>> found in Internet
>>
>> Paul Feyerabend, 1975 How To Defend Society Against Science
>> http://www.galilean-library.org/manuscript.php?postid=43842
>>
>> You may like it. Just two quote:
>>
>> "The lesson is plain: there does not exist a single argument that
>> could be used to support the exceptional role which science today
>> plays in society."
>>
>> "Science is just one of the many ideologies that propel society and
>> it should be treated as such."
>>
>> Other quotes that I like are at
>>
>> http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/01/feyerabend-against-science.html
>

> "/In society at large the judgement of the scientist is received with

> the same reverence as the judgement of bishops and cardinals was
> accepted not too long ago."
>

> /I guess Feyerbrand was looking the other way when scientist said

> microscopic animals caused disease, lightning was just electricity,
> condoms will prevent HIV, and cigarette smoking caused cancer. I
> wonder what he would make of the "reverence" with which warnings of
> global warming are being received. And it is still bishops and
> cardinals who are interviewed on television when there are questions
> of ethics and public policy.
>
> Brent

The Feyerbrand's paper is not about that. Rather take Hugh Everett III,
the creator of many-worlds interpretation. Wikipedia says

"Discouraged by the scorn[4] of other physicists for MWI, Everett ended
his physics career after completing his Ph.D."

In my view this is in agreement with Feyerbrand

"Heretics in science are still made to suffer from the most severe
sanctions this relatively tolerant civilization has to offer."

Evgenii
--
http:/blog.rudnyi.ru

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 06.01.2012 23:11 John Clark said the following:

I am afraid, that what you are talking about is just an example of mass
culture that enjoy widespread use in the modern highly educated society.
Below there are some quotes from Wikipedia on Bruno "as the martyr for
modern science". As for Feyerabend, I believe this his quote is appropriate:

"Do not be misled by the fact that today hardly anyone gets killed for
joining a scientific heresy. This has nothing to do with science. It has
something to do with the general quality of our civilization. Heretics

in science are still made to suffer from the most severe sanctions this
relatively tolerant civilization has to offer."

Evgenii

From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

"the Roman Inquisition found him guilty of heresy [Giordano Bruno] for
his pantheism"

"Some assessments suggest that Bruno's ideas about the universe played a
smaller role in his trial than his pantheist beliefs, which differed
from the interpretations and scope of God held by the Catholic Church."

"However, today, many feel that any characterization of Bruno's thought
as 'scientific' (and hence any attempt to position him as a martyr for
'science') is hard to accept. e.g. "Ever since Domenico Berti revived
him as the hero who died rather than renounce his scientific conviction
of the truth of the Copernican theory, the martyr for modern science,
the philosopher who broke with medieval Aristotelianism and ushered in
the modern world, Bruno has been in a false position. The popular view
of Bruno is still roughly as just stated. If I have not finally proved
its falsity, I have written this book in vain" Frances Yates, Giordano
Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964, p450;
see also: Adam Frank, The Constant Fire: Beyond the Science vs. Religion
Debate, University of California Press, 2009, p24"

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 06.01.2012 22:28 John Clark said the following:

> On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 11:54 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru>
> wrote:
>
>> This does not mean that everybody has to agree with him
>> [Feyerabend] but a statement about an idiot looks exaggerated.
>>
>
> If one can not use the word "idiot" to refer to someone who says
> things like "The church at the time of Galileo was much more
> faithful to reason than Galileo " or " Its verdict against Galileo
> was rational and just" then the word "idiot" should be removed from
> the English language because it would never be appropriate to use
> that word against anyone under any circumstances; but unfortunately
> it turns out that the word can be useful a appalling number of times
> in everyday life and even more often if the subject is philosophers.
>
> It's especially ironic to hear criticism of my criticism of
> Feyerabend's criticism of Galileo when Feyerabend, being a idiot,
> believed that all criticisms were of equal value.

You are free to express your opinion and I am free to express mine.
Don't you agree?

Otherwise in my view when we talk about history it would be good to
follow historical events. I have read Against Method a long time ago but
then my impression was that Feyerabend respects historical research. As
usual, one can imagine different interpretations of historical events
but while contrasting them I personally find the use of the word 'Idiot'
inappropriate. This term is more appropriate for propaganda but not for
science. If you believe that Feyerabend contradicts with historical
research, it would be more meaningful instead of using propaganda to
show his mistakes in history.

Evgenii

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 Jan 2012, at 23:11, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 12:33 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> In fact I do agree often with John Clark, but then he exaggerates also very often the point.

I've told you a million times I never exaggerate.

 

> The church was asking to Galileo to present his view as a theory or conjecture

What do you suppose would have happened if Galileo asked the church to present its views as a theory or conjecture?! Actually Galileo was not tortured but he was shown the instruments for it, as the worlds greatest expert on mechanics at the time he certainly understood how such machines operated, as a result he publicly apologized for his scientific ideas and said in writing that the church was right, the Earth was the center of the universe after all. I certainly don't hold this against Galileo, instead I look at it as yet another example of the man's enormous intellect. Only 20 years before, another astronomer Giordano Bruno, said that space was infinite, the stars were like the sun only very far away and life probably filled the universe, but Bruno was not as smart as Galileo, he refused to recant his views. For the crime of telling the truth Bruno was burned alive in the center of Rome so all could see, according to custom green wood was used because it doesn't burn as hot so it takes longer to kill. I imagine Feyerabend would say that the church's verdict against Bruno was rational and just too.

You might give reference to corroborate this. At first sight, the case of Galileo and Bruno does not seem comparable.

> Galileo did endorse the "modern" view of naturalism,

Another reason Galileo was a great man.
 

> and that science *has* to be naturalist

If there are things about the universe that are not naturalistic (and there might be),  that is to say if there are things that do not work by reason then science has nothing it can say about them, so yes science *has* to be naturalistic. 

You confuse naturalism (nature exists and is fundamental/primitive) and rationalism (things works by and for a reason).

The first is the main axiom of Aristotle theology, the second defines the general scientific attitude.

Today we know that they oppose each other. Indeed "nature" might have a non natural reason. For example nature, or the belief in nature, might have a logical and/or an arithmetical reason independent of its reification.

>and this *is* a scientific error (as comp illustrates) which has not yet been corrected (excepting the study of comp).

I don't know what that means.

It means, in a nutshell, that if you are willing to believe that your consciousness would remain unchanged for a digital functional substitution of your parts made at some description level of your body, (comp), then physics can no more be the fundamental science of reality, and the physical universe has to be explained in term of cohesive digital machine dreams/computation. Physics becomes one of the internal aspect, from the relative point of view of numbers/program/digital-machine, of arithmetic. We have been discussing this a lot on this list. You might have also followed the first six steps of the reasoning (the universal dovetailer argument) on the FOR list perhaps. If not you might read my sane04 paper(*).

I don't oppose natural with supernatural, but with computer science-theoretical or logico-arithmetical. In fact, to believe that nature and matter is primitive gives a sort of supernatural conception of matter, of the kind "don't ask for more explanation". I am not satisfied by that type of quasi-magical explanation, and besides, I can explain in all details why that position is irrational once we bet that we are digitalizable machine. In fine, computationalism forces to recognize that Plato's theology might have been, with respect to the fundamental questions, more rational than Aristotle's materialist theology (used by christians and their atheists variants). The simple "dream argument" shows already that observation is never a proof of existence, and that the *primitive* existence of a physical universe is a scientific hypothesis, not an undoubtable fact (unlike consciousness here-and-now).

Bruno

(*) http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html

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

[Bruno Marchal]

Hi Evgenii,

On 06 Jan 2012, at 19:14, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> Bruno,
>
> I have recently finished listening Prof Hoenen's Theorien der
> Wahrheit where he has also reviewed Feyerabend's Science in a Free
> Society. Today I wanted to learn more about that book and have found
> in Internet
>
> Paul Feyerabend, 1975
> How To Defend Society Against Science
> http://www.galilean-library.org/manuscript.php?postid=43842
>
> You may like it. Just two quote:
>
> "The lesson is plain: there does not exist a single argument that
> could be used to support the exceptional role which science today
> plays in society."

Hmm... Not sure I agree with this, but I have a larger conception of
science that most scientist today. Personally I consider that science
is natural, and practiced by virtually all animals. Babies makes
theories and update them all the time. Science becomes good science
when it stays modest and conscious of the hypothetical character of
all theories. In fact I do not believe in "Science", I believe only in
"scientific attitude", which is really nothing more than curiosity,
doubting and modesty.

>
> "Science is just one of the many ideologies that propel society and
> it should be treated as such."

I disagree a lot with this, although some modern view of science might
be like that, notably "naturalism". A lot of naturalist seems to take
for granted the primitive existence of a universe, or of matter or
nature. Once we take *anything* for granted, we just stop doing
science for doing ideology, which is only "bad religion". Of course
"human science" is not scientific most of the time, and I am talking
about "ideal science".

Hmm... I agree with Feyerabend on Galileo, but that might be the only
point where I agree with him, to be honest.

>
> Other quotes that I like are at
>
> http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/01/feyerabend-against-science.html

I took a look, and I really think that Feyerabend confuses science and
science-done-by-weak-human in search of food, position and power.
In a sense I believe that the scientific era has existed among a few
intellectual only from -500 to +500. After that, the most fundamental
science, which I think is theology, has been politicized. The
enlightenment period was only 1/2 enlightened, because its main
subject, the reason why we are here, has remained a political taboo.
The whole "human science" remains in practice based on the worst of
all arguments: "the boss is right.".

Bruno

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

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

> I took a look, and I really think that Feyerabend confuses science
> and science-done-by-weak-human in search of food, position and
> power.

I would agree in a sense that Feyerabend states that in the human
society there is "science-done-by-weak-human in search of food, position
and power" only. At least his empirical search has found nothing else.
Could you please give examples of the first alternative that you mention?

Evgenii

On 07.01.2012 12:51 Bruno Marchal said the following:

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 4:11 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:

 

>You are free to express your opinion and I am free to express mine. Don't you agree?

Yes, and Feyerabend should be free to say anything that pops into his head no matter how silly, and I should be free to call him an idiot for doing so.
 

> If you believe that Feyerabend contradicts with historical research, it would be more meaningful instead of using propaganda to show his mistakes in history.

The problem is not historical research, I have no disagreement with any of the facts Feyerabend presents, I do however have a massive disagreement with his opinion regarding those facts, such as:

"The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself" or "its verdict against Galileo was rational and just".

Frankly it just boggles my mind that well into the 21'st certury somebody could read those lines and NOT call their author a complete idiot.

> I personally find the use of the word 'Idiot' inappropriate.

Would "fool" be more appropriate, how about "moron"? Apparently you do think the word "idiot" should be removed from the English language, I disagree. I believe there is solid evidence that idiots do in fact exist and the language needs a word to describe someone who behaves idiotically and "idiot" is a excellent candidate for such a word. And off the top of my head I can't think of a better example of an idiot than Feyerabend; assuming he was not just trying to be provocative and get attention, in which case he was not a idiot but only a hypocrite.  

> This term is more appropriate for propaganda but not for science.

OK but why change the subject, what's Feyerabend got to do with science?

  John K Clark

 

 

[John Clark]

 Feyerabend Wrote:

"Do not be misled by the fact that today hardly anyone gets killed for joining a scientific heresy. This has nothing to do with science. It has something to do with the general quality of our civilization. Heretics in science are still made to suffer from the most severe sanctions this relatively tolerant civilization has to offer."

The "most severe sanctions" that Feyerabend is talking about is not getting tenure, that is to say not getting a well paid cushy job for the rest of your life where its almost impossible to get fired.  How barbaric!

In any form of human activity there is a general consensus on if someone is doing a good job or not, and science is no exception. The scientific consensus, being composed of human beings, is not perfect and sometimes it gets it wrong, but the beauty of science is it's self correcting and big errors usually don't last for very long. Probably the longest was the consensus about Alfred Wegerner, he developed his theory of continental drift in 1912 but most scientists did not think he was right until the 1960s. But in defense of the scientific consensus until the 1960s the evidence for continental drift was not very good. As for those "most severe sanctions" Wegerner continued to make a living as a scientist and published books and papers until his death. I'd say that science treats its heretics a bit better than the way religion treats theirs.

  John K Clark 
 
 

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 07.01.2012 17:21 John Clark said the following:

> On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 4:11 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru>
> wrote:
>
>
>>> You are free to express your opinion and I am free to express
>>> mine. Don't
>> you agree?
>>
>
> Yes, and Feyerabend should be free to say anything that pops into his
> head no matter how silly, and I should be free to call him an idiot
> for doing so.
>
>
>>> If you believe that Feyerabend contradicts with historical
>>> research, it
>> would be more meaningful instead of using propaganda to show his
>> mistakes in history.
>>
>
> The problem is not historical research, I have no disagreement with
> any of the facts Feyerabend presents, I do however have a massive
> disagreement with his opinion regarding those facts, such as:
>
> "The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason
> than Galileo himself" or "its verdict against Galileo was rational
> and just".
>
> Frankly it just boggles my mind that well into the 21'st certury
> somebody could read those lines and NOT call their author a complete
> idiot.

The conclusion that Feyerabend made is based on his historical research.
I personally have found his book quite logical, so I go not get what you
are saying.

>> I personally find the use of the word 'Idiot' inappropriate.
>>
>
> Would "fool" be more appropriate, how about "moron"? Apparently you
> do think the word "idiot" should be removed from the English
> language, I disagree. I believe there is solid evidence that idiots
> do in fact exist and the language needs a word to describe someone
> who behaves idiotically and "idiot" is a excellent candidate for such
> a word. And off the top of my head I can't think of a better example
> of an idiot than Feyerabend; assuming he was not just trying to be
> provocative and get attention, in which case he was not a idiot but
> only a hypocrite.

We have two opinions, one is yours and ones is Feyerabend's. They are
different, and I find it normal. Yet, if we talk about science then you
have to explain with the historical facts why you believe that
Feyerabend is idiot. So far from your side, there were just emotions,
that is pure propaganda. If you have made a research on Galileo where
you have shown the opposite, please make a link.

Brent has recently made a good statement:

"That's why progress in knowledge relies on empirical evidence, not
ratiocination."

So it would be good to consider real historical events without ideology.

>> This term is more appropriate for propaganda but not for science.
>>
>
> OK but why change the subject, what's Feyerabend got to do with
> science?

It depends on a definition. I personally consider Feyerabend as a scientist.

Evgenii

> John K Clark
>

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 07.01.2012 18:15 John Clark said the following:

Let me give you another example from the recent history (I will not even
touch the science in the atheistic Soviet Union under Stalin). So on
this list people quite often refer to Alan Turing. From Wikipedia

"Turing's homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952, when
homosexual acts were still illegal in the United Kingdom. He accepted
treatment with female hormones (chemical castration) as an alternative
to prison. He died in 1954, just over two weeks before his 42nd
birthday, from cyanide poisoning."

Who treated Turing with female hormones? The Church or the medical science?

Now the society is much more tolerant, I agree, but I am not sure if
this could be ascribed to the science. Or you mean the sexual revolution
was made by scientists?

Evgenii

[meekerdb]

When the most severe sanction is not having your theory accepted I don't know how any less
severe sanctions can become. It's good to be open minded, but not so open minded your
brains fall out.

>
> Evgenii
>
> From Wikipedia
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno
>
> "the Roman Inquisition found him guilty of heresy [Giordano Bruno] for his pantheism"
>
> "Some assessments suggest that Bruno's ideas about the universe played a smaller role in
> his trial than his pantheist beliefs, which differed from the interpretations and scope
> of God held by the Catholic Church."
>
> "However, today, many feel that any characterization of Bruno's thought as 'scientific'
> (and hence any attempt to position him as a martyr for 'science') is hard to accept.
> e.g. "Ever since Domenico Berti revived him as the hero who died rather than renounce
> his scientific conviction of the truth of the Copernican theory, the martyr for modern
> science, the philosopher who broke with medieval Aristotelianism and ushered in the
> modern world, Bruno has been in a false position. The popular view of Bruno is still
> roughly as just stated. If I have not finally proved its falsity, I have written this
> book in vain" Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Routledge and
> Kegan Paul, 1964, p450; see also: Adam Frank, The Constant Fire: Beyond the Science vs.
> Religion Debate, University of California Press, 2009, p24"

Oh, well that's OK then if they burned him to death slowly for a theological disagreement.

Brent

[meekerdb]

On 1/7/2012 2:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> You confuse naturalism (nature exists and is fundamental/primitive) and rationalism
> (things works by and for a reason).
> The first is the main axiom of Aristotle theology, the second defines the general
> scientific attitude.
> Today we know that they oppose each other. Indeed "nature" might have a non natural
> reason. For example nature, or the belief in nature, might have a logical and/or an
> arithmetical reason independent of its reification.
>

I would say you confuse them. There's no conflict between naturalism and "things work for
a reason". The conflict was when "rationalism" meant drawing conclusions from pure
rationcination, without reference to empiricial support.

Brent

[meekerdb]

The government, who considered that his homosexuality made him a security risk because he
could be blackmailed. Why could he be blackmailed? Because homosexuality was reviled.
Why was it reviled? Because the Church taught that it was a sin - but they had given up
stoning.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 Jan 2012, at 21:54, meekerdb wrote:

> On 1/7/2012 2:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> You confuse naturalism (nature exists and is fundamental/primitive)
>> and rationalism (things works by and for a reason).
>> The first is the main axiom of Aristotle theology, the second
>> defines the general scientific attitude.
>> Today we know that they oppose each other. Indeed "nature" might
>> have a non natural reason. For example nature, or the belief in
>> nature, might have a logical and/or an arithmetical reason
>> independent of its reification.
>>
>
> I would say you confuse them. There's no conflict between
> naturalism and "things work for a reason".

I think UDA presents such a conflict. I mean with metaphysical
naturalism (not instrumentalist naturalism, which might be a good
idea, at least for awhile. UDA shows that nature is secondary on some
properties of universal machines/numbers.

> The conflict was when "rationalism" meant drawing conclusions from
> pure rationcination, without reference to empiricial support.

I am an empiricist, in the sense that theories must be tested,
including comp, despite it says that the physical reality is "in your
head", indeed in the "head of all universal numbers". So let us
compared the two physics.

Bruno

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

[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 Jan 2012, at 13:13, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> > I took a look, and I really think that Feyerabend confuses science
> > and science-done-by-weak-human in search of food, position and
> > power.
>
> I would agree in a sense that Feyerabend states that in the human
> society there is "science-done-by-weak-human in search of food,
> position and power" only. At least his empirical search has found
> nothing else. Could you please give examples of the first
> alternative that you mention?

The comp "honest" answer to this is that it is only *you* who can find
the pieces of ideal science *in* the "science-done-by-weak-human in
search of food, position and power". You are the only judge.

Now, if you trust Peano Arithmetic, then the set of its theorems is a
pretty good example of ideal science. The same with PA + some facts
*you* agree on, or that you can assume conditionally.

You can take anything which look like a scientific story success (to
you) as an example.

Humans, by being humans, are not well placed to put an easy frontier
between the ideal science, and its relatively human concretization.

Bruno

[John Clark]

From Wikipedia:

> "Turing's homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952, when homosexual acts were still illegal in the United Kingdom. He accepted treatment with female hormones (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison. He died in 1954, just over two weeks before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning."

Yes Turing was persecuted but his unjust treatment was caused by his privet life and had nothing to do with his scientific ideas. If Turing had been a famous athlete he would have been in just as much trouble, and if he'd been a well known literary figure and wit he would have been in even more trouble because they tend to make more powerful enemies than mathematicians; just ask Oscar Wilde.

  John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 7, 2012  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> You confuse naturalism (nature exists

I hope we don't have to debate if nature exists or not.

> and is fundamental/primitive)

Correct me if I'm wrong but you seem to dislike naturalism so you think there is no such thing as a
fundamental/primitive so it is always meaningful to ask "what is that made of?". You could be right, or maybe not, nobody knows

> and rationalism (things works by and for a reason).

I don't demand that, things can be random.

> if you are willing to believe that your consciousness would remain unchanged for a digital functional substitution of your parts made at some description level of your body,

I do think that is true.

> then physics can no more be the fundamental science of reality

We already knew that because we can at least so far sill explain physics, thus obviously we haven't gotten to the fundamental level yet, assuming there is a fundamental level, and you could be right and there might not be one.

> and the physical universe has to be explained in term of cohesive digital machine dreams/computation.

If you want a explanation then you can't believe that's the fundamental level either and a way must be found to explain that ,and there is no end to the matter.

> to believe that nature and matter is primitive gives a sort of supernatural conception of matter, of the kind "don't ask for more explanation". I am not satisfied by that type of quasi-magical explanation

If you're right then reality is like a enormous onion with a infinite number of layers and no first level, no fundamental level because you can always find a level even more fundamental. On the other hand the universe could be constructed in such a way that you will forever be unsatisfied and there is a first/fundamental level and when we reach it we come to the end of the philosophy game, and there is nothing more to be said.

John K Clark

 

 

[Bruno Marchal]

On 08 Jan 2012, at 06:06, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Jan 7, 2012  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> You confuse naturalism (nature exists

I hope we don't have to debate if nature exists or not.

Of course, nature exists (very plausibly).

But naturalism want to explain things by reducing it to nature or natural law, and consider that such laws are the explanations. Computationalism asks for an explanation for the natural laws, or for the beliefs in them, without using them. And it explains them from computation and self-reference (with "computation" used in the mathematical sense).

> and is fundamental/primitive)

Correct me if I'm wrong but you seem to dislike naturalism

Not at all. I just think that naturalism is simply incompatible with mechanism. 

so you think there is no such thing as a
fundamental/primitive so it is always meaningful to ask "what is that made of?". You could be right, or maybe not, nobody knows

We know (or should know) that metaphysical naturalism is refutable, and the evidences are for mechanism, against naturalism.

This does not mean it is always meaningful to ask "what is that made of?". There are no thing made of something. The idea of things being made of something is still Aristotelian. If mechanism is true, there are only true number *relations*. Some represent machine's dreams, and the physical reality supervene on infinities of dreams, as seen from some point of view. 

> and rationalism (things works by and for a reason).

I don't demand that, things can be random.

I was just using your definition. Now, I am not sure things can be random, nor what that would mean. But a measurement result, like self-localization after a self-duplication (à-la Washington/Moscow) can be random.

> if you are willing to believe that your consciousness would remain unchanged for a digital functional substitution of your parts made at some description level of your body,

I do think that is true.

OK. That's my main working hypothesis. 

> then physics can no more be the fundamental science of reality

We already knew that because we can at least so far sill explain physics, thus obviously we haven't gotten to the fundamental level yet, assuming there is a fundamental level, and you could be right and there might not be one.

If mechanism is correct, physics becomes independent of the choice of the fundamental level, and any first order logical specification of a universal system (in Turing sense) can be chosen as being the primitive level. I use numbers+addition+multiplication as universal system because it is the simplest and best known one. 

> and the physical universe has to be explained in term of cohesive digital machine dreams/computation.

If you want a explanation then you can't believe that's the fundamental level either and a way must be found to explain that ,and there is no end to the matter.

Except that for the numbers (or the first order specification of a universal system) I can prove we cannot derive it from something simpler. Thus we have to postulate it. We cannot explain anything from an empty theory. Now, actual QM (à-la Everett/Deutsch) assumes computationalism and the SWE. But computationalism has to explain the SWE. Physics becomes derivable from non physical concepts (like Everett explains the appearance of the collapse of the wave, comp explains the appearance of the wave itself). So it provides a deeper explanations, and comp explains also the difference between qualia and quanta. 

> to believe that nature and matter is primitive gives a sort of supernatural conception of matter, of the kind "don't ask for more explanation". I am not satisfied by that type of quasi-magical explanation

If you're right then reality is like a enormous onion with a infinite number of layers and no first level, no fundamental level because you can always find a level even more fundamental.

Not really. I can't find something more fundamental than the natural numbers (or combinators, fortran programs, etc.).

basically, digital mechanism (comp) makes elementary arithmetic the theory of everything. Physics becomes a branch of elementary arithmetic. 

On the other hand the universe could be constructed in such a way that you will forever be unsatisfied and there is a first/fundamental level and when we reach it we come to the end of the philosophy game, and there is nothing more to be said.

But with mechanism the question of the existence of the universe is an open problem. There are only partial numbers dreams, and we still don't know if those dreams are sharable enough to provide a well defined notion of physical reality. Anyway, the whole mind-body problem is transformed into a purely arithmetical problem, in the shape of numbers'  or digital machine's theology. This announce the end of the Aristotelian theology (used by atheists and christians) and the coming back to Plato's type of conception of reality. God created the natural numbers, all the rest are (sharable) dreams by and among relative numbers. 

I am not saying that this is true, but that it follows from the belief that consciousness is invariant for digital functional substitution made at some self-description level. The interest is that it makes physics a theorem in machine's theology, and it makes such a theology testable, in a way smoother than just dying (or smoking salvia, which is about the same).

By "theology of a machine" I just mean the truth *about* that machine (including its possible points of view), as opposed to what the machine can rationally justify about herself. By incompleteness there is a big gap between truth and proof, and ideally sound machines can be proved to be able to handle a part of it. They have a rich and non trivial self-reference theory.

Bruno

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

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 1:31 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't see any logic or induction in the assertion that the only possible epistemological sources for Homo sapiens must be logic or induction.

What other pathway to knowledge do you propose? Well OK there is direct experience. I think therefore I am, I think.

> Is it induction that provides our understanding of how to swallow?

Only logic can provide understanding, the best that induction can do is make predictions. And the fact is I don't understand how to swallow, and not being a physiologist, I don't understand how to digest my food either, but fortunately understanding how to do something is not always necessary to do it, so I can still digest food just fine.

> Is it logical that a feeling that seems associated with the inside of your abdomen should indicate that your survival depends upon putting some formerly living organism in your mouth?

Hunger sounds like basic survival programming to me, programming written by Evolution; organisms that did not have this programming did not live long enough to reproduce, and without exception every single one of your many millions of ancestors did live long enough to do this. You and I are both descendents of a long long line of very rare winners.

> All computation in nature, including the human brain is analog.

The genetic code in DNA could not be more digital, and it was good enough to build your brain and every other part of you out of simple amino acid molecules; if you look at the details of the assembly process biology uses to make complex things, like your brain, you find its amazingly computer-like. And a synapse in your brain either fires or it does not.

>> If I change the biochemistry of your brain your subjective experience will change, it you don't believe me just take a drug that is not normally in your brain, like LSD or heroin, and see if I'm right.

> That would be an anecdotal subjective account.

Obviously.

> There is nothing we can see from looking at the brain's behavior that suggests LSD or heroin causes anything except biochemical changes in the neurological organs.

There is nothing we can see from just looking at the brain's behavior that suggests it is conscious, you just can't detect it directly from human brains or anything else, that's why if we want to study consciousness we must do so indirectly through anecdotal subjective accounts and other forms of behavior.

> But if we had no access to a person's account of feeling fear or anger, the chemists detection of elevated levels of adrenaline in the brain (and body) would be meaningless.

Yes but we DO have access to the person's accounts and behavior so it is not meaningless.

> Is it wacko to say that a plastic flower has no link to a real flower?

If a "plastic" flower smelled, felt, tasted, grew and looked exactly like a real flower even with a powerful microscope then calling it "plastic" would indeed be wacko.

>  Only the most glassy eyed computer fanatic would fail to see that an electronic puppet

That is a terrible analogy! A puppeteer knows what his puppet is going to do as well as he knows what he himself is going to do, but a computer designer or programmer most certainly does NOT know what his creation is going to do and it constantly surprises him, and that is in fact the entire point of making them in the first place. And I'm not glassy eyed.

> is not capable of turning into a living human mind.

The ultimate outcome will not be something as trivial as a living human mind.

> *Our* human awareness can tell when it encounters itself. Behavior has a lot to do with it,

Yes.

> but there are other factors. Like size. If a person was the size of an ant, we would have a hard time accepting it as an equal.

That's only because that's what you're accustomed to. If you lived in a world where the smaller someone was the smarter they seemed to be and all your college professors were a quarter of an inch tall then I'll bet you'd have very different views about the consciousness potential of an ant.

> It is entirely probable that we have a sense of a person that is direct but not reducible to easily identified intellectual understandings.

Then you would have to concede that if a computer passes the Turing test then the computer is a conscious being, or else your above speculation is incorrect.

> A dog is probably not going to be fooled by an android.

Then it has failed the dog Turing test and you need better android designers for version 2.0, so fire your old designers and get new ones. I just finished the Steve Jobs biography and I think that's what he'd do.

> An intelligent computer is designed to seem conscious though. That doesn't make a difference to you?

How on Earth could it make a difference to me?! I have no way of detecting consciousness other than my own, all I can do is detect things that seem to be conscious and if that's not good enough then so be it because that's all I got. That's all you got too.

> A person seems conscious in many ways that a computer does not seem to be.

Then the computer is not behaving properly and has failed the Turing Test and you need better computer designers so fire your old ones.

> "Until it is measured it does not just seem to have no polarization it really has none" This contradicts what you were trying to show.

How so? If I observe that a measurement that indicates a photon is polarized then it really is, if I observe behavior that indicates that something is behaving consciously then it really is conscious.

> Your example shows how even when confronted with obvious perspective-driven phenomena, the intolerance for 'seems' demands that measurement magically creates reality - an unambiguous, literal reality.

Yes but, at least with the standard Copenhagen interpretation, measurement DOES magically create reality; I don't like it, Einstein didn't like it, the scientific consensus doesn't like it, and even the brilliant scientists who created the idea didn't like it, but that is what the experiments are telling them, so if you don't like it either the proper place to direct your rage is the universe.

There is a alternative to Copenhagen, the Many World's Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, but it will be no friendlier to your ideas than Copenhagen is.

> It's hard for me to even entertain discussions about photons and QM because I see the whole
model as obsolete.

If you know of a theory that makes better predictions about what will happen when things become very small I and the entire world would love to hear all about it.

> Consciousness is not made of atoms but it is executed through them.

Just like computations.

> Consciousness is an actual physical process. Computation is not as clear cut.

Computation is not a mushy spiritual abstraction that only a philosopher could use or love, it's a precise process who's parameters modern science has found. For example we know that erasing a bit in a computation, or any irreversible change in information, results in an increase in entropy. We also know that the minimum energy needed for ANYTHING to change one bit of information is kT*ln2 where k is Boltzmann's constant and T is the temperature in degrees kelvin of the object doing the computation. Computation is as physical as death and taxes.

> Wow. You do realize that there is a thing called the internet and on that thing that there are scientific papers available to the public. They look like this: http://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/mfr454-6/mfr454-65.pdfand say things like

 "The isolates were transferred from TSA slants into 5 ml of TSBH and allowed to incubate for 24 hours at 37°C; 0.2 ml of each culture was transferred to another 5 ml of TSBH and incubated for 18 hours at 37°C. The 18-hour culture was diluted with saline until the density was comparable to McFarland standard #2 (McFarland, 1907)."

What's wrong with that? From your quotation I have no idea what this experiment is all about but, obviously it's a microbiology experiment of some sort and the man was explaining, as he should, exactly how he did it, and that is very important if somebody wants to repeat it, and no experiment is really complete until somebody has repeated it. TSA slants are just agar (a sort of gelatin made from soybeans) plates used to grow bacteria. I don't know what "TSBH" is or "McFarland standard #2" but if I was a specialist in his area of interest I certainly would.

It's hard work trying to figure out how the universe works, you've got to get your hands dirty and vague airy fairy philosophical ramblings is not enough.

> The people who I have debated with are exactly like you.

Wish I knew where you found them, I've been on the net a long time but I rarely find anybody on the net who agrees with me about anything, but maybe that's for the best; I can't debate with somebody who agrees with me.

> I have never once had anyone point me to any kind of flaky site.

Where do you find these paragons??

> I know your argument better than you do.

I doubt that very much.

> Just take a look at this forum alone. I've been over this territory dozens of times.

Not with me you haven't.

>> Unreadable by the general public but they were not written for them but for fellow specialists.

> Obviously. Do you think that isn't the case for philosophy?

Yes but there is a difference, for scientists the opaque language they use is because they must use unfamiliar words and phrases when they refer to unfamiliar things; philosophers use opaque language because their ideas are opaque even to themselves. Nearly everything philosophers say can be put into one of four categories.

1) False
2) True but obvious, a truism disguised in pretentious language.
3) True and deep but discovered first and explained better by someone who didn't write "philosopher" in the box labeled "occupation" on his tax form.
4) So bad its not even wrong. 

>> you've got to learn the language,

> It's true of all sufficiently deep examinations of subjects. That is my point. If you don't know philosophy or psychology, then it's mumbo jumbo to you.

The difference is that those fields make no progress which makes me think that their jargon was not invented for clarity or exactitude but just to impress and conceal their vacuous nature. Psychology (but not neurology) is no more advanced today than it was 50 years ago, and although there has been enormous, colossal, gigantic advances in philosophy in the last 300 years, with the exception of ethics none of those advances were made by philosophers. The word "scientist" is a relatively recent 19th century invention, before that they were called "natural philosophers" and I wish we still had that term.

Some philosophers like Bertrand Russel have contributed to ethics, but not as much as non-philosophers like Lincoln and Martin Luther King, and even Russel started off as a mathematician, and a very good one.

>>>how me a contemporary paper in a scientific journal that isn't like that.

>>I think the December 2 2011 issue of the excellent journal "Science" should be contemporary enough for you; look at pages 1245-1249 for the paper "Detection of Pristine Gas Two Billion Years After the Big Bang" by Fumagalli, O'Meara and Prochaska.

>Sorry, I don't have a subscription for that.

Wow. You do realize that there is a thing called a library and in that thing that there are scientific papers available to the public.

> Without free will, all human speech can only be noisy gibberish.

Maybe maybe not, it all depends on what the ASCII string "free will" is supposed to mean, and I have no idea what it means and it's becoming increasingly clear to me that you don't either.

> I'm saying that the minimum requirement for one thing to make sense is itself and it's opposite or absence. You can't just have one thing with nothing to compare it to.

OK I agree with that, you need contrast to have meaning.

> If an IED does violent things, is it violent?

Yes, and if a thunderstorm does violent things then it's a violent thunderstorm and if it's a violent thunderstorm then it's violent. Do we really have to continue with this exercise?

> Your dog has no need for Tensor Calculus, but it can figure out how to get fed and find a mate, which makes it more intelligent than any computer ever made thus far.

I agree, thus far; but ask me again in 5 or 6 years.

> Intention has possible effects, not deterministic ones.

And there is a convenient word for effects that are not deterministic, events that have no cause, the word is called "random".

> If it were deterministic or random there would be no reason for 'us' to 'create' anything.

That statement is self contradictory. If we create things, and we do, and we are deterministic then obviously we did it for a reason because that's what deterministic means.

> Of course there are reasons, but they are our reasons.

Yes, and one billiard ball moves left rather than right for its reasons and another billiard ball moves right rather than left for its reasons and both balls are deterministic; and a uranium atom decays now rather than then for no reason whatsoever and so is random.

> We decide which of the many agendas that we personally have the power to influence matters to us.

And we make that decision for a reason or we do not, it's deterministic or it is not, and I don't understand what's so controversial about that statement.

> It is the height of anthropomorphic exceptionalism to take seriously the possibility of muon-neutrinos, superposition, "dark energy", and superstings,

Nobody knows if superstrings exist but there is excellent experimental evidence for all those other things.

> but the concept of 'free will' and 'people' are soo exotic and wacko as to be worthy of compulsive scorn.

People exist and the ASCII string "free will" exists, and so does the ASCII string "klognee".

John K Clark

[David Nyman]

On 8 January 2012 04:57, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes Turing was persecuted but his unjust treatment was caused by his privet
> life and had nothing to do with his scientific ideas.

Interesting...I didn't know that Turing was persecuted for his
unpopular views about hedging.

David

[Craig Weinberg]

On Jan 8, 12:03 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 1:31 AM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > I don't see any logic or induction in the assertion that the only
> > possible epistemological sources for Homo sapiens must be logic or
> > induction.
>
> What other pathway to knowledge do you propose? Well OK there is direct
> experience. I think therefore I am, I think.

Yes, and our experience is also not limited to just thinking. We
experience all kinds of conditions and truths that we are not directly
conscious of but which subconscious and unconscious parts of us are
aware.

>
> > Is it induction that provides our understanding of how to swallow?
>
> Only logic can provide understanding, the best that induction can do is
> make predictions. And the fact is I don't understand how to swallow, and
> not being a physiologist, I don't understand how to digest my food either,
> but fortunately understanding how to do something is not always necessary
> to do it, so I can still digest food just fine.

That was my point. Knowing how to eat does not require logic or
induction. To say that it is instinct is a sufficient label for common
purposes, but if you are discussing consciousness, we have to ask what
is instinct really made of?

>
> > Is it logical that a feeling that seems associated with the inside of
> > your abdomen should indicate that your survival depends upon putting some
> > formerly living organism in your mouth?
>
> Hunger sounds like basic survival programming to me, programming written by
> Evolution; organisms that did not have this programming did not live long
> enough to reproduce, and without exception every single one of your many
> millions of ancestors did live long enough to do this. You and I are both
> descendents of a long long line of very rare winners.

That's a 'just-so story'. If evolution could program organisms to seek
food when they are low on nutrients, the experience of hunger would be
superfluous. Also, it's not clear that organisms lacking hunger would
not survive. I would not guess that hunger would improve a plant's
chance of survival. Seems like any organism which is passively
anchored into the soil or drifting in the water would have no use for
hunger. Hunger really has no possible purpose outside of informing a
subjective agent about conditions which it can choose to act upon
voluntarily...using free will. No free will = no hunger. No need for
it. No mechanism for it. No logic to it.

>
> > All computation in nature, including the human brain is analog.
>
> The genetic code in DNA could not be more digital, and it was good enough
> to build your brain and every other part of you out of simple amino acid
> molecules; if you look at the details of the assembly process biology uses
> to make complex things, like your brain, you find its amazingly
> computer-like. And a synapse in your brain either fires or it does not.

That may not be true even for DNA:

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110525/full/473432a.html

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6038/53

"The transmission of information from DNA to RNA is a critical
process. We compared RNA sequences from human B cells of 27
individuals to the corresponding DNA sequences from the same
individuals and uncovered more than 10,000 exonic sites where the RNA
sequences do not match that of the DNA. All 12 possible categories of
discordances were observed. These differences were nonrandom as many
sites were found in multiple individuals and in different cell types,
including primary skin cells and brain tissues. Using mass
spectrometry, we detected peptides that are translated from the
discordant RNA sequences and thus do not correspond exactly to the DNA
sequences. These widespread RNA-DNA differences in the human
transcriptome provide a yet unexplored aspect of genome variation. "

The primary sequence of DNA is just part of the story though.
Secondary and tertiary epigenetic factors are can determine which
genes are used and which are not, and they are not digital. Synapses
don't fire, neurons fire across synapses, but that doesn't make the
brain a binary computer. Far from it. It's a living thing. Just
because traffic lights turn from red to green before drivers move
their cars forward doesn't mean that the traffic light is what is
making cars move from one place to another. There is a lot more going
on in the brain than neurons firing.

>
> >> If I change the biochemistry of your brain your subjective experience
> >> will change, it you don't believe me just take a drug that is not normally
> >> in your brain, like LSD or heroin, and see if I'm right.
>
> > > That would be an anecdotal subjective account.
>
> Obviously.

So it wouldn't be evidence.

>
> > There is nothing we can see from looking at the brain's behavior that
> > suggests LSD or heroin causes anything except biochemical changes in the
> > neurological organs.
>
> There is nothing we can see from just looking at the brain's behavior that
> suggests it is conscious, you just can't detect it directly from human
> brains or anything else,

We detect it directly from inside of the brain. It's not even
detecting it, we consist of it.

> that's why if we want to study consciousness we
> must do so indirectly through anecdotal subjective accounts and other forms
> of behavior.

Of course, but that doesn't mean we should disqualify the direct
experience, especially since we already know that it is not something
which can be detected indirectly. An anecdotal account of being hit by
a bus is not the same thing as the experience of it.

>
> > But if we had no access to a person's account of feeling fear or anger,
> > the chemists detection of elevated levels of adrenaline in the brain (and
> > body) would be meaningless.
>
> Yes but we DO have access to the person's accounts and behavior so it is
> not meaningless.

It's meaningful for us, but not for science. Nothing about awareness
is explained scientifically, only correlated mechanically through folk
epistemology.

>
> > Is it wacko to say that a plastic flower has no link to a real flower?
>
> If a "plastic" flower smelled, felt, tasted, grew and looked exactly like a
> real flower even with a powerful microscope then calling it "plastic" would
> indeed be wacko.

But digital flowers don't smell like anything or feel like anything or
grow in the ground with water. You are assuming that there is such a
thing as a simulation of a flower that is the same in every way but is
somehow not a flower. I don't think that is a possibility.

>
> > Only the most glassy eyed computer fanatic would fail to see that an
> > electronic puppet
>
> That is a terrible analogy! A puppeteer knows what his puppet is going to
> do as well as he knows what he himself is going to do, but a computer
> designer or programmer most certainly does NOT know what his creation is
> going to do and it constantly surprises him, and that is in fact the entire
> point of making them in the first place. And I'm not glassy eyed.

Surprise is relative. What a programmer might find surprising might
seem inevitable to someone who has spent more time studying the
program's implication. Inventing a new color however is surprising in
any possible universe or computation. Not saying you are glassy eyed,
I'm just mirroring your accusations.

>
> > is not capable of turning into a living human mind.
>
> The ultimate outcome will not be something as trivial as a living human
> mind.

Haha, true, it might be a profoundly catastrophic non-living global
systemic pathology. Like investment banking.

>
> > *Our* human awareness can tell when it encounters itself. Behavior has a
> > lot to do with it,
>
> Yes.
>
> > but there are other factors. Like size. If a person was the size of an
> > ant, we would have a hard time accepting it as an equal.
>
> That's only because that's what you're accustomed to. If you lived in a
> world where the smaller someone was the smarter they seemed to be and all
> your college professors were a quarter of an inch tall then I'll bet you'd
> have very different views about the consciousness potential of an ant.

Absolutely, but they still wouldn't be behaviors.

>
> > It is entirely probable that we have a sense of a person that is direct
> > but not reducible to easily identified intellectual understandings.
>
> Then you would have to concede that if a computer passes the Turing test
> then the computer is a conscious being, or else your above speculation is
> incorrect.

No because physical presence is part of being. Someone can pretend to
be a computer over the internet but it's not as easy in person. There
is no Turing-like test that would be sufficient to my standard short
of brain invasive procedures. Make me a brain conjoined twin with it
and then I will tell you if it's a conscious being or not.

>
> > A dog is probably not going to be fooled by an android.
>
> Then it has failed the dog Turing test and you need better android
> designers for version 2.0, so fire your old designers and get new ones. I
> just finished the Steve Jobs biography and I think that's what he'd do.

Right, but you would need version ? to make an android that will fool
everything. As Stephen says, the best simulation of something is
itself, and there is no reason to think that anything can be simulated
to that degree without being the actual thing itself. Imitation sugar
is one thing, but imitation awareness is completely different.

>
> > An intelligent computer is designed to seem conscious though. That
> > doesn't make a difference to you?
>
> How on Earth could it make a difference to me?! I have no way of detecting
> consciousness other than my own, all I can do is detect things that seem to
> be conscious and if that's not good enough then so be it because that's all
> I got. That's all you got too.

By that reasoning, we should treat actors on TV as real people in our
living room that just happen to not pay us much attention.

>
> > A person seems conscious in many ways that a computer does not seem to be.
>
> Then the computer is not behaving properly and has failed the Turing Test
> and you need better computer designers so fire your old ones.

I'm talking about actual computers that exist now.

>
> > "Until it is measured it does not just seem to have no polarization it
> > really has none" This contradicts what you were trying to show.
>
> How so? If I observe that a measurement that indicates a photon is
> polarized then it really is, if I observe behavior that indicates that
> something is behaving consciously then it really is conscious.

Your point was that physics is about 'seems like' phenomena, but your
example makes my point that physics has no use for 'seems like' except
as an obstruction to be overcome on the way to discovering the
opposite of 'seems like' - *the* literal reality that 'simply is'.

More on this in my post yesterday: http://s33light.org/post/15487758646

>
> > Your example shows how even when confronted with obvious
> > perspective-driven phenomena, the intolerance for 'seems' demands that
> > measurement magically creates reality - an unambiguous, literal reality.
>
> Yes but, at least with the standard Copenhagen interpretation, measurement
> DOES magically create reality; I don't like it, Einstein didn't like it,
> the scientific consensus doesn't like it, and even the brilliant scientists
> who created the idea didn't like it, but that is what the experiments are
> telling them, so if you don't like it either the proper place to direct
> your rage is the universe.

Just because they have misinterpreted the results of the experiments
in the same way doesn't mean that the universe doesn't make sense.
Once you consider a sense-primitive model, the Copenhagen
interpretation vanishes like the hocus pocus that it is. Measurement
doesn't make reality, measurement is just a feeling/experience. It is
the correspondence of internal feeling with external non-feeling
feelings that makes reality.

>
> There is a alternative to Copenhagen, the Many World's Interpretation of
> Quantum Mechanics, but it will be no friendlier to your ideas than
> Copenhagen is.

Yeah, MWI is another almost-plausible explanation, but once you
understand how the subjective-objective symmetry works, we can realize
that it's just another way to preserve sentimental mechanemorphism.

>
> > It's hard for me to even entertain discussions about photons and QM
> > because I see the whole
> > model as obsolete.
>
> If you know of a theory that makes better predictions about what will
> happen when things become very small I and the entire world would love to
> hear all about it.

It's a perfect theory for predictions on the microcosmic level, but it
tells us nothing about light and visual perception. It actually stands
in our way of understanding visual sense because it assumes a passive
mechanism based on senseless objects.

>
> > Consciousness is not made of atoms but it is executed through them.
>
> Just like computations.

Sure, but it doesn't know that it's executing computations.

>
> > Consciousness is an actual physical process. Computation is not as clear
> > cut.
>
> Computation is not a mushy spiritual abstraction that only a philosopher
> could use or love, it's a precise process who's parameters modern science
> has found. For example we know that erasing a bit in a computation, or any
> irreversible change in information, results in an increase in entropy. We
> also know that the minimum energy needed for ANYTHING to change one bit of
> information is kT*ln2 where k is Boltzmann's constant and T is the
> temperature in degrees kelvin of the object doing the computation.
> Computation is as physical as death and taxes.

Those are inferences based on the assumption of information existing
in the first place. What those formulas are actually calculating are
the physics of electromagnetism and the minimum requirements for us to
make changes that are meaningful to us. There is no actual bit that
uses physical energy. It's just a figurative way to talk about the
limits of how we use atoms. Would successful quantum computing change
the Boltzmann constant?

>
> > Wow. You do realize that there is a thing called the internet and on that
> > thing that there are scientific papers available to the public. They look

> > like this:http://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/mfr454-6/mfr454-65.pdfandsay things

> > like
>
> > "The isolates were transferred from TSA slants into 5 ml of TSBH and
> > allowed to incubate for 24 hours at 37°C; 0.2 ml of each culture was
> > transferred to another 5 ml of TSBH and incubated for 18 hours at 37°C. The
> > 18-hour culture was diluted with saline until the density was comparable to
> > McFarland standard #2 (McFarland, 1907)."
>
> What's wrong with that? From your quotation I have no idea what this
> experiment is all about but, obviously it's a microbiology experiment of
> some sort and the man was explaining, as he should, exactly how he did it,
> and that is very important if somebody wants to repeat it, and no
> experiment is really complete until somebody has repeated it. TSA slants
> are just agar (a sort of gelatin made from soybeans) plates used to grow
> bacteria. I don't know what "TSBH" is or "McFarland standard #2" but if I
> was a specialist in his area of interest I certainly would.
>
> It's hard work trying to figure out how the universe works, you've got to
> get your hands dirty and vague airy fairy philosophical ramblings is not
> enough.

My point is that there is a long history of brilliant minds who have
gotten their hands dirty making Earth-shaking philosophical
discoveries only to have you dismiss them as 'vague airy fairy
ramblings'. Those ramblings have caused the rise and fall of
civilizations.

>
> > The people who I have debated with are exactly like you.
>
> Wish I knew where you found them, I've been on the net a long time but I
> rarely find anybody on the net who agrees with me about anything, but maybe
> that's for the best; I can't debate with somebody who agrees with me.

There's an atheist board I spent a lot of time on http://whywontgodhealamputees.com.
It looks like the forum is broken now.

>
> > I have never once had anyone point me to any kind of flaky site.
>
> Where do you find these paragons??

It's not hard. Most people that argue with me are intelligent.
Consciousness isn't really a good topic for trolls.

>
> > I know your argument better than you do.
>
> I doubt that very much.

I know.

>
> > Just take a look at this forum alone. I've been over this territory
> > dozens of times.
>
> Not with me you haven't.

Right, but it may as well have been with you. The same objections are
raised.

>
> >> Unreadable by the general public but they were not written for them but
> >> for fellow specialists.
>
> > > Obviously. Do you think that isn't the case for philosophy?
>
> Yes but there is a difference, for scientists the opaque language they use
> is because they must use unfamiliar words and phrases when they refer to
> unfamiliar things; philosophers use opaque language because their ideas are
> opaque even to themselves. Nearly everything philosophers say can be put
> into one of four categories.
>
> 1) False
> 2) True but obvious, a truism disguised in pretentious language.
> 3) True and deep but discovered first and explained better by someone who
> didn't write "philosopher" in the box labeled "occupation" on his tax form.
> 4) So bad its not even wrong.

Well, I'm not a big fan of reading philosophy personally, but I don't
imagine that it's useless just because I don't like it. Mathematicians
and scientists are no less guilty of using opaque language than
lawyers or philosophers. When you specialize in something, you develop
a more specialized linguistic tool set. I wouldn't look at a set of
unfamiliar tools and say 'this must be crap' just because I don't know
what they are for.

>
> >> you've got to learn the language,
>
> > > It's true of all sufficiently deep examinations of subjects. That is my
> > point. If you don't know philosophy or psychology, then it's mumbo jumbo to
> > you.
>
> The difference is that those fields make no progress

Wow, that is a quite a smug and ignorant thing to say even by general
standards. Progress in psychology is what keeps us from drilling holes
in people's heads to let the demons out. Philosophical progress is
what has allowed people to question the authority of kings and popes.
Science and mathematics are nothing but specializations of philosophy.

> which makes me think
> that their jargon was not invented for clarity or exactitude but just to
> impress and conceal their vacuous nature.

There is maybe more truth to that in philosophy than in other
disciplines, but it's still a bigoted sweeping generalization to make.
Philosophy isn't some kind of trick by charlatans with their high-
falutin big words, at worst it attracts intellectuals who indulge in
argument for the sake of argument (we wouldn't know anyone like
that ;).

> Psychology (but not neurology) is
> no more advanced today than it was 50 years ago,

Maybe, but I think that has more to do with the political climate in
medicine.

> and although there has
> been enormous, colossal, gigantic advances in philosophy in the last 300
> years, with the exception of ethics none of those advances were made by
> philosophers.

What qualifies someone as a philosopher?

> The word "scientist" is a relatively recent 19th century
> invention, before that they were called "natural philosophers" and I wish
> we still had that term.
>
> Some philosophers like Bertrand Russel have contributed to ethics, but not
> as much as non-philosophers like Lincoln and Martin Luther King, and even
> Russel started off as a mathematician, and a very good one.
>
> >>>how me a contemporary paper in a scientific journal that isn't like that.
>
> >> >>I think the December 2 2011 issue of the excellent journal "Science"
> >> should be contemporary enough for you; look at pages 1245-1249 for the
> >> paper "Detection of Pristine Gas Two Billion Years After the Big Bang" by
> >> Fumagalli, O'Meara and Prochaska.
>
> > >Sorry, I don't have a subscription for that.
>
> Wow. You do realize that there is a thing called a library and in that
> thing that there are scientific papers available to the public.

You want me to go to the library to read the paper that you are
citing?

>
> > Without free will, all human speech can only be noisy gibberish.
>
> Maybe maybe not, it all depends on what the ASCII string "free will" is
> supposed to mean, and I have no idea what it means and it's becoming
> increasingly clear to me that you don't either.

Free will is the difference between yes-no and true-false. Machine
logic can only understand true or false. It has no capacity to assert
'yes!' or 'no!' as a declaration. Free will is the ability to tell the
difference between an accident and 'on purpose'. Free will is what
lets you feel that you control your arms and legs but not your
pancreas. On what basis do you claim that I'm unclear about the
meaning of free will?

>
> > I'm saying that the minimum requirement for one thing to make sense is
> > itself and it's opposite or absence. You can't just have one thing with
> > nothing to compare it to.
>
> OK I agree with that, you need contrast to have meaning.
>
> > If an IED does violent things, is it violent?
>
> Yes, and if a thunderstorm does violent things then it's a violent
> thunderstorm and if it's a violent thunderstorm then it's violent. Do we
> really have to continue with this exercise?

That has to do with how we use language to extend subjective qualities
metaphorically to objective things. Nobody literally believes that the
storm should be subject to criminal penalties.

>
> > Your dog has no need for Tensor Calculus, but it can figure out how to
> > get fed and find a mate, which makes it more intelligent than any computer
> > ever made thus far.
>
> I agree, thus far; but ask me again in 5 or 6 years.

Maybe by then they will realize that silicon is a dead end for
synthetic awareness and start working with cells.

>
> > Intention has possible effects, not deterministic ones.
>
> And there is a convenient word for effects that are not deterministic,
> events that have no cause, the word is called "random".

Intention doesn't need a to have any one cause, it makes one
deliberate cause out of many possible/potential causes, and it's not
random.

>
> > If it were deterministic or random there would be no reason for 'us' to
> > 'create' anything.
>
> That statement is self contradictory. If we create things, and we do, and
> we are deterministic then obviously we did it for a reason because that's
> what deterministic means.

Then the deterministic reason would be creating things, not 'us'.

>
> > Of course there are reasons, but they are our reasons.
>
> Yes, and one billiard ball moves left rather than right for its reasons and
> another billiard ball moves right rather than left for its reasons and both
> balls are deterministic; and a uranium atom decays now rather than then for
> no reason whatsoever and so is random.

Atoms and billiard balls are at the far end of the objective spectrum.
Biology is the opposite. Organisms evolve to be drive their own
desires and whims using free will and teleology.

>
> > We decide which of the many agendas that we personally have the power to
> > influence matters to us.
>
> And we make that decision for a reason or we do not, it's deterministic or
> it is not, and I don't understand what's so controversial about that
> statement.

Because when we are doing the determining then the reason is our
reason, not an external reason. We select the reason that we use to
decide.

>
> > It is the height of anthropomorphic exceptionalism to take seriously the
> > possibility of muon-neutrinos, superposition, "dark energy", and
> > superstings,
>
> Nobody knows if superstrings exist but there is excellent experimental
> evidence for all those other things.

Ptolemaic epicycle had excellent experimental evidence too.

>
> > but the concept of 'free will' and 'people' are soo exotic and wacko as
> > to be worthy of compulsive scorn.
>
> People exist and the ASCII string "free will" exists, and so does the ASCII
> string "klognee".
>

Spoken like a true occidental literalist.

Craig

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 3:36 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> But naturalism want to explain things by reducing it to nature or natural law,

If you want to explain X you say that X exists because of Y. It's true that Y can be nothing and thus the existence of X is random, but let's assume that Y is something;in that case if you don't want to call Y "natural law" what do you want to call it?

> Computationalism asks for an explanation for the natural laws,

And if found those explanations would be yet more natural laws; however we don't know that there is a explanation for everything, some things might be fundamental. I have a hunch that consciousness is fundamental and it's just the way data feels like when it's being processed; the trouble is that even if consciousness is fundamental a proof of that fact probably does not exist, so people will continue to invent consciousness theories trying to explain it till the end of time but none of those theories will be worth a bucket of warm spit.

> This does not mean it is always meaningful to ask "what is that made of?".

It is until you get to something fundamental, then all you can say is that's just the way things are. If that is unsatisfactory then direct your rage at the universe. But perhaps you can always find something more fundamental, but I doubt it, I think consciousness is probably the end of the line.

> There are no thing made of something.

Good heavens, if we can't agree even that at least sometimes somethings are made of parts we will be chasing our intellectual tails forever going nowhere.

> The idea of things being made of something is still Aristotelian.

Aristotle like most philosophers liked to write about stuff that every person on the planet knows to be obviously true and state that fact to the world in inflated language as if he'd made a great discovery. Of course most things are made of parts, although I'm not too sure about electrons, they might be fundamental.  

> If mechanism is true, there are only true number *relations*.

I don't see your point. What's the difference from saying that gear X in a clock moved because of its relation to spring Y in the same clock, and saying that the clock is made of parts and 2 of those parts are gear X and spring Y?

> I am not sure things can be random, nor what that would mean.

It would mean a event without a cause and I don't see why that is more illogical that a event with a cause.

> If mechanism is correct, physics becomes independent of the choice of the fundamental level,

Choice of the fundamental level? There can only be one fundamental level, or none at all.

> for the numbers (or the first order specification of a universal system) I can prove we cannot derive it from something simpler.[...] I can't find something more fundamental than the natural numbers

OK then numbers are fundamental, and the lifeblood of computers are those very same numbers, so if asked how computers produce consciousness there may be nothing to say except that's just what numbers do.

> actual QM (à-la Everett/Deutsch) assumes computationalism and the SWE. But computationalism has to explain the SWE.

Numbers can certainly describe the Schrodinger Wave Equation,  the question you're really asking is why does the universe operate according to that equation and not another? Everett has a answer, it may or may not be the correct answer but at least it's a answer, because that's the universe you happen to be living in and you've got to live in some universe. Another explanation is that the link between Schrodinger's equation and matter is fundamental, after all, you said numbers are fundamental but you didn't say that's the only thing that is.

> God created the natural numbers, all the rest are (sharable) dreams by and among relative numbers.   I  am not saying that this is true, but that it follows from the belief that consciousness is invariant for digital functional substitution

OK, I'm not sure I agree but I see your point. I suppose it comes back to the old question, were the imaginary and irrational numbers invented or discovered?

 John K Clark

[1Z]

On Dec 22 2011, 12:18 pm, alexalex <alexmka...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello, Everythinglisters!
>
> The below text is a philosophical essay on what qualia may represent.
> I doubt you'll manage to finish reading it (it's kind of long, and
> translated from anoter language), but if you do I'll be happy to hear
> your opinion about what it says.
>
> Thanks!
>
> <<<A simpler model of the world with different points of view>>>
>
> It can often get quite amusing watching qualophiles' self-confidence,
> mutual assurance and agreement when they talk about something a priori
> defined as inherently private and un-accessible to third-party
> analysis (i.e. qualia), so they say, but they somehow agree on what
> they're discussing about even though as far as I've been able to
> understand they don't display the slightest scant of evidence which
> would show that they believe there will ever be a theory that could
> bridge the gap between the ineffable what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of
> personal experience and the scientific, objective descriptions of
> reality.
> The 1s and 0s that make the large variety of 3D design software on the
> market today are all we need in order to bring to virtual-reality
> whatever model of our real world we desire. Those 1s and 0s, which are
> by the way as physical as the neurons in your brain though not of the
> same assortment (see below), are further arranged into sub-modules
> that are further integrated into other different parts and subsystems
> of the computer onto which the software they are part of is running
> on, so their arrangement is obviously far from aleatory. One needs to
> adopt the intentional stance in order to understand the intricacies,
> details and roles that these specific particular modules play in this
> large and complex computer programs.
>
> If you had the desire you could bring to virtual reality any city of
> the world you want. Let's for example take the city of Rome. Every
> monument, restaurant, hospital, park, mall and police department can
> be accounted for in a detailed, virtual replica which we can model
> using one of these 3D modeling programs. Every car, plane and boat,
> even the people and their biomechanics are so well represented that we
> could easily mistake the computer model for the real thing. Here we
> are looking at the monitor screen from our God-like-point-of-view. All
> the points, lines, 2D-planes and 3D objects in this digital
> presentation have their properties and behavior ruled by simulated
> laws of physics which are identical to the laws encountered in our
> real world. These objects and the laws that govern them are 100%
> traceable to the 1s and 0s, that is, to the voltages and transistors
> on the silica chips that make up the computer onto which the software
> is runs on. We have a 100% description of the city of Rome in our
> computer in the sense that there is no object in that model that we
> can't say all there is to say about it and the movement of the points,
> lines and planes which compose it because they're all accounted for in
> the 0s and 1s saved on the hard-drive and then loaded into the RAM and
> video-RAM of our state of the art video graphics card. Let's call that
> perspective, the perspective of knowing all there is to know about the
> 3D-model, the third-person perspective (the perspective described by
> using only third-party objective data). What's interesting is that all
> of these 3D design programs have the option to add cameras to whatever
> world model you are currently developing. Cameras present a scene from
> a particular point-of-view (POV – or point of reference, call it how
> you will). Camera objects simulate still-image, motion picture, or
> video cameras in the real world and have the same usage here. The
> benefit of cameras is that you can position them anywhere within a
> scene to offer a custom view. You can imagine that camera not only as
> a point of view but also as an area point of view (all the light
> reflected from the objects in your particular world model enter the
> lens of the camera), but for our particular mental exercise this
> doesn't matter. What you need to know is that our virtual cameras can
> perfectly simulate real world cameras and all the optical science of
> the lens is integrated in the program making the simulated models
> similar to the ones that are found real life. We’ll use POVs and CPOVs
> interchangeably from now on; they mean the same thing in the logic of
> our argumentation.
>
> The point-of-view (POV) of the camera is obviously completely
> traceable and mathematically deducible from the third-person
> perspective of the current model we are simulating and from the
> physical characteristics of the virtual lens built into the camera
> through which the light reflected of the objects in the model is
> projected (Bare in mind that the physical properties and optics of the
> lens are also simulated by the computer model). Of course, the
> software does all that calculation and drawing for you. But if you had
> the ambition you could practically do all that work for yourself by
> taking the 3D-model’s mathematical and geometric data from the saved
> computer file containing your particular model description and
> calculate on sheets of paper how objects from it would look and behave
> from a particular CPOV, and more to that, you could literally draw
> those objects yourself by using the widely known techniques of
> descriptive geometry (the same as the ones used by the 3D modeling
> software). But what point would that make when we already have
> computers that achieve this arduous task for us? Maybe living in a
> period of time without computers would make this easily relentless
> task one worth considering.
>
> So, we can basically take a virtual trip to whatever part of Rome we
> want by just jumping inside a CPOV provided to us by the software. We
> can see, experience what it is like to be in Rome by adopting whatever
> CPOV which will be calculated and drawn to us by this complex but 100%
> describable and understandable computer program. The software would be
> no mystery to us if we were sufficiently trained programmers,
> architects and mathematicians. The WIIL of experiencing Rome will
> never be a mystery to us also if we’ll let the 3D design software do
> the job of calculating and drawing the CPOV for us. Of course, as said
> above, we can achieve the same WIIL by making strenuous calculations
> and draw ourselves on sheets of paper exactly the same POV “painted”
> to us by the computer program. Whatever our choice one thing stands to
> pure reason: We will achieve to experience the what-it-is-likeness
> (WIIL) of Rome by deducing it from objective, third-party data that we
> can all share by accessing the program file that contains the 3D-model
> third-person description; so there is nothing special about it. The
> whole point is that the experience of the WIIL can be achieved and
> built by/for us using third-person data). The WIIL only seems to be
> some kind of metaphysical thing because of its circumstantial
> relatedness with the idiosyncrasies of the POV. No need to squander
> energy contriving not-worth-considering meanings because of this
> relatedness. The WIIL is the intentional interpretation of the
> mathematical description of the physical objects' properties and
> relationships to each other which the POV describes; it is the
> richness and detail of the description of the POV taken as a whole by
> whatever is on the other side of the lens. On the other hand the POV
> can be accounted for by its mathematical and geometrical description;
> it’s all data, 0s and 1s. The WIIL and the POV represent the same
> thing but each are different interpretations of a specific slice of
> the 3D model: one is a reducible, mathematical and geometric
> description of a set of objects and how their would appear from a
> certain vantage point (i.e. the POV), the other one is the non-
> reducible, intentional, apparently immediate interpretation of all
> that data contained in the POV taken as a whole. The WIIL is all
> accounted for, we know all about it: how it comes to existence, how it
> is 100% physical but non-reducible because of its intentionality, and
> how the circumstantial relation to its POV makes it seem as if it’s
> something separate from it but that's an illusion.
>
So? if you are in the business of sayig that qualia are mysterious
and non phsycial. obviously you would reject such a theory.


> They don’t even try to brainstorm ideas about such a theory.
> How are we to explain this what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) if we can't
> subject it to what science has been and will always be? Third-party
> analysis. So, here it is: Qualia, one of the last remaining unresolved
> quandaries for us to splinter and rise on the pedestals of science,
> but we must stop, qualophiles say, because, .... “Because what?” I
> ask. “Because the what-it-is-likeness of qualia” most of them will
> respond. And believe me that is the whole argument from which they
> sprout all of the other awkward deductions and misconstrued axioms if
> we are to succinctly resume their rigorous, inner-gut, “aprioristic
> analysis”. I'll try to expose the absurdity of their stance

A stance is absurd if it contradicts facts. But all you have
is speculation.

> by making
> some analogies while telling the story of how architects and designers
> build 3D models of reality with the help of 3D modeling software.
>
> The what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of points-of-view (POVs) in our model

You haven;t established that there is WIL-ness of the human
kind in the model, or that human WIL-ness works like
geometical POVs. All you can say is that if it does,
then there is no mystery of qualia.


=
> Something on privateness now. The WILL is only private in the sense
> that only something which experiences a certain POV can experience its
> WIIL but that is all. Can this POV be shared with others? Of course.
> After we create that CPOV in the computer program we can save it to a
> file and send it via email to whatever part of the globe you want for
> someone else to experience its WIIL. So, the possibility of sharing it
> with others makes it a not very good candidate for privateness. POVs
> are only unique, but hardly private so let's not confuse the terms.
>
> The same reasons as above I should say go for the qualia of color,
> smells, etc.

Says who? If you could communicate them in some objectivese,
you cold prove your point. Otherwise it is just a hypothesis.

>So, I doubt there is any difference with these types of
> experiences. What it is like to see a color is just experiencing the
> complete model from a slice of the world from a certain POV.

Ditto. Maybe it is. maybe it isn;t.

>Why can't
> that POV be deduced and inferred from the widely agreed-upon,
> sufficient, scientific data

Do it then. You have a confirmable thesis
. But it isn't true until it is confirmed.

> as qualophiles’ plea for metaphysics
> suggest eludes me so far as i can see, so that's why the they haven't
> proved anything yet. I doubt they'll ever will. If we knew almost
> everything there is to know about the particles and forces that make
> up our world we could be able to build models of whatever brains we'd
> like that could experience all there is to be possible designable as
> an experience.

There;s no guarantee that a model will experience anything in a WIL
sense. it isn't
guaranteed by functional adeuqacy. Flight simulators don;t fly.


> Well, if you remember the story of how architects create specific
> camera-points-of-view (CPOVs) inside their 3D modeling software in
> order to experience a certain point-of-view (POV) of whatever model of
> reality or of their imagination they are designing, maybe building
> color experience inside oneself without ever having experienced colors
> may not seem that unbelievable after all. Remember that RoboMary knows
> everything about the physical world there is to be known. Couldn't she
> simulate (that is by a third-person perspective of course) what the
> brain state of a Mark 19 robot would be upon experiencing colors using
> a computer model of this type of robot and subjecting it to a
> completely digital replica of a LCD monitor screen onto which the
> stolen colorized security videos would be projected onto?


She could. If colour qualia are computatioal,
the simulation will work. if they are more
like the abiity of a flight simulator to fly,
it won;t. You just have a speculation there.
Intuiting in opposite directions to
qualiaphiles proves nothing.


> Some may retort that what may be a true fact for architecture and 3D
> computer modeling is not even close at explaining special phenomenal
> qualities like colors, pains, etc. But then again, why would that be a
> possibility worth taking into consideration?

Because we should not mistakes possibilities
for facts. Everything you have put forward
is only possibility.

>What qualia is, this what-
> it-is-likeness, is not something metaphysical (at least that is what
> we should a priori consider it if we ever wish to explain it),

Fine. Work on explaining it. If you succed you
will have proved your point. But qualiaphiles
aren't wrong because their guesses are
opposite to your guesses.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 Jan 2012, at 06:56, John Clark wrote:

On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 3:36 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> But naturalism want to explain things by reducing it to nature or natural law,

If you want to explain X you say that X exists because of Y. It's true that Y can be nothing and thus the existence of X is random, but let's assume that Y is something;in that case if you don't want to call Y "natural law" what do you want to call it?

In the case which concerns us, Y is elementary arithmetic.

> Computationalism asks for an explanation for the natural laws,

And if found those explanations would be yet more natural laws;

After all you can. Elementary arithmetic is the study of *natural* numbers. But that would be a pun. 

however we don't know that there is a explanation for everything, some things might be fundamental.

Yes. In the case of elementary arithmetic, we can even explain why we cannot explain it by something more fundamental. There are logical reason for that. But this is not the case for matter and consciousness, which admit an explanation from arithmetic.

I have a hunch that consciousness is fundamental and it's just the way data feels like when it's being processed;

Then it is not fundamental, and you have to search an explanation why some data, when processed, can lead to consciousness.

If you define consciousness by the undoubtable belief in at least one reality, it can be explained why numbers develop such belief. But there is a price which is also a gift: you have to explain the appearance of matter from the numbers too, and physics is no more the fundamental science. The gift is that we get a complete conceptual explanation of where the physical realities come from.

the trouble is that even if consciousness is fundamental a proof of that fact probably does not exist, so people will continue to invent consciousness theories trying to explain it till the end of time but none of those theories will be worth a bucket of warm spit.

That's your opinion. The fact is that we can explain, even prove, that natural numbers are not explainable from less, and we can explain entirely matter, and 99,9% of consciousness from the numbers too, and this in a testable way (I'm not pretending that numbers provide the correct explanation). And we can explain completely why it remains "0.1% of consciousness" which cannot be explained, by pure number logical self-reference limitation.

> This does not mean it is always meaningful to ask "what is that made of?".

It is until you get to something fundamental,

You seem here to have difficulties to conceive that Aristotle primary matter hypothesis might be wrong. 

then all you can say is that's just the way things are. If that is unsatisfactory then direct your rage at the universe. But perhaps you can always find something more fundamental, but I doubt it, I think consciousness is probably the end of the line.

That is already refuted once you take seriously the mechanist hypothesis. Consciousness is explained by semantical fixed point of Turing universal self-transformations. It leads to a testable theory of qualia and quanta (X1* in my papers).

> There are no thing made of something.

Good heavens, if we can't agree even that at least sometimes somethings are made of parts we will be chasing our intellectual tails forever going nowhere.

Something are made of parts. But not of fundamental parts. Time, space, energy, quantum states all belong to the imagination or tools of numbers looking at their origin, and we can explain why (relative) numbers develop that well founded imagination, and why some of it is persistent and sharable among many numbers. Imagination does not mean 'unreal', but it means not ontologically primary real.

> The idea of things being made of something is still Aristotelian.

Aristotle like most philosophers liked to write about stuff that every person on the planet knows to be obviously true and state that fact to the world in inflated language as if he'd made a great discovery. Of course most things are made of parts, although I'm not too sure about electrons, they might be fundamental.  

Plato invented science, including theology, by taking some distance from the animal lasting intuition that their neighborhoods are "primary real" or WYSIWYG. 

Aristotle just came back to that animal intuition, which of course is very satisfying for our animal natural intuition. But mechanism has been shown to be incompatible with it. (Weak) materialism will be abandonned, in the long run, as being a "natural superstition". Matter is only the border of the universal mind, which is the mind of universal numbers. The theory of mind becomes computer science (itself branch of arithmetic), and fundamental physics becomes a sub-branch of it.

> If mechanism is true, there are only true number *relations*.

I don't see your point. What's the difference from saying that gear X in a clock moved because of its relation to spring Y in the same clock, and saying that the clock is made of parts and 2 of those parts are gear X and spring Y?

You have to study the proof. Clocks are dreamed objects, like all "physical objects", and all "physical events". 

I don't know if that is true, but I know that this follows from the comp assumption. I can explain if you are interested, patient and serious enough. 

> I am not sure things can be random, nor what that would mean.

It would mean a event without a cause and I don't see why that is more illogical that a event with a cause.

An event without a cause/reason, is no better than creationism. It is a way of saying "don't ask", unless you can explain why it has to be so (and get some meta-reason for absence of cause/reason, like we have for the natural numbers).

> If mechanism is correct, physics becomes independent of the choice of the fundamental level,

Choice of the fundamental level? There can only be one fundamental level, or none at all.

Up to a recursive isomorphism. With mechanism, physics is retrievable by the postulation of any mathematical Turing universal system. The laws of physics and consciousness are independent of the choice of that universal system, and we have to explain why some seems to be statistically winning, like the quantum machinery.

> for the numbers (or the first order specification of a universal system) I can prove we cannot derive it from something simpler.[...] I can't find something more fundamental than the natural numbers

OK then numbers are fundamental, and the lifeblood of computers are those very same numbers, so if asked how computers produce consciousness there may be nothing to say except that's just what numbers do.

Why? On the contrary, you can explain, by using only the laws of addition and multiplication, why and how some numbers (the relatively universal one) discover both matter and consciousness when introspecting themselves, and this in a so precise way that it makes the number physics comparable with the observations. 

> actual QM (à-la Everett/Deutsch) assumes computationalism and the SWE. But computationalism has to explain the SWE.

Numbers can certainly describe the Schrodinger Wave Equation,  the question you're really asking is why does the universe operate according to that equation and not another?

Yes.

Everett has a answer, it may or may not be the correct answer but at least it's a answer, because that's the universe you happen to be living in and you've got to live in some universe.

Everett is wrong here. because, by UDA, once you postulate comp (as Everett does practically) we are not living in physical universes. Physical universes becomes more abstract gluing arithmetical number's dream conditions. Everett, like many, is still under the Aristotelian's spell. But his conception of physical reality is the closer to the necessary comp conception. UDA really explains this, and AUDA explains UDA entirely in arithmetic.

Another explanation is that the link between Schrodinger's equation and matter is fundamental, after all, you said numbers are fundamental but you didn't say that's the only thing that is.

Numbers (up to logical equivalence) are provably fundamental. You really cannot explain them from less, for logical reason. 

> God created the natural numbers, all the rest are (sharable) dreams by and among relative numbers.   I  am not saying that this is true, but that it follows from the belief that consciousness is invariant for digital functional substitution

OK, I'm not sure I agree but I see your point. I suppose it comes back to the old question, were the imaginary and irrational numbers invented or discovered?

Except that now we have the answer, at least if we believe that consciousness is invariant for digital functional substitution. In that case we know that everything is *discovered*, and are either numbers, or necessary numbers tools (from irrational numbers to analysis and physics) that the numbers discover when trying to understand themselves. This leads to a simpler theory of everything than QM, for example elementary arithmetic.  The theory of everything becomes:

Ax ~(0 = s(x))  (For all number x the successor of x is different from zero).

AxAy ~(x = y) -> ~(s(x) = s(y))    (different numbers have different successors)

 the addition laws:

Ax x + 0 = x  (0 adds nothing)

AxAy  x + s(y) = s(x + y)   ( meaning x + (y +1) = (x + y) +1)

and the multiplication laws

Ax   x *0 = 0

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

In that theory QM (swe) is false or redundant. You need also to accept the classical theory of knowledge and belief (the modern rendering form, made possible by Church thesis, of the Theaetetus' idea described by Plato).

Pythagorus was right. Assuming we are digitalizable machine, there is no choice in that matter, by UDA.

Bruno

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

[Bruno Marchal]

I agree with your general reply to Craig, but I disagree that computations are physical. That's the revisionist conception of computation, defended by Deustch, Landauer, etc. Computations have been discovered by mathematicians when trying to expalin some foundational difficulties in pure mathematics. We can implement computation in the physical worlds, but that means only that the physical reality is (at least) Turing universal. Theoretical computer science is a branch of pure mathematics, even completely embeddable in arithmetical truth. The Church-Turing-Post thesis concerns the mathematical notion. 

Of course, the fact that only erasing information needs energy is a very deep and interesting proposition concerning the physical reality.

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[Craig Weinberg]

On Jan 9, 6:06 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> I agree with your general reply to Craig, but I disagree that
> computations are physical. That's the revisionist conception of
> computation, defended by Deustch, Landauer, etc. Computations have
> been discovered by mathematicians when trying to expalin some
> foundational difficulties in pure mathematics.

Mathematicians aren't physical? Computations are discovered through a
living nervous system, one that has been highly developed and
conditioned specifically for that purpose.

>We can implement
> computation in the physical worlds, but that means only that the
> physical reality is (at least) Turing universal. Theoretical computer
> science is a branch of pure mathematics, even completely embeddable in
> arithmetical truth.

And pure mathematics is a branch of anthropology.

Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 Jan 2012, at 14:50, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> On Jan 9, 6:06 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>
>> I agree with your general reply to Craig, but I disagree that
>> computations are physical. That's the revisionist conception of
>> computation, defended by Deustch, Landauer, etc. Computations have
>> been discovered by mathematicians when trying to expalin some
>> foundational difficulties in pure mathematics.
>
> Mathematicians aren't physical? Computations are discovered through a
> living nervous system, one that has been highly developed and
> conditioned specifically for that purpose.

Computation and mechanism have been discovered by many people since
humans are there. It is related to the understanding of the difference
between "finite" and "infinite". The modern notion has been discovered
independently by many mathematicians, notably Emil Post, Alan Turing,
Alonzo Church, Andrzei Markov, etc.
With the comp. hyp., this is easily explainable, given that we are
somehow "made of" (in some not completely Aristotelian sense to be
sure) computations.

>
>> We can implement
>> computation in the physical worlds, but that means only that the
>> physical reality is (at least) Turing universal. Theoretical computer
>> science is a branch of pure mathematics, even completely embeddable
>> in
>> arithmetical truth.
>
> And pure mathematics is a branch of anthropology.

I thought you already agreed that the arithmetical truth are
independent of the existence of humans, from old posts you write.

Explain me, please, how the truth or falsity of the Riemann
hypothesis, or of Goldbach conjecture depend(s) on anthropology.
Please, explain me how the convergence or divergence of phi_(j)
depends on the existence of humans (with phi_i = the ith computable
function in an enumeration based on some universal system).

Bruno

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

[Craig Weinberg]

On Jan 9, 12:00 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> On 09 Jan 2012, at 14:50, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> > On Jan 9, 6:06 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>
> >> I agree with your general reply to Craig, but I disagree that
> >> computations are physical. That's the revisionist conception of
> >> computation, defended by Deustch, Landauer, etc. Computations have
> >> been discovered by mathematicians when trying to expalin some
> >> foundational difficulties in pure mathematics.
>
> > Mathematicians aren't physical? Computations are discovered through a
> > living nervous system, one that has been highly developed and
> > conditioned specifically for that purpose.
>
> Computation and mechanism have been discovered by many people since
> humans are there. It is related to the understanding of the difference
> between "finite" and "infinite". The modern notion has been discovered
> independently by many mathematicians, notably Emil Post, Alan Turing,
> Alonzo Church, Andrzei Markov, etc.
> With the comp. hyp., this is easily explainable, given that we are
> somehow "made of" (in some not completely Aristotelian sense to be
> sure) computations.
>

They are making those discoveries by using their physical brain
though.

>
>
> >> We can implement
> >> computation in the physical worlds, but that means only that the
> >> physical reality is (at least) Turing universal. Theoretical computer
> >> science is a branch of pure mathematics, even completely embeddable
> >> in
> >> arithmetical truth.
>
> > And pure mathematics is a branch of anthropology.
>
> I thought you already agreed that the arithmetical truth are
> independent of the existence of humans, from old posts you write.
>
> Explain me, please, how the truth or falsity of the Riemann
> hypothesis, or of Goldbach conjecture depend(s) on anthropology.
> Please, explain me how the convergence or divergence of phi_(j)
> depends on the existence of humans (with phi_i = the ith computable
> function in an enumeration based on some universal system).

The whole idea of truth or falsity in the first place depends on
humans capacities to interpret experiences in those terms. We can read
this quality of truth or falsity into many aspects of our direct and
indirect experience, but that doesn't mean that the quality itself is
external to us. If you look at a starfish, you can see it has five
arms, but the starfish doesn't necessarily know it had five arms.

What about arabic numerals? Seeing how popular their spread has been
on Earth after humans, shouldn't we ask why those numerals, given an
arithmetic universal primitive, are not present in nature
independently of literate humans? If indeed all qualia, feeling,
color, sounds, etc are a consequence of arithmetic, why not the
numerals themselves? Why should they be limited to human minds and
writings?

Craig