Importance of including environment in brain simulation

30 views
Skip to first unread message

Jason Resch

unread,
Jun 27, 2020, 1:36:57 PM6/27/20
to Everything List
Brent,

It looks like you were right about the importance of including environmental data in a brain simulation. Markus Muller uses algorithmic information theory to argue that whether or not a simulated brain is a zombie or not, depends on a large extent to the degree in which environmental information is incorporated into the simulation:

(See 51 minutes 40 seconds in)

Jason

Brent Meeker

unread,
Jun 27, 2020, 4:11:56 PM6/27/20
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
Rather consistent with QBism in which QM predicts personal probabilities of observations.

I wonder how much credence I should give to algorithmic probability?  Is this the only possible measure?  How much does it depend on the choice of Turing machine?  Usually such questions are answerable only in the limit n->oo; but is that legitimate in deriving physical reality?

Brent
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUhmdHjJ4%3D9Mkm9dwxKSEwVEMcW_m9Ow2dVeFAz-dPCmHQ%40mail.gmail.com.

Brent Meeker

unread,
Jun 27, 2020, 6:43:18 PM6/27/20
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
Looking at Muller's paper I find difficulties with the idea of "observer".  He recognizes that the observer state must be much more than a state of current awareness.  And I think his examples show it must be even much more than the state of a brain.  But once you go beyond current awareness, you're assuming some structure beyond thought that is storing the information.  How big is this information?  It seems to implicitly sneak in a whole world that is not part of consciousness and never was.

Brent

On 6/27/2020 10:36 AM, Jason Resch wrote:

Lawrence Crowell

unread,
Jun 27, 2020, 7:32:28 PM6/27/20
to Everything List
This video is set towards the end so I have not seen the whole presentation. At the end he gets into the Wigner's friend problem in QM, and there is the result of Fraschiger and Renner on this that illustrates limits on the idea of objective observership.

A brain to function needs an environment. It must be an open system  A brain or conscious entity that is a closed system is almost a contradiction. Self-awareness is all within the perspective of a relative basis with an external world.

LC

spudb...@aol.com

unread,
Jun 27, 2020, 7:44:31 PM6/27/20
to goldenfield...@gmail.com, everyth...@googlegroups.com
I stumbled across a related topic regarding Wigner's friend/Schrodinger's Cat via the observer in QM, in that a traditional cat, not a metaphor would count from physical principle's as an observer itself. This is going way down the observer chain, say, from a Boltzmann Brain of hyper intelligence to a cat. Would a computer system be an observer or a bacteria? Ummmm....? Hey, a BB is indeed a brain sim. 


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit

Lawrence Crowell

unread,
Jun 28, 2020, 8:02:44 AM6/28/20
to Everything List
On Saturday, June 27, 2020 at 6:44:31 PM UTC-5, spudb...@aol.com wrote:
I stumbled across a related topic regarding Wigner's friend/Schrodinger's Cat via the observer in QM, in that a traditional cat, not a metaphor would count from physical principle's as an observer itself. This is going way down the observer chain, say, from a Boltzmann Brain of hyper intelligence to a cat. Would a computer system be an observer or a bacteria? Ummmm....? Hey, a BB is indeed a brain sim. 


I do not think a quantum observer needs to be any conscious entity at all. All that is required for a system to act as a quantum observer is for the it to couple to a pure quantum state so the quantum phase of that pure state is completely transferred to the large N number of mixed quantum states composing this system. This serves as the collapse. Further this quantum system with frequency ν will enter this state of affairs on a time scale T << 1/ν and so the system never executes its quantum oscillations.

 

There is no need for a mentally conscious being. A biological system, whether a purring cat or a person is a finite non-zero temperature entity filled with quantum noise due to its thermal properties. As such the Schrödinger cat is not possible. There is no way a cat can be in a superposition of states, or at least not the entire thing.

 

LC
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com>
To: Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sat, Jun 27, 2020 7:32 pm
Subject: Re: Importance of including environment in brain simulation

This video is set towards the end so I have not seen the whole presentation. At the end he gets into the Wigner's friend problem in QM, and there is the result of Fraschiger and Renner on this that illustrates limits on the idea of objective observership.

A brain to function needs an environment. It must be an open system  A brain or conscious entity that is a closed system is almost a contradiction. Self-awareness is all within the perspective of a relative basis with an external world.

LC

On Saturday, June 27, 2020 at 12:36:57 PM UTC-5, Jason wrote:
Brent,

It looks like you were right about the importance of including environmental data in a brain simulation. Markus Muller uses algorithmic information theory to argue that whether or not a simulated brain is a zombie or not, depends on a large extent to the degree in which environmental information is incorporated into the simulation:

(See 51 minutes 40 seconds in)

Jason
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit

spudb...@aol.com

unread,
Jun 28, 2020, 12:00:29 PM6/28/20
to goldenfield...@gmail.com, everyth...@googlegroups.com
Ok, a photocell was what they used in the 20's during the 1st wave function tests, if I recall, so no neurons needed. 


To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit

Jason Resch

unread,
Jun 28, 2020, 2:14:40 PM6/28/20
to Everything List
On Sat, Jun 27, 2020 at 3:11 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Rather consistent with QBism in which QM predicts personal probabilities of observations.

I wonder how much credence I should give to algorithmic probability?

It does allow one to retrodict several observed and otherwise unexplained properties of the universe (why there are simple, yet probabilistic and computable laws, why the universe has a finite traceable age, why it has time)
 
  Is this the only possible measure?  How much does it depend on the choice of Turing machine? 

He mentions earlier in his talk that this is covered in section 12 but that he doesn't have time to cover it in his talk. He says the choice of Turing machine is unimportant to the overall measure but I am unsure of how the argument works so I can't explain it without trying to reread and understand that part of the paper. I think it is similar to how the choice of computer is irrelevant to the UDA or its exact programming implementation.
 
Usually such questions are answerable only in the limit n->oo; but is that legitimate in deriving physical reality?


I think physics is heading in that direction. Many of the roadblocks in various theories are hitting limits in understanding due to an apparent explosion of infinite possibilities. It happens in trying to go back before the big bang in inflation, in string theory when trying to determine the vacuum state we are in, in accounting for the fine-tuning of the universe, in trying to unify general relativity and QM, in explaining how quantum computers work.  I think all of these lend a little credence to the idea that we are observers embedded within an infinite reality containing all possible observer states.

Jason
 
Brent

On 6/27/2020 10:36 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
Brent,

It looks like you were right about the importance of including environmental data in a brain simulation. Markus Muller uses algorithmic information theory to argue that whether or not a simulated brain is a zombie or not, depends on a large extent to the degree in which environmental information is incorporated into the simulation:

(See 51 minutes 40 seconds in)

Jason
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUhmdHjJ4%3D9Mkm9dwxKSEwVEMcW_m9Ow2dVeFAz-dPCmHQ%40mail.gmail.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

Lawrence Crowell

unread,
Jun 28, 2020, 7:12:20 PM6/28/20
to Everything List
The Schrodinger cat argument is meant to illustrate a sort of reductio-absurdism. A cat is a macroscopic and thermal object that is filled with quantum noise. It is massively decoherent. This means there is no real physical way for it to be in an entangled state so half alive and dead. 

LC

On Saturday, June 27, 2020 at 6:44:31 PM UTC-5, spudb...@aol.com wrote:
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit

Bruno Marchal

unread,
Jun 30, 2020, 8:16:02 AM6/30/20
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
He does not say much there, and taken literally, this is already what the antic dream argument put in doubt.

If we take the arithmetical first person indeterminacy into account, it is not so much the environment which needs to be taken into account, but the collection of all consistent continuation, structured by the material modes of self-reference. 

If not, it means that the substitution level has chosen correctly, or that the “brain” was not well copied… (or that we use a non mechanist theory of mind).

Bruno




Jason

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUhmdHjJ4%3D9Mkm9dwxKSEwVEMcW_m9Ow2dVeFAz-dPCmHQ%40mail.gmail.com.

Bruno Marchal

unread,
Jun 30, 2020, 8:24:15 AM6/30/20
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 28 Jun 2020, at 01:32, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

This video is set towards the end so I have not seen the whole presentation. At the end he gets into the Wigner's friend problem in QM, and there is the result of Fraschiger and Renner on this that illustrates limits on the idea of objective observership.

Mechanism implies this. But an important first person plural intersubjective account of the physical reality remains in play.




A brain to function needs an environment. It must be an open system 

OK.


A brain or conscious entity that is a closed system is almost a contradiction.


That is right, but this does not a closed system to emulate something open and conscious. If not, a physical universe, which is closed by definition, would not been able to sustain any form of consciousness.




Self-awareness is all within the perspective of a relative basis with an external world.

I would say, note the plural, that self-awareness is all within the many perspectives of many relative bases all coming from an external reality (which is just elementary arithmetic, actually).

Bruno






LC

On Saturday, June 27, 2020 at 12:36:57 PM UTC-5, Jason wrote:
Brent,

It looks like you were right about the importance of including environmental data in a brain simulation. Markus Muller uses algorithmic information theory to argue that whether or not a simulated brain is a zombie or not, depends on a large extent to the degree in which environmental information is incorporated into the simulation:

(See 51 minutes 40 seconds in)

Jason

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

Bruno Marchal

unread,
Jun 30, 2020, 8:30:29 AM6/30/20
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 28 Jun 2020, at 20:14, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:



On Sat, Jun 27, 2020 at 3:11 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Rather consistent with QBism in which QM predicts personal probabilities of observations.

I wonder how much credence I should give to algorithmic probability?

It does allow one to retrodict several observed and otherwise unexplained properties of the universe (why there are simple, yet probabilistic and computable laws, why the universe has a finite traceable age, why it has time)
 
  Is this the only possible measure?  How much does it depend on the choice of Turing machine? 

He mentions earlier in his talk that this is covered in section 12 but that he doesn't have time to cover it in his talk. He says the choice of Turing machine is unimportant to the overall measure but I am unsure of how the argument works so I can't explain it without trying to reread and understand that part of the paper. I think it is similar to how the choice of computer is irrelevant to the UDA or its exact programming implementation.


Almost. The physical laws, with Mechanism, are completely independent of the choice of the basic (Turing universal) ontology. 
For algorithm information, the situation is slightly different, and it is the same only modulo some constant. That constant can always be renormalised, and play of course no role in the negative results in algorithmic information theory. 
Now, I am not sure if that notion of algorithmic information plays an important role, mainly because the first person indeterminacy is independent of the complexity of the programs involved in the consciousness of the observer.



 
Usually such questions are answerable only in the limit n->oo; but is that legitimate in deriving physical reality?


I think physics is heading in that direction. Many of the roadblocks in various theories are hitting limits in understanding due to an apparent explosion of infinite possibilities. It happens in trying to go back before the big bang in inflation, in string theory when trying to determine the vacuum state we are in, in accounting for the fine-tuning of the universe, in trying to unify general relativity and QM, in explaining how quantum computers work.  I think all of these lend a little credence to the idea that we are observers embedded within an infinite reality containing all possible observer states.

Which is a given once we postulate RA, which is postulated by all (scientific) theories.

Bruno




Jason
 
Brent

On 6/27/2020 10:36 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
Brent,

It looks like you were right about the importance of including environmental data in a brain simulation. Markus Muller uses algorithmic information theory to argue that whether or not a simulated brain is a zombie or not, depends on a large extent to the degree in which environmental information is incorporated into the simulation:

(See 51 minutes 40 seconds in)

Jason
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUhmdHjJ4%3D9Mkm9dwxKSEwVEMcW_m9Ow2dVeFAz-dPCmHQ%40mail.gmail.com.


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/6024d47b-5bd1-d469-ce65-754a838688eb%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

Bruno Marchal

unread,
Jun 30, 2020, 8:37:05 AM6/30/20
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 29 Jun 2020, at 01:12, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

The Schrodinger cat argument is meant to illustrate a sort of reductio-absurdism. A cat is a macroscopic and thermal object that is filled with quantum noise. It is massively decoherent. This means there is no real physical way for it to be in an entangled state so half alive and dead. 


I would have said that this means there is no physical way to exploit its entangled state. By linearity, the quantum superposition has not disappeared, but it cannot be measured as such due to leak/contagion of it with the (unknown and very complex) environment. 
… or you reintroduce a physical wave packet reduction, suggesting that the SWE does not apply to the couple cat+particle.
Macro-superposition are just technically irretrievable, but I don’t see how we could eliminate those relative states without abandoning or restricting the use of the SWE.

Of course, I am biased by Mechanism which imposes the macro-superposition by the execution of all computations.

Bruno



To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/7d279717-0a9f-4101-8de8-34f092b59315o%40googlegroups.com.

Brent Meeker

unread,
Jun 30, 2020, 1:54:40 PM6/30/20
to everyth...@googlegroups.com


On 6/30/2020 5:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 27 Jun 2020, at 19:36, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

Brent,

It looks like you were right about the importance of including environmental data in a brain simulation. Markus Muller uses algorithmic information theory to argue that whether or not a simulated brain is a zombie or not, depends on a large extent to the degree in which environmental information is incorporated into the simulation:

(See 51 minutes 40 seconds in)

He does not say much there, and taken literally, this is already what the antic dream argument put in doubt.

If we take the arithmetical first person indeterminacy into account, it is not so much the environment which needs to be taken into account, but the collection of all consistent continuation, structured by the material modes of self-reference.

Consistent continuation of  what?  That's the question.

Brent


If not, it means that the substitution level has chosen correctly, or that the “brain” was not well copied… (or that we use a non mechanist theory of mind).

Bruno




Jason

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUhmdHjJ4%3D9Mkm9dwxKSEwVEMcW_m9Ow2dVeFAz-dPCmHQ%40mail.gmail.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

Bruno Marchal

unread,
Jul 1, 2020, 9:02:35 AM7/1/20
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 30 Jun 2020, at 19:54, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



On 6/30/2020 5:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 27 Jun 2020, at 19:36, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

Brent,

It looks like you were right about the importance of including environmental data in a brain simulation. Markus Muller uses algorithmic information theory to argue that whether or not a simulated brain is a zombie or not, depends on a large extent to the degree in which environmental information is incorporated into the simulation:

(See 51 minutes 40 seconds in)

He does not say much there, and taken literally, this is already what the antic dream argument put in doubt.

If we take the arithmetical first person indeterminacy into account, it is not so much the environment which needs to be taken into account, but the collection of all consistent continuation, structured by the material modes of self-reference.

Consistent continuation of  what?  That's the question.

Consistent continuation of you (the first person knower). It is what is axiomatised completely (at the propositional level) by:
[]p & <>t & p (p is provable, consistent and true).

Intutively, that entails many aberrant experience/dream, but the constraints of self-reference leads to a sort of Everett-Griffith-Omnès-Hartle-Gell’man sort of quantum logic: a statistically interfering bunch of histories “making relative sense”.

Bruno




Brent


If not, it means that the substitution level has chosen correctly, or that the “brain” was not well copied… (or that we use a non mechanist theory of mind).

Bruno




Jason

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUhmdHjJ4%3D9Mkm9dwxKSEwVEMcW_m9Ow2dVeFAz-dPCmHQ%40mail.gmail.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/195B5D3A-9503-481A-9562-B7886D82AFDC%40ulb.ac.be.


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

Brent Meeker

unread,
Jul 1, 2020, 4:30:47 PM7/1/20
to everyth...@googlegroups.com


On 7/1/2020 6:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 30 Jun 2020, at 19:54, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



On 6/30/2020 5:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 27 Jun 2020, at 19:36, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

Brent,

It looks like you were right about the importance of including environmental data in a brain simulation. Markus Muller uses algorithmic information theory to argue that whether or not a simulated brain is a zombie or not, depends on a large extent to the degree in which environmental information is incorporated into the simulation:

(See 51 minutes 40 seconds in)

He does not say much there, and taken literally, this is already what the antic dream argument put in doubt.

If we take the arithmetical first person indeterminacy into account, it is not so much the environment which needs to be taken into account, but the collection of all consistent continuation, structured by the material modes of self-reference.

Consistent continuation of  what?  That's the question.

Consistent continuation of you (the first person knower). It is what is axiomatised completely (at the propositional level) by:
[]p & <>t & p (p is provable, consistent and true).

How can pick out a person and define the unity of experience of that person?

Brent


Intutively, that entails many aberrant experience/dream, but the constraints of self-reference leads to a sort of Everett-Griffith-Omnès-Hartle-Gell’man sort of quantum logic: a statistically interfering bunch of histories “making relative sense”.

Bruno




Brent


If not, it means that the substitution level has chosen correctly, or that the “brain” was not well copied… (or that we use a non mechanist theory of mind).

Bruno




Jason

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUhmdHjJ4%3D9Mkm9dwxKSEwVEMcW_m9Ow2dVeFAz-dPCmHQ%40mail.gmail.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/195B5D3A-9503-481A-9562-B7886D82AFDC%40ulb.ac.be.


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/998bd878-7681-5a61-042c-91b17363d27d%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

Bruno Marchal

unread,
Jul 2, 2020, 5:56:17 AM7/2/20
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 1 Jul 2020, at 22:30, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



On 7/1/2020 6:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 30 Jun 2020, at 19:54, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



On 6/30/2020 5:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 27 Jun 2020, at 19:36, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

Brent,

It looks like you were right about the importance of including environmental data in a brain simulation. Markus Muller uses algorithmic information theory to argue that whether or not a simulated brain is a zombie or not, depends on a large extent to the degree in which environmental information is incorporated into the simulation:

(See 51 minutes 40 seconds in)

He does not say much there, and taken literally, this is already what the antic dream argument put in doubt.

If we take the arithmetical first person indeterminacy into account, it is not so much the environment which needs to be taken into account, but the collection of all consistent continuation, structured by the material modes of self-reference.

Consistent continuation of  what?  That's the question.

Consistent continuation of you (the first person knower). It is what is axiomatised completely (at the propositional level) by:
[]p & <>t & p (p is provable, consistent and true).

How can pick out a person and define the unity of experience of that person?


It is like in the Helsinki—>(Washington/Moscow) experience. It illustrates that nobody can do that, except the first person subject itself, who does it by memorising some past history. 

Bruno



Bruno Marchal

unread,
Jul 6, 2020, 9:55:02 AM7/6/20
to everyth...@googlegroups.com

On 2 Jul 2020, at 18:11, Brent Meeker <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:



On 7/2/2020 2:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 1 Jul 2020, at 22:30, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



On 7/1/2020 6:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 30 Jun 2020, at 19:54, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



On 6/30/2020 5:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 27 Jun 2020, at 19:36, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

Brent,

It looks like you were right about the importance of including environmental data in a brain simulation. Markus Muller uses algorithmic information theory to argue that whether or not a simulated brain is a zombie or not, depends on a large extent to the degree in which environmental information is incorporated into the simulation:

(See 51 minutes 40 seconds in)

He does not say much there, and taken literally, this is already what the antic dream argument put in doubt.

If we take the arithmetical first person indeterminacy into account, it is not so much the environment which needs to be taken into account, but the collection of all consistent continuation, structured by the material modes of self-reference.

Consistent continuation of  what?  That's the question.

Consistent continuation of you (the first person knower). It is what is axiomatised completely (at the propositional level) by:
[]p & <>t & p (p is provable, consistent and true).

How can pick out a person and define the unity of experience of that person?


It is like in the Helsinki—>(Washington/Moscow) experience. It illustrates that nobody can do that, except the first person subject itself, who does it by memorising some past history.

What does it mean in this computational model to memorize some history.  In the physics model of computation, memory means storing information in a temporarily static form.  I don't see a place for this in the "closest continuation of observer moments”.


I don’t see how you don’t see it. To be sure I don’t use “observer moment”, but thanks to mechanism I use the notion of first person state, and local description of computation.

Consider the Helsinki -> (Washington/Moscow) experience. Locally, you have a computation which correspond more or less to the life of the guy up to just before its experience in Helsinki. Up to that moment, he has store information, but also plausibly erase some of them, during all its life. Then he "pushes on the button" in Helsinki, and we get the two copies, one in Washington, and the other in Moscow. Once they have open the door of their respective reconstitution apparatus (3D printer working at the relevant level), one will see Washington, and he/she will store the information, in his/her brain and/or in the personal notebook.

The physical world is obviously Turing universal, and so can emulate all sort of Turing machine, some reversible and some non reversible, but it is easy to show how a reversible Turing machine can emulate a non reversible one.The sigma_1 arithmetic, aka the universal dovetailing, emulates all computations, which means all those which are reversible and all those which are non reversible. The presence of “p -> []<>p” in the material mode of self-reference in arithmetic makes the physical looking completely reversible at its core. For the first person singular modes (with “& p”), we need to take into account that a machine cannot distinguish, from its observation, a machine from a machine with some oracle, and we need the first person limit on the dovetailing, which makes the measure operating on the first person given by the relativisation of the sigma_1 on *all* oracle. I thought wrongly that to get the measure would need both choice and determinacy (in ZF), which has been shown inconsistent, but eventually this works with the axiom of choice and a restricted form of the axiom of determinacy, known as projective determinacy. The works which remains to be done can be done formally in/by ZFC+PD (Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory + the axiom of Projective Determinacy (which would be long to explain here).

To be franc, I am not sure there is a physics model of computation. What happens is that there are many subpart of the physical laws which are Turing universal. Similarly, many subparts of elementary arithmetic are Turing universal, and that’s typically the case for all universal machinery.

The point I make is just that if we assume enough of Mechanism to make sense of Darwin, the mind-body problem consists in deriving the appearance of the physical laws, and their stability, by a measure on the sigma_1 sentences (with oracles) determined by the material modes of self-references (abstractly defined by the presence of []p -> p, plus p -> []<>p). This can be motivated either by thought experience of by using Plato, and the lexicon I gave in the “arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus”.

So I have progressed (!). I know now that there is a measure, even a Lebesgue measure or integral. From this, we are closer to derive the group theoretical structure of physics, and some hope to get the “particles”. It is time to revise topology and measure theory (and the so called Descriptive Set theory). 

Bruno








Brent

Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages