Why do particles decay randomly?

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Craig Weinberg

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Apr 9, 2013, 8:57:11 AM4/9/13
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If any particle were truly identical to another, then they could not decay at different rates. While we see this as "random" (aka spontaneous to our eyes), there is nothing to say that the duration of the life of the particle is not influenced by intentional dispositions. Particles may represent different intensities of 'will to continue' or expectation of persistence. In this sense, organic molecules could represent a Goldilocks range of time-entangled panpsychism which is particularly flexible and dynamic. Think of the lifetime of a molecular ensemble as the length of a word in a sentence as it relates to the possibilities of meaning. Too long and it becomes unwieldy, too brief and it becomes generic.

Russell Standish

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Apr 9, 2013, 7:54:27 PM4/9/13
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It is hard to answer this question precisely, because the large,
radioactive nuclei are very complex structures, for which exact solutions of
Schroedinger's equation cannot be obtained. Rather these things are
usually studied via Hartree-Fock approximations.

However, in loose visual terms, you can think of a neutron as being in
a superposition of states, some of which are an electron-proton pair
separated by a substantial distance. If the electron finds itself too
far from its partner proton, the weak force is too weak, and the
electric force is shielded by the orbital electrons, so the electron
escapes, becoming the beta ray. This explanation has left out an
obvious factor - an anti-neutrino must also be created as part of the
process. This is often explained as being required to preserve lepton
number - but conservation of lepton number is a somewhat ad hoc law - I
don't know the real physical reason why lepton number is conserved.

Anyway, the point of randomness is that this is a quintessential
quantum process, very closely related to the phenomenon of quantum
tunneling. Unless there exists a hidden variable-type theory
underlying QM (which basically appears to be ruled out by
Bell+Aspect), the process must be completely random.

Cheers
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Craig Weinberg

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Apr 9, 2013, 11:18:49 PM4/9/13
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On Tuesday, April 9, 2013 7:54:27 PM UTC-4, Russell Standish wrote:
It is hard to answer this question precisely, because the large,
radioactive nuclei are very complex structures, for which exact solutions of
Schroedinger's equation cannot be obtained. Rather these things are
usually studied via Hartree-Fock approximations.

However, in loose visual terms, you can think of a neutron as being in
a superposition of states, some of which are an electron-proton pair
separated by a substantial distance. If the electron finds itself too
far from its partner proton, the weak force is too weak, and the
electric force is shielded by the orbital electrons, so the electron
escapes, becoming the beta ray. This explanation has left out an
obvious factor - an anti-neutrino must also be created as part of the
process. This is often explained as being required to preserve lepton
number - but conservation of lepton number is a somewhat ad hoc law - I
don't know the real physical reason why lepton number is conserved.

Anyway, the point of randomness is that this is a quintessential
quantum process, very closely related to the phenomenon of quantum
tunneling. Unless there exists a hidden variable-type theory
underlying QM (which basically appears to be ruled out by
Bell+Aspect), the process must be completely random.

I wonder if we looked at the behavior of cars driving on the highway, would we conclude that the variation in how long they travel before exiting the highway must be completely random? Maybe the hidden variable is that matter knows what it is doing?

Craig
 

Colin Geoffrey Hales

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Apr 10, 2013, 12:04:14 AM4/10/13
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Colin’s Wackier Version:

 

Because the space they operate in, at the scale in which the decay operates, there are far more dimensions than 3. They decay deterministically in >>3D and it appears, to us, to be random because of the collapse of the spatial dimensions to 3, where we humble observers gain access to it. Same reason atoms jiggle in space. Same reason an electron is fuzzy. Smoothness in >>3D looks fuzzy to us.

 

Quantum mechanics is a statistical description that is predictive in 3D. It explains nothing.

 

I offer explanation, not description.

 

J

Russell Standish

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Apr 10, 2013, 12:39:02 AM4/10/13
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Actually, this idea is not as wacky as you're suggesting. Laurent Nottale
suggested something like this with his Fractal Spacetime theory,
essentially explaining standard QM geometrically as a projection from a higher
dimension Hausdorf space (fractal dimension).

His ideas haven't gained traction, alas - not because they've been
proven wrong, as I understand - he just seems to have been ignored by
the mainstream.

Cheers

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 04:04:14AM +0000, Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
> Colin's Wackier Version:
>
> Because the space they operate in, at the scale in which the decay operates, there are far more dimensions than 3. They decay deterministically in >>3D and it appears, to us, to be random because of the collapse of the spatial dimensions to 3, where we humble observers gain access to it. Same reason atoms jiggle in space. Same reason an electron is fuzzy. Smoothness in >>3D looks fuzzy to us.
>
> Quantum mechanics is a statistical description that is predictive in 3D. It explains nothing.
>
> I offer explanation, not description.
>
> :)
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Craig Weinberg

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Apr 10, 2013, 8:59:29 AM4/10/13
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On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 12:04:14 AM UTC-4, ColinHales wrote:

Colin’s Wackier Version:

 

Because the space they operate in, at the scale in which the decay operates, there are far more dimensions than 3.
They decay deterministically in >>3D and it appears, to us, to be random because of the collapse of the spatial dimensions to 3, where we

 As long as the "collapse" has a spatial result, I see no reason why the other dimensions would have a spatial aesthetic. Our own creativity and choice manifests in public space as a private sensory-motor participation. This ordinary awareness is, I suggest, is the origin of all implicate orders, zero point fields, compactified dimensions, and probably dark matter/dark energy as well. Rather than a collapse from intangible quantitative dimensions, the microcosm carries the same orthogonal-symmetric aesthetic oscillation as we do - from proprietary significance to generic entropy. It is not a collapse from abstract dimensions of *more* axes, but a de-saturation to a reduced sensory protocol, where only the impersonal, unintentional qualities are preserved; i.e. dispositions must be indirectly inferred from positional relations over time. With private intention, dispositions are generated directly and influence positional relations over time.

humble observers gain access to it. Same reason atoms jiggle in space. Same reason an electron is fuzzy. Smoothness in >>3D looks fuzzy to us.


If you had to represent your will as a set of isolated positions, it would look fuzzy too.

Thanks,
Craig

John Clark

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Apr 11, 2013, 1:43:20 PM4/11/13
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It's a bit odd to ask why a random event happened; if you could explain why then there would be a reason for it to happen, and then it wouldn't be random.

  John K Clark

Craig Weinberg

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Apr 11, 2013, 2:01:10 PM4/11/13
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On Thursday, April 11, 2013 1:43:20 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
It's a bit odd to ask why a random event happened; if you could explain why then there would be a reason for it to happen, and then it wouldn't be random.

I'm not asking why the ball landed on 26 black, I'm asking why is there a roulette wheel that balls land on rather than on a pre-determined square. If matter is deterministic, how could it behave in a random way?

Craig

 

  John K Clark

John Clark

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Apr 11, 2013, 3:29:51 PM4/11/13
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On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

> If matter is deterministic, how could it behave in a random way?

It couldn't.

 John K Clark

Craig Weinberg

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Apr 11, 2013, 3:35:00 PM4/11/13
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Are you saying then that matter is random, or that it is neither random nor deterministic?

Craig
 

 John K Clark

Stathis Papaioannou

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Apr 11, 2013, 9:30:05 PM4/11/13
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Matter behaves randomly, but probability theory allows us to make
predictions about random events.


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Stathis Papaioannou

Telmo Menezes

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Apr 12, 2013, 10:15:27 AM4/12/13
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In my view, randomness = magic.
The MWI and Comp are the only theories I've seen so far that do not
require magic to explain observed randomness.

>
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou

Richard Ruquist

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Apr 12, 2013, 10:24:31 AM4/12/13
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Mathematics itself seems rather magical.
For instance the sum 1+2+3+4+5.....infinity = -1/12

And according to Scott Aaronson's new book
when string theorists estimate the mass of a photon
they get two components: one being 1/12
and the other being that sum, so the mass is zero,
thanks to Ramanujan

If that sum is cutoff at some very large number but less than infinity,
does anyone know the value of the summation.?

Craig Weinberg

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Apr 12, 2013, 10:34:50 AM4/12/13
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Ohh, so it's the special randomness which can be predicted by deterministic theories. Random until it isn't. Sounds intriguing.

Think of intention as a probability theory which operates actively rather than passively. It allows us to make our predictions about random events come true frequently. The theory has a particular feature we call "effort" which modulates the degree to which we expect our predictions to come true.

Craig

 


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Stathis Papaioannou

Telmo Menezes

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Apr 12, 2013, 10:35:45 AM4/12/13
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On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 4:24 PM, Richard Ruquist <yan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Mathematics itself seems rather magical.
> For instance the sum 1+2+3+4+5.....infinity = -1/12
>
> And according to Scott Aaronson's new book
> when string theorists estimate the mass of a photon
> they get two components: one being 1/12
> and the other being that sum, so the mass is zero,
> thanks to Ramanujan
>
> If that sum is cutoff at some very large number but less than infinity,
> does anyone know the value of the summation.?

Hi Richard,

Ok, but in that case physics is deterministic, just hard to compute.
How do we then deal with the fact that two photons under the precise
same conditions can follow two different paths (except for some hidden
variable we don't know about)? I'm not a physicist and way over my
head here, so this is not a rhetorical question.

Craig Weinberg

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Apr 12, 2013, 10:37:54 AM4/12/13
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On Friday, April 12, 2013 10:15:27 AM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote:
On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 3:30 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 5:35 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, April 11, 2013 3:29:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> > If matter is deterministic, how could it behave in a random way?
>>>
>>>
>>> It couldn't.
>>
>>
>> Are you saying then that matter is random, or that it is neither random nor
>> deterministic?
>
> Matter behaves randomly, but probability theory allows us to make
> predictions about random events.

In my view, randomness = magic.

I agree. Randomness is indistinguishable from incomplete interpretation.

Craig
 

Richard Ruquist

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Apr 12, 2013, 11:07:27 AM4/12/13
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Telmo,

I can only give you my opinion. You are of course referring to the double slit experiment where one photon can follow at least two different paths, and potentially an infinite number of paths. 

But even diffraction of a single photon will do that: in the simplest case send a photon on to a semi-infinite metallic plane and the photon potentially scatters into an infinite number of paths from the edge of the plane. We only know which path when the photon reaches a detector plane on the far side. The actual deterministic diffraction pattern only emerges when the number of photons sent approaches infinity in plane waves. The actual path of a single photon is random within the constraints of the infinite-photon diffraction pattern.

So I say the way to deal with that is to propagate a large number of photons or do an EM wave calculation for the diffraction pattern. 

I wonder how comp treats such single photon instances. Does it use algorithms that are random number generators?
Richard

Telmo Menezes

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Apr 12, 2013, 11:39:44 AM4/12/13
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On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 5:07 PM, Richard Ruquist <yan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Telmo,
>
> I can only give you my opinion.

Thanks Richard.

> You are of course referring to the double
> slit experiment where one photon can follow at least two different paths,
> and potentially an infinite number of paths.
>
> But even diffraction of a single photon will do that: in the simplest case
> send a photon on to a semi-infinite metallic plane and the photon
> potentially scatters into an infinite number of paths from the edge of the
> plane. We only know which path when the photon reaches a detector plane on
> the far side. The actual deterministic diffraction pattern only emerges when
> the number of photons sent approaches infinity in plane waves. The actual
> path of a single photon is random within the constraints of the
> infinite-photon diffraction pattern.
>
> So I say the way to deal with that is to propagate a large number of photons
> or do an EM wave calculation for the diffraction pattern.

But then we're still left without a theory that could explain the
behaviour of a single photon without resorting to randomness, correct?

> I wonder how comp treats such single photon instances. Does it use
> algorithms that are random number generators?

I'll leave this one for Bruno, of course. My understanding is that
it's consistent with the MWI and also with what Russel proposes in his
book: everything happens but each observer only perceives one of the
outcomes.

This seems highly unintuitive to a lot of people, but it seems more
reasonable to me than the idea that there is just one Telmo with one
personal diary. If there are infinitely many, each one with his own
personal diary, the world still looks exactly like it does to this
particular instance of me, and we do not have to resort to any
randomness magic.

It's tempting for me to extend this idea to everyone and not just
Telmos, at the risk of sounding a bit new-agey.

I don't yet understand how an algorithm could be a random number
generator (non-pseudo), but I think Bruno has more to say here.

Telmo.

Richard Ruquist

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Apr 12, 2013, 12:58:02 PM4/12/13
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"But then we're still left without a theory that could explain the
behaviour of a single photon without resorting to randomness, correct?"

No. There is no theory that can tell us where a single photon will go within the  infinite-photon-number diffraction pattern. Take my word for that.

In the half-plane diffraction thought experiment that I described, there are an infinite number of paths that the photon could take. So with this one photon, do we get an infinite number of parallel worlds. That is doubtful. 

But then someone who believes in MWI should explain how that is possible. It may be that the number of parallel worlds depends on the number of detectors or pixels in a photo-sensitive plane. At least that would be finite but still rather large splitting for one photon interaction.

In MWI your body is a blur of overlapping copies that are fungible as they say.
I am not sure what you must do to get completely separate bodies in separate  parallel worlds. Perhaps when making a decision as to whether you go left or right in a fork in the road would do.

BTW my gmail service prevents me from interleaving, at least in this parallel world. Occasionally my computer is off in another world and I cannot get online.
Richard

John Clark

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Apr 12, 2013, 3:20:46 PM4/12/13
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On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 10:15 AM, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote:

> In my view, randomness = magic.

Obviously every cause has a event or it wouldn't be a cause, but I know of no law of logic that demands every event have a cause; therefore magic may be illogical but randomness is not.

   John K Clark

 

Craig Weinberg

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Apr 12, 2013, 3:33:09 PM4/12/13
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What then is the difference between an event that has no cause (which you know of no law of logic denies) and magic (which is obviously illogical, right?)

Craig
 

   John K Clark

 

Stephen Paul King

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Apr 12, 2013, 12:57:30 PM4/12/13
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Telmo Menezes wrote:
"...My understanding is that

it's consistent with the MWI and also with what Russel proposes in his
book: everything happens but each observer only perceives one of the
outcomes.

This seems highly unintuitive to a lot of people, but it seems more
reasonable to me than the idea that there is just one Telmo with one
personal diary. If there are infinitely many, each one with his own
personal diary, the world still looks exactly like it does to this
particular instance of me, and we do not have to resort to any
randomness magic."

What people do not seem to understand is that 1st person perspectives, for instance, what any one version of Telmo perceives' is constrained to be consistent with Telmo's existence as a perciever. Observing many points of view simultaneously from a single location is very much like a list of propositions that are not mutually consistent. This is a failure of satisfiability in a Boolean algebra.
The property of satisfiability does not just occur by magic... 


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Stephen Paul King

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Apr 12, 2013, 6:54:38 PM4/12/13
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Hi John,

It seems to me that the very idea of singular causes and singular effects is deeply flawed. Can you point to a few examples of singular causes? All examples that I can think of have a line of regress behind them...


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Telmo Menezes

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Apr 12, 2013, 9:57:53 PM4/12/13
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On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 6:57 PM, Stephen Paul King
<kingste...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Telmo Menezes wrote:
> "...My understanding is that
>
> it's consistent with the MWI and also with what Russel proposes in his
> book: everything happens but each observer only perceives one of the
> outcomes.
>
> This seems highly unintuitive to a lot of people, but it seems more
> reasonable to me than the idea that there is just one Telmo with one
> personal diary. If there are infinitely many, each one with his own
> personal diary, the world still looks exactly like it does to this
> particular instance of me, and we do not have to resort to any
> randomness magic."
>
> What people do not seem to understand is that 1st person perspectives, for
> instance, what any one version of Telmo perceives' is constrained to be
> consistent with Telmo's existence as a perciever. Observing many points of
> view simultaneously from a single location is very much like a list of
> propositions that are not mutually consistent. This is a failure of
> satisfiability in a Boolean algebra.
> The property of satisfiability does not just occur by magic...

Yes, I think about that too. It leads me to the idea that logic is
more fundamental than physical laws. I would propose that each subset
of consistent perceptions is precisely what a 1p is. That's why I am
not aware of my alters, and maybe why I am not aware that I am you.
I'm counting memories as perceptions for simplification -- one could
imagine the brain as a bag of states that can be perceived, which is
perhaps a bizarre way of defining memory / personal diaries.

Telmo.

Colin Geoffrey Hales

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Apr 12, 2013, 10:06:27 PM4/12/13
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-----Original Message-----
From: everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou
Sent: Friday, 12 April 2013 11:30 AM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Why do particles decay randomly?

------------------------------------------

Yeah, what Stathis said. I can add that in cellular automata totally deterministic rules give rise to randomness. Maybe Read Wolfram's stuff?

And ....

'Matter', the word, the concept, is grounded in (presupposes) a scientific observer that dreamt up the regularity called 'quantum mechanics'. QM supplies nothing about the real nature (the actual building blocks) of reality. It merely supplies how it appears, to us, inside the system being described, observing it from within, built of the same stuff. E.g. I can claim there's no such thing as 'atoms' and be 100% right, because that concept is actually "the natural world behaves atom-ly when we look at it, in circumstances where its atom-like behaviour results". With QM get to be predictive. We get no explanation of why it is that way. Same in everything else, BTW. Not just QM.

Anyway you all heard this stuff from me before....

Cheers
Colin




Telmo Menezes

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Apr 12, 2013, 10:19:18 PM4/12/13
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On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 4:06 AM, Colin Geoffrey Hales
<cgh...@unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou
> Sent: Friday, 12 April 2013 11:30 AM
> To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: Why do particles decay randomly?
>
> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 5:35 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, April 11, 2013 3:29:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> > If matter is deterministic, how could it behave in a random way?
>>>
>>>
>>> It couldn't.
>>
>>
>> Are you saying then that matter is random, or that it is neither
>> random nor deterministic?
>
> Matter behaves randomly, but probability theory allows us to make predictions about random events.
>
>
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
>
> ------------------------------------------
>
> Yeah, what Stathis said. I can add that in cellular automata totally deterministic rules give rise to randomness. Maybe Read Wolfram's stuff?

No deterministic CA can give rise to randomness, only complexity. Rule
110, for example, can be used as a pseudo-random number generator, but
this is not randomness in the "which slit is the photon going to go
through" sense, because it is always possible to predict a future
state based on the current state given enough computational power.
With true randomness, there is no such possible computation.

>
> And ....
>
> 'Matter', the word, the concept, is grounded in (presupposes) a scientific observer that dreamt up the regularity called 'quantum mechanics'. QM supplies nothing about the real nature (the actual building blocks) of reality. It merely supplies how it appears, to us, inside the system being described, observing it from within, built of the same stuff. E.g. I can claim there's no such thing as 'atoms' and be 100% right, because that concept is actually "the natural world behaves atom-ly when we look at it, in circumstances where its atom-like behaviour results". With QM get to be predictive. We get no explanation of why it is that way. Same in everything else, BTW. Not just QM.
>
> Anyway you all heard this stuff from me before....
>
> Cheers
> Colin
>
>
>
>

Stephen Paul King

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Apr 12, 2013, 11:25:47 PM4/12/13
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I would not say "more fundamental"... I would say, equally. We can not derive one completely from the other.

meekerdb

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Apr 13, 2013, 12:15:54 AM4/13/13
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On 4/12/2013 6:57 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 6:57 PM, Stephen Paul King
> <kingste...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >Telmo Menezes wrote:
>> >"...My understanding is that
>> >
>> >it's consistent with the MWI and also with what Russel proposes in his
>> >book: everything happens but each observer only perceives one of the
>> >outcomes.
>> >
>> >This seems highly unintuitive to a lot of people, but it seems more
>> >reasonable to me than the idea that there is just one Telmo with one
>> >personal diary. If there are infinitely many, each one with his own
>> >personal diary, the world still looks exactly like it does to this
>> >particular instance of me, and we do not have to resort to any
>> >randomness magic."
>> >
>> >What people do not seem to understand is that 1st person perspectives, for
>> >instance, what any one version of Telmo perceives' is constrained to be
>> >consistent with Telmo's existence as a perciever. Observing many points of
>> >view simultaneously from a single location is very much like a list of
>> >propositions that are not mutually consistent. This is a failure of
>> >satisfiability in a Boolean algebra.
>> >The property of satisfiability does not just occur by magic...
> Yes, I think about that too. It leads me to the idea that logic is
> more fundamental than physical laws. I would propose that each subset
> of consistent perceptions is precisely what a 1p is.

But be careful, I think it matters what domain logic is applied to. When quantum mechanics
was first proposed people said a particle can't be in two different states at the same
time - that just violates logic.

Brent

meekerdb

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Apr 13, 2013, 12:18:14 AM4/13/13
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That's true but in a trivial way. Whatever theory is taken to be fundamental doesn't have
an explanation. If it did it wouldn't be fundamental.

Brent

Stephen Paul King

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Apr 13, 2013, 1:14:16 AM4/13/13
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I agree Brent, but that assumes that "logic" is limited to distributive lattice structures. We know better!


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Stathis Papaioannou

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Apr 13, 2013, 1:57:20 AM4/13/13
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On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 12:34 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Matter behaves randomly, but probability theory allows us to make
>> predictions about random events.
>
>
> Ohh, so it's the special randomness which can be predicted by deterministic
> theories. Random until it isn't. Sounds intriguing.

As you will know, it is possible to predict some random events with
great certainty, while it is impossible to predict some deterministic
events. Predictability does not correlate with either randomness or
deterministic.

> Think of intention as a probability theory which operates actively rather
> than passively. It allows us to make our predictions about random events
> come true frequently. The theory has a particular feature we call "effort"
> which modulates the degree to which we expect our predictions to come true.

That's what intention is: we wish to do things, these things either
happen or they don't, and they are either determined or random.


--
Stathis Papaioannou

Bruno Marchal

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Apr 13, 2013, 6:50:25 AM4/13/13
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Comp explains completely how and why random events happens from the
perspective of persons, and this does not make those events any bit
less random than they are.

QM without collapse does the same.

Bruno



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Bruno Marchal

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Apr 13, 2013, 7:10:39 AM4/13/13
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But with QM without collapse, matter does not behave randomly. The SWE
is deterministic.
We are multiplied, and the randomness comes from the first person
perspective.
Comp extends this. The SWE itself emerges from the first person
perspective of the person supervening on the arithmetical relation
defining computations.

Bruno




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Bruno Marchal

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Apr 13, 2013, 7:33:45 AM4/13/13
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On 12 Apr 2013, at 16:24, Richard Ruquist wrote:

Mathematics itself seems rather magical.
For instance the sum 1+2+3+4+5.....infinity = -1/12

Well,  with some convergence criteria!



And according to Scott Aaronson's new book
when string theorists estimate the mass of a photon
they get two components: one being 1/12
and the other being that sum, so the mass is zero,
thanks to Ramanujan

If that sum is cutoff at some very large number but less than infinity,
does anyone know the value of the summation.?

A very large number.

Bruno

Bruno Marchal

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Apr 13, 2013, 7:40:05 AM4/13/13
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On 12 Apr 2013, at 17:07, Richard Ruquist wrote:

Telmo,

I can only give you my opinion. You are of course referring to the double slit experiment where one photon can follow at least two different paths, and potentially an infinite number of paths. 

But even diffraction of a single photon will do that: in the simplest case send a photon on to a semi-infinite metallic plane and the photon potentially scatters into an infinite number of paths from the edge of the plane. We only know which path when the photon reaches a detector plane on the far side. The actual deterministic diffraction pattern only emerges when the number of photons sent approaches infinity in plane waves. The actual path of a single photon is random within the constraints of the infinite-photon diffraction pattern.

So I say the way to deal with that is to propagate a large number of photons or do an EM wave calculation for the diffraction pattern. 

I wonder how comp treats such single photon instances. Does it use algorithms that are random number generators?

No, it uses the first person indeterminacy in self-multiplication, which explains where the quantum wave comes from. I have explained this on this list and published it a long time ago. That is why I told you that if you take comp into consideration, you must derive QM and perhaps string theory (if it is correct) from addition and multiplication of the natural numbers. I see you have not yet studied or grasped the UDA :)

Bruno

Richard Ruquist

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Apr 13, 2013, 9:17:16 AM4/13/13
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But Bruno, 
because of the measure problem, MWI must also be probabilistic,
otherwise it does not agree with experiment.
Richard


On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 7:10 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 12 Apr 2013, at 03:30, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 5:35 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:


On Thursday, April 11, 2013 3:29:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:

On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

If matter is deterministic, how could it behave in a random way?


It couldn't.


Are you saying then that matter is random, or that it is neither random nor
deterministic?

Matter behaves randomly, but probability theory allows us to make
predictions about random events.


But with QM without collapse, matter does not behave randomly. The SWE is deterministic.
We are multiplied, and the randomness comes from the first person perspective.
Comp extends this. The SWE itself emerges from the first person perspective of the person supervening on the arithmetical relation defining computations.

Bruno






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Richard Ruquist

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Apr 13, 2013, 9:18:43 AM4/13/13
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Is 10^122 or 10^1000 large enough?
Richard

Richard Ruquist

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Apr 13, 2013, 9:21:59 AM4/13/13
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I have tried to study the UDA but lack sufficient understanding to see how the UDA could compute an infinite number of paths or universes as in the diffraction example I discussed.

Richard Ruquist

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Apr 13, 2013, 9:23:06 AM4/13/13
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Bruno, Please excuse my bottom posting but my gmail acct prevents me from interleaving my responses.

John Clark

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Apr 13, 2013, 11:56:52 AM4/13/13
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On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 6:54 PM, Stephen Paul King <kingste...@gmail.com> wrote:

> It seems to me that the very idea of singular causes and singular effects is deeply flawed.

Deeply flawed or not that reductionist philosophy has taught us everything we know about science. If we believe in a holistic approach and assumed that we can't know anything until we know everything then we'd be stuck in a rut forever.

> Can you point to a few examples of singular causes?

I can do better than that, I can give a example of a effect with no cause at all, the creation of virtual particles.

> All examples that I can think of have a line of regress behind them...

So that means there is either a infinite regress of causes and effects like the layers of a infinite onion with no fundamental layer, or there is a effect without a cause. Neither of those possibilities is emotionally satisfying to some people but one of them must be true. 

  John K Clark

 



 

Craig Weinberg

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Apr 13, 2013, 4:19:47 PM4/13/13
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On Friday, April 12, 2013 9:57:53 PM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote:
On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 6:57 PM, Stephen Paul King
<kingste...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Telmo Menezes wrote:
> "...My understanding is that
>
> it's consistent with the MWI and also with what Russel proposes in his
> book: everything happens but each observer only perceives one of the
> outcomes.
>
> This seems highly unintuitive to a lot of people, but it seems more
> reasonable to me than the idea that there is just one Telmo with one
> personal diary. If there are infinitely many, each one with his own
> personal diary, the world still looks exactly like it does to this
> particular instance of me, and we do not have to resort to any
> randomness magic."
>
> What people do not seem to understand is that 1st person perspectives, for
> instance, what any one version of Telmo perceives' is constrained to be
> consistent with Telmo's existence as a perciever. Observing many points of
> view simultaneously from a single location is very much like a list of
> propositions that are not mutually consistent. This is a failure of
> satisfiability in a Boolean algebra.
> The property of satisfiability does not just occur by magic...

Yes, I think about that too. It leads me to the idea that logic is
more fundamental than physical laws.

I think that physical laws must supervene on sense. It is possible to have experiences which have no logic and follow no physical law, but have aesthetic sense. Logic requires an organization of pattern, that it a particular kind of meta-pattern, but pattern in itself can only be sensed, not designed functionally.
 
I would propose that each subset
of consistent perceptions is precisely what a 1p is. That's why I am
not aware of my alters, and maybe why I am not aware that I am you.
I'm counting memories as perceptions for simplification -- one could
imagine the brain as a bag of states that can be perceived, which is
perhaps a bizarre way of defining memory / personal diaries.

Any state can be perceived with the proper perceiver, no state can be perceived without one.

Craig
 

Telmo Menezes

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Apr 13, 2013, 5:40:10 PM4/13/13
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On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 5:56 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 6:54 PM, Stephen Paul King
> <kingste...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > It seems to me that the very idea of singular causes and singular
>> > effects is deeply flawed.
>
>
> Deeply flawed or not that reductionist philosophy has taught us everything
> we know about science.

The theory of evolution as proposed by Darwin is non-reductionist. It
relies on the concept of "natural selection", which is an holistic
concept.

Reductionism is more effective because of a selection bias. Problems
that can be solved by reductionism are easier. Finding a cure for
cancer or understanding exactly how the brain works resist the
reductionist approach to this day.

> If we believe in a holistic approach and assumed that
> we can't know anything until we know everything then we'd be stuck in a rut
> forever.

You're creating a false dichotomy. It doesn't have to be single cause
or know everything. There are many possibilities in between.

>> > Can you point to a few examples of singular causes?
>
>
> I can do better than that, I can give a example of a effect with no cause at
> all, the creation of virtual particles.

One could argue that they are the result of some condition created by
the Big Bang. Causality is just a human concept anyway.

>> > All examples that I can think of have a line of regress behind them...
>
>
> So that means there is either a infinite regress of causes and effects like
> the layers of a infinite onion with no fundamental layer, or there is a
> effect without a cause. Neither of those possibilities is emotionally
> satisfying to some people but one of them must be true.

Unless we question causality itself. Which we should. This is why
Science is not the only way to pursue knowledge and Philosophy is
necessary.

Telmo.

> John K Clark
>
>
>
>
>
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meekerdb

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Apr 13, 2013, 6:52:08 PM4/13/13
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On 4/13/2013 2:40 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Unless we question causality itself. Which we should. This is why
Science is not the only way to pursue knowledge and Philosophy is
necessary.

Causality isn't even an important concept in fundamental physics.  All the equations are time reversal (or CPT) invariant.  But philosophers resisted this view.

What knowledge do you think has come from philosophy?

Brent
"The philosophy of science is just about as useful to scientists
as ornithology is to birds."
      --- Steven Weinberg

Telmo Menezes

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Apr 14, 2013, 9:37:10 AM4/14/13
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On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 12:52 AM, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On 4/13/2013 2:40 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>
> Unless we question causality itself. Which we should. This is why
> Science is not the only way to pursue knowledge and Philosophy is
> necessary.
>
>
> Causality isn't even an important concept in fundamental physics. All the
> equations are time reversal (or CPT) invariant. But philosophers resisted
> this view.

I'm aware, but it is an important concept for all the sciences at
higher levels of abstraction, starting with chemistry. Until
fundamental physics can provide us with workable theories for the meso
world we live in, we have a problem.

> What knowledge do you think has come from philosophy?

You are aware that by asking this question you are already doing philosophy?

Some of my favorites: the scientific method, logic, the
systematisation of fallacies, Descarte's cogito, theories about
knowledge itself (Epistemology). The entire intellectual foundation of
western civilisation may make it to the list too, but it's a bit hard
to enumerate all the ideas...

> Brent
> "The philosophy of science is just about as useful to scientists
> as ornithology is to birds."
> --- Steven Weinberg

Funny as it might be to treat scientists as a biological class of
organisms, this is a bit silly. Popper's principle of falsifiability
seems rather useful to me. Occam's razor is not that bad either.

Cheers,
Telmo.

Bruno Marchal

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Apr 14, 2013, 12:33:42 PM4/14/13
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On 13 Apr 2013, at 15:17, Richard Ruquist wrote:

But Bruno, 
because of the measure problem, MWI must also be probabilistic,
otherwise it does not agree with experiment.

The universal wave evolves deterministically, but *we* are in the superposed and differentiating branches, so we feel like there is an indeterminacy in the 3p sense, but without collapse, it is only a first person indeterminacy of the same kind of comp (UDA step 3). 

With comp, we are automatically in the superposed state brought by the infinitely many universal numbers competing to generate our state. Indeterminacy is predicted once we look around below our substitution level.

The sharable experiment comes from some first person plural indeterminacy. 

Bruno



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Bruno Marchal

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Apr 14, 2013, 12:41:01 PM4/14/13
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On 13 Apr 2013, at 15:18, Richard Ruquist wrote:

Is 10^122 or 10^1000 large enough?
Richard


I think that 10^1000 is large enough to make the Ramanujan limited sum (limited to 10^1000) as large as (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + ... + 10^1000).

I'm afraid that to get the -1/12, you need to go to infinity, and even do some detour in the complex plane.

I find alluring that, in the "Riemann sense", 

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + ... = -1/12

But that

1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 + 1/6 + ...    still diverge, although algorithmically slowly.

Bruno

Bruno Marchal

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Apr 14, 2013, 12:51:53 PM4/14/13
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On 13 Apr 2013, at 15:21, Richard Ruquist wrote:

I have tried to study the UDA but lack sufficient understanding to see how the UDA could compute an infinite number of paths or universes as in the diffraction example I discussed.

I will remind this in later explanations. Dovetailing is a technic allowing to emulate digital parallelism with a single processor. The basic idea is that you can back again and again on the initial programs. You go through the programs p1, p2, p3, ... in that way:


p1, p2, p1, p2, p3, p1, p2, p1, p2, p3, p4, p1, p2, p1, p2, p3, p4, p5, p1, ...

and each time you emulate for some finite time the activity, and you save the "continuation" to resume that computation at the next meeting in that listing.

In that way, you will run all programs, even all those which never stop.

If you wait long enough, you will get the emulation of the linear evolution of the rational heisenberg matrix describing the Milky Way Observable, at all substitution level possible, and thus emulating notably many diffraction processes.

Church thesis ensures that you do enumerate all programs with the pi, once you have chosen a Turing universal system (like LISP, or the game-of-life pattern, or just some degree 4 diophantine polynomial).

Bruno

Stephen Paul King

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Apr 14, 2013, 1:02:49 PM4/14/13
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Hi Bruno,

Unless we can explain how the *some first person plural indeterminacy* obtains, it does not give a satisfactory explanation of 'shared experience'. It seems to me that you are right, in so far as, the necessity of such, but I argue that that alone is insufficient. You might want something like the axiom of choice and foundation to force the collection of *some first person plural indeterminacy* into a partition, but I argue that this is equivalent to assuming that satistiability obtains for collections of propositions automatically - something we know it false!
It is for this reason that I reject the timelessness of Platonism and adopt a 'Process" view where Becoming is ontologically fundamental and time is defined locally by the 1p measures of observers.


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meekerdb

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Apr 14, 2013, 3:45:20 PM4/14/13
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On 4/14/2013 6:37 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 12:52 AM, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> On 4/13/2013 2:40 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>> ...
>> What knowledge do you think has come from philosophy?
> You are aware that by asking this question you are already doing philosophy?
>
> Some of my favorites: the scientific method, logic, the
> systematisation of fallacies, Descarte's cogito, theories about
> knowledge itself (Epistemology). The entire intellectual foundation of
> western civilisation may make it to the list too, but it's a bit hard
> to enumerate all the ideas...
>
>> Brent
>> "The philosophy of science is just about as useful to scientists
>> as ornithology is to birds."
>> --- Steven Weinberg
> Funny as it might be to treat scientists as a biological class of
> organisms, this is a bit silly. Popper's principle of falsifiability
> seems rather useful to me. Occam's razor is not that bad either.

Useful summaries of practice and explication of science, but are they *knowledge*?

Brent

Jason Resch

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Apr 15, 2013, 1:00:44 AM4/15/13
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Richard, it is still possible.  You need to click the [ ... ]  box to expand the text.  I find the new gmail interface quite annoying myself.

Jason

Bruno Marchal

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Apr 15, 2013, 5:34:31 AM4/15/13
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There is no knowledge as such in science. Only falsifiable beliefs.
Oh, we can except some part of arithmetic perhaps.

Bruno



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Bruno Marchal

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Apr 15, 2013, 9:05:02 AM4/15/13
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On 14 Apr 2013, at 19:02, Stephen Paul King wrote:

Hi Bruno,

Unless we can explain how the *some first person plural indeterminacy* obtains, it does not give a satisfactory explanation of 'shared experience'.

Yes. Basically, getting the fits person plural is the same as getting the physical laws. 



It seems to me that you are right, in so far as, the necessity of such, but I argue that that alone is insufficient. You might want something like the axiom of choice

That is asking too much, as I have already explained. I don't assume set theory.



and foundation to force the collection of *some first person plural indeterminacy* into a partition, but I argue that this is equivalent to assuming that satistiability obtains for collections of propositions automatically - something we know it false!
It is for this reason that I reject the timelessness of Platonism and adopt a 'Process" view where Becoming is ontologically fundamental and time is defined locally by the 1p measures of observers.

You should convince Craig, not a computationalist, as UDA shows that physical time is not primitive. 

Bruno

Stephen Paul King

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Apr 15, 2013, 9:27:47 AM4/15/13
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Hi Bruno,

Interleaving

On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 9:05 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 14 Apr 2013, at 19:02, Stephen Paul King wrote:

Hi Bruno,

Unless we can explain how the *some first person plural indeterminacy* obtains, it does not give a satisfactory explanation of 'shared experience'.

Yes. Basically, getting the fits person plural is the same as getting the physical laws. 


OK, but could you be a bit more elaborative? We have already agreed that our goal is to be able to derive 'physical laws', so we cannot assume something equivalent to them (by your account!) without explanation. I think that we get 1st person plurality by solving the solipsism problem for numbers: How can a number distinguish its dreams of itself and its dreams of not-itself? 
 

It seems to me that you are right, in so far as, the necessity of such, but I argue that that alone is insufficient. You might want something like the axiom of choice

That is asking too much, as I have already explained. I don't assume set theory.

Of course, I am not asking you to assume it. I am asking you to look at how set theory seems to be necessary to obtain 1st person plurality. 



and foundation to force the collection of *some first person plural indeterminacy* into a partition, but I argue that this is equivalent to assuming that satistiability obtains for collections of propositions automatically - something we know it false!
It is for this reason that I reject the timelessness of Platonism and adopt a 'Process" view where Becoming is ontologically fundamental and time is defined locally by the 1p measures of observers.

You should convince Craig, not a computationalist, as UDA shows that physical time is not primitive. 

Bruno


  I do not know what you mean by "physical time". The time you use is the lexicographical ordering of numbers and does not refer to any kind of 'change' as there is nothing that 'becomes' in Platonia, everything just 'is'. 
  This is where our ways of thinking differ the most. I assume that becoming is primitive (ontologically fundamental), pace Parmenides and you agree with Parmenides and assume Being is primitive. Time then is defined relative to an individual's measure of Becoming and since there is no 'ultimate' observer in my ontology, there is no primitive time eithe; there is only local times (plural) as there must exist multiple observers as there necessarily exist multiple measures of Becoming and Being. (Being is the equivalence class of automorphisms of Becoming.)

Bruno Marchal

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Apr 15, 2013, 9:45:27 AM4/15/13
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On 15 Apr 2013, at 15:27, Stephen Paul King wrote:

Hi Bruno,

Interleaving

On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 9:05 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 14 Apr 2013, at 19:02, Stephen Paul King wrote:

Hi Bruno,

Unless we can explain how the *some first person plural indeterminacy* obtains, it does not give a satisfactory explanation of 'shared experience'.

Yes. Basically, getting the fits person plural is the same as getting the physical laws. 


OK, but could you be a bit more elaborative? We have already agreed that our goal is to be able to derive 'physical laws', so we cannot assume something equivalent to them (by your account!) without explanation. I think that we get 1st person plurality by solving the solipsism problem for numbers: How can a number distinguish its dreams of itself and its dreams of not-itself? 
 

It seems to me that you are right, in so far as, the necessity of such, but I argue that that alone is insufficient. You might want something like the axiom of choice

That is asking too much, as I have already explained. I don't assume set theory.

Of course, I am not asking you to assume it. I am asking you to look at how set theory seems to be necessary to obtain 1st person plurality. 

In some non comp theory, perhaps.






and foundation to force the collection of *some first person plural indeterminacy* into a partition, but I argue that this is equivalent to assuming that satistiability obtains for collections of propositions automatically - something we know it false!
It is for this reason that I reject the timelessness of Platonism and adopt a 'Process" view where Becoming is ontologically fundamental and time is defined locally by the 1p measures of observers.

You should convince Craig, not a computationalist, as UDA shows that physical time is not primitive. 

Bruno


  I do not know what you mean by "physical time". The time you use is the lexicographical ordering of numbers and does not refer to any kind of 'change' as there is nothing that 'becomes' in Platonia, everything just 'is'. 
  This is where our ways of thinking differ the most. I assume that becoming is primitive (ontologically fundamental), pace Parmenides and you agree with Parmenides and assume Being is primitive. Time then is defined relative to an individual's measure of Becoming and since there is no 'ultimate' observer in my ontology, there is no primitive time eithe; there is only local times (plural) as there must exist multiple observers as there necessarily exist multiple measures of Becoming and Being. (Being is the equivalence class of automorphisms of Becoming.)

Too much unclear, sorry. I have no idea of what you assume. You still look like if you were defending some truth, which I do not.

Bruno

John Clark

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Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote:

> The theory of evolution as proposed by Darwin is non-reductionist. It relies on the concept of "natural selection", which is an holistic concept.

That is entirely false. Natural selection is local, not just spatially but temporally as well. Evolution doesn't make decision based on the species as a whole but rather on whether this particular animal right here survives long enough to get its genes into the next generation. And Evolution has no foresight, it doesn't understand one step backward 2 steps forward, it only understands if there is a advantage to the animal right now.  Natural selection works on what is happening right here right now.


> Finding a cure for cancer or understanding exactly how the brain works resist the reductionist approach to this day.

Richard Dawkins has said that in today's pop culture admitting to being a reductionist is like admitting that you like to eat babies, but the fact is that every disease science has found a cure for it has done so with a reductionist approach, and you're only going to know that you really do understand how the brain works if you can duplicate it, and that means knowing all the billion little details, and that means reductionism.  However "holistic" is a great buzz word that will impress the rubes and make you a hit at parties.


>> I can give a example of a effect with no cause at all, the creation of virtual particles.

> One could argue that they are the result of some condition created by the Big Bang.

On the contrary, one could argue that the Big Bang itself was caused by the creation of virtual particles that became actual for no reason whatsoever. Quantum Mechanics says that the probability of that happening is mind bendingly small, but if you're dealing with a infinite amount of time you can be certain it will happen. That being said I do admit that when infinity is involved the meaning of probability becomes very fuzzy, so although there are hints I can't claim that we have a firm understanding of why there is something rather than nothing.


> Causality is just a human concept anyway.

Unless ET exists all concepts are human concepts because the universe can't think but humans can.

>> there is either a infinite regress of causes and effects like the layers of a infinite onion with no fundamental layer, or there is a effect without a cause. Neither of those possibilities is emotionally satisfying to some people but one of them must be true.

> Unless we question causality itself. Which we should.

Well, if we don't know what "causality" means then there is nothing to talk about; it's like those silly debates about if people have "free will" or not when they have no idea what the term is supposed to mean and so very literally don't know what in hell they're debating about.

> Science is not the only way to pursue knowledge

True, induction also works. Usually.

> Philosophy is necessary.

Philosophy is necessary but philosophers are not.

 John K Clark



Bruno Marchal

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Apr 15, 2013, 1:18:38 PM4/15/13
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On 12 Apr 2013, at 17:39, Telmo Menezes wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 5:07 PM, Richard Ruquist <yan...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Telmo,
>>
>> I can only give you my opinion.
>
> Thanks Richard.
>
>> You are of course referring to the double
>> slit experiment where one photon can follow at least two different
>> paths,
>> and potentially an infinite number of paths.
>>
>> But even diffraction of a single photon will do that: in the
>> simplest case
>> send a photon on to a semi-infinite metallic plane and the photon
>> potentially scatters into an infinite number of paths from the edge
>> of the
>> plane. We only know which path when the photon reaches a detector
>> plane on
>> the far side. The actual deterministic diffraction pattern only
>> emerges when
>> the number of photons sent approaches infinity in plane waves. The
>> actual
>> path of a single photon is random within the constraints of the
>> infinite-photon diffraction pattern.
>>
>> So I say the way to deal with that is to propagate a large number
>> of photons
>> or do an EM wave calculation for the diffraction pattern.
>
> But then we're still left without a theory that could explain the
> behaviour of a single photon without resorting to randomness, correct?
>
>> I wonder how comp treats such single photon instances. Does it use
>> algorithms that are random number generators?
>
> I'll leave this one for Bruno, of course. My understanding is that
> it's consistent with the MWI and also with what Russel proposes in his
> book: everything happens but each observer only perceives one of the
> outcomes.
>
> This seems highly unintuitive to a lot of people, but it seems more
> reasonable to me than the idea that there is just one Telmo with one
> personal diary. If there are infinitely many, each one with his own
> personal diary, the world still looks exactly like it does to this
> particular instance of me, and we do not have to resort to any
> randomness magic.
>
> It's tempting for me to extend this idea to everyone and not just
> Telmos, at the risk of sounding a bit new-agey.
>
> I don't yet understand how an algorithm could be a random number
> generator (non-pseudo), but I think Bruno has more to say here.


In math, there is many randomness. Diagonal argument can easily prove
most real or decimal infinite expansions are random, in the strongest
form of randomness.

Some simple programs can generate strings passing all the usual test
of randomness, like just counting

012345678910111213141516..... 7500008956790021176043275260881 ....

You said to John Clark that you don't believe in physical randomness.
Me too. As you say it is easier to explain it by the FPI on some
domain, like Everett universal wave or on arithmetic with comp. I am
with you and Einstein on this :)
All physical events have a determinist cause and reason. I think
Einstein said he would prefer to be a plumber if that was not the case.

But as logician, I can't exclude completely a (comp) physics with non
causal events, as the physics extracted from comp is only in its
infancy, to say the least. Even in that case the non physical cause
will have an arithmetical reason, and that non cause would emerge from
the first person (plural) indeterminacy on the UD* or (sigma1)
arithmetic. No need of unnecessary magic.

Bruno












>
> Telmo.
>
>> Richard
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com
>> >
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 4:24 PM, Richard Ruquist <yan...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Mathematics itself seems rather magical.
>>>> For instance the sum 1+2+3+4+5.....infinity = -1/12
>>>>
>>>> And according to Scott Aaronson's new book
>>>> when string theorists estimate the mass of a photon
>>>> they get two components: one being 1/12
>>>> and the other being that sum, so the mass is zero,
>>>> thanks to Ramanujan
>>>>
>>>> If that sum is cutoff at some very large number but less than
>>>> infinity,
>>>> does anyone know the value of the summation.?
>>>
>>> Hi Richard,
>>>
>>> Ok, but in that case physics is deterministic, just hard to compute.
>>> How do we then deal with the fact that two photons under the precise
>>> same conditions can follow two different paths (except for some
>>> hidden
>>> variable we don't know about)? I'm not a physicist and way over my
>>> head here, so this is not a rhetorical question.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 10:15 AM, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com
>>>> >
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 3:30 AM, Stathis Papaioannou
>>>>> <stat...@gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 5:35 AM, Craig Weinberg
>>>>>> <whats...@gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Thursday, April 11, 2013 3:29:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> If matter is deterministic, how could it behave in a random
>>>>>>>>>> way?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> It couldn't.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Are you saying then that matter is random, or that it is neither
>>>>>>> random
>>>>>>> nor
>>>>>>> deterministic?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Matter behaves randomly, but probability theory allows us to make
>>>>>> predictions about random events.
>>>>>
>>>>> In my view, randomness = magic.
>>>>> The MWI and Comp are the only theories I've seen so far that do
>>>>> not
>>>>> require magic to explain observed randomness.
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Stathis Papaioannou
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
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>>>>>> Visit this group at
>>>>>> http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
>>>>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
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Bruno Marchal

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Apr 15, 2013, 1:21:51 PM4/15/13
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On 12 Apr 2013, at 16:15, Telmo Menezes wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 3:30 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com
> > wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 5:35 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com
>> > wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thursday, April 11, 2013 3:29:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> If matter is deterministic, how could it behave in a random way?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It couldn't.
>>>
>>>
>>> Are you saying then that matter is random, or that it is neither
>>> random nor
>>> deterministic?
>>
>> Matter behaves randomly, but probability theory allows us to make
>> predictions about random events.
>
> In my view, randomness = magic.
> The MWI and Comp are the only theories I've seen so far that do not
> require magic to explain observed randomness.


You said this to Stathis!

Apology to Stathis and John Clark.

I agree with the point.

Bruno




>
>>
>> --
>> Stathis Papaioannou
>>
>> --
>> 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,
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meekerdb

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Apr 15, 2013, 1:54:28 PM4/15/13
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On 4/15/2013 2:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> On 14 Apr 2013, at 21:45, meekerdb wrote:
>
>> On 4/14/2013 6:37 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>> On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 12:52 AM, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>> On 4/13/2013 2:40 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>>> ...
>>>> What knowledge do you think has come from philosophy?
>>> You are aware that by asking this question you are already doing philosophy?
>>>
>>> Some of my favorites: the scientific method, logic, the
>>> systematisation of fallacies, Descarte's cogito, theories about
>>> knowledge itself (Epistemology). The entire intellectual foundation of
>>> western civilisation may make it to the list too, but it's a bit hard
>>> to enumerate all the ideas...
>>>
>>>> Brent
>>>> "The philosophy of science is just about as useful to scientists
>>>> as ornithology is to birds."
>>>> --- Steven Weinberg
>>> Funny as it might be to treat scientists as a biological class of
>>> organisms, this is a bit silly. Popper's principle of falsifiability
>>> seems rather useful to me. Occam's razor is not that bad either.
>>
>> Useful summaries of practice and explication of science, but are they *knowledge*?
>
> There is no knowledge as such in science.

That's contrary to all usage. It means I don't know the Earth is round and I don't know
there's a refrigerator in my kitchen. I understand these are theories or models and that
they are defeasible. But to say there is no knowledge because knowledge must be certain
seems perverse. And it doesn't comport with your own formula that "knowledge = true
belief". My belief that there's a refrigerator in my kitchen can be true without being
certain. If I go now and look in the kitchen and see a refrigerator then my belief is
true and constitutes knowledge.

But this seems very different from say, Popper's principle of falsifiability. Is it a
definition? A normative rule about how we use the word "science"? Or is it advice about
how to weigh theories when deciding which one to work on? Is Popper's principle falsifiable?

> Only falsifiable beliefs.

Are you asserting that there are no true beliefs in science?

Brent

meekerdb

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Apr 15, 2013, 4:09:39 PM4/15/13
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I would expect that in comp the same event would have arbitrarily many different causes.

Brent

Telmo Menezes

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Apr 15, 2013, 7:25:28 PM4/15/13
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On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 5:48 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote:
>
>> > The theory of evolution as proposed by Darwin is non-reductionist. It
>> > relies on the concept of "natural selection", which is an holistic concept.
>
>
> That is entirely false. Natural selection is local, not just spatially but
> temporally as well.

Natural selection is an emergent phenomena arising from local interactions.

> Evolution doesn't make decision based on the species as
> a whole but rather on whether this particular animal right here survives
> long enough to get its genes into the next generation.

Evolution doesn't make decisions at all. It's an emergent phenomena.

> And Evolution has no
> foresight, it doesn't understand one step backward 2 steps forward, it only
> understands if there is a advantage to the animal right now.

That is debatable. There is the possibility of the evolution of
evolvability, in which one can imagine that certain genetic
configurations are selected because they are more maleable for future
adaptations (because they have been more maleable to past
adaptations). This is speculation, but within the realm of
possibility. Some computational simulations give credence to the idea.
It's also one of the theories for why there is so much junk DNA.

> Natural
> selection works on what is happening right here right now.

This is true but at the same time misses the point. Your version of
evolutionary theory only gets us so far as to making trivial
statements like: "I am live because all of my ancestors successfully
reproduced before dying". The interesting questions are more
ambitious:

- Why are there so many species?
- Why do different species exist to begin with?
- Why only two genders?
- Why are some species more altruistic and others more selfish?
- ...

You're going through intellectual contortions to avoid facing the
reality that one of the most amazing insights of science ever is a
theory about emergent behaviours, about how things can be explained by
creating a layer of abstraction and that for this step to be possible
we have to necessarily accept our ignorance about, not only many of
the details, but also about many of the (non-linear) interactions that
give rise to what we generically call evolution.

>> > Finding a cure for cancer or understanding exactly how the brain works
>> > resist the reductionist approach to this day.
>
>
> Richard Dawkins has said that in today's pop culture admitting to being a
> reductionist is like admitting that you like to eat babies, but the fact is
> that every disease science has found a cure for it has done so with a
> reductionist approach,

This is entirely not the case. The most obvious example is the field
of psychiatry, using drugs for which mechanisms of operation are not
understood combined with therapy techniques that are completely based
on practioner's experience and intuition. Yet it manages to get
results above placebo for some classes of diseases, like depression.

Many of the modern drugs are discovered by brute force. The "let's see
if molecule X cures disease Y" brute-force approach. A large chunk of
modern medicine is based on epidemiological research. A modern version
of "tasting the forest", like Platonist Guitar Cowboy would say.

Another very common disease: hypertension.

From wikipedia:
"In almost all contemporary societies, blood pressure rises with aging
and the risk of becoming hypertensive in later life is
considerable.[13] Hypertension results from a complex interaction of
genes and environmental factors. Numerous common genetic variants with
small effects on blood pressure have been identified[14] as well as
some rare genetic variants with large effects on blood pressure[15]
but the genetic basis of hypertension is still poorly understood."

Treatment for hypertension is also holistic, typically consisting of a
combination of diet, lifestyle changes as mushy as "stress avoidance"
and sometimes medication like beta-blockers: another class of drugs
with a complex and not fully understood mechanisms of action.

> and you're only going to know that you really do
> understand how the brain works if you can duplicate it,

Being able to duplicate the brain does not imply that we understand
it, nor does understanding it imply that we can replicate it.

> and that means
> knowing all the billion little details, and that means reductionism.

Actually understanding how the brain works means exactly the opposite:
not having to consider all the billions of little details but instead
understanding the fundamental principles -- which are holistic for
sure.

> However "holistic" is a great buzz word that will impress the rubes and make
> you a hit at parties.

Hey, we don't all look like Brad Pitt. We have to play the hand we're dealt.

>>> >> I can give a example of a effect with no cause at all, the creation of
>>> >> virtual particles.
>>
>>
>> > One could argue that they are the result of some condition created by
>> > the Big Bang.
>
>
> On the contrary, one could argue that the Big Bang itself was caused by the
> creation of virtual particles that became actual for no reason whatsoever.
> Quantum Mechanics says that the probability of that happening is mind
> bendingly small, but if you're dealing with a infinite amount of time you
> can be certain it will happen. That being said I do admit that when infinity
> is involved the meaning of probability becomes very fuzzy, so although there
> are hints I can't claim that we have a firm understanding of why there is
> something rather than nothing.
>
>> > Causality is just a human concept anyway.
>
>
> Unless ET exists all concepts are human concepts because the universe can't
> think but humans can.

How do you know that the universe can't think?

>>> >> there is either a infinite regress of causes and effects like the
>>> >> layers of a infinite onion with no fundamental layer, or there is a effect
>>> >> without a cause. Neither of those possibilities is emotionally satisfying to
>>> >> some people but one of them must be true.
>>
>>
>> > Unless we question causality itself. Which we should.
>
>
> Well, if we don't know what "causality" means then there is nothing to talk
> about; it's like those silly debates about if people have "free will" or not
> when they have no idea what the term is supposed to mean and so very
> literally don't know what in hell they're debating about.

My view is that the difficulty in defining certain terms is a hint
about where our ignorance lies. Suppressing discussion about these
definitions is a form of mysticism.

>> > Science is not the only way to pursue knowledge
>
>
> True, induction also works. Usually.
>
>> > Philosophy is necessary.
>
>
> Philosophy is necessary but philosophers are not.

I don't know what to say here. Isn't philosophy a human endeavour? How
can it exist without humans engaging in it? Unless I don't understand
what you mean by "philosopher"?

I suspect you see terms as "scientist", "philosopher", "artist" as
classes of human beings -- almost like an extensions of the biological
ontology, as opposed to activities that humans can engage in.

Telmo.

> John K Clark

Bruno Marchal

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Apr 16, 2013, 4:55:22 AM4/16/13
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That's the point. That is important when we talk on science in
science. The usage is good for sending man on the moon, but in
epistemological research, we must be more cautious with the terming.



> But to say there is no knowledge because knowledge must be certain
> seems perverse.

Knowledge must be true, not certain. Truth is anything but certain, in
most case. The only exception might be consciousness.




> And it doesn't comport with your own formula that "knowledge = true
> belief". My belief that there's a refrigerator in my kitchen can be
> true without being certain.

Exactly.



> If I go now and look in the kitchen and see a refrigerator then my
> belief is true and constitutes knowledge.

You might be dreaming. You only get a confirmation of your belief/
theory.




>
> But this seems very different from say, Popper's principle of
> falsifiability. Is it a definition? A normative rule about how we
> use the word "science"? Or is it advice about how to weigh theories
> when deciding which one to work on? Is Popper's principle
> falsifiable?

Yes. Actually it has been falsified:

CASE J. & NGO-MANGUELLE S., 1979, Refinements of inductive inference
by Popperian
machines. Tech. Rep., Dept. of Computer Science, State Univ. of New-
York, Buffalo.



>
>> Only falsifiable beliefs.
>
> Are you asserting that there are no true beliefs in science?

All true and communicable beliefs are falsifiable. Falsifiable does
not lean falsified.
Consciousness is plausibly not falsifiable, but it is not communicable
either.

Public knowledge is never certain.

Bruno Marchal

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Apr 16, 2013, 5:16:30 AM4/16/13
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Hmm... That's a bit ambiguous. I would say that a physical event has
one cause : the multiple arithmetical realization leasing to some
observer state. There is one cause or one reason, but it is infinite
in extent---it is infinitely realized or implemented in arithmetic.


Bruno


>
> Brent

Telmo Menezes

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Apr 16, 2013, 11:21:34 AM4/16/13
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The problem here is that we are mapping similar concepts to the same
word. I understand what you mean, but there are other, less narrow
definitions of the word (I know you know this). The definition most
closely related to the common use of the word would be Plato's
"justified true belief". No?

Replying to Brent, under Plato's definition (which has problems that I
am aware of), the examples I gave are indeed knowledge. There is a
currently popular trend amongst positivists to believe that knowledge
= scientific knowledge, and this is trivially absurd.

Telmo.

John Clark

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Apr 16, 2013, 1:49:16 PM4/16/13
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On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 7:25 PM, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote:

> Evolution doesn't make decisions at all.

You may be pedantic about the use of anthropomorphic language but I am not.

> It's an emergent phenomena.

Emergent is another great buzz word that isn't of much use.

> And Evolution has no foresight, it doesn't understand one step backward 2 steps forward, it only understands if there is a advantage to the animal right now.

> That is debatable.

Like hell it is.

> There is the possibility of the evolution of evolvability,

Well OK, maybe you could look at the Evolution of segmentation as the Evolution of evolvability, if you want to evolve a longer animal just do more of the same and add more segments.
 
> Why only two genders?

A better question is why there are as many as 2 genders, the greatest mystery in Evolution is how and why sex evolved. 

>> Richard Dawkins has said that in today's pop culture admitting to being a reductionist is like admitting that you like to eat babies, but the fact is that every disease science has found a cure for it has done so with a reductionist approach,

> This is entirely not the case. The most obvious example is the field
of psychiatry, using drugs for which mechanisms of operation are not
understood combined with therapy techniques that are completely based
on practioner's experience and intuition. Yet it manages to get
results above placebo for some classes of diseases, like depression.

OK, but what does that have to do with the "holistic approach" whatever that is? As I said science is not the only way to gain knowledge, induction works too. Usually. 

> Being able to duplicate the brain does not imply that we understand it,

I believe it does, or at least it would mean we understand the brain as well as we ever will.

> nor does understanding it imply that we can replicate it.

I agree in principle but in practice I think it probably will mean we can replicate it.

> Actually understanding how the brain works means exactly the opposite: not having to consider all the billions of little details but instead
understanding the fundamental principles -- which are holistic for sure.

That's the trouble with this list, everybody is a big picture man with their own fundamental holistic theories about consciousness (but never about intelligence because that's much too hard) that is completely useless and doesn't advance science by one inch. 

> How do you know that the universe can't think?

The same reason I believe a rock can't think, it doesn't behave intelligently; but of course  I could be wrong, maybe the rock and the universe are both just playing possum. But probably not.   

> My view is that the difficulty in defining certain terms is a hint about where our ignorance lies.

You can define free will anyway you like and I will be happy to join the debate about Human beings having this interesting property or not. But when nobody knows what the hell "free will" is supposed to mean, not even approximately, and then have long impassioned debates about people having free will or not is just ridiculous.

When he was a student at Princeton Richard Feynman had an encounter with philosophers, years later this is what he had to say about it:

"In the Graduate College dining room at Princeton everybody used to sit with his own group. I sat with the physicists, but after a bit I thought: It would be nice to see what the rest of the world is doing, so I'll sit for a week or two in each of the other groups.

When I sat with the philosophers I listened to them discuss very seriously a book called Process and Reality by Whitehead. They were using words in a funny way, and I couldn't quite understand what they were saying. Now I didn't want to interrupt them in their own conversation and keep asking them to explain something, and on the few occasions that I did, they'd try to explain it to me, but I still didn't get it. Finally they invited me to come to their seminar.

They had a seminar that was like, a class. It had been meeting once a week to discuss a new chapter out of Process and Reality - some guy would give a report on it and then there would be a discussion. I  went to this seminar promising myself to keep my mouth shut, reminding myself that I didn't know anything about the subject, and I was going there just to watch.

What happened there was typical - so typical that it was unbelievable, but true. First of all, I sat there without saying anything, which is almost unbelievable, but also true. A student gave a report on the chapter to be studied that week. In it Whitehead kept using the words "essential object" in a particular technical way that presumably he had defined, but that I didn't understand.

After some discussion as to what "essential object" meant, the professor leading the seminar said something meant to clarify things and drew something that looked like lightning bolts on the blackboard. "Mr. Feynman," he said, "would you say an electron is an 'essential object'?"

Well, now I was in trouble. I admitted that I hadn't read the book, so I had no idea of what Whitehead meant by the phrase; I had only come to watch. "But," I said, "I'll try to answer the professor's question if you will first answer a question from me, so I can have a better idea of what 'essential object' means.

What I had intended to do was to find out whether they thought theoretical constructs were essential objects. The electron is a theory that we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real. I wanted to make the idea of a theory clear by analogy. In the case of the brick, my next question was going to be, "What about the inside of the brick?" - and I would then point out that no one has ever seen the inside of a brick. Every time you break the brick, you only see the surface. That the brick has an inside is a simple theory which helps us understand things better. The theory of electrons is analogous. So I began by asking, "Is a brick an essential object?"

Then the answers came out. One man stood up and said, "A brick as an individual, specific brick. That is what Whitehead means by an essential object."

Another man said, "No, it isn't the individual brick that is an essential object; it's the general character that all bricks have in common - their 'brickiness' - that is the essential object."

Another guy got up and said, "No, it's not in the bricks themselves. 'Essential object' means the idea in the mind that you get when you think of bricks."

Another guy got up, and another, and I tell you I have never heard such ingenious different ways of looking at a brick before. And, just like it should in all stories about philosophers, it ended up in complete chaos. In all their previous discussions they hadn't even asked themselves whether such a simple object as a brick, much less an electron, is an "essential object."  " 


> Suppressing discussion about these definitions is a form of mysticism.

 Wow, calling a guy known for not liking religion religious! Never heard that one before, at least not before the sixth grade.

 
> >Philosophy is necessary but philosophers are not.

>I don't know what to say here. Isn't philosophy a human endeavour?

Yes, and there have been many huge philosophical discoveries made in the last 200 years, but not one of them was made by a philosopher,  the discoveries were made by scientists and mathematicians. 
 
> what you mean by "philosopher"?

Somebody who puts  "philosopher" in the occupation line on his tax form

  John K Clark



 

meekerdb

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Apr 16, 2013, 1:51:55 PM4/16/13
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On 4/16/2013 1:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
There is no knowledge as such in science.

That's contrary to all usage.  It means I don't know the Earth is round and I don't know there's a refrigerator in my kitchen.  I understand these are theories or models and that they are defeasible.

That's the point. That is important when we talk on science in science. The usage is good for sending man on the moon, but in epistemological research, we must be more cautious with the terming.



But to say there is no knowledge because knowledge must be certain seems perverse.

Knowledge must be true, not certain. Truth is anything but certain, in most case. The only exception might be consciousness.




And it doesn't comport with your own formula that "knowledge = true belief".  My belief that there's a refrigerator in my kitchen can be true without being certain.

Exactly.

Then you cannot assert that there is no knowledge in science. 

Brent

meekerdb

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Apr 16, 2013, 2:05:32 PM4/16/13
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On 4/16/2013 2:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
But as logician, I can't exclude completely a (comp) physics with non causal events, as the physics extracted from comp is only in its infancy, to say the least. Even in that case the non physical cause will have an arithmetical reason, and that non cause would emerge from the first person (plural) indeterminacy on the UD* or (sigma1) arithmetic. No need of unnecessary magic.

I would expect that in comp the same event would have arbitrarily many different causes.

Hmm... That's a bit ambiguous. I would say that a physical event has one cause : the multiple arithmetical realization leasing to some observer state. There is one cause or one reason, but it is infinite in extent---it is infinitely realized or implemented in arithmetic.

As Stathis pointed out, since a brain has only a finite number of possible states (assuming comp) it is inevitable that a state be repeated provided the brain lasts long enough.  But there need not be identical causal chains leading to this state.  A Turing machine can reach the same state by different sequences of computation.  QM is time reversal invariant, so if it predicts different future states of the observer then it also retrodicts different past states.

Brent

Bruno Marchal

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Apr 17, 2013, 9:29:46 AM4/17/13
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Why? 

Bruno





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Bruno Marchal

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Apr 17, 2013, 9:37:22 AM4/17/13
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On 16 Apr 2013, at 20:05, meekerdb wrote:

On 4/16/2013 2:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
But as logician, I can't exclude completely a (comp) physics with non causal events, as the physics extracted from comp is only in its infancy, to say the least. Even in that case the non physical cause will have an arithmetical reason, and that non cause would emerge from the first person (plural) indeterminacy on the UD* or (sigma1) arithmetic. No need of unnecessary magic.

I would expect that in comp the same event would have arbitrarily many different causes.

Hmm... That's a bit ambiguous. I would say that a physical event has one cause : the multiple arithmetical realization leasing to some observer state. There is one cause or one reason, but it is infinite in extent---it is infinitely realized or implemented in arithmetic.

As Stathis pointed out, since a brain has only a finite number of possible states (assuming comp) it is inevitable that a state be repeated provided the brain lasts long enough.

Or that elementary arithmetic is correct. OK.

But there need not be identical causal chains leading to this state. 

That is what I said. That are the multiple realization (in arithmetic) leading to my state. 



A Turing machine can reach the same state by different sequences of computation. 

Absolutely so.



QM is time reversal invariant, so if it predicts different future states of the observer then it also retrodicts different past states.

The same already occurs in arithmetic. I guess my english was unclear as I agree with all what you say here.

Bruno





Brent

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meekerdb

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Apr 17, 2013, 1:24:13 PM4/17/13
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On 4/17/2013 6:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 16 Apr 2013, at 19:51, meekerdb wrote:

On 4/16/2013 1:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
There is no knowledge as such in science.

That's contrary to all usage.  It means I don't know the Earth is round and I don't know there's a refrigerator in my kitchen.  I understand these are theories or models and that they are defeasible.

That's the point. That is important when we talk on science in science. The usage is good for sending man on the moon, but in epistemological research, we must be more cautious with the terming.



But to say there is no knowledge because knowledge must be certain seems perverse.

Knowledge must be true, not certain. Truth is anything but certain, in most case. The only exception might be consciousness.




And it doesn't comport with your own formula that "knowledge = true belief".  My belief that there's a refrigerator in my kitchen can be true without being certain.

Exactly.

Then you cannot assert that there is no knowledge in science. 

Why?

Because I believe there's a refrigerator in my kitchen and that may be true.  If it is then I have knowledge and to assert there can be no such knowledge is false.

Brent

Craig Weinberg

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Apr 17, 2013, 2:02:49 PM4/17/13
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If you were some being made of neutrinos, there wouldn't be a refrigerator or a kitchen, maybe something more like a thin haze or vapor. If you were as big as a star, the whole country you live in would be an insignificant smudge on an orbiting pellet.

Craig


Brent

John Mikes

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Apr 17, 2013, 4:30:36 PM4/17/13
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Brent: I side with Bruno (whatever it is worth).
(And it doesn't comport with your own formula that "knowledge = true belief".  My belief that there's a refrigerator in my kitchen can be true without being certain. 

Exactly.) 

Brent: Then you cannot assert that there is no knowledge in science.  
JM: "can be true..." - or not. We don't know. Nobody. 
Bruno's 'certainty' is also hypothetical (what my agnostic position may question.) 
It all depends how you (we?) define knowledge, certainty and 'true'. And the rest of it.

John M  

Telmo Menezes

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Apr 17, 2013, 5:31:26 PM4/17/13
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On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 7:49 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 7:25 PM, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com>
> wrote:
>
>> > Evolution doesn't make decisions at all.
>
>
> You may be pedantic about the use of anthropomorphic language but I am not.

It can become distracting / misleading in deeper discussions about the
mechanisms of evolution.

>> > It's an emergent phenomena.
>
>
> Emergent is another great buzz word that isn't of much use.

I would prefer if you argued the point instead of just stating your
biases. Quantum is also a buzz term, so what?

Emergence is just a way to connect different levels of abstraction.
It's certainly useful for visual thinkers like me to understand the
world. It allows me to picture, for example, the beautiful machinery
that sequences proteins from nucleoid acids, how these proteins fold
and aggregate in larger structures, how they feed back to the DNA
decoding mechanism and regulate the production of other proteins, how
all this leads to cells and membranes, and signalling between cells,
all the way up to organs and then organisms, how all these organisms
behave in ways that configure social structures and how each one of
these steps feeds back backwards, both to the morphogenetic and the
evolutionary processes.

What do you mean "useful"? Who are you to say what's useful or not as
a tool for other people to think and understand?

>>> > And Evolution has no foresight, it doesn't understand one step backward
>>> > 2 steps forward, it only understands if there is a advantage to the animal
>>> > right now.
>>
>>
>> > That is debatable.
>
>
> Like hell it is.

Well maybe not with you :)

>> > There is the possibility of the evolution of evolvability,
>
>
> Well OK, maybe you could look at the Evolution of segmentation as the
> Evolution of evolvability, if you want to evolve a longer animal just do
> more of the same and add more segments.

it's deeper than that. There is a many-to-many mapping between
genotype and phenotype. The same phenotype can be expressed in ways
that are immediately the same but are more or less susceptible to
future adaptations. More adaptable versions may tend to survive more
because they are more robust to uncertainty, leading to higher
adaptability (or a more effective type of adaptability) in the future.
There are some theories that propose that this might have been the
case for the selection of DNA/RNA itself.

>>
>> > Why only two genders?
>
>
> A better question is why there are as many as 2 genders, the greatest
> mystery in Evolution is how and why sex evolved.

Ok, if you prefer. There are a lot of theories on why, but here's one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muller's_ratchet

>>> >> Richard Dawkins has said that in today's pop culture admitting to
>>> >> being a reductionist is like admitting that you like to eat babies, but the
>>> >> fact is that every disease science has found a cure for it has done so with
>>> >> a reductionist approach,
>>
>>
>> > This is entirely not the case. The most obvious example is the field
>> of psychiatry, using drugs for which mechanisms of operation are not
>> understood combined with therapy techniques that are completely based
>> on practioner's experience and intuition. Yet it manages to get
>> results above placebo for some classes of diseases, like depression.
>
>
> OK, but what does that have to do with the "holistic approach" whatever that
> is? As I said science is not the only way to gain knowledge, induction works
> too. Usually.

Holistic means the opposite of "divide and conquer".

The therapist has to treat the patient has a whole, with chemical
processes, past experiences, family relationships, world views, and so
on, all entangled in a complex web. Attempting to find a single cause
and a single treatment to address that single cause doesn't seem to
work for many psychiatric issues. The same is true of many other
medical conditions.

>> > Being able to duplicate the brain does not imply that we understand it,
>
>
> I believe it does, or at least it would mean we understand the brain as well
> as we ever will.

Ok, imagine we have this amazing 3D scanner that can provide a
detailed enough description of a brain, and this amazing 3D printer
that can print a copy, and the copy works. Can you claim we understand
the brain because we duplicated it under this scenario?

>> > nor does understanding it imply that we can replicate it.
>
>
> I agree in principle but in practice I think it probably will mean we can
> replicate it.
>> > Actually understanding how the brain works means exactly the opposite:
>> > not having to consider all the billions of little details but instead
>> understanding the fundamental principles -- which are holistic for sure.
>
>
> That's the trouble with this list, everybody is a big picture man with their
> own fundamental holistic theories about consciousness

Isn't "big picture" the theme of this list?

> (but never about
> intelligence because that's much too hard)

If consciousness is easier than intelligence, how come we have
scientific progress in the latter and not in the former?

> that is completely useless and
> doesn't advance science by one inch.

We should have a stock market style ticker for science.

>> > How do you know that the universe can't think?
>
>
> The same reason I believe a rock can't think, it doesn't behave
> intelligently; but of course I could be wrong, maybe the rock and the
> universe are both just playing possum. But probably not.

Intelligence can only be measured in terms of goals. The universe os
playing possum???
Also, how do you know that intelligence is a requirement of consciousness?

>> > My view is that the difficulty in defining certain terms is a hint about
>> > where our ignorance lies.
>
>
> You can define free will anyway you like and I will be happy to join the
> debate about Human beings having this interesting property or not. But when
> nobody knows what the hell "free will" is supposed to mean, not even
> approximately, and then have long impassioned debates about people having
> free will or not is just ridiculous.

We can talk about free will if we want, but this discussion was about causality.
I didn't call you anything. I am merely pointing out that if we are
going to use a term -- like causality -- we have to debate its
meaning. Otherwise, what we are doing is mysticism, because we are
grounding our beliefs in symbols that we do not understand.

>
>>>
>>> > >Philosophy is necessary but philosophers are not.
>>
>>
>> >I don't know what to say here. Isn't philosophy a human endeavour?
>
>
> Yes, and there have been many huge philosophical discoveries made in the
> last 200 years, but not one of them was made by a philosopher, the
> discoveries were made by scientists and mathematicians.

How are these scientists and mathematicians not also philosophers,
given that they have made contributions to philosophy?

>>
>> > what you mean by "philosopher"?
>
>
> Somebody who puts "philosopher" in the occupation line on his tax form

Ok, I guess Plato and Aristotle and the rest of that gang are out then.

meekerdb

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Apr 17, 2013, 5:42:55 PM4/17/13
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On 4/17/2013 2:31 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
> it's deeper than that. There is a many-to-many mapping between
> genotype and phenotype. The same phenotype can be expressed in ways
> that are immediately the same but are more or less susceptible to
> future adaptations.

That's very vague. Does "susceptible to future adaptations" just mean more likely to
produce mutant offspring. Or are you envisioning Lamarckian adaptation? How about an example

> More adaptable versions may tend to survive more
> because they are more robust to uncertainty, leading to higher
> adaptability (or a more effective type of adaptability) in the future.
> There are some theories that propose that this might have been the
> case for the selection of DNA/RNA itself.

It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject
to natural selection.

Brent

John Clark

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Apr 18, 2013, 11:15:18 AM4/18/13
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On Wed, Apr 17, 2013  meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.

If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.  

Such a stress-mutation gene has never been found in a sexual animal and it's easy to see why. In sex all the genes are not inherited in one big package but are shuffled around with the genes of the other parent, so a animal that was lucky enough to inherit the good genes produced by the hypothetical stress-mutation gene but not the stress-mutation gene itself would do just as well or better than a animal that got both the good genes and the stress-mutation gene that is no longer active because the animal is no longer under stress. So even if such a stress-mutation gene did occur in one individual in a population it would vanish in just a few generations from the gene pool. Natural Selection doesn't figure  "I better keep that stress-mutation gene because even though there is no stress now that could change and such a gene might come in handy in the future".  Evolution has no foresight and can't think and all that matters to it is what's happening right here right now. 

  John K Clark

   



meekerdb

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Apr 18, 2013, 1:29:29 PM4/18/13
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On 4/18/2013 8:15 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013  meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.

If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.  

That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability.  What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability.  There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction.  Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct.  But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species.  So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.

Brent


Such a stress-mutation gene has never been found in a sexual animal and it's easy to see why. In sex all the genes are not inherited in one big package but are shuffled around with the genes of the other parent, so a animal that was lucky enough to inherit the good genes produced by the hypothetical stress-mutation gene but not the stress-mutation gene itself would do just as well or better than a animal that got both the good genes and the stress-mutation gene that is no longer active because the animal is no longer under stress. So even if such a stress-mutation gene did occur in one individual in a population it would vanish in just a few generations from the gene pool. Natural Selection doesn't figure  "I better keep that stress-mutation gene because even though there is no stress now that could change and such a gene might come in handy in the future".  Evolution has no foresight and can't think and all that matters to it is what's happening right here right now. 

  John K Clark

   



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John Clark

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Apr 18, 2013, 2:09:28 PM4/18/13
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On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 1:29 PM, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:
> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.

>> If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.  
> That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability.  What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability.  There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction.  Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct.  But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species.  So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.

No because in a sexually reproducing animal the genes that make the error correcting machinery are inherited independently of the very genes that they have corrected, and the vast majority of mutations are detrimental not helpful. So in any generation the offspring of a animal with good error correcting machinery will almost always do better than offspring from a animal with poor correcting machinery. And even in the very rare cases where the mutation caused a improvement in a gene the animal will do better if it has the gene for the better error correcting machinery, because otherwise that good gene is likely to mutate again and this time the mutation will almost certainly be bad.  As Richard Dawkins said in his wonderful book "Climbing Mount Improbable":

"The predaliction to mutate is always bad, even though individual mutations occasionally turn out to be good. It is best, if more than a little paradoxical, to think of natural selection as favoring a mutation rate of zero. Fortunately for us, and for the continuance of evolution, this genetic nirvana is never quite attained."

  John K Clark
 

meekerdb

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Apr 18, 2013, 2:36:22 PM4/18/13
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On 4/18/2013 11:09 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 1:29 PM, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:
> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.

>> If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.  
> That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability.  What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability.  There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction.  Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct.  But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species.  So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.

No because in a sexually reproducing animal the genes that make the error correcting machinery are inherited independently of the very genes that they have corrected, and the vast majority of mutations are detrimental not helpful. So in any generation the offspring of a animal with good error correcting machinery will almost always do better than offspring from a animal with poor correcting machinery.

I think this overlooks the fact that there can be many mutations that are neutral relative to a given environment, but under a change or in combination with another may be advantageous.  But I'll look up Dawkins argument.

Brent

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Craig Weinberg

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Apr 18, 2013, 4:05:13 PM4/18/13
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On Thursday, April 18, 2013 1:29:29 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
On 4/18/2013 8:15 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013  meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.

If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.  

That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability.  What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability.  There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction.  Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct.  But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species.  So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.

How does a deterministic universe invent something which is intentionally less than perfect? I'm not saying that it couldn't, or didn't, but why would there really even be any possibility of volatility built into physics in the first place? What, in a deterministic universe, constitutes an 'error'?

Craig

John Clark

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Apr 18, 2013, 4:32:25 PM4/18/13
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On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 5:31 PM, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote:

>> You may be pedantic about the use of anthropomorphic language but I am not.

> It can become distracting / misleading in deeper discussions about the mechanisms of evolution.

I don't care, anybody who was mislead or distracted and believed Evolution could think would be so stupid that I wouldn't care to talk to them. And as you once said "who are you to say what's useful or not as a tool for other people to think and understand?".
 
> Emergence is just a way to connect different levels of abstraction.

The trouble is people say X leads to Y but when asked how they just wave their hands around and say it's a emergent property, as if that explains something. 

> What do you mean "useful"?

I'm not going to tell you. Any definition I give you will be made of words and I have no doubt you would then demand a definition of at least one of those words.  
 
>> That's the trouble with this list, everybody is a big picture man with their own fundamental holistic theories about consciousness

> Isn't "big picture" the theme of this list?

I thought the theme of this list was everything, and details are something. Dilettantes are always big picture men because that is so much easier than being a details man; they are VERY big picture men, so big that their ideas have made absolutely no changes to science or to anything that anyone can measure.  

> If consciousness is easier than intelligence

Evolution certainly found that to be the case.

>  how come we have scientific progress in the latter and not in the former?

Today's computers are smarter than they were 10 years ago so I think it is highly likely that they are more conscious too. If you have another method for measuring consciousness other than intelligent behavior I would very much like to hear about it.

> how do you know that intelligence is a requirement of consciousness?

The only consciousness I have direct experience with is my own and I note that when I'm sleepy my consciousness is reduced and so is my intelligence, when I'm alert the reverse is true.

> Somebody who puts  "philosopher" in the occupation line on his tax form

Ok, I guess Plato and Aristotle and the rest of that gang are out then.

Archimedes was a mathematician and he discovered more philosophy than Plato and Aristotle combined.

  John K Clark 



 


Craig Weinberg

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Apr 18, 2013, 8:03:08 PM4/18/13
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On Thursday, April 18, 2013 4:32:25 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 5:31 PM, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote:

>> You may be pedantic about the use of anthropomorphic language but I am not.

> It can become distracting / misleading in deeper discussions about the mechanisms of evolution.

I don't care, anybody who was mislead or distracted and believed Evolution could think would be so stupid that I wouldn't care to talk to them. And as you once said "who are you to say what's useful or not as a tool for other people to think and understand?".
 
> Emergence is just a way to connect different levels of abstraction.

The trouble is people say X leads to Y but when asked how they just wave their hands around and say it's a emergent property, as if that explains something. 

> What do you mean "useful"?

I'm not going to tell you. Any definition I give you will be made of words and I have no doubt you would then demand a definition of at least one of those words.  
 
>> That's the trouble with this list, everybody is a big picture man with their own fundamental holistic theories about consciousness

> Isn't "big picture" the theme of this list?

I thought the theme of this list was everything, and details are something. Dilettantes are always big picture men because that is so much easier than being a details man; they are VERY big picture men, so big that their ideas have made absolutely no changes to science or to anything that anyone can measure.  

> If consciousness is easier than intelligence

Evolution certainly found that to be the case.

>  how come we have scientific progress in the latter and not in the former?

Today's computers are smarter than they were 10 years ago so I think it is highly likely that they are more conscious too.

Nobody could think that except someone who is trying hard to believe it.  If anything, computers have become more disposable. Nobody seriously imagines that any digital device - from their cell phone to Watson, can tell the difference between being turned off and turned on. They can't tell, they don't care, there is no 'they' there. The number of circuits only matters of something cares about using them, and a computer does not care about anything.

Craig

 

Stephen Paul King

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Apr 18, 2013, 9:44:31 PM4/18/13
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Ummm, Craig, you couldn't tell if you were switched off and on unless you had environmental clues that time when by/shit moved around... I think that you are being a bit specist here. Computers are very much conscious, just not self-aware in  any way relatable to our experience of such.


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Craig Weinberg

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Apr 18, 2013, 11:45:54 PM4/18/13
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On Thursday, April 18, 2013 9:44:31 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Ummm, Craig, you couldn't tell if you were switched off and on unless you had environmental clues that time when by/shit moved around... I think that you are being a bit specist here. Computers are very much conscious, just not self-aware in  any way relatable to our experience of such.

No computer I have ever worked on has ever been conscious of anything that it is doing. Services do not know what each other are doing, none of the messages in the logs are meaningful to the computer itself. What the computer produces is only potentially meaningful to a user, and it produces nothing which is useful to itself. What I meant by a computer not knowing the difference between between being turned off and turned on is that it makes no difference to them - they can discern no preferred state - no computer wants to commit suicide so that it can be turned off.

It's so obviously the Pathetic fallacy to attribute consciousness to these representational systems that its hard for me to take the counterargument seriously. The counterargument seems to be nothing more than the assumption that since some generic, anesthetic mind-like functions can be simulated that consciousness itself should work the same way.

Craig

 

Stephen Paul King

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Apr 19, 2013, 7:41:52 AM4/19/13
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"No computer I have ever worked on has ever been conscious of anything that it is doing. "

Hi Craig,


Stephen Paul King

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Apr 19, 2013, 7:46:51 AM4/19/13
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"No computer I have ever worked on has ever been conscious of anything that it is doing. ..."

Hi Craig,

How could you possibly know this to be true or false? Consciousness is not 3p falsifiable! Seriously, Turing tests... LOL! Umm, I think that we all can safely ignore your post here as some kind of temporary reactionary insanity... maybe... or ???

Bruno Marchal

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Apr 19, 2013, 9:59:34 AM4/19/13
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On 18 Apr 2013, at 22:05, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, April 18, 2013 1:29:29 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
On 4/18/2013 8:15 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013  meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.

If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.  

That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability.  What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability.  There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction.  Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct.  But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species.  So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.

How does a deterministic universe invent something which is intentionally less than perfect? I'm not saying that it couldn't, or didn't, but why would there really even be any possibility of volatility built into physics in the first place? What, in a deterministic universe, constitutes an 'error'?


A deterministic reality might be unable to make an error at the "bottom level", but if it can emulate high level complex processes, like running some complex software, and such software can make an error with respect to the goal (like "survive"). Look at some youtube "crash investigation" showing why today some plane crash are due to computer errors. The error can have multiple origin, hardware or software.
Likewise it is reasonable for a biologist to say that when a DNA polymerase introduces an unwanted supplementary nucleotide, it is making an error. In fact living cells contains a lot of error correction code to handle such cases, with 'error' taken in a sense similar to the one used in computer science.  This illustrates that some errorless low-level can support higher level errors.

Bruno







Craig


Brent


Such a stress-mutation gene has never been found in a sexual animal and it's easy to see why. In sex all the genes are not inherited in one big package but are shuffled around with the genes of the other parent, so a animal that was lucky enough to inherit the good genes produced by the hypothetical stress-mutation gene but not the stress-mutation gene itself would do just as well or better than a animal that got both the good genes and the stress-mutation gene that is no longer active because the animal is no longer under stress. So even if such a stress-mutation gene did occur in one individual in a population it would vanish in just a few generations from the gene pool. Natural Selection doesn't figure  "I better keep that stress-mutation gene because even though there is no stress now that could change and such a gene might come in handy in the future".  Evolution has no foresight and can't think and all that matters to it is what's happening right here right now. 

  John K Clark

   



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John Mikes

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Apr 19, 2013, 11:59:10 AM4/19/13
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Craig - John - this is to the hard-to-identify last part of your combined and mixed post signed by John K C. about the 'consciousness' ("C") part. 
I know that intelligence is a requirement of consciousness, just identify intelligence appropriately.<G>. -  I like to indentify "i" with the Latin origin as 'inter-lego' (between the lines) tp consider more than properly expressed by the words used - maybe considering the 'meaning' represented by the 'name' (word, term) in the particular language - always more comprehensive than the general usage of a term. One may tailor-make "i"  to fit to a given 'meaning' used in one's own theory for "C". 
 
Otherwise:

I have "another method" maybe not to 'measure', but identify consciousness 
(at least the term as many talk about it): it is a response to relations. IMO definitely NOT a HUMAN ONLY (not even animal) characteristic. I try not to call it "C". 
I consider the "C" term useful for people tackling with human behavior and in need of a general term to 'name' a group of phenomena they need for it. 
I definitely refuse definitions like "you can FEEL it" or "you know it for sure". 
Relations? we may know 'some' - or THINK we know. We, for sure, don't know a lot of them since our knowledge is restricted (growing(?) over the millennia with no assurance to reach 'them all'). We don't even know WHAT items(?) exercise relations in the infinite complexity (which is beyond our capabilities to learn). 

Agnostically yours
John Mikes Ph.D., D.Sc.



On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 8:03 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

John Clark

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Apr 19, 2013, 1:08:00 PM4/19/13
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On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrot
> A deterministic reality

We don't know that reality is deterministic and in fact right now the overwhelming evidence very strongly suggests that it is not.   

> might be unable to make an error at the "bottom level", but if it can emulate high level complex processes, like running some complex software, and such software can make an error with respect to the goal (like "survive").

And the only things we have found that have goals are humans and some of the higher animals, there is not a scrap of evidence that anything else does including reality or the universe or the multiverse if such a thing turns out to exist. Thus although humans may like or dislike what the universe does (I personally dislike the ban on faster than light travel because Star Wars was cool) from the universe's point of view it can't do anything wrong, or anything right for that matter.

  John K Clark 

Craig Weinberg

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Apr 19, 2013, 1:52:51 PM4/19/13
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On Friday, April 19, 2013 9:59:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 18 Apr 2013, at 22:05, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, April 18, 2013 1:29:29 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
On 4/18/2013 8:15 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013  meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.

If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.  

That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability.  What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability.  There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction.  Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct.  But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species.  So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.

How does a deterministic universe invent something which is intentionally less than perfect? I'm not saying that it couldn't, or didn't, but why would there really even be any possibility of volatility built into physics in the first place? What, in a deterministic universe, constitutes an 'error'?


A deterministic reality might be unable to make an error at the "bottom level", but if it can emulate high level complex processes, like running some complex software, and such software can make an error with respect to the goal (like "survive"). Look at some youtube "crash investigation" showing why today some plane crash are due to computer errors. The error can have multiple origin, hardware or software.
Likewise it is reasonable for a biologist to say that when a DNA polymerase introduces an unwanted supplementary nucleotide, it is making an error. In fact living cells contains a lot of error correction code to handle such cases, with 'error' taken in a sense similar to the one used in computer science.  This illustrates that some errorless low-level can support higher level errors.

Bruno

It seems like you are bringing in empirical evidence of errors in the real world and using that to justify the expectation that at some point between low-level and high-level, this 'error' potential emerges as a condition of complexity.

What I am asking for though is precisely that this point be explained by theory. What is the theory of the emergence of the first error?

Craig
 

Bruno Marchal

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Apr 20, 2013, 3:51:10 AM4/20/13
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Hi John,


On 19 Apr 2013, at 17:59, John Mikes wrote:

Craig - John - this is to the hard-to-identify last part of your combined and mixed post signed by John K C. about the 'consciousness' ("C") part. 
I know that intelligence is a requirement of consciousness, just identify intelligence appropriately.<G>.

I tend to think that worms are conscious, that they can feel pain for example. I am not sure that it makes sense to say that they are intelligent. I think consciousness is the base of any subjectivity, and so is the most primitive subjective sense. May be you were talking about self-consciousness, which is something more elaborate.




-  I like to indentify "i" with the Latin origin as 'inter-lego' (between the lines) tp consider more than properly expressed by the words used - maybe considering the 'meaning' represented by the 'name' (word, term) in the particular language - always more comprehensive than the general usage of a term. One may tailor-make "i"  to fit to a given 'meaning' used in one's own theory for "C". 
 
Otherwise:

I have "another method" maybe not to 'measure', but identify consciousness 
(at least the term as many talk about it): it is a response to relations. IMO definitely NOT a HUMAN ONLY (not even animal) characteristic. I try not to call it "C". 
I consider the "C" term useful for people tackling with human behavior and in need of a general term to 'name' a group of phenomena they need for it. 
I definitely refuse definitions like "you can FEEL it" or "you know it for sure". 

Why? I do think that consciousness is the less doubtable thing we can live. Indeed to need it to doubt in a genuine way.

Bruno

Bruno Marchal

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Apr 20, 2013, 3:55:45 AM4/20/13
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On 19 Apr 2013, at 19:08, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrot
> A deterministic reality

We don't know that reality is deterministic and in fact right now the overwhelming evidence very strongly suggests that it is not.   

Everett restores determinacy in physics. The SWE's solutions are deterministic.
I don't think that physical indeterminacy makes sense, nor that it is something testable. 




> might be unable to make an error at the "bottom level", but if it can emulate high level complex processes, like running some complex software, and such software can make an error with respect to the goal (like "survive").

And the only things we have found that have goals are humans and some of the higher animals, there is not a scrap of evidence that anything else does including reality or the universe or the multiverse if such a thing turns out to exist. Thus although humans may like or dislike what the universe does (I personally dislike the ban on faster than light travel because Star Wars was cool) from the universe's point of view it can't do anything wrong, or anything right for that matter.

Indeed. Same for arithmetical truth a priori, from which the multiverse percolates in some sense.

Bruno




  John K Clark 


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Bruno Marchal

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Apr 20, 2013, 4:15:17 AM4/20/13
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On 19 Apr 2013, at 19:52, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Friday, April 19, 2013 9:59:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 18 Apr 2013, at 22:05, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, April 18, 2013 1:29:29 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
On 4/18/2013 8:15 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013  meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.

If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.  

That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability.  What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability.  There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction.  Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct.  But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species.  So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.

How does a deterministic universe invent something which is intentionally less than perfect? I'm not saying that it couldn't, or didn't, but why would there really even be any possibility of volatility built into physics in the first place? What, in a deterministic universe, constitutes an 'error'?


A deterministic reality might be unable to make an error at the "bottom level", but if it can emulate high level complex processes, like running some complex software, and such software can make an error with respect to the goal (like "survive"). Look at some youtube "crash investigation" showing why today some plane crash are due to computer errors. The error can have multiple origin, hardware or software.
Likewise it is reasonable for a biologist to say that when a DNA polymerase introduces an unwanted supplementary nucleotide, it is making an error. In fact living cells contains a lot of error correction code to handle such cases, with 'error' taken in a sense similar to the one used in computer science.  This illustrates that some errorless low-level can support higher level errors.

Bruno

It seems like you are bringing in empirical evidence of errors in the real world and using that to justify the expectation that at some point between low-level and high-level, this 'error' potential emerges as a condition of complexity.

OK.




What I am asking for though is precisely that this point be explained by theory. What is the theory of the emergence of the first error?

It is when god put the tree of knowledge in the garden :)

More seriously, it is when universal machine/number begins to refer and self-refer. That ability makes it possible to accelerate the computations relatively to each other, but entails the possiblity of error.

The deep reason is already contained in Gödel's second incompleteness: if I am consistent then it is consistent that I am inconsistent (Dt -> ~BDt). Simple but rich correct theories can be come inconsistent, or consistent but unsound. 

Bruno

Craig Weinberg

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Apr 20, 2013, 7:51:34 AM4/20/13
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On Saturday, April 20, 2013 4:15:17 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 19 Apr 2013, at 19:52, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Friday, April 19, 2013 9:59:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 18 Apr 2013, at 22:05, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, April 18, 2013 1:29:29 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
On 4/18/2013 8:15 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013  meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.

If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.  

That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability.  What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability.  There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction.  Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct.  But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species.  So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.

How does a deterministic universe invent something which is intentionally less than perfect? I'm not saying that it couldn't, or didn't, but why would there really even be any possibility of volatility built into physics in the first place? What, in a deterministic universe, constitutes an 'error'?


A deterministic reality might be unable to make an error at the "bottom level", but if it can emulate high level complex processes, like running some complex software, and such software can make an error with respect to the goal (like "survive"). Look at some youtube "crash investigation" showing why today some plane crash are due to computer errors. The error can have multiple origin, hardware or software.
Likewise it is reasonable for a biologist to say that when a DNA polymerase introduces an unwanted supplementary nucleotide, it is making an error. In fact living cells contains a lot of error correction code to handle such cases, with 'error' taken in a sense similar to the one used in computer science.  This illustrates that some errorless low-level can support higher level errors.

Bruno

It seems like you are bringing in empirical evidence of errors in the real world and using that to justify the expectation that at some point between low-level and high-level, this 'error' potential emerges as a condition of complexity.

OK.




What I am asking for though is precisely that this point be explained by theory. What is the theory of the emergence of the first error?

It is when god put the tree of knowledge in the garden :)

More seriously, it is when universal machine/number begins to refer and self-refer. That ability makes it possible to accelerate the computations relatively to each other, but entails the possiblity of error.

Why does it entail that possibility, i.e. how does 'error' become a possibility?
 

The deep reason is already contained in Gödel's second incompleteness: if I am consistent then it is consistent that I am inconsistent (Dt -> ~BDt). Simple but rich correct theories can be come inconsistent, or consistent but unsound. 

Not satisfying. A paradox does not automatically conjure a phenomena where determinism arbitrarily fails on a infrequent but quasi-inevitable basis.

Craig

John Clark

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Apr 20, 2013, 12:43:40 PM4/20/13
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On Sat, Apr 20, 2013  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> We don't know that reality is deterministic and in fact right now the overwhelming evidence very strongly suggests that it is not.   

> Everett restores determinacy in physics.

Yes, but although I like Everett I don't know for a fact that he is correct, and even if he is from our point of view things are still indeterminate because there is information that we can never obtain, not even in theory much less in practice.

> The SWE's solutions are deterministic.

Yes, but the Schrodinger Wave Equation does not describe physical reality, it describes the Quantum Wave Function. The Quantum Wave Function is very useful and so are the lines of latitude and longitude, and they both have equal physical reality. 

> I don't think that physical indeterminacy makes sense,

What law of logic demands that every event have a cause? I think we're lucky that we live in a universe where at least some events have causes, demanding that all of them do may be asking for too much; but of course if we weren't that lucky and lived in a completely random universe of white noise we wouldn't be around to demand anything.

> nor that it is something testable. 

If indeterminacy is not testable then neither is determinacy.

 John K Clark


Bruno Marchal

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Apr 20, 2013, 3:05:09 PM4/20/13
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On 20 Apr 2013, at 18:43, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Apr 20, 2013  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> We don't know that reality is deterministic and in fact right now the overwhelming evidence very strongly suggests that it is not.   

> Everett restores determinacy in physics.

Yes, but although I like Everett I don't know for a fact that he is correct,

We can't know truth, in science. 




and even if he is from our point of view things are still indeterminate because there is information that we can never obtain, not even in theory much less in practice.


No problem. That's the case for all creatures dreaming in Numberland.





> The SWE's solutions are deterministic.

Yes, but the Schrodinger Wave Equation does not describe physical reality, it describes the Quantum Wave Function. The Quantum Wave Function is very useful and so are the lines of latitude and longitude, and they both have equal physical reality. 

Yes. But its solution is the multiverse. Like latitude and longitude refers to relatively real part of the planet.





> I don't think that physical indeterminacy makes sense,

What law of logic demands that every event have a cause?

It is not a law of logic. It my intuition of the physical. Then with comp, it is plausible that all physical events have a cause, actually many competing one in the long run. And the laws of physics have a reason.

Believing that a physical events might not have a cause seems to me like believing in magic.

The law of logic are modest. 




I think we're lucky that we live in a universe where at least some events have causes, demanding that all of them do may be asking for too much;

I think that this is fatalism, and encourage the lazyness in thinking. Your philosophy is the type of philosophy which would have mock all tentative to explain things not yet understood. It favors the "don't ask" principle. 




but of course if we weren't that lucky and lived in a completely random universe of white noise we wouldn't be around to demand anything.

That's for quasi-sure.





> nor that it is something testable. 

If indeterminacy is not testable then neither is determinacy.

It depends on the theory. In a single world universe, both the theory (QM+collapse), and the facts, one universe + violation of Bell's inequality, entails 3-indeterminacy. Of course, MW restores 3-determinacy (leaving 1-indeterminacy only).

Bruno





 John K Clark



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Telmo Menezes

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Apr 20, 2013, 8:14:17 PM4/20/13
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On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 10:32 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 5:31 PM, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com>
> wrote:
>
>>> >> You may be pedantic about the use of anthropomorphic language but I am
>>> >> not.
>>
>>
>> > It can become distracting / misleading in deeper discussions about the
>> > mechanisms of evolution.
>
>
> I don't care, anybody who was mislead or distracted and believed Evolution
> could think would be so stupid that I wouldn't care to talk to them. And as
> you once said "who are you to say what's useful or not as a tool for other
> people to think and understand?".

Ok, I think this is getting a bit hostile and I apologise for my part
in that. John, I don't know you personally so I have nothing against
you. We're just debating ideas. Maybe you're a great guy and maybe I'm
a great guy. Maybe we're both idiots. Can we keep this discussion
light-hearted?

>>
>> > Emergence is just a way to connect different levels of abstraction.
>
>
> The trouble is people say X leads to Y but when asked how they just wave
> their hands around and say it's a emergent property, as if that explains
> something.

People also use the word "quantum" to sell self-help snake oil. That
does not invalidate QM. There is an entire field of physics, for
example, dedicated to studying emergence in a rigorous fashion --
statistical physics. It explains how local molecule interactions give
rise to pressure, for example. Or the emergence of ferromagnetism.
There's also mean field theory. Cellular automata show how simple
local rules can give rise to complexity, again in a well-defined
fashion. Artificial Life provides us with a number of computational
experiments that show life-like emergence. We know how social insects
like ants perform integration through simple local interactions and
pheromone trails. There's schelling's segregation model in social
science. It's not all wishy-washy stuff.

>> > What do you mean "useful"?
>
>
> I'm not going to tell you. Any definition I give you will be made of words
> and I have no doubt you would then demand a definition of at least one of
> those words.

It wasn't a trick question, but it's a valid one when someone invokes
utilitarianism -- a concept that can be dangerous, as History as shown
us a number of times. Science is undoubtfuly useful in providing
plausible theories for how the universe works (provided we understand
a priori assumptions). Also for generating new technologies. It even
helps me in understanding what I am, but only too a degree. The
missing part I don't understand bugs me. I love science too much not
to question it. Because, like you, I loathe religion.

>>>
>>> >> That's the trouble with this list, everybody is a big picture man with
>>> >> their own fundamental holistic theories about consciousness
>>>
>> > Isn't "big picture" the theme of this list?
>
>
> I thought the theme of this list was everything, and details are something.

Ok.

> Dilettantes are always big picture men because that is so much easier than
> being a details man; they are VERY big picture men, so big that their ideas
> have made absolutely no changes to science or to anything that anyone can
> measure.

Can one be both? I promise you, I spend most of my time on details.
Here I do as I please, until the list sends me a paycheck :)

>
>> > If consciousness is easier than intelligence
>
>
> Evolution certainly found that to be the case.

There is not scientific evidence whatsoever of this. Nor do I think it
can be. People like António Damásio (my compatriot) and other
neuroscientists confuse a machine's ability to recognise itself with
consciousness. This makes me wonder if some people are zombies.

>> > how come we have scientific progress in the latter and not in the
>> > former?
>
>
> Today's computers are smarter than they were 10 years ago so I think it is
> highly likely that they are more conscious too.

Computers are what they have always been, Turing machines with finite
tapes. The tapes are getting bigger, that's all. We have discovered
more algorithms.

> If you have another method
> for measuring consciousness other than intelligent behavior I would very
> much like to hear about it.

The lack of a method is not a reason to accept any alternative.
Measuring conscious by intelligent behaviour is mysticism, just like
believing that it rains because Zeus is peeing.

>> > how do you know that intelligence is a requirement of consciousness?
>
>
> The only consciousness I have direct experience with is my own and I note
> that when I'm sleepy my consciousness is reduced and so is my intelligence,
> when I'm alert the reverse is true.

I agree on intelligence, but I don't feel less conscious when I'm
sleepy. Just differently conscious. I'm a bit sleepy right now.

>>> > Somebody who puts "philosopher" in the occupation line on his tax form
>>
>>
>> Ok, I guess Plato and Aristotle and the rest of that gang are out then.
>
>
> Archimedes was a mathematician and he discovered more philosophy than Plato
> and Aristotle combined.

You have a personal bias for certain types of intellectual
contributions. I think Archimedes was a swell guy too.

Russell Standish

unread,
Apr 20, 2013, 8:54:24 PM4/20/13
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 02:09:28PM -0400, John Clark wrote:
> No because in a sexually reproducing animal the genes that make the error
> correcting machinery are inherited independently of the very genes that
> they have corrected, and the vast majority of mutations are detrimental not
> helpful. So in any generation the offspring of a animal with good error
> correcting machinery will almost always do better than offspring from a
> animal with poor correcting machinery. And even in the very rare cases
> where the mutation caused a improvement in a gene the animal will do better
> if it has the gene for the better error correcting machinery, because
> otherwise that good gene is likely to mutate again and this time the
> mutation will almost certainly be bad. As Richard Dawkins said in his
> wonderful book "Climbing Mount Improbable":
>
> "The predaliction to mutate is always bad, even though individual mutations
> occasionally turn out to be good. It is best, if more than a little
> paradoxical, to think of natural selection as favoring a mutation rate of
> zero. Fortunately for us, and for the continuance of evolution, this
> genetic nirvana is never quite attained."
>
> John K Clark

The evolving evolvability argument is that there may well be scenarios
where a higher mutation rate is selected for. The most extreme case is
the immune system, where the immune system needs to keep ahead of
evolving pathogens.

I think the reason Dawkins was so negative about the evolving
evolvability idea is that it necessarily is a form of group selection,
which has been consigned to scientific Siberia throughout the
seventies and eighties. An individual replicator never obtains an
advantage from high mutation rates.

However, with group selection having been rehabilited recently, I
wonder if Dawkins would be quite so hardline on this matter.


--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bruno Marchal

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Apr 21, 2013, 8:48:42 AM4/21/13
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 20 Apr 2013, at 13:51, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Saturday, April 20, 2013 4:15:17 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 19 Apr 2013, at 19:52, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Friday, April 19, 2013 9:59:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 18 Apr 2013, at 22:05, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, April 18, 2013 1:29:29 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
On 4/18/2013 8:15 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013  meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.

If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.  

That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability.  What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability.  There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction.  Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct.  But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species.  So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.

How does a deterministic universe invent something which is intentionally less than perfect? I'm not saying that it couldn't, or didn't, but why would there really even be any possibility of volatility built into physics in the first place? What, in a deterministic universe, constitutes an 'error'?


A deterministic reality might be unable to make an error at the "bottom level", but if it can emulate high level complex processes, like running some complex software, and such software can make an error with respect to the goal (like "survive"). Look at some youtube "crash investigation" showing why today some plane crash are due to computer errors. The error can have multiple origin, hardware or software.
Likewise it is reasonable for a biologist to say that when a DNA polymerase introduces an unwanted supplementary nucleotide, it is making an error. In fact living cells contains a lot of error correction code to handle such cases, with 'error' taken in a sense similar to the one used in computer science.  This illustrates that some errorless low-level can support higher level errors.

Bruno

It seems like you are bringing in empirical evidence of errors in the real world and using that to justify the expectation that at some point between low-level and high-level, this 'error' potential emerges as a condition of complexity.

OK.




What I am asking for though is precisely that this point be explained by theory. What is the theory of the emergence of the first error?

It is when god put the tree of knowledge in the garden :)

More seriously, it is when universal machine/number begins to refer and self-refer. That ability makes it possible to accelerate the computations relatively to each other, but entails the possiblity of error.

Why does it entail that possibility, i.e. how does 'error' become a possibility?

Not-provable False implies consistent (provable false).  Second incompleteness theorem of Gödel. If a machine is consistent, then it is consistent for that machine that she is inconsistent.

Notably (but need to be handle with care).



 

The deep reason is already contained in Gödel's second incompleteness: if I am consistent then it is consistent that I am inconsistent (Dt -> ~BDt). Simple but rich correct theories can be come inconsistent, or consistent but unsound. 

Not satisfying. A paradox does not automatically conjure a phenomena where determinism arbitrarily fails on a infrequent but quasi-inevitable basis.

It is not a paradox. It is a theorem of arithmetic.

Bruno

Bruno Marchal

unread,
Apr 21, 2013, 9:52:36 AM4/21/13
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
You are right, emergence is a fundamental notion. With comp we can
also tackle it with rigor.
Some people misused it, but then some people misused QM, as you say,
or Gödel, or theology, etc.



>
>>>> What do you mean "useful"?
>>
>>
>> I'm not going to tell you. Any definition I give you will be made
>> of words
>> and I have no doubt you would then demand a definition of at least
>> one of
>> those words.
>
> It wasn't a trick question, but it's a valid one when someone invokes
> utilitarianism -- a concept that can be dangerous, as History as shown
> us a number of times. Science is undoubtfuly useful in providing
> plausible theories for how the universe works (provided we understand
> a priori assumptions). Also for generating new technologies. It even
> helps me in understanding what I am, but only too a degree. The
> missing part I don't understand bugs me. I love science too much not
> to question it. Because, like you, I loathe religion.

Religion is what happens when people put theology out of science.





>
>>>>
>>>>>> That's the trouble with this list, everybody is a big picture
>>>>>> man with
>>>>>> their own fundamental holistic theories about consciousness
>>>>
>>>> Isn't "big picture" the theme of this list?
>>
>>
>> I thought the theme of this list was everything, and details are
>> something.
>
> Ok.
>
>> Dilettantes are always big picture men because that is so much
>> easier than
>> being a details man; they are VERY big picture men, so big that
>> their ideas
>> have made absolutely no changes to science or to anything that
>> anyone can
>> measure.
>
> Can one be both? I promise you, I spend most of my time on details.
> Here I do as I please, until the list sends me a paycheck :)
>
>>
>>>> If consciousness is easier than intelligence
>>
>>
>> Evolution certainly found that to be the case.
>
> There is not scientific evidence whatsoever of this. Nor do I think it
> can be. People like António Damásio (my compatriot) and other
> neuroscientists confuse a machine's ability to recognise itself with
> consciousness. This makes me wonder if some people are zombies.

Careful!
Some people don't think, but are still conscious, most plausibly. I
guess you were joking.
You are right about Damásio. he confuses [] p and (([] p & p).
Machines already know the nuances, when they look inward, and bet that
they are correct.




>
>>>> how come we have scientific progress in the latter and not in the
>>>> former?
>>
>>
>> Today's computers are smarter than they were 10 years ago so I
>> think it is
>> highly likely that they are more conscious too.
>
> Computers are what they have always been, Turing machines with finite
> tapes. The tapes are getting bigger, that's all. We have discovered
> more algorithms.
>
>> If you have another method
>> for measuring consciousness other than intelligent behavior I would
>> very
>> much like to hear about it.
>
> The lack of a method is not a reason to accept any alternative.
> Measuring conscious by intelligent behaviour is mysticism, just like
> believing that it rains because Zeus is peeing.
>
>>>> how do you know that intelligence is a requirement of
>>>> consciousness?
>>
>>
>> The only consciousness I have direct experience with is my own and
>> I note
>> that when I'm sleepy my consciousness is reduced and so is my
>> intelligence,
>> when I'm alert the reverse is true.
>
> I agree on intelligence, but I don't feel less conscious when I'm
> sleepy. Just differently conscious. I'm a bit sleepy right now.

That's something amazing with consciousness. It exists in different
modes. We are not trained to develop vigilance during sleep, but sleep
produces a lot of intriguing altered state of consciousness.




>
>>>>> Somebody who puts "philosopher" in the occupation line on his
>>>>> tax form
>>>
>>>
>>> Ok, I guess Plato and Aristotle and the rest of that gang are out
>>> then.
>>
>>
>> Archimedes was a mathematician and he discovered more philosophy
>> than Plato
>> and Aristotle combined.
>
> You have a personal bias for certain types of intellectual
> contributions. I think Archimedes was a swell guy too.

If John read those lines, he might be kind enough to tell us what
Archimedes, who was a great mathematician and physicist, discovered
in philosophy. Plato and Aristotle discovered and shaped the modern
science.

Bruno



>
> Telmo.
>
>> John K Clark
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
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>> Groups
>> "Everything List" group.
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>> send an
>> email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
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>> li...@googlegroups.com.
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>>
>>
>
> --
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>

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



Stephen Paul King

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Apr 21, 2013, 12:25:26 PM4/21/13
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
Hi Telmo,

Could it be that, as usual, each of us are using a different dictionary of definitions of words? What is "science", what is "religion"...... Round and round we go! ISTM that consciousness per se is completely and totally 1p and anything that involves reporting on its content is not consciousness.

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Telmo Menezes

unread,
Apr 21, 2013, 12:40:54 PM4/21/13
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
Bruno, I'm still not sure I understand your definition of theology. Is
it the same as metaphysics?

>
>
>
>
>
>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>> That's the trouble with this list, everybody is a big picture man
>>>>>>> with
>>>>>>> their own fundamental holistic theories about consciousness
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Isn't "big picture" the theme of this list?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I thought the theme of this list was everything, and details are
>>> something.
>>
>>
>> Ok.
>>
>>> Dilettantes are always big picture men because that is so much easier
>>> than
>>> being a details man; they are VERY big picture men, so big that their
>>> ideas
>>> have made absolutely no changes to science or to anything that anyone can
>>> measure.
>>
>>
>> Can one be both? I promise you, I spend most of my time on details.
>> Here I do as I please, until the list sends me a paycheck :)
>>
>>>
>>>>> If consciousness is easier than intelligence
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Evolution certainly found that to be the case.
>>
>>
>> There is not scientific evidence whatsoever of this. Nor do I think it
>> can be. People like António Damásio (my compatriot) and other
>> neuroscientists confuse a machine's ability to recognise itself with
>> consciousness. This makes me wonder if some people are zombies.
>
>
> Careful!
> Some people don't think, but are still conscious, most plausibly. I guess
> you were joking.

I meant the opposite: people who think but are not conscious. I'm half-joking.

> You are right about Damásio. he confuses [] p and (([] p & p).

Not sure I understand. Doesn't []p => p ?
Yes, it's so frustrating to not be able to come back with the full memories.

Telmo.

>
>
>
>
>>
>>>>>> Somebody who puts "philosopher" in the occupation line on his tax
>>>>>> form
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Ok, I guess Plato and Aristotle and the rest of that gang are out then.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Archimedes was a mathematician and he discovered more philosophy than
>>> Plato
>>> and Aristotle combined.
>>
>>
>> You have a personal bias for certain types of intellectual
>> contributions. I think Archimedes was a swell guy too.
>
>
> If John read those lines, he might be kind enough to tell us what
> Archimedes, who was a great mathematician and physicist, discovered in
> philosophy. Plato and Aristotle discovered and shaped the modern science.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
>>
>> Telmo.
>>
>>> John K Clark
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> 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.
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>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "Everything List" group.
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>> email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
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>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>>
>>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
> --
> 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
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