Best lecture (so far) on 'consciousness'

[Philip Thrift]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FHLjHC-soU

"there is no conflict between a ‘hard-nosed’ physicalist/materialist/naturalistic scientific approach to the world and all-out belief in the reality of consciousness, conscious experience, good old fashioned qualia - whatever you want to call it or them"

-- Galen Strawson

@philpthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

I am not sure that there is no conflict there,  even with a non-mechanist theory of mind. But with mechanism, and most of its weakening, there is a conflict, as the physicalist position stop to make any sense (see my papers for the proof of this, or ask me). 

With mechanism, we have a precise mathematical theory of consciousness and qualia, and it is testable as the quanta are explained by a subtheory of the qualia. In fact quanta are almost entirely characterised by being sharable quanta.

Bruno

@philpthrift

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[Brent Meeker]

I quite agree with Strawson that physics, and science in general, doesn't tell us about the ding und sich of consciousness or anything else.  But I notice that he completely avoids any similar level description or definition of qualia.  Over and over he says "You know what I mean."  So his denial adds nothing.  In contrast the idea that consciousness is a particular kind of computation does lead somewhere...it leads to AI and analysis and possibly even repair of brains.  It leads to consciousness engineering.

The student questions are quite good...better than Strawson's answers.

Brent

[Philip Thrift]

I agree completely with Strawson that the type of qualia-free computational approach suggested by some is nothing but zombieism.

All the viable computational frameworks (like Donald Hoffmann's) - when closely examined - depend on this:

Conscious agent networks:

Formal analysis and application to cognition

http://cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/CA-circuits-CSR-rev.pdf

The CA framework says nothing about the nature of experience. It says nothing about qualia; it simply assumes that qualia exist, that agents experience them, and that they can be tokened.

 

There would have to be "revolution" (or at least "updating") in the current scientific vocabulary of physics - the vocabulary conventionally written in 2020 - to match the Strawson view. (CHIMP: consciousnessive hypo-intrinsic massless particle). But that is perfectly OK, since physics or any science - as written - is not a fixed catechism, like the Ten Commandments written in stone for Moses.

(I am not quite happy with Bruno's response, but it is better.)

@philipthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

On 4 Apr 2020, at 22:33, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I quite agree with Strawson that physics, and science in general, doesn't tell us about the ding und sich of consciousness or anything else.  But I notice that he completely avoids any similar level description or definition of qualia.  Over and over he says "You know what I mean."  So his denial adds nothing.  In contrast the idea that consciousness is a particular kind of computation does lead somewhere...it leads to AI and analysis and possibly even repair of brains.  It leads to consciousness engineering.

The student questions are quite good...better than Strawson's answers.

Same opinion. 

I would say that physics does not study consciousness, per se. It is not in its subject matter. But science can study consciousness and, actually, can be done in all domains. It is just the retrieval of metaphysics/theology from science which makes us believe that there subject out of science. Those subset are out of science to prevent people understanding the tyran tricks, a bit like cannabis is out of science, to steal money with inefficacious and expensive products instead.

And you are right, the assumption that consciousness is preserved through digital functional substitution at some level does have many sort of observable consequences, from the plausibility of AI to quantum-like principle in Nature.

Bruno

Brent

On 4/4/2020 1:07 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FHLjHC-soU

"there is no conflict between a ‘hard-nosed’ physicalist/materialist/naturalistic scientific approach to the world and all-out belief in the reality of consciousness, conscious experience, good old fashioned qualia - whatever you want to call it or them"

-- Galen Strawson

@philpthrift

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 5 Apr 2020, at 01:11, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

I agree completely with Strawson that the type of qualia-free computational approach suggested by some is nothing but zombieism.

The whole point of incompleteness is that it assures that the logic of []p & p, which is undefinable by the machine about itself, obeys a different logic than the logic of []p, which is qualia-free indeed. But machines knows that, and eventually learn to distinguish []p (the virtual body) from []p & p, the logic of the soul. That difference is what the machine needs to understand the difference between I (full of directly accessible qualia) and you (where I need my intellect to attribute, or not, some qualia to a (third) person.

All the viable computational frameworks (like Donald Hoffmann's) - when closely examined - depend on this:

Conscious agent networks:

Formal analysis and application to cognition

http://cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/CA-circuits-CSR-rev.pdf

The CA framework says nothing about the nature of experience. It says nothing about qualia; it simply assumes that qualia exist, that agents experience them, and that they can be tokened.

 

There would have to be "revolution" (or at least "updating") in the current scientific vocabulary of physics - the vocabulary conventionally written in 2020 - to match the Strawson view. (CHIMP: consciousnessive hypo-intrinsic massless particle). But that is perfectly OK, since physics or any science - as written - is not a fixed catechism, like the Ten Commandments written in stone for Moses.

(I am not quite happy with Bruno's response, but it is better.)

I agree that the CA miss the point. But Strawson evade the interesting questions, and he seems to miss the fact that computer science does provide the tools to address such questions, at least if we bet on Mechanism (like Darwin). To use Chalmers’ expression, Strawson and CA only agrees the simple “consciousness” problem, and avoid the hard problem, that is the metaphysical mind-body problem.

Bruno

@philipthrift

On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 3:33:49 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

I quite agree with Strawson that physics, and science in general, doesn't tell us about the ding und sich of consciousness or anything else.  But I notice that he completely avoids any similar level description or definition of qualia.  Over and over he says "You know what I mean."  So his denial adds nothing.  In contrast the idea that consciousness is a particular kind of computation does lead somewhere...it leads to AI and analysis and possibly even repair of brains.  It leads to consciousness engineering.

The student questions are quite good...better than Strawson's answers.

Brent

On 4/4/2020 1:07 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FHLjHC-soU

"there is no conflict between a ‘hard-nosed’ physicalist/materialist/naturalistic scientific approach to the world and all-out belief in the reality of consciousness, conscious experience, good old fashioned qualia - whatever you want to call it or them"

-- Galen Strawson

@philpthrift

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[Philip Thrift]

On Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 7:26:02 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 4 Apr 2020, at 22:33, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I quite agree with Strawson that physics, and science in general, doesn't tell us about the ding und sich of consciousness or anything else.  But I notice that he completely avoids any similar level description or definition of qualia.  Over and over he says "You know what I mean."  So his denial adds nothing.  In contrast the idea that consciousness is a particular kind of computation does lead somewhere...it leads to AI and analysis and possibly even repair of brains.  It leads to consciousness engineering.

The student questions are quite good...better than Strawson's answers.

Same opinion. 

I would say that physics does not study consciousness, per se. It is not in its subject matter. But science can study consciousness and, actually, can be done in all domains. It is just the retrieval of metaphysics/theology from science which makes us believe that there subject out of science. Those subset are out of science to prevent people understanding the tyran tricks, a bit like cannabis is out of science, to steal money with inefficacious and expensive products instead.

And you are right, the assumption that consciousness is preserved through digital functional substitution at some level does have many sort of observable consequences, from the plausibility of AI to quantum-like principle in Nature.

Bruno

Except for a few (Penrose, Koch, Hoffman, Matloff, ...) the scientists weigh in on consciousness do not actually think consciousness exists (in a Strawsonian, Russellian, ...) way. 

As you may have read already, Sabine Hossenfelder's recent comments demonstrates this:

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/04/what-is-emergence-what-means-emergent.html

There is no reason to think that [consciousness is not measurable] is the case. Indeed, scientists are devising ways of measuring consciousness as we speak.

Of course ["feeling"] is observable, provided you can accurately monitor the brain. This is not even a matter of debate any more. Scientists *do* monitor people's feelings.

[The] brain is made of particles and physicists know what these particles do very well. Hence, they have a theory for the brain; end of story. If you want to invent something that is not contained in their theory already, you are claiming that particle physics are wrong. It's called the causal exclusion argument, please look it up.

@philipthrift

[Philip Thrift]

On Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 7:35:11 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 5 Apr 2020, at 01:11, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

I agree completely with Strawson that the type of qualia-free computational approach suggested by some is nothing but zombieism.

The whole point of incompleteness is that it assures that the logic of []p & p, which is undefinable by the machine about itself, obeys a different logic than the logic of []p, which is qualia-free indeed. But machines knows that, and eventually learn to distinguish []p (the virtual body) from []p & p, the logic of the soul. That difference is what the machine needs to understand the difference between I (full of directly accessible qualia) and you (where I need my intellect to attribute, or not, some qualia to a (third) person.

All the viable computational frameworks (like Donald Hoffmann's) - when closely examined - depend on this:

Conscious agent networks:

Formal analysis and application to cognition

http://cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/CA-circuits-CSR-rev.pdf

The CA framework says nothing about the nature of experience. It says nothing about qualia; it simply assumes that qualia exist, that agents experience them, and that they can be tokened.

 

There would have to be "revolution" (or at least "updating") in the current scientific vocabulary of physics - the vocabulary conventionally written in 2020 - to match the Strawson view. (CHIMP: consciousnessive hypo-intrinsic massless particle). But that is perfectly OK, since physics or any science - as written - is not a fixed catechism, like the Ten Commandments written in stone for Moses.

(I am not quite happy with Bruno's response, but it is better.)

I agree that the CA miss the point. But Strawson evade the interesting questions, and he seems to miss the fact that computer science does provide the tools to address such questions, at least if we bet on Mechanism (like Darwin). To use Chalmers’ expression, Strawson and CA only agrees the simple “consciousness” problem, and avoid the hard problem, that is the metaphysical mind-body problem.

Bruno

To adopt a numerical framing, the qualia are either computable numbers

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_number

(the traditional AI approach is with computable numbers) or they are uncomputable numbers - which are numbers that are not computable! (Simple enough.) 

There Roger Penrose says as much, after this point.

>

@58min

(approx.) Penrose: quantum-state "collapse" produces proto-consciousness, the opposite of consciousness produces the "collapse" "Roger Penrose: Physics of Consciousness and the Infinite Universe | AI Podcast #85 with Lex Fridman" on YouTube https://youtu.be/orMtwOz6Db0

@philipthrift 

[Telmo Menezes]

On Sun, Apr 5, 2020, at 13:18, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 7:26:02 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 4 Apr 2020, at 22:33, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I quite agree with Strawson that physics, and science in general, doesn't tell us about the ding und sich of consciousness or anything else.  But I notice that he completely avoids any similar level description or definition of qualia.  Over and over he says "You know what I mean."  So his denial adds nothing.  In contrast the idea that consciousness is a particular kind of computation does lead somewhere...it leads to AI and analysis and possibly even repair of brains.  It leads to consciousness engineering.

The student questions are quite good...better than Strawson's answers.

Same opinion. 

I would say that physics does not study consciousness, per se. It is not in its subject matter. But science can study consciousness and, actually, can be done in all domains. It is just the retrieval of metaphysics/theology from science which makes us believe that there subject out of science. Those subset are out of science to prevent people understanding the tyran tricks, a bit like cannabis is out of science, to steal money with inefficacious and expensive products instead.

And you are right, the assumption that consciousness is preserved through digital functional substitution at some level does have many sort of observable consequences, from the plausibility of AI to quantum-like principle in Nature.

Bruno

Except for a few (Penrose, Koch, Hoffman, Matloff, ...) the scientists weigh in on consciousness do not actually think consciousness exists (in a Strawsonian, Russellian, ...) way. 

As you may have read already, Sabine Hossenfelder's recent comments demonstrates this:

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/04/what-is-emergence-what-means-emergent.html

There is no reason to think that [consciousness is not measurable] is the case. Indeed, scientists are devising ways of measuring consciousness as we speak.

Of course ["feeling"] is observable, provided you can accurately monitor the brain. This is not even a matter of debate any more. Scientists *do* monitor people's feelings.

People have always been able to monitor other people's feelings, for example by observing facial expressions. Do you figure there is some fundamental difference between observing muscular contraction correlates with reported feelings and observing neural activity correlates with reported feelings?

Another question I have for you is this: is your computer conscious? And the follow-up question (whatever the answer) is: how do you know?

Telmo.

[The] brain is made of particles and physicists know what these particles do very well. Hence, they have a theory for the brain; end of story. If you want to invent something that is not contained in their theory already, you are claiming that particle physics are wrong. It's called the causal exclusion argument, please look it up.

@philipthrift

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[Philip Thrift]

If your computer was conscious as you are, then you should not turn it off, at least permanenty - never to turn it on again. Ending its elexrical flow would be like ending the blood flow to your brain.

The computer would not like that for itself, as you would not like that for yourself.

@philipthrift

[ronaldheld]

Watched the entire video, but do not know what to make of it.   It cannot be because I am a physicalist .   Could it be his use of language and definitions are imprecise?

[Brent Meeker]

On 4/5/2020 7:53 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:

There Roger Penrose says as much, after this point.

>

@58min

(approx.) Penrose: quantum-state "collapse" produces proto-consciousness, the opposite of consciousness produces the "collapse" "Roger Penrose: Physics of Consciousness and the Infinite Universe | AI Podcast #85 with Lex Fridman" on YouTube https://youtu.be/orMtwOz6Db0

@philipthrift 

I get a "! Video unavailable"

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

There are many levels of consciousness.  They don't all include
self-consciousness.  Depending on its program it's unlikely that your
personal computer is self-aware or has any preference for being on in
the future.

Brent

[Philip Thrift]

The link works fine in my Chrome browser,

Alternative link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orMtwOz6Db0

@philipthrift 

[Bruno Marchal]

On 5 Apr 2020, at 15:18, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 7:26:02 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 4 Apr 2020, at 22:33, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I quite agree with Strawson that physics, and science in general, doesn't tell us about the ding und sich of consciousness or anything else.  But I notice that he completely avoids any similar level description or definition of qualia.  Over and over he says "You know what I mean."  So his denial adds nothing.  In contrast the idea that consciousness is a particular kind of computation does lead somewhere...it leads to AI and analysis and possibly even repair of brains.  It leads to consciousness engineering.

The student questions are quite good...better than Strawson's answers.

Same opinion. 

I would say that physics does not study consciousness, per se. It is not in its subject matter. But science can study consciousness and, actually, can be done in all domains. It is just the retrieval of metaphysics/theology from science which makes us believe that there subject out of science. Those subset are out of science to prevent people understanding the tyran tricks, a bit like cannabis is out of science, to steal money with inefficacious and expensive products instead.

And you are right, the assumption that consciousness is preserved through digital functional substitution at some level does have many sort of observable consequences, from the plausibility of AI to quantum-like principle in Nature.

Bruno

Except for a few (Penrose, Koch, Hoffman, Matloff, ...) the scientists weigh in on consciousness do not actually think consciousness exists (in a Strawsonian, Russellian, ...) way. 

Here Penrose is more lucid than many scientists. 

As you may have read already, Sabine Hossenfelder's recent comments demonstrates this:

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/04/what-is-emergence-what-means-emergent.html

There is no reason to think that [consciousness is not measurable] is the case. Indeed, scientists are devising ways of measuring consciousness as we speak.

The problem with assuming a physical reality, in metaphysics, is that we have to abandon Mechanism, and the mathematical logic approach to consciousness and matter-appearances. If we keep Mechanism, then the physical universe has to be endowed with magical attributes whose must be capable of selecting some computations, or sheaves of computations, to make them able to support consciousness, leading to infinitely many zombies in arithmetic, but also to … non mechanism.

Of course ["feeling"] is observable, provided you can accurately monitor the brain. This is not even a matter of debate any more. Scientists *do* monitor people's feelings.

They bet on correlations. We all do that when seeing people. We are literally programmed to do that. I have assisted to a cheater presentation which included a very cute expressive tiny robot, and the public was outraged when he was bullied and tortured. Even for those who knew that the program was rather simple, it was hard not get emotions, and it was hard not to attribute some feeling to the robot, even when understanding the program and knowing that this was not quite plausible. Children attribute emotions to their toys. There is no simple 3p criteria to attribute, or not, consciousness to another, or to anything desired in a pure 3p way. That’s part of the problem. The existence of correlation is not an explanation. But the (universal, Löbian) machine is already aware that she will never been able to prove in a definite way that she is conscious.

[The] brain is made of particles

That is an assumption, which eventually has to be abandoned when we work in the Mechanist theory.

and physicists know what these particles do very well.

May be. But “doing” is not enough when handling qualia and consciousness. Again, that is part of the problem. I have known a case of someone in a comatose state, and the physicians around debated a very long time if that person was conscious or not.

Hence, they have a theory for the brain; end of story.

That’s a Mike Spencer type of argument. "There was a bit crowd at Trump inaugural presentation, period”.

End of story? The story has not yet begun, Imo.

If you want to invent something that is not contained in their theory already, you are claiming that particle physics are wrong.

Particle physics might be 100% correct in physics, and 100% false in metaphysics. That should be the case with mechanism, with a general sense of particle, like relative singularity in a quantum field, or a quantum “superstring”. 

Mechanism seems to lead to a sort of string theory.

It's called the causal exclusion argument, please look it up.

When doing metaphysics, we must carefully not add anything in the ontology that is not needed. With Digital Mechanism, we need to explain the physical from the psychology of the numbers, and up to now, it works, and not only that, if we assume a richer ontology, we get an inflation of absurd predictions.

My argument shows that we cannot have both primitive matter (having a role in consciousness including material appearance) and Digital Mechanism. If you disagree somewhere in the argument, let us address this. Referring to the Aristotelian literature will just beg the question.

If you are OK with mechanism, you need to explain me why a computation realised by the arithmetical truth can be dismissed in the measure on all computations (which are *all* realised in Arithmetic). That does not make sense. That put some magic in matter, but then how can I know if my doctor take that magic into account, and if he did, then it is Turing emulated already in arithmetic, or mechanism is false.

Bruno

@philipthrift

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 5 Apr 2020, at 16:53, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 7:35:11 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 5 Apr 2020, at 01:11, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

I agree completely with Strawson that the type of qualia-free computational approach suggested by some is nothing but zombieism.

The whole point of incompleteness is that it assures that the logic of []p & p, which is undefinable by the machine about itself, obeys a different logic than the logic of []p, which is qualia-free indeed. But machines knows that, and eventually learn to distinguish []p (the virtual body) from []p & p, the logic of the soul. That difference is what the machine needs to understand the difference between I (full of directly accessible qualia) and you (where I need my intellect to attribute, or not, some qualia to a (third) person.

All the viable computational frameworks (like Donald Hoffmann's) - when closely examined - depend on this:

Conscious agent networks:

Formal analysis and application to cognition

http://cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/CA-circuits-CSR-rev.pdf

The CA framework says nothing about the nature of experience. It says nothing about qualia; it simply assumes that qualia exist, that agents experience them, and that they can be tokened.

 

There would have to be "revolution" (or at least "updating") in the current scientific vocabulary of physics - the vocabulary conventionally written in 2020 - to match the Strawson view. (CHIMP: consciousnessive hypo-intrinsic massless particle). But that is perfectly OK, since physics or any science - as written - is not a fixed catechism, like the Ten Commandments written in stone for Moses.

(I am not quite happy with Bruno's response, but it is better.)

I agree that the CA miss the point. But Strawson evade the interesting questions, and he seems to miss the fact that computer science does provide the tools to address such questions, at least if we bet on Mechanism (like Darwin). To use Chalmers’ expression, Strawson and CA only agrees the simple “consciousness” problem, and avoid the hard problem, that is the metaphysical mind-body problem.

Bruno

To adopt a numerical framing, the qualia are either computable numbers

We cannot identify a first person notion with anything third person describable. Consciousness belongs to the type “truth”, and cannot be defined by the machine concerned. Consciousness is not a third person notion.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_number

(the traditional AI approach is with computable numbers) or they are uncomputable numbers - which are numbers that are not computable! (Simple enough.) 

There Roger Penrose says as much, after this point.

>

@58min

(approx.) Penrose: quantum-state "collapse" produces proto-consciousness, the opposite of consciousness produces the "collapse" "Roger Penrose: Physics of Consciousness and the Infinite Universe | AI Podcast #85 with Lex Fridman" on YouTube https://youtu.be/orMtwOz6Db0

@philipthrift 

Penrose has lost his credibility on consciousness by misapplying Gödel’s theorem. There is a relation between consciousness and the quantum, but it is the “other way round”:  the conceptually simple theory of consciousness provided already by the universal machine explains the quantum appearances, and it explains the qualia first person experience, their non definability, their non provability, but also the fact that it is indubitable immediate knowledge, and this by using only elementary mathematics, and the most standard definition in the field, brought by Theaetetus and the neopmlatonicians.

Bruno

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[Philip Benjamin]

[Galen Strawson]

"There is no conflict between a ‘hard-nosed’ physicalist /materialist/ naturalistic scientific approach to the world and all-out belief in the reality of consciousness, conscious experience, good old fashioned qualia - whatever you want to call it or them".

[Philip Benjamin]

Conflict? Naturalism? Materialism? Consciousness? None of these terms actually belong the realm of science. Conflict involves the issues of meaning, origin, causality, aseity, infinite regress etc. which are all essentially philosophic or theological or religious matters. Naturalism/ materialism ought to be redefined in the light of dark-matter and its possible chemistry. The difference between bio dark-matter and astrophysical dark-matter is that between bio light-matter (92+ elements) and astrophysical light-matter (largely H & He). The candidates for bio dark-matter with its bio dark-matter chemistry are possibly axions, monopoles and neutrinos (all with masses negligible w.r.t electrons). The ratios of these masses within a bio dark-matter atom will be the same as those of bio light-matter atom.

            Nobody (other than perhaps the brilliant and clever Swami Vivekananda, the uninvited speaker at 1895 Chicago Parliament of Religions) knows what consciousness is. Is it the unknown Yin-Yang of Tao, or the Atman-Brahman of Eastern Mysticism?

    The unbridgeable Rudyard Kiplinger gap between East and West is that between an un-awakened (dead) pagan consciousness and awakened (quickened) non-pagan consciousness. (Pagan is derived from Pan-Gaia-n, earthlings or earth worshippers). That difference is exemplified in the instant transformation of a “dead” consciousness of the Phoenician pagan profligate Augustine of Hippo (the chief architect of modern Western ethos) into the non-pagan “quickened” consciousness through the instrumentality of Romans 13:13 via the “accidental” singing of a little girl! (https://www.midwestaugustinians.org/conversion-of-st-augustine).

The WAMP (Western Acade-Media Pagan/Paganism) fails to recognize is the Augustinian acceptance of Protoevangelium (Genesis 3:15) as interpreted by Rabbi Saul of Tarsus in Romans fifth chapter. It is that “quickening” which led Augustine to “identify” the Platonic concept of Unmoved Mover as the Adonai (plural) YHWH (singular) Elohim (uni-plural), which has Patriarchal, Prophetic and Apostolic authority. That is the beginning of rationalistic Augustinian West.  

Evidentialist

Philip Benjamin      

@philpthrift .

[smitra]

When we dream we can experience nonsensical things that we usually only
recognize as nonsensical when we are awake. The state of consciousness
during a dream should therefore be consistent with a wide range of
different versions of me in the multiverse. These different versions
will have slightly different experiences that can cause exactly the same
reduced consciousness during a dream. This merger of inexact copies will
then cause unlikely chance events to be erased. So, if I've won the
lottery and go to sleep, I should expect to wake up as the version of me
who didn't win the lottery.

Saibal

[Stathis Papaioannou]

By extension there are low level states of consciousness, such as the first moments of waking up, which are consistent with the experience of a large number of humans, and I would therefore merge with those humans and more likely wake up as one of the more common ones, in China or India rather than Australia, where I currently find myself.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 6 Apr 2020, at 19:45, smitra <smi...@zonnet.nl> wrote:
>
> When we dream we can experience nonsensical things that we usually only recognize as nonsensical when we are awake. The state of consciousness during a dream should therefore be consistent with a wide range of different versions of me in the multiverse. These different versions will have slightly different experiences that can cause exactly the same reduced consciousness during a dream. This merger of inexact copies will then cause unlikely chance events to be erased. So, if I've won the lottery and go to sleep, I should expect to wake up as the version of me who didn't win the lottery.

It seems to me that with this reasoning we should expect to wake up as a bacteria, if not the “virgin” universal machine itself, and sleeping might be irrelevant. Then we can expect to go to heaven, or hell, at any times.

I am still unable to interview the machine on the experience of duplication: MW_2 (say) where we are duplicate in three exemplars, one in Moscow, and two strictly identical in Washington (better to be thought as being virtual to assure perfect numerical identities). Most people agree that if the two copies in Washington differ we get P(M) = 1/3, but what if they don’t? Should it be 1/2?

The mathematics of self-reference is not yet advanced enough to answer this. That’s the problem when we extract everything from the machine’s theory of self-reference, but it is the only way to keep clearly the difference between the quanta and the qualia.

The existence of the measure is (plausibly) provable in ZF + some large cardinal axiom. But the actual computation of that measure might remain for long intractable. It could be quantum-tractable only.

As far as I know, your reasoning could correct. Our "limit life” would be abnormal normal, but that might converge to the life of bacteria …

What you say is a consequence of your idea of near death backtracking. Possible, but a quite open problem to me. The answer is in qG* and its variants, though, but that is not (yet) tractable.


Bruno






>
> Saibal

>
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[smitra]

Yes, but the question is then if the definition of "you" that includes
Chinese people would be reasonable. If you think of yourself as a
program that processes data, then while all tat data does end up
redefining the program, there is a sort of coarse grained notion of the
program that's defined by the bulk of the data it has been processing
since it came into existence. One can then talk in a meaningful way
about the same program processing data X or data Y. So, you can have the
experience of having won the lottery, and the same "you" could also have
experienced not winning the lottery.

Saibal