Towards Conscious AI Systems

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John Clark

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Dec 6, 2018, 3:20:33 PM12/6/18
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On Wed, Dec 5, 2018 at 12:59 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> Your theory is a working Turing Machine can be made without using matter or physics,
 
> No. My hypothesis is that we can survive with a digital brain.

But, at least until recently, you maintained that a digital brain can exist without matter or physics; if you have changed your mind about that we have nothing more to argue about. 

> physics cannot assume Aristotle [...]

Physics CAN safely assume that neither Aristotle nor any other ancient Greek fossil can be of the slightest help in answering modern cutting edge scientific questions. 

>  What you say is a fuzzy and quite misleading rephrasing of a theorem (not a theory).

What I say is SHOW Me this mystical Turing Machine of yours that doesn't need matter or physics make a calculation, don't tell me about it, don't claim to have a proof about it, just SHOW ME it making a calculation. And there is nothing fuzzy about that request.  

> You confuse phi_x(y) with phi_u(x,y).

That's not as bad as being confused about what you just proved even after you've finished correctly manipulating all the symbols in the proof.

>> In 1931 Godel knew nothing about Turing Machines.
  
> Gödel still showed the arithmization of all partial computable function, by showing the arithmetisation of the primitive recursive functions,

That shows that some symbols that humans (who are made of matter and obey physics) have assigned meaning to are equivalent to other symbols humans have assigned meaning to.

>  He just missed the Markov-Post-Kleene-Church-Turing thesis.

Did you know that of all the people that have extended his work Godel thought Turing's was the most profound? He had more respect for Turing than Church even though Church independently solved the halting problem a few months before Turing because in the process of solving it Turing told us something new about the physical world that Church did not.

>   Just look into a mirror. You will see one. Well, you will see an image of one. I can’t do better.

I have no doubt that is true, you can't do better, and that's not nearly good enough. I requested a working Turing machine that does not make use of matter or physics, and obviously the thing in the mirror is observable or the mirror wouldn't work, and it's made of matter that obeys the laws of physics.
 
>  A Turing machine is a finite set of quadruplets.

If that's what "Turing Machine" means in Brunospeak then a "Turing Machine" is a very boring thing because a "finite set of quadruplets" can't change in time or space unless a mathematician, who is made of matter and obeys physics, changes it. Nothing changes without matter and physics.  

>  It does not belong to the category of the observable thing.

OK, you're un-observable Turing Machine can make calculations without matter or physics, but that's nothing, my un-observable angel who likes to dance on the head of a pin can compute non-computable functions like the Busy Beaver. My my un-observable thing can beat your observable thing!

>  > Turing machine are not physical object.

And that's why what you (and nobody else) calls a "Turing Machine" can't DO anything, only physical stuff can change in time or space.  

> You are the one having introduced “observable Turing machine”.

Yes indeed, and I did that because unlike you I am a fan of the scientific method.

only a physical implementation can make something observable.

Yep, and that's not the only advantage, only a physical implementation can make something change in time or space, and without change you can't have calculation or intelligence or consciousness or DO anything at all.

>> all I ask is that it be observable and able to make a calculation without using matter or physics; and it need not be complicated, 2+2 would be good enough.

But this I did answer already two times. Come on! It is done in all textbooks.

TEXTBOOKS CAN'T CALCULATE, and the reason they can't is that the sequence of symbols in them never changes.

>  and see page 62 its implementation in arithmetic.

Page 62 can't calculate any better than the  entire textbook can. Your problem is even if you are able to follow all the steps in a proof after you've finished all the steps you don't have a deep understanding of exactly what it is that you just proved.

>  You attack me like people who says that the simulation of a typhoon cannot make me wet.

A simulation of a typhoon can't make me wet but it can DO other things, like produce a display on a computer monitor screen, but your airy fairy unobservable "Turing Machine" that makes no use of matter or physics can not DO anything to anyone or anything because it never changes.  

>   a tiny art of the arithmetical reality (model, semantic) is Turing complete, arithmetic simulates the typhoon

Arithmetical reality can't simulate diddly squat without a computer made of matter that obeys the laws of physics.

> *That* is the Aristotelian credo.

Given your great love for ancient fossils and extinct things you should have gone into paleontology rather than mathematics 

> You are just saying “my Aristotelian religion” is the only true one.

Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard that one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12. 

> you already confessed to be open to a notion of event without a cause.

Yes I am open to the idea because there are only 2 possibilities, either the iterated sequence of "Why did that happen?" questions comes to a end with a brute fact or it doesn't, and neither possibility violates a law of logic.

>  That is bizarre someone open to Everett.

Why? There is a reason the Multiverse has always existed or there isn't.

> If you agree that the simulated typhoon is observable by the simulated person, whatever universal system realise the simulation, then we are OK. I think.

Yes, a simulated person can observe a simulated typhoon but so can we who are outside the computer because the simulation can change things in our world in addition to the simulated world; if we couldn't see it too nobody would bother to make computer simulations.  But unlike simulations nobody anywhere can observe your mystical non-material Turing Machine because it doesn't have the ability to change anything in time or space.

>> I tried that but it doesn't work, I've been shouting at {(q1 B 1 q1)} at the top of my lungs "HOW MUCH IS 2+2 ?" but nothing changes, the squiggles just sit there.

Repeating a joke does not make it more  funny either.

If it's a joke it's your joke not mine, you're the one who claimed  {(q1 B 1 q1)} had extraordinary but conveniently unobservable abilities.
 
> with Aristotle’s criterion or reality [...]

In related news, paleontologists have found the fossil of a new dinosaur species in Africa:


>  I would say that observable by a machine u means that u can make a measurement and repeat it and get some results.

I'll make this as easy for you as I can, forget calculation forget Turing Machines forget measurement, all you have to do is show me one thing that makes no use of matter or energy or the laws of physics that can change in time or space or both.  

> if the environment changes in time or space then its physical,
 
> OK, but then we have many physical things in arithmetic,

So the value of 2+2 is one thing in Moscow and something different in Washington, and it changes from Wednesday to Thursday?  

> as it dovetails on all programs execution,

No program can be executed without a computer that is made of matter and uses energy.

> You have not even show me primary matter.

I can never prove there is nothing more fundamental than matter and I can never prove there isn't a weightless invisible hippopotamus sitting on my head, but there is no evidence of either.    

> We can still belong to the infinite of “video games” that should be supporting us below our substitution level.

If there is a infinity of levels then nothing is primary, mathematics can't be at the foundation of things because there is no foundational level and the iterated "Why are things that way?" questions just keep going on and on forever.

> You confuse the textbooks, and what those textbooks are about.

The meaning in textbooks is whatever humans, who are made of matter and use energy, care to give them, and some humans are more skillful at doing this than others. Professors give a A to students that are good at this and a F to those that aren't.

The arithmetical reality is (provably) different that what *any* textbook can describe.

Huh? How does that support your position that textbooks can prove ethereal non-material Turing machines can make real calculations.  

>> That's why Apple puts Silicon and not logic textbooks inside their computers.

> The textbooks have helped them to know what they were implemented in the physical neighbourhood.

Certainly, but Apple isn't going to be doing any calculating without matter and energy.

> You so the 1 virus “1” confusion (for the nth time).

I'm not a bit confused by the difference,  I think a Turing Machine can make a calculation but "a Turing Machine" can't because ASCII characters never change. You believe something else because you are confused about what a proof is trying to tell you. .

>  When I refer to the textbooks, obviously I was referring to the content

The content of a textbook can't change without matter and energy thus it can't calculate or DO anything at all.  

> The fact that a mathematician needs a chalk to write the axioms of group theory

He needs a lot more than chalk, to formulate and understand the axioms of group theory the mathematician needs a brain made of matter and energy to run it.

> you invoke your Aristotelian  [....]

In more news from the wonderful world of paleontology a fossilized egg of the extinct Elephant Bird  has been found:

 
> Maybe this explains why you stop at step 3?

Why on Earth would any rational person keep reading a proof after they found a blunder that the author can't fix?

>> I don't assume I know that arithmetic is eternal and unchanging and therefore is unable to DO the job of un-encoding a Godel number, and can't DO any other job either.

>  So you reject GR and/or any block view of physics? You reject Einstein’s conception of space-time.

In the first place Einstein was a physicist not a mathematician and the block universe involves matter and energy. In the second place the block universe as a whole never changes (if we ignore Quantum Mechanics as Einstein did) and so can't calculate and even if it did nobody could see it, but things in it can calculate. When a Turing Machine moves from point A to point B in the block universe it changes with time and so a calculation is made.

So, once in Helsinki, what do you predict will happen, from the first person view,

That is not a question, that is gibberish. You introduced a first person point of view duplicating machine in your thought experiment so there is no longer such a thing as "THE first person view".

>  I recall that by definition of the protocol, [...]

The word "protocol" makes it sound very scientific but you don't even know who the personal pronouns that infested the thought experiment refer to after you ground them up in your personal pronoun duplicating machine.
 
>> > Any guy with the relevant memories.
 
>> OK, and the relevant memories are those of Helsinki, therefore according to what you just said there is simply no way to avoid the conclusion that Mr.You will see 2 cities.

> At once?

If you meant what you just said about Mr.You being "Any guy with the relevant memories" then certainly at once, it could not be any other way. However I am quite certain you will start backtracking because you didn't think through what you just said

> It is the definition used at the very beginning, and it trivially contradicts the account by both copies,

Mr. You is defined as somebody who has the relevant memories, nowhere in the definition does it say there can only be one that has the relevant memories. 
 
> who both agree that they saw only one city after opening the door.

Yes, and  there are two of them, you're the mathematician so correct me if I'm wrong but I believe  1+1=2 .
 
> When I count "HM" and "HW" I count 2, you're the mathematician so you tell me, did I count correctly?

> But the first person experience is [...]

And that is exactly what's wrong with your "protocol", I don't know who's "THE first person experience" you're talking about and neither do you.

> You keep desiring the 3-1 view, 

I desire you stop talking gibberish.

> Both the HM and HW man have lived the experience of seeing one city.

How many times does the letter "H" appear in "HM and HW "? I think the answer is 2. What do you think?

> Who exactly could not have guessed what exactly?

> The H-guy is able to predict with P = 1, that he will open the door, see ONE city, 

I don't know who the hell Mr.He is, and neither do you, and neither does the H man, and neither does the W man, and neither does the M man, therefore nobody can predict or say anything relevant at all about the mysterious Mr.He. 

> You really like Aristotle!

In another related story, an ancient fossilized Dinosaur toe bone has been found in Oregon:


> If a Catholic is duplicated and transported to Helsinki and Moscow how many cities will a Catholic see?

> One. 

So you think 2 Catholics in 2 different cities will only see one city, did one of them go blind?

>> each place only tells half the story of what the Helsinki Man ends up seeing.

> Yes, that is the first person experience.

There is no "THE first person experience" in the thing you call your protocol.
 
> the HM and the HW guy have become different guy,

I agree, HM and HW are both the Helsinki Man but are different from each other, and that is exactly why I don't know who the hell this mysterious Mr.He is that you keep talking about. 

> Doing theology with the scientific attitude requires....

... not being troubled by self contradiction.

> the two main conception of reality was what the greeks [...] You have chosen Aristotle’s [...]

You'll be interested in this, fossilized dinosaur turds from the Jurassic can be bought on Ebay, you can make a bid for one here:


> why do you do theology? 

Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard that one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12. 

John K Clark


 


Bruno Marchal

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Dec 7, 2018, 6:40:13 AM12/7/18
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On 6 Dec 2018, at 21:19, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Dec 5, 2018 at 12:59 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> Your theory is a working Turing Machine can be made without using matter or physics,
 
> No. My hypothesis is that we can survive with a digital brain.

But, at least until recently, you maintained that a digital brain can exist without matter or physics; if you have changed your mind about that we have nothing more to argue about. 

A human brain needs matter, but even a human brain does not need PRIMITIVE, or irreducible matter.

NUMBER ==> CONSCIOUSNESS ==> MATTER ==> HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS





> physics cannot assume Aristotle [...]

Physics CAN safely assume that neither Aristotle nor any other ancient Greek fossil can be of the slightest help in answering modern cutting edge scientific questions. 

But we re not doing physics, but metaphysics.

Scientists who say that they are not interested in meta^physics often implicitly take Aristotle’s theology (existence of irreducible matter) for granted.

You own perpetual invocation of some primitive physical reality shows that you do exactly that: you accept Aristotle theology, and mocks any departure from it, apparently.

Plato was just much in advance compared to Aristotle, who did not understood Plato. Both QM, and mechanism, are much closer to Plato, even Pythagorus, than to Aristotle.





>  What you say is a fuzzy and quite misleading rephrasing of a theorem (not a theory).

What I say is SHOW Me this mystical Turing Machine of yours that doesn't need matter or physics make a calculation, don't tell me about it, don't claim to have a proof about it, just SHOW ME it making a calculation. And there is nothing fuzzy about that request.  

I have done that, but then you criticise it as being “invisible” and bu using your Aristotelian criteria of truth (observable), which beg the question.

You are the one doing an ontological commitment. But there is no paper showing that primary matter exists. You speculate on something, just to prevent scientific testing. That is unscientific.





> You confuse phi_x(y) with phi_u(x,y).

That's not as bad as being confused about what you just proved even after you've finished correctly manipulating all the symbols in the proof.

?





>> In 1931 Godel knew nothing about Turing Machines.
  
> Gödel still showed the arithmization of all partial computable function, by showing the arithmetisation of the primitive recursive functions,

That shows that some symbols that humans (who are made of matter and obey physics)

Human are made of matter and obey to physics, sure, but that does not mean that this matter is primitive.





have assigned meaning to are equivalent to other symbols humans have assigned meaning to.

>  He just missed the Markov-Post-Kleene-Church-Turing thesis.

Did you know that of all the people that have extended his work Godel thought Turing's was the most profound? He had more respect for Turing than Church even though Church independently solved the halting problem a few months before Turing because in the process of solving it Turing told us something new about the physical world that Church did not.

That is plainly wrong. Turing used a more apparently-physical machine to model better a human being for pedagogical purpose, but the main point is that his machine is mathematical, and later shown yto be arithmetical. 





>   Just look into a mirror. You will see one. Well, you will see an image of one. I can’t do better.

I have no doubt that is true, you can't do better, and that's not nearly good enough. I requested a working Turing machine that does not make use of matter or physics, and obviously the thing in the mirror is observable or the mirror wouldn't work, and it's made of matter that obeys the laws of physics.


It is made of matter, but it is not made of primitive matter. You are the one in need to refute this, but if you succeed you would have found a way a universal machine can detect primitive matter. But then an infinity of digital machine would be able to prove the existence of primary matter in arithmetic, which is a nonsense.





 
>  A Turing machine is a finite set of quadruplets.

If that's what "Turing Machine" means in Brunospeak then a "Turing Machine" is a very boring thing because a "finite set of quadruplets" can't change in time or space unless a mathematician, who is made of matter and obeys physics, changes it. Nothing changes without matter and physics.  


My definition of Turing’s machine is the standard definitio as anyone can verify. It is Turing’s one (except he is using quintuplet, but that is a detail).

A computation is not a change in physical time, the digital natural number successor relation is enough. You need only the relation x —> s(x).





>  It does not belong to the category of the observable thing.

OK, you're un-observable Turing Machine can make calculations without matter or physics, but that's nothing, my un-observable angel who likes to dance on the head of a pin can compute non-computable functions like the Busy Beaver. My my un-observable thing can beat your observable thing!


?




>  > Turing machine are not physical object.

And that's why what you (and nobody else)

And everybody else.




calls a "Turing Machine" can't DO anything, only physical stuff can change in time or space.  

In the Aristotelian theology. 





> You are the one having introduced “observable Turing machine”.

Yes indeed, and I did that because unlike you I am a fan of the scientific method.


No. You are a fan of Aristotle theology, which equates physics with metaphysics. That is a string metaphysical axiom, indeed, provably false when we assume digital mechanism.




only a physical implementation can make something observable.

Yep, and that's not the only advantage, only a physical implementation can make something change in time or space, and without change you can't have calculation or intelligence or consciousness or DO anything at all.


That is physicalism. But it is incompatible with mechanism. Nobody has made sense of your “refutation”, as it eliminate the 1p and 3p distinction at a place we need to distinguish it.








>> all I ask is that it be observable and able to make a calculation without using matter or physics; and it need not be complicated, 2+2 would be good enough.

But this I did answer already two times. Come on! It is done in all textbooks.

TEXTBOOKS CAN'T CALCULATE,

Here, you do again the error you are accusing me to do above. You read “by” textbook, where I wrote “in textbook”, just hoping you would open it and study (its content). You also don’t quote me entirely.







and the reason they can't is that the sequence of symbols in them never changes.

>  and see page 62 its implementation in arithmetic.

Page 62 can't calculate any better than the  entire textbook can.


You continue playing with word. You well tell Schroedinger “show me how tomato a pizza with your equation”, and mock his equation, as it cannot do that.




Your problem is even if you are able to follow all the steps in a proof after you've finished all the steps you don't have a deep understanding of exactly what it is that you just proved.

Argument?





>  You attack me like people who says that the simulation of a typhoon cannot make me wet.

A simulation of a typhoon can't make me wet but it can DO other things, like produce a display on a computer monitor screen, but your airy fairy unobservable "Turing Machine" that makes no use of matter or physics can not DO anything to anyone or anything because it never changes.  

The changes might be in the mind of the machine, like in a GR block-universe.





>   a tiny art of the arithmetical reality (model, semantic) is Turing complete, arithmetic simulates the typhoon

Arithmetical reality can't simulate diddly squat without a computer made of matter that obeys the laws of physics.

False.





> *That* is the Aristotelian credo.

Given your great love for ancient fossils and extinct things you should have gone into paleontology rather than mathematics 

> You are just saying “my Aristotelian religion” is the only true one.

Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard that one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12. 

Then, try to take some distance with your faith in primitive matter.





> you already confessed to be open to a notion of event without a cause.

Yes I am open to the idea because there are only 2 possibilities, either the iterated sequence of "Why did that happen?" questions comes to a end with a brute fact or it doesn't, and neither possibility violates a law of logic.

I have already given a counter-example for this.





>  That is bizarre someone open to Everett.

Why? There is a reason the Multiverse has always existed or there isn't.


Yes, and there is a reason.




> If you agree that the simulated typhoon is observable by the simulated person, whatever universal system realise the simulation, then we are OK. I think.

Yes, a simulated person can observe a simulated typhoon but so can we who are outside the computer because the simulation can change things in our world in addition to the simulated world; if we couldn't see it too nobody would bother to make computer simulations.  But unlike simulations nobody anywhere can observe your mystical non-material Turing Machine because it doesn't have the ability to change anything in time or space.


Everyone see this. 




>> I tried that but it doesn't work, I've been shouting at {(q1 B 1 q1)} at the top of my lungs "HOW MUCH IS 2+2 ?" but nothing changes, the squiggles just sit there.

Repeating a joke does not make it more  funny either.

If it's a joke it's your joke not mine, you're the one who claimed  {(q1 B 1 q1)} had extraordinary but conveniently unobservable abilities.
 
> with Aristotle’s criterion or reality [...]

In related news, paleontologists have found the fossil of a new dinosaur species in Africa:


>  I would say that observable by a machine u means that u can make a measurement and repeat it and get some results.

I'll make this as easy for you as I can, forget calculation forget Turing Machines forget measurement, all you have to do is show me one thing that makes no use of matter or energy or the laws of physics that can change in time or space or both.  

That is impossible, and there is no reason to ask me this, unless you invoke your faith in time and space, but as a scientist we have to be agnostic, and just show how we can test our theories. You keep invoking your opinion, and this to prevent testing. 





> if the environment changes in time or space then its physical,
 
> OK, but then we have many physical things in arithmetic,

So the value of 2+2 is one thing in Moscow and something different in Washington, and it changes from Wednesday to Thursday?  

You can see it that way. 





> as it dovetails on all programs execution,

No program can be executed without a computer that is made of matter and uses energy.

That contradicts the definition of execution in computer science. You confuse execution with physical execution.





> You have not even show me primary matter.

I can never prove there is nothing more fundamental than matter


It follows from Digital Mechanism.



and I can never prove there isn't a weightless invisible hippopotamus sitting on my head, but there is no evidence of either.    

> We can still belong to the infinite of “video games” that should be supporting us below our substitution level.

If there is a infinity of levels then nothing is primary, 

Why? With mechanism, you can take the numbers, or the combinators, or any term of any Turing-complete theory as primitive, then physics is recovered, and many-levels go with it.



mathematics can't be at the foundation of things because there is no foundational level and the iterated "Why are things that way?" questions just keep going on and on forever.


With mechanism it stops at the natural number + addition + multiplication. 

With this, we can explain why we can’t take less, and why we can’t add more.

You would read the greeks, you would know that you argument has already been done and refuted by them.




> You confuse the textbooks, and what those textbooks are about.

The meaning in textbooks is whatever humans, who are made of matter and use energy, care to give them, and some humans are more skillful at doing this than others. Professors give a A to students that are good at this and a F to those that aren't.

That position is called reductionist materialism. Mechanism is incompatible with materialism (reductionist or not).




The arithmetical reality is (provably) different that what *any* textbook can describe.

Huh? How does that support your position that textbooks can prove ethereal non-material Turing machines can make real calculations.

Textbook can contain proofs but do not prove. You put many things in my mouth, which I have never asserted.
It is, needless to say, the arithmetical reality (not to confuse with theories, still less with presentation of theories) which do the computations.



 

>> That's why Apple puts Silicon and not logic textbooks inside their computers.

> The textbooks have helped them to know what they were implemented in the physical neighbourhood.

Certainly, but Apple isn't going to be doing any calculating without matter and energy.

Nobody said that. But Apple, matter and energy comes from the number relations, when we assume mechanism.

To refute this, you need to show me some evidence for primary matter. There are none.




> You so the 1 virus “1” confusion (for the nth time).

I'm not a bit confused by the difference,  I think a Turing Machine can make a calculation


You think that only a physical implementation can do a computation. But that is just wrong.




but "a Turing Machine" can't because ASCII characters never change.


Change relatively to what? You god the primary physical universe? 

Invoking your personal ontological commitment in metaphysics is pseudo-science, or pseudo-religion.



You believe something else because you are confused about what a proof is trying to tell you. .

>  When I refer to the textbooks, obviously I was referring to the content

The content of a textbook can't change without matter and energy thus it can't calculate or DO anything at all.  

Read what you just quoted.




> The fact that a mathematician needs a chalk to write the axioms of group theory

He needs a lot more than chalk, to formulate and understand the axioms of group theory the mathematician needs a brain made of matter and energy to run it.

That illustrate how much you confuse the mathematical reality with the human perception of that reality.





> you invoke your Aristotelian  [....]

In more news from the wonderful world of paleontology a fossilized egg of the extinct Elephant Bird  has been found:

 
> Maybe this explains why you stop at step 3?

Why on Earth would any rational person keep reading a proof after they found a blunder that the author can't fix?

All scientist do that all the time. Then more than 5 people show you the blunder you were making.





>> I don't assume I know that arithmetic is eternal and unchanging and therefore is unable to DO the job of un-encoding a Godel number, and can't DO any other job either.

>  So you reject GR and/or any block view of physics? You reject Einstein’s conception of space-time.

In the first place Einstein was a physicist not a mathematician and the block universe involves matter and energy.

But not time, which was the object of the discussion. Secondly, it involve matter and energy, but not primary matter a priori. 



In the second place the block universe as a whole never changes (if we ignore Quantum Mechanics as Einstein did) and so can't calculate and even if it did nobody could see it, but things in it can calculate.

So it is like the arithmetical reality. It does not calculate, but contains all universal numbers and they do calculate relatively to each other. Time and all physicalness becomes relative.




When a Turing Machine moves from point A to point B in the block universe it changes with time and so a calculation is made.

Idem in arithmetic.





So, once in Helsinki, what do you predict will happen, from the first person view,

That is not a question, that is gibberish. You introduced a first person point of view duplicating machine in your thought experiment so there is no longer such a thing as "THE first person view.


In helsinki, as you will survive, there is necessarily some sense to “the first pov”. You (in helsinki) are just unable to say which one. It cannot be both, it cannot be none. And, as confirmed by the two copies (who inherit from the helsinki identity), both see only one city.





>  I recall that by definition of the protocol, [...]

The word "protocol" makes it sound very scientific but you don't even know who the personal pronouns that infested the thought experiment refer to after you ground them up in your personal pronoun duplicating machine.

Where? We did agree on all pronouns used at each state. Your refutation just confuse 1p and 3p pow after the guy pushes the button.




 
>> > Any guy with the relevant memories.
 
>> OK, and the relevant memories are those of Helsinki, therefore according to what you just said there is simply no way to avoid the conclusion that Mr.You will see 2 cities.

> At once?

If you meant what you just said about Mr.You being "Any guy with the relevant memories" then certainly at once, it could not be any other way.

Then mechanism entails telepathy.





However I am quite certain you will start backtracking because you didn't think through what you just said

> It is the definition used at the very beginning, and it trivially contradicts the account by both copies,

Mr. You is defined as somebody who has the relevant memories, nowhere in the definition does it say there can only be one that has the relevant memories. 

No, but with mechanism, the helsinki guy knows that none of the copies will have the same memory or experience than the others, which justifies entirely that in Helsinki he is maximally ignorant on {W, M}.



 
> who both agree that they saw only one city after opening the door.

Yes, and  there are two of them, you're the mathematician so correct me if I'm wrong but I believe  1+1=2 .

But that gives the 3p description. But that (correct) 3p description entails that each copy understand that he was unable, in Helsinki, to predict which one would be realised after pushing the trigger. 




 
> When I count "HM" and "HW" I count 2, you're the mathematician so you tell me, did I count correctly?

> But the first person experience is [...]

And that is exactly what's wrong with your "protocol", I don't know who's "THE first person experience" you're talking about and neither do you.

That is what we know the best, and with mechanism, we attribute 1p consciousness to both copies, and both see only one city, and recognise he could not have predict it in Helsinki, which is the point.

Here you eliminate the first person experience of the copies. They BOTH says ONE city.





> You keep desiring the 3-1 view, 

I desire you stop talking gibberish.

To call gibberish the precision needed will not help you.






> Both the HM and HW man have lived the experience of seeing one city.

How many times does the letter "H" appear in "HM and HW "? I think the answer is 2. What do you think?

2, that is correct. But how many city those 2 guys see from their 1p view: ONE.






> Who exactly could not have guessed what exactly?

> The H-guy is able to predict with P = 1, that he will open the door, see ONE city, 

I don't know who the hell Mr.He is,

The H-guy.



and neither do you, and neither does the H man, and neither does the W man, and neither does the M man, therefore nobody can predict or say anything relevant at all about the mysterious Mr.He. 

> You really like Aristotle!

In another related story, an ancient fossilized Dinosaur toe bone has been found in Oregon:


> If a Catholic is duplicated and transported to Helsinki and Moscow how many cities will a Catholic see?

> One. 

So you think 2 Catholics in 2 different cities will only see one city,

Each of them? Yes, indeed. Unless telepathy.




did one of them go blind?

Each are blind (so to speak) with respect to the city he is not in, indeed.

The HM guy do not see W, and the HW guy do not see M. As the prediction bear on that seeing, that makes the proof.





>> each place only tells half the story of what the Helsinki Man ends up seeing.

> Yes, that is the first person experience.

There is no "THE first person experience" in the thing you call your protocol.

Then you die, and you backtrack on mechanism, making my point. 





 
> the HM and the HW guy have become different guy,

I agree, HM and HW are both the Helsinki Man but are different from each other,

Indeed, they see different cities, and understand that no matter which city they would have predicted, it would be wrong for one of them. Making my point.



and that is exactly why I don't know who the hell this mysterious Mr.He is that you keep talking about. 

It is always the H-guy, who survives into HM and HW, but, of course, only in one of them from the 1p view.

Bruno



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John Clark

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Dec 7, 2018, 6:52:31 PM12/7/18
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On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 6:40 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> Physics CAN safely assume that neither Aristotle nor any other ancient Greek fossil can be of the slightest help in answering modern cutting edge scientific questions. 

> But we re not doing physics, but metaphysics.

The trouble with metaphysics is it's too easy, because it doesn't use the scientific method but does allow invisible evidence any theory will work just fine because there are no facts they need to fit. There are a infinite number of metaphysical theories and one is as good as the other.
 
> take Aristotle’s theology

Please!
 
> Aristotle theology, and [,,,,[ Plato was [...] Aristotle, who did not [...]

And the longest fossilized turd from a extinct thing was 40 inches long and sold for $8,000 in 2014. I guess if something is old enough somebody will think it has value. You can read all about this massive turd here"

 
> closer to Plato, even Pythagorus, than to Aristotle.

It's interesting, out of all the ancient Greeks you keep yammering about you never mention the greatest of them all Archimedes, and he was a mathematician and an excellent one.   

>>SHOW Me this mystical Turing Machine of yours that doesn't need matter or physics make a calculation, don't tell me about it, don't claim to have a proof about it, just SHOW ME it making a calculation. And there is nothing fuzzy about that request.  

> I have done that, but then you criticise it as being “invisible”.

Yes how unreasonable for me not to be impressed by invisible evidence.  

 > there is no paper showing that primary matter exists.

Two can play this game, I have invisible evidence it does exist.  
 
> You speculate on something, just to prevent scientific testing. That is unscientific.

But of course accepting invisible evidence is very very scientific. 

>>That's not as bad as being confused about what you just proved even after you've finished correctly manipulating all the symbols in the proof.

?

!

> Human are made of matter and obey to physics, sure, but that does not mean that this matter is primitive.

But it does mean matter can do something numbers can't.
 
>> Did you know that of all the people that have extended his work Godel thought Turing's was the most profound? He had more respect for Turing than Church even though Church independently solved the halting problem a few months before Turing because in the process of solving it Turing told us something new about the physical world that Church did not.

> That is plainly wrong.

I don't think so, and my evidence that backs up what I say isn't invisible. Godel said:

“ [Turing] has for the first time succeeded in giving an absolute definition of an interesting epistemological notion, i.e., one not depending on the formalism chosen.” -Godel, Princeton Bicentennial, [1946, p. 84]

Please note the words "not depending on the formalism chosen", Godel thought Turing didn't just prove something about symbols but proved something about the real physical world. Even Alonzo Church admitted Turing did something he didn't.

" [Computability by a Turing machine] has the advantage of making the identification with effectiveness in the ordinary (not explicitly defined) sense evident immediately—i.e., without the necessity of proving preliminary theorems.” -Alonzo Church, [1937], Review of Turing [1936]

And Godel had plenty of other good stuff to say about Turing:

"But I was completely convinced only by Turing’s paper.” -Godel: letter to Kreisel of May 1, 1968 [Sieg, 1994, p. 88].

“That this really is the correct definition of mechanical computability was established beyond any doubt by Turing.” -Godel 193? Notes in Nachlass [1935] 

"The greatest improvement [in my work] was made possible through the precise definition of the concept of finite procedure, . . . This concept, . . . is equivalent to the concept of a ‘computable function of integers’ . . . The most satisfactory way, in my opinion, is that of reducing the concept of finite procedure to that of a machine with a finite number of parts, as has been done by the British mathematician Turing.” —-Godel [1951, pp. 304–305], Gibbs lecture

And Mathematician Robert I Soare had this to say:

"Godel was interested in the intensional analysis of finite procedure. He never believed the arguments and confluence evidence which Church presented to justify his Thesis. On the other hand Godel accepted immediately not only Turing machines, but more importantly the analysis Turing gave of a finite procedure."
 
>> OK, you're un-observable Turing Machine can make calculations without matter or physics, but that's nothing, my un-observable angel who likes to dance on the head of a pin can compute non-computable functions like the Busy Beaver. My my un-observable thing can beat your observable thing!

> ?

Which word didn't you understand?
 
> In the Aristotelian theology [...]

In 2018 why on Earth would anybody have even the slightest bit of interest in Aristotelian theology, or of any Greek theology, or any theology at all?
 
> You are a fan of Aristotle theology,

Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard that one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12. 

> >Your problem is even if you are able to follow all the steps in a proof after you've finished all the steps you don't have a deep understanding of exactly what it is that you just proved.

Argument?

I'll do much better, I'll give an example. After your brain (which is made of matter and obeys all the laws of physics) learned how to manipulate the symbols in Robinson arithmetic and proved a theorem in it you think that proof is telling you calculations can be made without matter or physics.
 
>>There is a reason the Multiverse has always existed or there isn't.

>Yes, and there is a reason.

I won't even ask what silly thing you dreamed up or what invisible evidence you have in support of it, instead I will ask a more important question, is there a reason for that reason?

 >>a simulated person can observe a simulated typhoon but so can we who are outside the computer because the simulation can change things in our world in addition to the simulated world; if we couldn't see it too nobody would bother to make computer simulations.  But unlike simulations nobody anywhere can observe your mystical non-material Turing Machine because it doesn't have the ability to change anything in time or space.

> Everyone see this. 

Good, so you admit matter has properties arithmetic does not, a Turing Machine made of matter has the ability to be observable and the ability to change in spacetime, your mystical invisible nonmaterial Turing Machine can't do either.
 
>> I'll make this as easy for you as I can, forget calculation forget Turing Machines forget measurement, all you have to do is show me one thing that makes no use of matter or energy or the laws of physics that can change in time or space or both.  

> That is impossible,

I most certainly agree, it's impossible, and as time and space are rather important to me I'm not very interested in your mystical invisible Turing Machine that can't do anything in either.
 
> and there is no reason to ask me this, unless you invoke your faith in time and space,

So you ask me to ignore time and space and matter and energy and have faith in an invisible mystical nonmaterial Turing Machine and just listen to you. That's asking rather a lot.
 
>> So the value of 2+2 is one thing in Moscow and something different in Washington, and it changes from Wednesday to Thursday?  

> You can see it that way. 

What the hell? Even for you that's nuts.
 
>>No program can be executed without a computer that is made of matter and uses energy.

>That contradicts the definition of execution in computer science.

The graduates of any school of computer science that used a definition of "execution" that have nothing to do with time or space or matter or energy would NEVER be able to get a job, so it's fortunate no such school of computer science exists; or if it does the school is invisible and does not change in time or space.

>>If there is a infinity of levels then nothing is primary, 

> Why? With mechanism, you can take the numbers, or the combinators, or any term of any Turing-complete theory as primitive, 

If something is primitive then something exists for no reason and there are not a infinite number of iterated questions, the series eventually ends with a brute fact.
 
> You would read the greeks,

If you put a gun to my head perhaps.

> Textbook can contain proofs but do not prove.

Then why do you keep referring me to some  textbook every time I say calculations can't be made without matter energy and physics

>> "a Turing Machine" can't [change] because ASCII characters never change.

> Change relatively to what?

Time and space. And  a Turing Machine that does not make use of matter and the laws of physics can't change in time or space and as both play a key part in consciousness it's odd that you don't think that's important given that you keep talking about consciousness.
 
> You god the primary physical universe [...]

Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard that one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12. 
 
>>Why on Earth would any rational person keep reading a proof after they found a blunder that the author can't fix? 

> All scientist do that all the time

BULLSHIT. Scientists have better things to do with their time than to continue reading a proof after they already know it can't be correct. 

>>In the first place Einstein was a physicist not a mathematician and the block universe involves matter and energy.

>But not time, which was the object of the discussion.

You discuss consciousness constantly, and there is no property more important to consciousness than time. And don't tell me time is just an illusion because illusion is a perfectly respectable subjective phenomenon and subjectivity is what we're talking about.  

>>In the second place the block universe as a whole never changes (if we ignore Quantum Mechanics as Einstein did) and so can't calculate and even if it did nobody could see it, but things in it can calculate.

> So it is like the arithmetical reality. It does not calculate, but contains all universal numbers

I'd never heard of "universal numbers"  before so I asked Google about them and all I got was a bunch of astrology websites. Apparently the "universal numbers" are 1 through 9 plus for some bizarre reason 11 22 and 33. They may explain the astrological significance of those numbers but I was too bored to read more.

>>The word "protocol" makes it sound very scientific but you don't even know who the personal pronouns that infested the thought experiment refer to after you ground them up in your personal pronoun duplicating machine.

> Where? We did agree on all pronouns used at each state.

OF COURSE WE DIDN'T AGREE! The iron clad proof that you are utterly confused is that even after your thought exparament is long over you STILL don't know what the correct prediction Mr. He should have made yesterday back in Helsinki because you have no idea who the hell Mr.He is. You quite literally don't know what you're talking about, but that doesn't inhibit you in the slightest from talking about Mr.He .

>>And that is exactly what's wrong with your "protocol", I don't know who's "THE first person experience" you're talking about and neither do you.
 
> That is what we know the best, and with mechanism, we attribute 1p consciousness to both copies, and both see only one city, and recognise he could not have predict it in Helsinki, which is the point.

That's nice, but you haven't answered my question.  When you demand predictions about "THE first person experience" after introducing a THE first person experience duplicating machines who's "THE first person experience" do you want the prediction to be about? I've been asking this same damn question for over 5 years and I haven't got a straight answer out of you yet and I don't expect I ever will.

>>I don't know who the hell Mr.He is

>The H-guy.

That's not nearly specific enough because both the M-guy and the W-guy are the  H-guy. So who exactly did you want to make a prediction yesterday in Helsinki and who exactly did you want the prediction to be about? Your complete inability to answer this simple question is proof your thought exparament is not thoughtful and is not an exparament at all, it's gibberish. 
 
>>So you think 2 Catholics in 2 different cities will only see one city,

> Each of them?

No, my question was how many cities will Catholics see. I can think of no reason why 2 Catholics can't see 2 different cities at the same time. 
 
> Then you die, and you backtrack on mechanism

John Clark doesn't know if that's true or not because John Clark doesn't know who Mr.You is, and Bruno has even less understanding of Mr.You's identity than John Clark does.

>>I don't know who the hell this mysterious Mr.He is that you keep talking about. 

> It is always the H-guy, who survives into HM and HW, but, of course, only in one of them from the 1p view.

So now that the experiment is over which one did it turn out survived from the one and only "THE 1p view"?  Was it HM or HW? You don't know the answer because you don't know the question and neither do I.

John K Clark



Philip Thrift

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Dec 8, 2018, 4:41:14 AM12/8/18
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On Friday, December 7, 2018 at 5:52:31 PM UTC-6, John Clark wrote:
On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 6:40 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:


>>No program can be executed without a computer that is made of matter and uses energy.

>That contradicts the definition of execution in computer science.

The graduates of any school of computer science that used a definition of "execution" that have nothing to do with time or space or matter or energy would NEVER be able to get a job, so it's fortunate no such school of computer science exists; or if it does the school is invisible and does not change in time or space.




There is indeed a type of semantics (along with denotational, operational, etc.) in computing and programming language theory where the physical nature (matter, energy) of the computer is taken into account: physical semantics. 

e.g. Building connections between theories of computing and physical systems

- pt

Bruno Marchal

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Dec 9, 2018, 8:36:09 AM12/9/18
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On 8 Dec 2018, at 00:51, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 6:40 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> Physics CAN safely assume that neither Aristotle nor any other ancient Greek fossil can be of the slightest help in answering modern cutting edge scientific questions. 

> But we re not doing physics, but metaphysics.

The trouble with metaphysics is it's too easy, because it doesn't use the scientific method

Since 529.

Metaphysics has been done with the scientific attitude before. It is not easy to come back to this because in this filed, since 529 we have been brainswahedq by fairy tales, and this includes taking the primitive material reality for granted.





but does allow invisible evidence any theory will work just fine because there are no facts they need to fit. There are a infinite number of metaphysical theories and one is as good as the other.


Not at all. When we do it with the scientific method, we get experimental means to verify it.

As quantum mechanics confirms (up to now) mechanism, we can say that we have good empirical reason to disbelieve in physicalism or materialism.

Your belief in primary matter on the contrary, is sustained without any experimental evidence at all.





 
> take Aristotle’s theology

Please!

No, your remark above show how much it is necessary for you to remember that there was another rational conception of reality before Aristotle, and it fits better with the contemporary facts (Gödel, Einstein, QM, …).

You talk like if the consciousness problem was solved. I am OK that consciousness is easier than intelligence to solve, but it is not so easy when we assume mechanism, which enforce to come back to the pre-aristotelian conception of reality.

When you invoke matter to make a computation real, you invoke the Aristotelian religion. That is just irrational. 




 
> Aristotle theology, and [,,,,[ Plato was [...] Aristotle, who did not [...]

And the longest fossilized turd from a extinct thing was 40 inches long and sold for $8,000 in 2014. I guess if something is old enough somebody will think it has value. You can read all about this massive turd here"

 
> closer to Plato, even Pythagorus, than to Aristotle.

It's interesting, out of all the ancient Greeks you keep yammering about you never mention the greatest of them all Archimedes, and he was a mathematician and an excellent one. 

Bt we don’t discuss mathematics here. Of course Archimedes was a great guy, no doubt, but he was not an expert in metaphysics and theology.



 

>>SHOW Me this mystical Turing Machine of yours that doesn't need matter or physics make a calculation, don't tell me about it, don't claim to have a proof about it, just SHOW ME it making a calculation. And there is nothing fuzzy about that request.  

> I have done that, but then you criticise it as being “invisible”.

Yes how unreasonable for me not to be impressed by invisible evidence.  


That is what lead you, and others to think that mathematics is conventional. Even Einstein did do, until Gödel explained him his mistake.

Numbers are invisible. All the subject matter of mathematics is invisible, yet arguably quite “real” and senseful. Then indeed, with mechanism we get the theorem that the physical reality emerge from the number arithmetical self-reference.




 > there is no paper showing that primary matter exists.

Two can play this game, I have invisible evidence it does exist.  

Then explain them. 

An evidence does not need to be visible, but it still needs to be given and shared. I can conceive some mathematical evidence for Matter, but eventually, I found none. Quite the contrary.




 
> You speculate on something, just to prevent scientific testing. That is unscientific.

But of course accepting invisible evidence is very very scientific. 


Mathematics is entirely based on invisible evidence. 

Plato was skeptical on just that: the visible evidence, as the dream argument shows that visibility is not a criterion of truth.

The idea that visibility is evidence is exactly the Aristotelian theology, well recasted in christianity through St-Thomas, who famously said that he believes only in what he sees. 



> Human are made of matter and obey to physics, sure, but that does not mean that this matter is primitive.

But it does mean matter can do something numbers can’t.


That inference is not valid if used to defend your idea that some Matter exists. Only matter exists, but that one is phenomenological in arithmetic. I use “Matter”, with a big M, to denote Aristotle’s notion of matter, with its ontological primary existence.



 
>> Did you know that of all the people that have extended his work Godel thought Turing's was the most profound? He had more respect for Turing than Church even though Church independently solved the halting problem a few months before Turing because in the process of solving it Turing told us something new about the physical world that Church did not.

> That is plainly wrong.

I don't think so, and my evidence that backs up what I say isn't invisible. Godel said:

“ [Turing] has for the first time succeeded in giving an absolute definition of an interesting epistemological notion, i.e., one not depending on the formalism chosen.” -Godel, Princeton Bicentennial, [1946, p. 84]

Please note the words "not depending on the formalism chosen", Godel thought Turing didn't just prove something about symbols but proved something about the real physical world.



Nor did Turing. The independence of the formalism means here that you can take arithmetic, or fortran, or lisp, or lambda calculus, etc. 

This has nothing to do with physics, as none of those formalism assumes anything in physics.

You attribute statement to Turing, who never assert them. There is no physical hypothesis in Turing work in Logic, still less a physicalist hypothesis in metaphysics.



Even Alonzo Church admitted Turing did something he didn't.

" [Computability by a Turing machine] has the advantage of making the identification with effectiveness in the ordinary (not explicitly defined) sense evident immediately—i.e., without the necessity of proving preliminary theorems.” -Alonzo Church, [1937], Review of Turing [1936]


Yes, but now we see that some confuse a pedagogical idea (explaining computation by machine which looks like material human) with metaphysics. But the Turing machine does not assume more physics than the combinators or the lambda calculus: none.





And Godel had plenty of other good stuff to say about Turing:

"But I was completely convinced only by Turing’s paper.” -Godel: letter to Kreisel of May 1, 1968 [Sieg, 1994, p. 88].

“That this really is the correct definition of mechanical computability was established beyond any doubt by Turing.” -Godel 193? Notes in Nachlass [1935] 

"The greatest improvement [in my work] was made possible through the precise definition of the concept of finite procedure, . . . This concept, . . . is equivalent to the concept of a ‘computable function of integers’ . . . The most satisfactory way, in my opinion, is that of reducing the concept of finite procedure to that of a machine with a finite number of parts, as has been done by the British mathematician Turing.” —-Godel [1951, pp. 304–305], Gibbs lecture

But Godel knew, as everyone, that the Turing machine is non material.





And Mathematician Robert I Soare had this to say:

"Godel was interested in the intensional analysis of finite procedure. He never believed the arguments and confluence evidence which Church presented to justify his Thesis. On the other hand Godel accepted immediately not only Turing machines, but more importantly the analysis Turing gave of a finite procedure.”


And Turing was the one showing that his (more pedagogical perhaps) formalism was equivalent with Lambda calculus, HerbrnGödel equation, etc.

Anyway, none assume a physical reality, nor physical object, as anyone can verify by taking a look at their original papers (cf Davis “The Undecidable”).




 
> In the Aristotelian theology [...]

In 2018 why on Earth would anybody have even the slightest bit of interest in Aristotelian theology, or of any Greek theology, or any theology at all?


People who says that theology makes no sense, are usually people who takes Aristotelian theology for granted. 

Are you able to doubt that physics is the fundamental science? Are you able to doubt physicalism?




 
> You are a fan of Aristotle theology,

Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard that one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12. 

> >Your problem is even if you are able to follow all the steps in a proof after you've finished all the steps you don't have a deep understanding of exactly what it is that you just proved.

Argument?

I'll do much better, I'll give an example. After your brain (which is made of matter and obeys all the laws of physics)


You don’t know that this matter is primary.



learned how to manipulate the symbols in Robinson arithmetic and proved a theorem in it you think that proof is telling you calculations can be made without matter or physics.


Yes, end indeed I can prove that the (sigma_1) arithmetical reality implemented them all, and the physical appearance have to emerge from the first person indeterminacy on all (relative) computations.

I use the mathematical definition of computation, not to be confused with any of its implementation y some other universal machine, be it arithmetic or a physical reality. 

You beg the question by identifying/confusing the concept of 

Matter with primary matter
Computation with physical computation
God with Christian theory of God








 
>>There is a reason the Multiverse has always existed or there isn't.

>Yes, and there is a reason.

I won't even ask what silly thing you dreamed up or what invisible evidence you have in support of it, instead I will ask a more important question,


You don’t ask, because you know the answer. If we believe that 2+2 = 4 independently of us, we HAVE TO believe that all computations are realised in arithmetic, because that it is easy to prove, and that is where the apparent multiverse come from.




is there a reason for that reason?


The reason is elementary arithmetic. And elementary arithmetic explains why we cannot get it from less.

If you doubt that 2+2=4, or that x^3 + y^3 + z^3 = 33 has, or has no, solutions, then “digital mechanism” has to be abandoned, and in that case you can believe in your Matter. But with Mechanism, that belief is irrational, and only based on the ignorance or misunderstanding of <hat are computations.




 >>a simulated person can observe a simulated typhoon but so can we who are outside the computer because the simulation can change things in our world in addition to the simulated world; if we couldn't see it too nobody would bother to make computer simulations.  But unlike simulations nobody anywhere can observe your mystical non-material Turing Machine because it doesn't have the ability to change anything in time or space.

> Everyone see this. 

Good, so you admit matter has properties arithmetic does not,

Of course.




a Turing Machine made of matter has the ability to be observable and the ability to change in spacetime, your mystical invisible nonmaterial Turing Machine can't do either.

Like a simulated typhoon cannot makes a physical object wet. 

Yet, the simulation of the physical couple “observer + typhoon”, in arithmetic, will make the observers feel wet, relatively to that typhoon when enough well situated (which is the case in arithmetic, as it does all simulations).

So your argument fails to justify a belief in Matter. It just gives a role to matter, which is explainable without Matter.





 
>> I'll make this as easy for you as I can, forget calculation forget Turing Machines forget measurement, all you have to do is show me one thing that makes no use of matter or energy or the laws of physics that can change in time or space or both.  

> That is impossible,

I most certainly agree, it's impossible, and as time and space are rather important to me I'm not very interested in your mystical invisible Turing Machine that can't do anything in either.
 
> and there is no reason to ask me this, unless you invoke your faith in time and space,

So you ask me to ignore time and space and matter and energy and have faith in an invisible mystical nonmaterial Turing Machine and just listen to you. That's asking rather a lot.
 
>> So the value of 2+2 is one thing in Moscow and something different in Washington, and it changes from Wednesday to Thursday?  

> You can see it that way. 

What the hell? Even for you that's nuts.
 
>>No program can be executed without a computer that is made of matter and uses energy.

>That contradicts the definition of execution in computer science.

The graduates of any school of computer science that used a definition of "execution" that have nothing to do with time or space or matter or energy would NEVER be able to get a job, so it's fortunate no such school of computer science exists; or if it does the school is invisible and does not change in time or space.


We would never been able to implement the arithmetical computation in matter, and handle them properly, without having discovered them in mathematics. Even Babbage says that its functional language does not depend on its machine, and was a truly mush bigger discovery than his machine.

I don’t ask you any act of faith (beyond the “yes doctor”, as hypothesis). You need just to believe in 2+2=4, and to accept the definition of the textbook in the domain. 

Oh, I ask you perhaps also to leave your personal convictions out of the room.




>>If there is a infinity of levels then nothing is primary, 

> Why? With mechanism, you can take the numbers, or the combinators, or any term of any Turing-complete theory as primitive, 

If something is primitive then something exists for no reason and there are not a infinite number of iterated questions, the series eventually ends with a brute fact.

Yes, and with mechanism the only truth facts we need is that Kxy = x, and Sxyz = xz(yz). Or the definition and axiom of elementary arithmetic, as Gödel saw, the computer science will be independently of the choice of the formalism, and that makes theology and physics independent of the formalism. But we have to assume at least one Turing universal reality (like arithmetic) to get all the others and the internal appearances.





 
> You would read the greeks,

If you put a gun to my head perhaps.

Which shows the immensity of your lack of knowledge on them.




> Textbook can contain proofs but do not prove.

Then why do you keep referring me to some  textbook every time I say calculations can't be made without matter energy and physics


Because all textbook use my definition of computation, not yours which assume physics.





>> "a Turing Machine" can't [change] because ASCII characters never change.

> Change relatively to what?

Time and space.

But with mechanism, you cannot assume the. You need to explain that. It is part of the “easy problem of consciousness”.




And  a Turing Machine that does not make use of matter and the laws of physics can't change in time


It changes relatively to any numbering “time”, called "steps" in computability theory. Those digital steps needs the number successor relation, not any physical space or time.




or space and as both play a key part in consciousness it's odd that you don't think that's important given that you keep talking about consciousness.

After 1500 years of Materialism failing to solve the mind-body problem, when it does not eliminate it, or replace it by fairy Tales.




 
> You god the primary physical universe [...]

Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard that one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12. 
 
>>Why on Earth would any rational person keep reading a proof after they found a blunder that the author can't fix? 

> All scientist do that all the time

BULLSHIT. Scientists have better things to do with their time than to continue reading a proof after they already know it can't be correct. 

False. If a scientist believe that a proof cannot be correct, he will do the work and show where the proof is incorrect, or change its mind. That is even why you do claim having found an error, but you have not written any of this that any one could understand. You just oscillate between understand step 3, and dismissing as too much easy, or confusing 3p and 1p views. I it is too much easy, just move on step 4. If you really believe step 3 is false, try a new refutation, perhaps.






>>In the first place Einstein was a physicist not a mathematician and the block universe involves matter and energy.

>But not time, which was the object of the discussion.

You discuss consciousness constantly, and there is no property more important to consciousness than time.

The mundane type of consciousness requires time. OK. 



And don't tell me time is just an illusion because illusion is a perfectly respectable subjective phenomenon and subjectivity is what we're talking about.  

We are taking about the origin of that illusion. With mechanism, any Turing-complete formalism will work, an indeed has worked until now.





>>In the second place the block universe as a whole never changes (if we ignore Quantum Mechanics as Einstein did) and so can't calculate and even if it did nobody could see it, but things in it can calculate.

> So it is like the arithmetical reality. It does not calculate, but contains all universal numbers

I'd never heard of "universal numbers"  before so I asked Google about them and all I got was a bunch of astrology websites. Apparently the "universal numbers" are 1 through 9 plus for some bizarre reason 11 22 and 33. They may explain the astrological significance of those numbers but I was too bored to read more.


You continue to play dumb. I have already given the definition of universal numbers. Let me refresh your memory. We fix a universal machinery phi_i (see rogers or any book, or may posts in the CT thread, or my older post). U is a universal number is phi_u(x, y) = phi_x(y). We say that u emulates x on y.





>>The word "protocol" makes it sound very scientific but you don't even know who the personal pronouns that infested the thought experiment refer to after you ground them up in your personal pronoun duplicating machine.

> Where? We did agree on all pronouns used at each state.

OF COURSE WE DIDN'T AGREE!

You did agree that HM and HW are the H_guy. That follows also from the fact that the H_guy believes correctly (when assuming computationalism) that he will not die in the duplication process.




The iron clad proof that you are utterly confused is that even after your thought exparament is long over you STILL don't know what the correct prediction Mr. He should have made yesterday back in Helsinki

It “W v M” but I cannot be sure of which one.




because you have no idea who the hell Mr.He is.


It is the Huy in Helsinki. 




You quite literally don't know what you're talking about, but that doesn't inhibit you in the slightest from talking about Mr.He .

What is your prediction? Sometimes you say he guy dies, sometimes you say “W & M” which is directly refuted by both HM and HW, when describing their first person experience (the original question is about that subjective experience).






>>And that is exactly what's wrong with your "protocol", I don't know who's "THE first person experience" you're talking about and neither do you.
 
> That is what we know the best, and with mechanism, we attribute 1p consciousness to both copies, and both see only one city, and recognise he could not have predict it in Helsinki, which is the point.

That's nice, but you haven't answered my question.  When you demand predictions about "THE first person experience" after introducing a THE first person experience duplicating machines


THE experience is duplicated from the view of a third person guy, but is not from the first person of both copies. They see only one city, and can only infer the presence of a doppelgänger in the other city.






 who's "THE first person experience" do you want the prediction to be about?

The experience that the H-guy can predict he will live. Two will be realised in the 3p picture, but as the H-guy know that he will acquire telepathic abilities between its tow copies, he can predict in Helsinki that he, the H-guy, will feel to be only in one of the disjunct of W v M. Everyone understand this, except you.

I do not ever have meet one scientist who have problem with this. When there is a problem, it either by people clearly disbelieving in Mechanism, but even them understand eventually that it follows from Mechanism (it is just that they disbelieve in Mechanism, for personal reason).




>>I don't know who the hell Mr.He is

>The H-guy.

That's not nearly specific enough because both the M-guy and the W-guy are the  H-guy.

The whole point is that there is no specific answer here. That is the whole point. The prediction is asked to the H-guy, who know that he will be physically at both W and M, but as the question is about the subjective future result, he, the H-guy when still in Helsinky,  knows that he will feel subjectively to see only one city, and this with certainty, as BOTH its “descendant” will feel to see only one city.



So who exactly did you want to make a prediction yesterday in Helsinki

The H-guy, before he push the button, still in Helsinki. 



and who exactly did you want the prediction to be about?

As we both agree that both copies are digne successor/descendant of the H-guy, that HM and HW are both the H-guy, even if HM and HW have differentiated, the verification of the prediction has to be asked to both copies. 

And indeed, both confirms that W v M was the best prediction possible, as they both agree with it. For them, it is equivalent to a fair coin.





Your complete inability to answer this simple question is proof your thought exparament is not thoughtful and is not an exparament at all, it's gibberish. 

See above.



 
>>So you think 2 Catholics in 2 different cities will only see one city,

> Each of them?

No, my question was how many cities will Catholics see.

That is not English. You might rephrase it. 




I can think of no reason why 2 Catholics can't see 2 different cities at the same time. 


In some 3p view, but you forget again that the question is about the subjective experience. All catholics in the world see only one city, from their first person experience, which is that what re interested in.





 
> Then you die, and you backtrack on mechanism

John Clark doesn't know if that's true or not because John Clark doesn't know who Mr.You is, and Bruno has even less understanding of Mr.You's identity than John Clark does.

>>I don't know who the hell this mysterious Mr.He is that you keep talking about. 

> It is always the H-guy, who survives into HM and HW, but, of course, only in one of them from the 1p view.

So now that the experiment is over which one did it turn out survived from the one and only "THE 1p view"?  Was it HM or HW? You don't know the answer because you don't know the question and neither do I.


On the contrary; it is very simple. The H-guy predicts W v M, and both the HM and HW guys confirms. All different predictions fails, or violate the principle that both the HM and the HW guys are digne H-guy survivors.


What is your prediction? What could the guy in Helsinki predicts about the subjective experience that he will live?

Bruno







John K Clark



John Clark

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Dec 10, 2018, 5:30:47 PM12/10/18
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On Sun, Dec 9, 2018 at 8:36 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> Since 529.Metaphysics has been done with the scientific attitude before. It is not easy to come back to this because in this filed, since 529 we have been brainswahedq by fairy tales, 

And the scientific knowledge that existed in 529 AD was about the same as the the scientific knowledge that existed in 529 BC, so apparently doing  metaphysics with any sort of attitude is a waste of time.

> When we do it with the scientific method, we get experimental means to verify it.

You can't experiment with invisible factors and an experiment that produces invisible results verifies nothing.  This is even true for thought experiments, a good thought experiment could in theory actually be performed and only monetary or technological limitations prevent you from doing so, but the thing you call a thought experiment could never be performed regardless of how much money you had or your level of technology because as described it is full of logical self contradictions. And as a result it is a recipe for self delusion, and the easiest person to fool is yourself.   

> conception of reality before Aristotle [...]

Why should I give a tinker's damn about the conception of reality before Aristotle
 
> You talk like if the consciousness problem was solved.

I talk like there is no point in worrying about consciousness until you've first solved the problem of intelligence, and that is something you never talk about. Why? Because coming up with a intelligence theory, even a mediocre one, is incredibly hard. But coming up with a consciousness theory is incredibly easy, any theory will work just fine because there are no facts the theory must fit.
 
> I am OK that consciousness is easier than intelligence to solve,

I know you are. A good theory must fit the facts. There are no known facts about consciousness. Your theory fits all known facts about consciousness. Therefore your theory is a good theory about consciousness, just like every other theory about consciousness.

> to come back to the pre-aristotelian conception of reality [...]

No, let's not come back to that. Is it physically possible for you to stop yammering for 2 seconds about a group of people who knew less science than a bright fourth grader and less mathematics than a bright eighth grader?
 
> you invoke the Aristotelian religion that [...]

Apparently the answer is no.
 
>  we don’t discuss mathematics here.

We don't discuss mathematics on the EVERYTHING list?

> Of course Archimedes was a great guy, no doubt, but he was not an expert in metaphysics and theology.

And one of the reasons Archimedes was a great guy, the greatest of all the ancient Greeks and the one that has best survived the test of time, is because he didn't waste his time with metaphysics or theology.
 
>> Two can play this game, I have invisible evidence it [ a halting problem solver] does exist.  

> Then explain them. 

There are no results to explain because my universal halting problem solver is invisible as are all the answers to the problems it's asked, just like your invisible Turing Machine except mine is better. My invisible machine can solve the Halting Problem but your invisible machine can't.
 
> Plato was skeptical on [...]

And little Joey Smith in the fourth grade who just got a B+ on his science test is skeptical about some stuff too. I can't think of any reason I should be more interested in Plato's skepticism than the skepticism of little Joey Smith.

> The idea that visibility is evidence is exactly the Aristotelian theology,

There is another name for the idea that evidence must be visible, it's called "The Scientific Method".  And I don't know what the word "theology" means in Brunospeak.   
 
> in christianity through St-Thomas [...]

And I care even less about what Christianity through St.Thomas thought about things than I do for the goddamn ancient Greeks.
 
> to denote Aristotle’s notion of [...]

I have a good idea, let's not note or denote Aristotle’s notion of anything.

>> Godel said: “ [Turing] has for the first time succeeded in giving an absolute definition of an interesting epistemological notion, i.e., one not depending on the formalism chosen.” -Godel, Princeton Bicentennial, [1946, p. 84]
Please note the words "not depending on the formalism chosen", Godel thought Turing didn't just prove something about symbols but proved something about the real physical world.

> Nor did Turing. The independence of the formalism means here that you can take arithmetic, or fortran, or lisp, or lambda calculus, etc. 

Look up the word formalism in Google and the first definition is "excessive adherence to prescribed forms". The second definition is "a description of something in formal mathematical or logical terms".  Please note the use of the word "description". Mathematics is the best language for describing the way the physical world operates but there are limits on what even the best language can do.  Any language can write fiction as well as nonfiction, the story Newton told about gravity was based on reality just as a well written historical novel is, the story was written in the language of mathematics and contained no grammatical errors or logical plot holes but when we looked close enough at real physical gravity we discovered that Newton's gravity does not exist. Mathematical consistency is necessary but not sufficient to guarantee existence.  
 
> This has nothing to do with physics, as none of those formalism assumes anything in physics.

True, arithmetic and fortran and lisp and lambda calculus have nothing to do with physics, and that is exactly why Godel thought Turing's work was superior because Turing showed that none of those formalisms were needed, you only need matter energy and the laws of physics to compute anything that can be computed. 
 
>  now we see that some confuse [...]

But very few are so confused they don't know the referent of the personal pronouns they use even when the very thing they're trying to illustrate is the nature of personal identity.
 
> the Turing machine does not assume more physics

Of course it assumes physics! You can't move a tape or write a 0 or 1 on it without being physical.


>>"The greatest improvement [in my work] was made possible through the precise definition of the concept of finite procedure, . . . This concept, . . . is equivalent to the concept of a ‘computable function of integers’ . . . The most satisfactory way, in my opinion, is that of reducing the concept of finite procedure to that of a machine with a finite number of parts, as has been done by the British mathematician Turing.” —-Godel [1951, pp. 304–305], Gibbs lecture
 
> But Godel knew, as everyone, that the Turing machine is non material.

What the hell is non material about "a machine with a finite number of parts"? Can you think of anything more material than that? I can't. Godel also said "That this really is the correct definition of mechanical computability was established beyond any doubt by Turing.” If the word "mechanical" is to have any meaning it can't be non material.

> And Turing was the one showing that his (more pedagogical perhaps) formalism was equivalent with Lambda calculus,

Yes, what a Turing Machine is doing can be described in the language of Lambda calculus but a Turing Machine is not a language, it is not describing anything, it is doing, it is the thing being described. It's like confusing cow and "cow" and after writing the following in the language of English "the cow jumped over the moon" claimed to have proved that a bovine mammal is capable of achieving escape velocity of 11,200 meters per second.
 
> People who says that theology makes no sense

That very statement makes no sense to me because as I said I don't know what "theology" means in Brunospeak and I'm pretty sure Bruno doesn't either.
 
> are usually people who takes Aristotelian theology for granted. 

It's some sort of weird obsession I guess, all the secrets of universe can be found in the writings of the scientific illiterate ancient Greeks.
 
> You beg the question by identifying/confusing the concept of [...]

At least I'm not confused about who the referent is of the personal pronouns that I use.

> God with Christian theory of God

Just once I'd like to see a post from you that doesn't mention God, Christians, theology or goddamn brain dead ancient Greeks! But I don't suppose I'll ever get my wish.

> If we believe that 2+2 = 4 independently of us [...]

The English language is not independent of us, without us it wouldn't exist, and the language of mathematics is not independent of physics, if there were not at least 2 different physical things in the universe then 2+2=4 would not make sense to anyone even if there was someone around to try, and there wouldn't be.

> We would never been able to implement the arithmetical computation in matter, and handle them properly, without having discovered them in mathematics.

That is certainly true, a language is powerful tool that helps brains in reasoning, and when it comes to physics there is no better language than mathematics.  

> I ask you perhaps also to leave your personal convictions out of the room.

So says the man who is personally convinced that invisible evidence is scientific evidence.  
 
> that makes theology and physics independent of the formalism.

You equate science with theology? Theology is the only "science" that has no field of study, at least if the word has its standard meaning, but I'm not fluent  in Brunospeak, nobody is not even Bruno.
 
>> a Turing Machine that does not make use of matter and the laws of physics can't change in time

> It changes relatively to any numbering “time”, called "steps" in computability theory. Those digital steps needs the number successor relation, not any physical space or time.

If time and space are not made use of in your mystical invisible timeless Turing Machine how do you go from step N to step N+1, what is the relationship between the 2 steps? For a physical Turing Machine a change in time enables the machine to change to the next step and move in space so it can read the next symbol and change it and then go into the next state, but it all starts with a change in time. But without time what gets things going? You've got to have something that does the equivalent of what time and space does for a physical Turing Machine but I can't imagine what it could be. What changes to enable your mystical invisible Turing Machine to go to the next step if it's not time and how does it get that new information on the tape without moving in space? And while you're at it explain how a non-material Turing machine that has nothing to do with time or space can be so important when time and space are so critical to our intelligence and consciousness. 
>> Scientists have better things to do with their time than to continue reading a proof after they already know it can't be correct. 

> False. If a scientist believe that a proof cannot be correct, he will do the work and show where the proof is incorrect, or change its mind.

I can know your proof is incorrect by just asking a few very simple questions about the thought experiment it is based on; such as " after the experiment has been concluded what did the correct answer turn out to be, Moscow or Washington?" or " as neither the Washington Man nor  the Moscow man existed yesterday back in Helsinki who exactly was supposed to make the prediction yesterday back in Helsinki and just as important who exactly was the prediction supposed to be about?" It is not my responsibility to fix this ridiculous mess and is certainly not my responsibility to read more of it.    

>> You discuss consciousness constantly, and there is no property more important to consciousness than time.

> The mundane type of consciousness requires time. OK. 

Mundane? Time is mundane?? 

>> OF COURSE WE DIDN'T AGREE!

> You did agree that HM and HW are the H_guy.

Yes,  we agreed HM guy is the H guy but also the H guy is not the HM guy because H is a proper subset of HM (and HW too); and we also agreed the HM guy is not the HW guy. So you can't just throw around personal pronouns and ask what "he" should predict about what "he" will see. Do both those "he" personal pronouns refer to the same person? Who do they refer to?  You can't answer any of these questions and that's why you continue to use personal pronouns to try to cover up that inability. 
 
>> The iron clad proof that you are utterly confused is that even after your thought exparament is long over you STILL don't know what the correct prediction Mr. He should have made yesterday back in Helsinki

> It “W v M” but I cannot be sure of which one.

If AFTER the experiment you STILL don't know what the correct answer should have been then it was not a experiment and only a fool would keep reading more about it.

>>you have no idea who the hell Mr.He is.

> It is the Huy in Helsinki. 

You're free to make any definition you like but that one is too restrictive to be useful because tomorrow there will be no guy in Helsinki.  If that is your definition of the H guy then tomorrow the H guy will see no city at all, but I think a far more useful definition is the H guy today is anyone who remembers being the H guy yesterday. 

>> You quite literally don't know what you're talking about, but that doesn't inhibit you in the slightest from talking about Mr.He .

> What is your prediction?

If I'm one of your timeless invisible Turing Machines then that question is meaningless as is the word "prediction", but I'm not a invisible Turing Machine timeless so I know what the word means, however before I give you my prediction give me yours. Bob is duplicated. Bob is sent to Washington and Moscow. What one and only one city will Bob see? Predict it or call it for what it is, a very stupid question.

> THE experience is duplicated from the view of a third person guy, but is not from the first person of both copies. They see only one city, and can only infer the presence of a doppelgänger in the other city.

That's nice, but today you claim a correct prediction was not made yesterday, in light of the new knowledge you received today that enabled you to conclude that yesterday's prediction was wrong what should the Helsinki Man (if that's the person you think should be making the prediction) have said yesterday that would enable you to conclude that yesterday's prediction was correct? I would bet money you can generate bafflegab but you can't answer that question.

> The whole point is that there is no specific answer here.

And that's because there was no specific question asked there. 

 John K Clark

 

Bruno Marchal

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Mar 13, 2019, 8:07:43 AM3/13/19
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Hi John,

My computer told me that this post has not be sent. Apology if it was already sent. It is an old posts, but I think it is somehow important. 

Lawrence, if you read those lines, it looks like one message keep not going through (on Gleason). I will try again. It looks like there is s server problem, or a Goggle account problem. Sorry.


On 10 Dec 2018, at 23:30, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Dec 9, 2018 at 8:36 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> Since 529.Metaphysics has been done with the scientific attitude before. It is not easy to come back to this because in this filed, since 529 we have been brainswahedq by fairy tales, 

And the scientific knowledge that existed in 529 AD was about the same as the the scientific knowledge that existed in 529 BC, so apparently doing  metaphysics with any sort of attitude is a waste of time.


I think the contrary. Without the progress in theology during that period, none of the modern mathematics, physics, computer science, would exist. You seem to believe that science is born at your birth. It is born in -500, and has evolved a lot up to 529. Then with the enlightenment period, itself due to progress in Islamic theology up to 1248, it has made the natural science coming back to reason, but spiritual and human sciences are still in the hand of the institutionalised charlatans.




> When we do it with the scientific method, we get experimental means to verify it.

You can't experiment with invisible factors and an experiment that produces invisible results verifies nothing. 

Visibility is Aristotle’s religion. You beg the question by using systematically the Aristotelian materialist dogma.





This is even true for thought experiments, a good thought experiment could in theory actually be performed and only monetary or technological limitations prevent you from doing so, but the thing you call a thought experiment could never be performed regardless of how much money you had or your level of technology because as described it is full of logical self contradictions.


You asserts often negative statement like that. Yet, when we dig on this you find nothing, or you change the vocabulary, or use different sort of rhetorical distracting tricks.

Obviously, the UDA step can be done in principle. You can even replace the human subject by robots, the conclusion follows.



And as a result it is a recipe for self delusion, and the easiest person to fool is yourself.   

And all the scientists  who studied my work, even in my country, and many other people. But your own point has convinced nobody.




> conception of reality before Aristotle [...]

Why should I give a tinker's damn about the conception of reality before Aristotle

Because you seem to believe in mechanism which is incompatible with physicalism or primary matter, that you invoke all the times. 

Aristotle metaphysics has been refuted. Plato was right, after all.





 
> You talk like if the consciousness problem was solved.

I talk like there is no point in worrying about consciousness until you've first solved the problem of intelligence,

You said yourself that consciousness is easy, and intelligence is more difficult. In science we usually solve first the easy problem, before the more complex one.





and that is something you never talk about. Why? Because coming up with a intelligence theory, even a mediocre one, is incredibly hard. But coming up with a consciousness theory is incredibly easy,


No. It is easier than intelligence, but it is not that easy, especially for people who can’t understand the most easy consequence of computationalism, like the first person indeterminacy. For the theory of intelligence, I use case & Smith, as I explained in detail in my long test “conscience et mécanisme” (in my URL).



any theory will work just fine because there are no facts the theory must fit.

Of course this again shows that you don’t read the posts and the papers. 




 
> I am OK that consciousness is easier than intelligence to solve,

I know you are. A good theory must fit the facts. There are no known facts about consciousness.

This is so false.




Your theory fits all known facts about consciousness. Therefore your theory is a good theory about consciousness, just like every other theory about consciousness.

“My” theory of consciousness is the the theory of consciousness made by the machine, and that is 100% verifiable. Then it is also 100% testable, as that theory determines completely physics. It is hard to imagine anything more testable. You just don’t read the papers, invoking an error at step 3, and thus without even understanding that we don’t need that step 3 to get the physics. UDA is just the non mathematical, yet rigorous, but qualitative explanation why physics has to be retrieved from arithmetic, and how to do it, which is done in the more technical part, which can be read independently. 






> to come back to the pre-aristotelian conception of reality [...]

No, let's not come back to that.

OK. At least you agree that you follow Aristotle materialism in metaphysics. But there has never been one experimental evidence for that.



Is it physically possible for you to stop yammering for 2 seconds about a group of people who knew less science than a bright fourth grader and less mathematics than a bright eighth grader?

All you can do is negative statements on people, and this clearly without reading them. 




 
> you invoke the Aristotelian religion that [...]

Apparently the answer is no.
 
>  we don’t discuss mathematics here.

We don't discuss mathematics on the EVERYTHING list?


Neither math, nor physics. We discuss the possibility of a theory of everything. Math and physics have some important role here, but are not the subject of discussion. 




> Of course Archimedes was a great guy, no doubt, but he was not an expert in metaphysics and theology.

And one of the reasons Archimedes was a great guy, the greatest of all the ancient Greeks and the one that has best survived the test of time, is because he didn't waste his time with metaphysics or theology.


The pope and the ayatollah loves statements like that.



 
>> Two can play this game, I have invisible evidence it [ a halting problem solver] does exist.  

> Then explain them. 

There are no results to explain because my universal halting problem solver is invisible as are all the answers to the problems it's asked, just like your invisible Turing Machine except mine is better. My invisible machine can solve the Halting Problem but your invisible machine can’t.

That is called an oracle, or a god. That exists in arithmetic, but it is an open problem if that plays a role in consciousness. With mechanism, + the experimental evidence, it would be premature to invoke them, as we explain better physics without adding them in the ontology.






 
> Plato was skeptical on [...]

And little Joey Smith in the fourth grade who just got a B+ on his science test is skeptical about some stuff too. I can't think of any reason I should be more interested in Plato's skepticism than the skepticism of little Joey Smith.

> The idea that visibility is evidence is exactly the Aristotelian theology,

There is another name for the idea that evidence must be visible, it's called "The Scientific Method”.


No. That is equating science and Aristotle’s theology. You don’t 





  And I don't know what the word "theology" means in Brunospeak.   

It is normal if you have forgotten that before Aristotle, there was Plato. I use theology in the sense of a millenium of serious theology (banished from Occident since the closure of Plato Academy by the christians of that time).



 
> in christianity through St-Thomas [...]

And I care even less about what Christianity through St.Thomas thought about things than I do for the goddamn ancient Greeks.


Like Saint Thomas, you use the visibility criterion for truth.



 
> to denote Aristotle’s notion of [...]

I have a good idea, let's not note or denote Aristotle’s notion of anything.

>> Godel said: “ [Turing] has for the first time succeeded in giving an absolute definition of an interesting epistemological notion, i.e., one not depending on the formalism chosen.” -Godel, Princeton Bicentennial, [1946, p. 84]
Please note the words "not depending on the formalism chosen", Godel thought Turing didn't just prove something about symbols but proved something about the real physical world.

> Nor did Turing. The independence of the formalism means here that you can take arithmetic, or fortran, or lisp, or lambda calculus, etc. 

Look up the word formalism in Google and the first definition is "excessive adherence to prescribed forms". The second definition is "a description of something in formal mathematical or logical terms".  Please note the use of the word "description". Mathematics is the best language for describing the way the physical world operates but there are limits on what even the best language can do.  Any language can write fiction as well as nonfiction, the story Newton told about gravity was based on reality just as a well written historical novel is, the story was written in the language of mathematics and contained no grammatical errors or logical plot holes but when we looked close enough at real physical gravity we discovered that Newton's gravity does not exist. Mathematical consistency is necessary but not sufficient to guarantee existence.  


No problem with that, but please don’t confuse the mathematical language and the mathematical reality.




 
> This has nothing to do with physics, as none of those formalism assumes anything in physics.

True, arithmetic and fortran and lisp and lambda calculus have nothing to do with physics, and that is exactly why Godel thought Turing's work was superior because Turing showed that none of those formalisms were needed, you only need matter energy and the laws of physics to compute anything that can be computed. 

All formalism are equivalent with respect to the notion of computation and computability.

You will not find any physical, still less physicalist, assumptions in the work of Turing.




 
>  now we see that some confuse [...]

But very few are so confused they don't know the referent of the personal pronouns they use even when the very thing they're trying to illustrate is the nature of personal identity.


No. The only things which is shown is that if mechanism is correct, physics has to be retrieved from arithmetic. For personal identity we have agreed on all points, and we use a small amount of it in the proof.




 
> the Turing machine does not assume more physics

Of course it assumes physics! You can't move a tape or write a 0 or 1 on it without being physical.


Without being primarily physical? The use of a machine instead of a more abstract looking lama expression was for pedagogy. It helps in computability theory for the dummies, but it becomes an handicap in metaphysics for those who missed that Turing formalism is *equiavalent* with all the others.






>>"The greatest improvement [in my work] was made possible through the precise definition of the concept of finite procedure, . . . This concept, . . . is equivalent to the concept of a ‘computable function of integers’ . . . The most satisfactory way, in my opinion, is that of reducing the concept of finite procedure to that of a machine with a finite number of parts, as has been done by the British mathematician Turing.” —-Godel [1951, pp. 304–305], Gibbs lecture
 
> But Godel knew, as everyone, that the Turing machine is non material.

What the hell is non material about "a machine with a finite number of parts”?

Just read Turing, please. Or Davis. A Turing machine requires only state symbols, tape symbols, and the quadruplets. This is explained in all books and papers, including Turing’s original one, that you can find in Davis “The Undecidable”. 








Can you think of anything more material than that? I can’t.

Literalism is bad in religion, but here you show that a form of literalism is bad in math too. You are the first one, to my knowledge, who believes that a Turing machine is a physical object.




Godel also said "That this really is the correct definition of mechanical computability was established beyond any doubt by Turing.”

Because of it looks intuitively like a human doing a computation. Gödel was just a bot slow on this. Turing will prove itself the equivalence of “its correct definition” (if that makes sense), with all the others known, and conjecture its thesis, which concerns all definitions possibles.




If the word "mechanical" is to have any meaning it can't be non material.


You are just wrong here. You really miss what the Church-Turing thesis is all about.





> And Turing was the one showing that his (more pedagogical perhaps) formalism was equivalent with Lambda calculus,

Yes, what a Turing Machine is doing can be described in the language of Lambda calculus but a Turing Machine is not a language, it is not describing anything, it is doing, it is the thing being described. It's like confusing cow and "cow" and after writing the following in the language of English "the cow jumped over the moon" claimed to have proved that a bovine mammal is capable of achieving escape velocity of 11,200 meters per second.

Nice, but it just repeat what I said about your confusion. What you say is true for all Turing complete formalism. You can implement a lambda expression in a Turing machine, but you can implement a Turing machine in Robinson arithmetic, all universal system can emulate all universal systems.





 
> People who says that theology makes no sense

That very statement makes no sense to me because as I said I don't know what "theology" means in Brunospeak and I'm pretty sure Bruno doesn't either.

It means the study of truth with the intuition that we cannot define it, nor know it as such. It is the sense of Plato, according to Hirschberger (and others).




 
> are usually people who takes Aristotelian theology for granted. 

It's some sort of weird obsession I guess, all the secrets of universe can be found in the writings of the scientific illiterate ancient Greeks.

Like you can find them in the head of any self-observing Universal Machine. Then it just means that the greeks were good in self-observation.





 
> You beg the question by identifying/confusing the concept of [...]

At least I'm not confused about who the referent is of the personal pronouns that I use.

Up to now, you he shown the contrary, by claiming that “W & M”, which nobody understand (or better, everybody see that you eliminate the 1p distinction, and gives only the 3-1 description.





> God with Christian theory of God

Just once I'd like to see a post from you that doesn't mention God, Christians, theology or goddamn brain dead ancient Greeks! But I don't suppose I'll ever get my wish.

Science is not wishful thinking.





> If we believe that 2+2 = 4 independently of us [...]

The English language is not independent of us, without us it wouldn't exist, and the language of mathematics is not independent of physics,


Of course it is, except for the word referring to the physical, but as such they are independent. You confuse the English language with the use by humans of the English language. Of course, it makes sense only in a material world, but it does not require physicalism or aristotelism to make sense. Indeed, I can prove to you the existence of infinitely mean English speaker in arithmetic, without assuming anything in physics.




if there were not at least 2 different physical things in the universe then 2+2=4 would not make sense to anyone even if there was someone around to try, and there wouldn't be.

> We would never been able to implement the arithmetical computation in matter, and handle them properly, without having discovered them in mathematics.

That is certainly true, a language is powerful tool that helps brains in reasoning, and when it comes to physics there is no better language than mathematics.  

> I ask you perhaps also to leave your personal convictions out of the room.

So says the man who is personally convinced that invisible evidence is scientific evidence.  

 I said only that a visible evidence of something is not necessarily a scientific evidence for the existence of something. That is known since the socratic dream arguments. It has been discovered by many others, in other civilisation.
Aristotle use implicitly the assumption that we can know that we are awaken, but that makes no sense with mechanist-like assumption.





 
> that makes theology and physics independent of the formalism.

You equate science with theology? Theology is the only "science" that has no field of study, at least if the word has its standard meaning, but I'm not fluent  in Brunospeak, nobody is not even Bruno.

Plato. Not me.





 
>> a Turing Machine that does not make use of matter and the laws of physics can't change in time

> It changes relatively to any numbering “time”, called "steps" in computability theory. Those digital steps needs the number successor relation, not any physical space or time.

If time and space are not made use of in your mystical invisible timeless Turing Machine how do you go from step N to step N+1, what is the relationship between the 2 steps?

The transition table of the Turing machine, or
The reduction in the combinators, or
A clock in the von Neumann mathematical computer (before implementing it in nature), or
etc.






For a physical Turing Machine a change in time enables the machine to change to the next step and move in space so it can read the next symbol and change it and then go into the next state, but it all starts with a change in time.


You confuse persitentently a computation and a physical implementation of a computation.

That is the same confusion than between phi_u(x, y) and phi_x(y) when both are run by some other (than u) universal number/machine. Level confusion.






But without time what gets things going? You've got to have something that does the equivalent of what time and space does for a physical Turing Machine but I can't imagine what it could be. What changes to enable your mystical invisible Turing Machine to go to the next step if it's not time and how does it get that new information on the tape without moving in space?

It moves in a mathematical space, like when running a Turing machine by a universal lambda expression.





And while you're at it explain how a non-material Turing machine that has nothing to do with time or space can be so important when time and space are so critical to our intelligence and consciousness. 

Yes, but no primary matter needs to be invoke for this. You point makes sense, but is not valid to refute the immaterialist consequence of mechanism.







>> Scientists have better things to do with their time than to continue reading a proof after they already know it can't be correct. 

> False. If a scientist believe that a proof cannot be correct, he will do the work and show where the proof is incorrect, or change its mind.

I can know your proof is incorrect by just asking a few very simple questions about the thought experiment it is based on; such as " after the experiment has been concluded what did the correct answer turn out to be, Moscow or Washington?”

As the answer must be confirmed by both copies, the correct prediction was “W v M”, so that both the HM and the Hguy can say that their were correct. Obviously all the other answer are false.







or " as neither the Washington Man nor  the Moscow man existed yesterday back in Helsinki

Then the H-guy died. For both the HM and the WM guy will say that “yesterday I was in helsinki”. 

You refute the notion of identity on which we have agreed. 




who exactly was supposed to make the prediction yesterday back in Helsinki and just as important who exactly was the prediction supposed to be about?”


Simple enough, and you know the answer.





It is not my responsibility to fix this ridiculous mess and is certainly not my responsibility to read more of it. 

Once more you evade the problem that was raised only by you. Fine, it was not a problem after all.


  

>> You discuss consciousness constantly, and there is no property more important to consciousness than time.

> The mundane type of consciousness requires time. OK. 

Mundane? Time is mundane?? 

Yes. 




>> OF COURSE WE DIDN'T AGREE!

> You did agree that HM and HW are the H_guy.

Yes,  we agreed HM guy is the H guy but also the H guy is not the HM guy

Then the H-guy dies in the experience.



because H is a proper subset of HM (and HW too); and we also agreed the HM guy is not the HW guy.

But the H-guy is both of them and both of them is the H-guy. Only the HM-guy and the HW feel different, which explains the first person indeterminacy.



So you can't just throw around personal pronouns and ask what "he" should predict about what "he" will see.

Only bu using the idea that the H-guy dies in the process, as you made explicit in some of your “refutation”, but now you contradict it.



Do both those "he" personal pronouns refer to the same person? Who do they refer to?  You can't answer any of these questions and that's why you continue to use personal pronouns to try to cover up that inability. 

The problem comes only when you dismiss the 1p-you with the 3p-you. When taking that distinction into account, it appears to be very simple.




 
>> The iron clad proof that you are utterly confused is that even after your thought exparament is long over you STILL don't know what the correct prediction Mr. He should have made yesterday back in Helsinki

> It “W v M” but I cannot be sure of which one.

If AFTER the experiment you STILL don't know what the correct answer should have been then it was not a experiment and only a fool would keep reading more about it.


That is ridiculous. If I look at a chroedinger cat, and see it alive, that does not imply he was alive before I look at it. Your statement here would contradict QM-without-collapse, if not any use of probability in science.








>>you have no idea who the hell Mr.He is.

> It is the Huy in Helsinki. 

You're free to make any definition you like but that one is too restrictive to be useful because tomorrow there will be no guy in Helsinki.

Then again, you talk like the H-guy dies in the experience, contradicting mechanism (and what you said in the previous post). 




  If that is your definition of the H guy then tomorrow the H guy will see no city at all, but I think a far more useful definition is the H guy today is anyone who remembers being the H guy yesterday. 

>> You quite literally don't know what you're talking about, but that doesn't inhibit you in the slightest from talking about Mr.He .

> What is your prediction?

If I'm one of your timeless invisible Turing Machines then that question is meaningless as is the word "prediction", but I'm not a invisible Turing Machine timeless so I know what the word means, however before I give you my prediction give me yours. Bob is duplicated. Bob is sent to Washington and Moscow. What one and only one city will Bob see? Predict it or call it for what it is, a very stupid question.

> THE experience is duplicated from the view of a third person guy, but is not from the first person of both copies. They see only one city, and can only infer the presence of a doppelgänger in the other city.

That's nice, but today you claim a correct prediction was not made yesterday, in light of the new knowledge you received today that enabled you to conclude that yesterday's prediction was wrong what should the Helsinki Man (if that's the person you think should be making the prediction) have said yesterday that would enable you to conclude that yesterday's prediction was correct? I would bet money you can generate bafflegab but you can't answer that question.

> The whole point is that there is no specific answer here.

And that's because there was no specific question asked there. 

 John K Clark

 

John Clark

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Mar 13, 2019, 5:09:24 PM3/13/19
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On Wed, Mar 13, 2019 at 8:07 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> My computer told me that this post has not be sent. Apology if it was already sent. It is an old posts, but I think it is somehow important. 

I'm only going to comment on about 10% of your very long post because the other 90% is just stuff I've heard 6.02*10^23 times before about the scientifically illiterate ancient Greeks, peepee, the Universal Dance Association, and how I am the most religious man who ever lived.  

>>And the scientific knowledge that existed in 529 AD was about the same as the the scientific knowledge that existed in 529 BC, so apparently doing  metaphysics with any sort of attitude is a waste of time.

> I think the contrary. Without the progress in theology during that period [...]

Progress in theology?? What's the difference between good theology and bad theology? None that I can see.
 
> none of the modern mathematics, physics, computer science, would exist. You seem to believe that science is born at your birth. It is born in -500, and has evolved a lot up to 529.

There was almost no progress in science or mathematics between 100 and 529 AD, especially in Christian Europe, the big jump had to wait for another 900 years or so.

> You can't experiment with invisible factors and an experiment that produces invisible results verifies nothing. 

> Visibility is Aristotle’s religion.

Meaning needs contrast and Brunospeak is not my native language so please name something that is NOT a religion. I've asked you to do this before but you never did.

>> there is no point in worrying about consciousness until you've first solved the problem of intelligence,

> You said yourself that consciousness is easy,

It's far TOO easy, it's so easy ANY consciousness theory will work because there are no facts they must satisfy, and that's why every Tom Dick and Harry on the internet is peddling their own consciousness theory. But there are vastly fewer intelligence theoreticians on the net because that's hard and unlike consciousness theories they can be tested.

> Literalism is bad in religion

 Everything is bad in religion because religion is just bad. As Christopher Hitchens said "religion ruins everything".

>> If time and space are not made use of in your mystical invisible timeless Turing Machine how do you go from step N to step N+1, what is the relationship between the 2 steps?

> The transition table of the Turing machine,

transition table never changes, thus it can't DO anything

 > or The reduction in the combinators,

 Mathematics never changes, thus it can't DO anything
 
> or A clock in the von Neumann mathematical computer

A software clock can't change without the help of physical hardware, and a clock that can't change is not a clock.

 >> explain how a non-material Turing machine that has nothing to do with time or space can be so important when time and space are so critical to our intelligence and consciousness. 

> Yes, but no primary matter needs to be invoke for this. You point makes sense, but is not valid to refute the immaterialist consequence of mechanism.
 
Could you please make clear your distinction between matter and primary matter and why this distinction is important. Even if you're right and pure mathematics can produce matter (and I can't see any way it could) it would still be necessary for mathematics to first produce matter before intelligence or consciousness could emerge.

>> I can know your proof is incorrect by just asking a few very simple questions about the thought experiment it is based on; such as " after the experiment has been concluded what did the correct answer turn out to be, Moscow or Washington?”

> As the answer must be confirmed by both copies,

Confirmed? What with your massive confusion with personal pronouns causes be the existence of a personal pronoun duplicating machine you can't even clearly state what the question is much less confirm that that the answer was correct.
 
> the correct prediction was “W v M”,

You predict that the result of my coin flip experiment will turn out to be heads or tails. I then flip the coin and it turns out to be tails. So tell me, what have we learned from this experiment?  Absolutely positively nothing. 

> neither the Washington Man nor  the Moscow man existed yesterday back in Helsinki

> Then the H-guy died.

Yes the H-guy does not exist today, but only if you define the H-guy as the man who was in Helsinki yesterday because today is not yesterday so today there is no way a man can be a man in Helsinki yesterday. Of course that would be a very very stupid was to define the H-guy, a much smarter definition would be the H-guy today is anybody who remembers being the H-guy yesterday.
 
>> who exactly was supposed to make the prediction yesterday back in Helsinki and just as important who exactly was the prediction supposed to be about?”

> Simple enough, and you know the answer.

Yes I know the answer, you don't know. if you did you wouldn't hesitate to tell me  me but that can't be done without personal pronouns with no referent. 

>> If AFTER the experiment you STILL don't know what the correct answer should have been then it was not a experiment and only a fool would keep reading more about it.

> That is ridiculous. If I look at a chroedinger cat, and see it alive, that does not imply he was alive before I look at it. Your statement here would contradict QM-without-collapse, if not any use of probability in science.

After the box is opened and the Schrodinger Cat experiment is over and everybody packed up their equipment and went home we know what the correct prediction of the cat's fate would have been, but after your "experiment" is over we STILL don't know what the correct answer would have been. We have learned precisely nothing from it and that is the very definition of a failed experiment, we haven't even learned what won't work. 

John K Clark  


Philip Thrift

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Mar 14, 2019, 3:40:49 AM3/14/19
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On two topics:

On "intelligence": Having spent the 1980s and '90s in an AI lab (now AI is making another wave in its existence in the late 2010s), the only focus was intelligence, not consciousness. The goal of AI is basically that of making super-smart, or smart-enough to do things (like drive cars), zombies. We will be surrounded by a bunch of intelligent, helpful zombies soon. We may even have robots that can sit and talk with us about current events, know everything in Wikipedia, etc. How "creative" they will be is an open question. But they will not be conscious. They will be zombies. But we know that we are conscious, so we know that some sort of matter configuration is conscious. If we make such a thing, it will be the first artificial entity to get a Social Security Card. It will likely want to start posting on Twitter.

On mathematics: Of course mathematics changes, because it is a type of language, and languages change. The language(s) of mathematics include things like HoTT, reformulated as a programming language (of space). An "unchangeable" mathematics is the conception of the Platonists.

- pt 

John Clark

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Mar 14, 2019, 8:07:09 AM3/14/19
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On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 3:40 AM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

> They [AI's] will be zombies. But we know that we are conscious
 
We? What's with this "we" business? I know for a fact that I'm conscious but I have no reason to believe any of my fellow human beings are except for the intelligent behavior that they sometimes exhibit.  

 John K Clark

John Clark

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Mar 14, 2019, 8:54:49 AM3/14/19
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On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 3:40 AM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
 
> We may even have robots that can sit and talk with us about current events, know everything in Wikipedia, etc. How "creative" they will be is an open question.

I don't think it's a open question at all. I can state without reservation that regardless of how intelligent computers become they will never be creative because the word "creative" now means whatever computers aren't good at. Yet. And thus due to Moore's Law and improved programing the meaning of the word constantly changes. What was creative yesterday isn't creative today.


> On mathematics: Of course mathematics changes, because it is a type of language, and languages change.

If mathematics is just a language (as I think it is) then it can not be used to construct things, in particular it can't, by itself without the use of matter, construct a Turing Machine as Bruno claims it can. English is also a language but an English word has no meaning without an English speaker with a physical brain to hear it.

 John K Clark

Philip Thrift

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Mar 14, 2019, 9:03:54 AM3/14/19
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There is some AI art that sells at galleries


but that's about it I've seen.

Turing machines in theoretical computing/math books are all fictional things, of course.

All actual computers are made of matter.

(Technically the fictional ones are too: Printed ink glyphs on paper.)

 -pt

 

Brent Meeker

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Mar 14, 2019, 1:52:04 PM3/14/19
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And with a world outside that brain for the word to reference.

Brent

Brent Meeker

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Mar 14, 2019, 2:10:27 PM3/14/19
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And AI designs stuff:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_antenna

Brent

Bruno Marchal

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Mar 14, 2019, 2:22:29 PM3/14/19
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On 13 Mar 2019, at 22:08, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Mar 13, 2019 at 8:07 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> My computer told me that this post has not be sent. Apology if it was already sent. It is an old posts, but I think it is somehow important. 

I'm only going to comment on about 10% of your very long post because the other 90% is just stuff I've heard 6.02*10^23 times before about the scientifically illiterate ancient Greeks, peepee, the Universal Dance Association, and how I am the most religious man who ever lived.  

>>And the scientific knowledge that existed in 529 AD was about the same as the the scientific knowledge that existed in 529 BC, so apparently doing  metaphysics with any sort of attitude is a waste of time.

> I think the contrary. Without the progress in theology during that period [...]

Progress in theology?? What's the difference between good theology and bad theology? None that I can see.


You confess not to read the pre-dogmatic theology. Are you aware that after Justinian, in 529, the academy of Plato has been has been closed, by order, and the platonist philosopher or thinker where persecuted and most of them will fly from Athene to Alexandria, where Hypatia will eventually taught Plotinus theology and Diphantius Algebra, and indeed, this will lead to the judo-Islamic era, full of rich merchandising and a development of science … up to 1248, where again, the muslim will commit the same error than the christians in 529, in the famous contrevery between Averroes and Al Ghazli:

Averroès: the Text must be submitted to reason.

Al Ghazali:  Reason must be submitted to Text.

Which will lead to the decline of the Muslims of the Middle-East.

The Platonician are the skeptical one; notably on Aristotle “primary materialism”, even more so of what some “mainstream” school of those religion can take, when institutionalised (the authentic “blasphemy” as well understood by the greeks and the taoist Chinese (but that has not prevented the Taoist to also fall in the “theological trap”, like harbouring any certainty in that subject.

Theology has progressed, but if you don’t study the non confessional theology of the greeks, you will not been able to appreciate it, of course.

Yet, The theology of the universal machine, the Löbian one, provides a simple transparent interpretation of Plotinus’ theology in arithmetic. Even in the way Simplicius attributes to a thinker of the first century, Moderatus, which is related Parmenides, and take the form of five important mode of reality:

The one,
The intellect/intelligible/believer/third-person self
The knower/soul/first-person
The intelligible matter
The sensible matter

The one, here “played”, or represented by the notion of truth, for example the set of sigma_1 true arithmetical sentences (that represents already the universal dovetailing), but for the start, and simplicity, we can use the “full” first order truth: the set of all true arithmetical sentences.

The intellect/intelligible is played by the Gödel “beweisbar” provability predicate: []p

The soul/knower/first person is placed by the formal conjunct of provability and truth: []p & p

The Intelligible matter, the one where God can no more control things (the platonician reconstruction of the Aristotle definition). It is the first person indeterminacy on the consistent extension, and it is motivated by the thought experiences, or by the Theatetus of Plato. It is played by []p & <>t. It assumes a reality de facto. (By the completeness theorem.

The beauty is that G* proves that all those modes describes the exact same extensional arithmetical reality, yet, G*, saw how much those mode-equivalence are not accessible to the machine, and obeys quite different logic and mathematics. Indeed we get classical mathematics (God, the One), intuitionist mathematics (the soul), quantum mathematics (intelligible matter), intuitionistic quantum logic (sensible matter).

You know you dislike both reading old text, and doing thought experience, or listening to the machine (through a bit of mathematical logic), but you seem also attached to your philosophical conviction that physicalism is true, or that there is a PRIMARY physical universe, and that only physics can explain consciousness. But it fails up to now, and here, we see that with Church thesis, it does not fail, as quantum logics and alternate consistent histories appears in arithmetic at the place the thought experience suggests and the math obliges.

You told us that consciousness is easy, and you told us that you did understand that consciousness is not localised, but you still assume a god, even if only a non personal one, an ontological commitment, if you prefer, which is not valid when we do science. 
You keep fighting for Aristotle without saying. You are an ally to those who fight against those who want to come back to reason in the fundamental questioning mind and person included.

And, pardon me, but you have the first argument ever, the one used by Bruno, in “Sylvie and Bruno”, when he talk about spinach. 

Sylvie: Please, Bruno, eat Spinach, it is new, it is good.
Bruno: No! I hate Spinach!
Sylvie: but you have never eaten them, How could you know that you hate them?
Bruno: that is the point, if I eat them, I might like them, but that is the very idea which disgusts me the most!

Replace “(neo)platonist philosophy/theology” for Spinach, and that is your argument.







 
> none of the modern mathematics, physics, computer science, would exist. You seem to believe that science is born at your birth. It is born in -500, and has evolved a lot up to 529.

There was almost no progress in science or mathematics between 100 and 529 AD, especially in Christian Europe, the big jump had to wait for another 900 years or so.

> You can't experiment with invisible factors and an experiment that produces invisible results verifies nothing. 

> Visibility is Aristotle’s religion.

Meaning needs contrast and Brunospeak is not my native language so please name something that is NOT a religion. I've asked you to do this before but you never did.

>> there is no point in worrying about consciousness until you've first solved the problem of intelligence,

> You said yourself that consciousness is easy,

It's far TOO easy, it's so easy ANY consciousness theory will work because there are no facts they must satisfy, and that's why every Tom Dick and Harry on the internet is peddling their own consciousness theory. But there are vastly fewer intelligence theoreticians on the net because that's hard and unlike consciousness theories they can be tested.

> Literalism is bad in religion

 Everything is bad in religion because religion is just bad. As Christopher Hitchens said "religion ruins everything”.


This is sheer nonsense. Especially if you read well Christopher Hitchens, which seemed to me to make clear that he is talking of the authoritarian religion, which has been the reason to steal theology to science.

What you say is like saying that Genetics is bad, because it has given rise to the biggest human made catastrophes (a Russian famine, after Lyssenko tried its “materialist genetics”, and considered the notion of gene as too much “small bourgeois” to be be valid with Marx and Lenine.

You should not even compare a branch of science, with what any authoritarian (dogmatic) group of humans do with it when stolen from the domain of reason (science).

You can’t impose your materialist conviction, science does not work that way.





>> If time and space are not made use of in your mystical invisible timeless Turing Machine how do you go from step N to step N+1, what is the relationship between the 2 steps?

> The transition table of the Turing machine,

transition table never changes, thus it can't DO anything

 > or The reduction in the combinators,

 Mathematics never changes, thus it can't DO anything
 
> or A clock in the von Neumann mathematical computer

A software clock can't change without the help of physical hardware, and a clock that can't change is not a clock.

 >> explain how a non-material Turing machine that has nothing to do with time or space can be so important when time and space are so critical to our intelligence and consciousness. 

> Yes, but no primary matter needs to be invoke for this. You point makes sense, but is not valid to refute the immaterialist consequence of mechanism.
 
Could you please make clear your distinction between matter and primary matter and why this distinction is important.



Primary matter, or primary physics is the idea that the fundamental reality is the physical reality.

It is the assumption that what we see is the real thing, and that is the Aristotelian Assumption.

For an Aristotelian matter = primary matter, they take the existence of the measurable numbers for granted.

Platonist, in the large sense, are those who doubt this, for whatever reason, they conceive that there might be a simpler conceptual solution, like “first principles”, “equation”, or beauty, art, music. 





Even if you're right and pure mathematics can produce matter (and I can't see any way it could)


I reassure you, nor do I. But the sigma_1 arithmetical relation does emulate computations, when taken in the sense of Gödel-Herbrand-Kleene-Church-Post-Turing. Post discovered anticipated all this in the 1920s. Including the immateriality, but still retracting itself from it in a footnote.




it would still be necessary for mathematics to first produce matter before intelligence or consciousness could emerge.


Not if you can survive with a digital computer, qua computation, that is in virtue of that computer doing the right things, including the local counterfactuals accessible, because no universal machine at, can ever make the distinction between

A computation supported by a Fortran interpreter, run by an Algol interpreter, run by a combinator, run by a diophantine polynomial run by a physical super-macintosh computer

From


A computation supported by a Fortran interpreter, run by an Algol interpreter, run by a combinator, run by a diophantine polynomial run by a Relevant-subset-of-physical super-macintosh computer run by a diophantine polynomial (again).

The mechanist assumption is the assumption that a relevant Turing complete laws of physics is enough, at the “right” level of substitution, which is assumed to exist.

But then, it becomes absolutely undecidable if our reality is bigger than the sigma_1 arithmetical reality, which runs all computations. 

But despite this, it remains testable, as physics has be be given to some mode of self-reference imposed by incompleteness, and indeed everything match up.





>> I can know your proof is incorrect by just asking a few very simple questions about the thought experiment it is based on; such as " after the experiment has been concluded what did the correct answer turn out to be, Moscow or Washington?”

> As the answer must be confirmed by both copies,

Confirmed? What with your massive confusion with personal pronouns


The amount of exaggeration betray your doubt on this. Good. The pronouns are my specialty.

The theory above, extracted from the mathematical logic of self-reference, introduces and make precise 8 notion of selves. 8 because truth and provability not only imposes those “vertical nuances”, but it split three mathematical modes in two, which distinguish the truth that the machine can know, like “I am the one reconstituted in Moscow” and the one they can communicate “My body will be in the two city”. 

Your refutation of step 1, when translated into the machine’s theory of self-reference was a confusion between []p and []p & p, and some variants.




causes be the existence of a personal pronoun duplicating machine you can't even clearly state what the question is much less confirm that that the answer was correct.


Because you deny the first person discourse. I can perfectly predict what will happen to me, in the first person sense of the self. If coffee is offered in the two places Washington and Moscow, I can predict that I will have coffee with certainty (modulo the usual default hypothesis, which is the “<>t” of “[]p & <>t”, BTW), but I cannot know if I will drink it in W or in W, yet I know it will be one of them”.

And when we do the experience, both the M-guy and the W-Guy, confirm.

The iteration of that experience, leads most WMMWWWM….WWWWMWMMMW type of guys predicts “white noise” or random, or incompressible sequences. And they are right, with mechanism, as taking them all, you get the prefect Pascal triangle, or Gaussian for very large iteration.






 
> the correct prediction was “W v M”,

You predict that the result of my coin flip experiment will turn out to be heads or tails. I then flip the coin and it turns out to be tails. So tell me, what have we learned from this experiment?  Absolutely positively nothing. 

The coin is another type of indeterminacy. A laplacian god can still predict it.

That is not the case in the quantum indeterminacy, even a Laplacian God cannot predict the result to the guy doing the experiment.

The same occur with the digital mechanist self-duplication, the Laplacian God is defeated again, yet, without assuming a mysterious quantum world that nobody really understand. We assume only elementary arithmetic, and of course build on the giant discovery of Turing, Gödel, … Solovay (the discovery of G and G*).







> neither the Washington Man nor  the Moscow man existed yesterday back in Helsinki

> Then the H-guy died.

Yes the H-guy does not exist today, but only if you define the H-guy as the man who was in Helsinki yesterday because today is not yesterday so today there is no way a man can be a man in Helsinki yesterday. Of course that would be a very very stupid was to define the H-guy, a much smarter definition would be the H-guy today is anybody who remembers being the H-guy yesterday.


Which I used all the time. Indeed, that is why each reconstituted copies can claim having survived, as they should assuming mechanism, but then listen to them both, and each says “I survived in only one city and I realise I could not have predicted which one”.







 
>> who exactly was supposed to make the prediction yesterday back in Helsinki and just as important who exactly was the prediction supposed to be about?”

> Simple enough, and you know the answer.

Yes I know the answer, you don't know.


I sincerely hope it is has been clarified. 

The answer is, concerning what I expect in the first person mode, that I expect to bring coffee, and that it will be either in Washington, or in Moscow, but I can be sure of which one.




if you did you wouldn't hesitate to tell me  me but that can't be done without personal pronouns with no referent. 


We agreed on them.  As other have shown to you, you did use the same pronouns in Everertt-QM, and your argument that physical doppelgänger can met has been shown not relevant, or you need to explain how a universal machine can distinguish a virtual quantum emulation, from a classical one, and you will have to violate the Church-Turing thesis at some point, or provide the algorithm.







>> If AFTER the experiment you STILL don't know what the correct answer should have been then it was not a experiment and only a fool would keep reading more about it.

> That is ridiculous. If I look at a chroedinger cat, and see it alive, that does not imply he was alive before I look at it. Your statement here would contradict QM-without-collapse, if not any use of probability in science.

After the box is opened and the Schrodinger Cat experiment is over and everybody packed up their equipment and went home we know what the correct prediction of the cat's fate would have been, but after your "experiment" is over we STILL don't know what the correct answer would have been.

That means you do not use Everett, but Copenhagen.

OK. I will go without in the box in Helsinki. Before pushing the button, we make our prediction. In Moscow, I tell you OK, mine is validated, etc. We know the results of the experiment. That we have doppelgänger getting different result, well it is like in QM, unless you make a last collapse, they are there two.

And the fact we can met them is irrelevant when using mechanism, unless you add some non Turing emulable magic.






We have learned precisely nothing from it and that is the very definition of a failed experiment, we haven't even learned what won't work. 


We learn that explains the collapse appearance with the wave has to be extended to the appearance of the wave in arithmetic, where all computations are emulated in virtue of the elementary arithmetical truth.

We have reduced the mind-body problem, to derive physics in the mode of sef-rerefences, and it works, including the distinction between quanta and qualia. 

Oh! We lean we need to backtrack 1500 years in theology, as the greeks got the right big picture, unless tomorrow someone show that physics diverges from mechanism, but that is why we need to pursue the testing. 

Bruno

Bruno Marchal

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Mar 15, 2019, 6:17:45 AM3/15/19
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On 14 Mar 2019, at 13:54, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 3:40 AM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
 
We may even have robots that can sit and talk with us about current events, know everything in Wikipedia, etc. How "creative" they will be is an open question. 

I don't think it's a open question at all. I can state without reservation that regardless of how intelligent computers become they will never be creative because the word "creative" now means whatever computers aren't good at. Yet. And thus due to Moore's Law and improved programing the meaning of the word constantly changes. What was creative yesterday isn't creative today.

On mathematics: Of course mathematics changes, because it is a type of language, and languages change.

If mathematics is just a language (as I think it is)


Consider arithmetic. The language are the well formed expressions, using the logical symbols, and the no logical symboles like s, +, *, and “0”.

But a theory is concerned with proofs (syntactical) and semantics (a reality supposed to make the proposition true). After Gödel we know that *all* effective theories (effective = the proof are mechanically checkable) miss the arithmetical standard reality. A theory is a set of formal proposition that we believe true in that standard model/reality. It never captures the whole reality, which provably extends any theory. Even ZF is incomplete with respect to the arithmetical reality.





then it can not be used to construct things, in particular it can't, by itself without the use of matter, construct a Turing Machine as Bruno claims it can. 

But why would that be needed. You assume some primary matter, but there are no evidence for this.





English is also a language but an English word has no meaning without an English speaker with a physical brain to hear it.

… and without some reality to give sense to the proposition. But the arithmetical reality contains, a bit like a bloc-universe, all the computations. Once you associated consciousness to computations, a material primary universe seems to add unnecessary complexity. The arithmetical reality cannot build matter, but contains all dreams/experience of the material. 

Bruno Marchal

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On 14 Mar 2019, at 14:03, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:



On Thursday, March 14, 2019 at 7:54:49 AM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 3:40 AM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
 
We may even have robots that can sit and talk with us about current events, know everything in Wikipedia, etc. How "creative" they will be is an open question. 

I don't think it's a open question at all. I can state without reservation that regardless of how intelligent computers become they will never be creative because the word "creative" now means whatever computers aren't good at. Yet. And thus due to Moore's Law and improved programing the meaning of the word constantly changes. What was creative yesterday isn't creative today.

On mathematics: Of course mathematics changes, because it is a type of language, and languages change.

If mathematics is just a language (as I think it is) then it can not be used to construct things, in particular it can't, by itself without the use of matter, construct a Turing Machine as Bruno claims it can. English is also a language but an English word has no meaning without an English speaker with a physical brain to hear it.

 John K Clark



There is some AI art that sells at galleries


but that's about it I've seen.

Turing machines in theoretical computing/math books are all fictional things, of course.

“Of course”?




All actual computers are made of matter.

No doubt that this is true, but that is not an argument that such matter are not (stable) appearances.

But as I try to explain here from times to times, the arithmetical reality explains where and why such stable appearances appears. If I can say.

You just seem to be a believer in a Primary Matter, but I have never seen one evidence for it. Initially, “mathematician” were not believer in a mathematical reality, but a skeptic toward the idea that matter is the primitive reality we have to assume. But with mechanism, we don’t have to assume matter, it explains matter, and unlike physicalism, it explains how consciousness remains associated to the appearances of matter.

You seem to beg the question by deciding that math objects are fiction and physics object is not.

No problem, but then digital mechanism is false. But there are no evidences, it is just an old habit since the closure of Plato academy;

Bruno





(Technically the fictional ones are too: Printed ink glyphs on paper.)

 -pt

 

Philip Thrift

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Mar 15, 2019, 8:43:16 AM3/15/19
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On Friday, March 15, 2019 at 5:18:43 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 14 Mar 2019, at 14:03, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:



On Thursday, March 14, 2019 at 7:54:49 AM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 3:40 AM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
 
We may even have robots that can sit and talk with us about current events, know everything in Wikipedia, etc. How "creative" they will be is an open question. 

I don't think it's a open question at all. I can state without reservation that regardless of how intelligent computers become they will never be creative because the word "creative" now means whatever computers aren't good at. Yet. And thus due to Moore's Law and improved programing the meaning of the word constantly changes. What was creative yesterday isn't creative today.

On mathematics: Of course mathematics changes, because it is a type of language, and languages change.

If mathematics is just a language (as I think it is) then it can not be used to construct things, in particular it can't, by itself without the use of matter, construct a Turing Machine as Bruno claims it can. English is also a language but an English word has no meaning without an English speaker with a physical brain to hear it.

 John K Clark



There is some AI art that sells at galleries


but that's about it I've seen.

Turing machines in theoretical computing/math books are all fictional things, of course.

“Of course”?




All actual computers are made of matter.

No doubt that this is true, but that is not an argument that such matter are not (stable) appearances.

But as I try to explain here from times to times, the arithmetical reality explains where and why such stable appearances appears. If I can say.

You just seem to be a believer in a Primary Matter, but I have never seen one evidence for it. Initially, “mathematician” were not believer in a mathematical reality, but a skeptic toward the idea that matter is the primitive reality we have to assume. But with mechanism, we don’t have to assume matter, it explains matter, and unlike physicalism, it explains how consciousness remains associated to the appearances of matter.

You seem to beg the question by deciding that math objects are fiction and physics object is not.

No problem, but then digital mechanism is false. But there are no evidences, it is just an old habit since the closure of Plato academy;

Bruno




One could also look at it as a pragmatist.

Say I want to make something. I could say "I want to make it out of arithmetic (numbers)." But ways to actually do that is something like to write a program where "numbers" do things in a computer. But we know what is going on here is electrons moving through circuits and pixels.

It could be "running" in my brain (assuming I can imagine the program executing). But that does nobody else any good.

Or I could type it up and file it away for later on a hard drive.

Electrons, circuits, pixels, brain cells, hard drives. Matter.

On whether some ultimate Löb-Gödel theorem prover can "explain" self-aware experiences: I still think that there are non-numerical first-class experiential entities that are needed to completely "flesh out" true experience. (And those can only come from matter.)


- pt 

Bruno Marchal

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On 15 Mar 2019, at 13:43, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:



On Friday, March 15, 2019 at 5:18:43 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 14 Mar 2019, at 14:03, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:



On Thursday, March 14, 2019 at 7:54:49 AM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 3:40 AM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
 
We may even have robots that can sit and talk with us about current events, know everything in Wikipedia, etc. How "creative" they will be is an open question. 

I don't think it's a open question at all. I can state without reservation that regardless of how intelligent computers become they will never be creative because the word "creative" now means whatever computers aren't good at. Yet. And thus due to Moore's Law and improved programing the meaning of the word constantly changes. What was creative yesterday isn't creative today.

On mathematics: Of course mathematics changes, because it is a type of language, and languages change.

If mathematics is just a language (as I think it is) then it can not be used to construct things, in particular it can't, by itself without the use of matter, construct a Turing Machine as Bruno claims it can. English is also a language but an English word has no meaning without an English speaker with a physical brain to hear it.

 John K Clark



There is some AI art that sells at galleries


but that's about it I've seen.

Turing machines in theoretical computing/math books are all fictional things, of course.

“Of course”?




All actual computers are made of matter.

No doubt that this is true, but that is not an argument that such matter are not (stable) appearances.

But as I try to explain here from times to times, the arithmetical reality explains where and why such stable appearances appears. If I can say.

You just seem to be a believer in a Primary Matter, but I have never seen one evidence for it. Initially, “mathematician” were not believer in a mathematical reality, but a skeptic toward the idea that matter is the primitive reality we have to assume. But with mechanism, we don’t have to assume matter, it explains matter, and unlike physicalism, it explains how consciousness remains associated to the appearances of matter.

You seem to beg the question by deciding that math objects are fiction and physics object is not.

No problem, but then digital mechanism is false. But there are no evidences, it is just an old habit since the closure of Plato academy;

Bruno




One could also look at it as a pragmatist.


This depends on your goal. Physics is better in prediction, than metaphysics and theology, except person for the first person expectation when taken seriously, but pragmatism is OK.





Say I want to make something. I could say "I want to make it out of arithmetic (numbers).”


This would be like using string theory to prepare a pizza. 

I just let you know the logical consequence of YD + CT (indexical mechanism, “yes doctor” + “Church-Turing”). 

Then it is hard not to see how much contemporary physics confirms it.




But ways to actually do that is something like to write a program where "numbers" do things in a computer. But we know what is going on here is electrons moving through circuits and pixels.

I have no idea what the electron are. The best I can find are books in quantum field theory which describes only intricate number relation, predicting rather well most measurable numbers related to the electron phenomenon. The physicists can even tell us if there is only one electron or many (cf Dirac).



It could be "running" in my brain (assuming I can imagine the program executing). But that does nobody else any good.

It is the “in my brain” which might seem preposterous. 





Or I could type it up and file it away for later on a hard drive.

Electrons, circuits, pixels, brain cells, hard drives. Matter.

Or digital clock mechanism, like with Babbage machine, or just anything from any Turing complete reality, but if we assume mechanism, it is just undecidable introspectively, yet testable by observing nature. Up to now, what the physicist find incomprehensible is what all universal machine “rich enough” discover all by itself.




On whether some ultimate Löb-Gödel theorem prover can "explain" self-aware experiences: I still think that there are non-numerical first-class experiential entities that are needed to completely "flesh out" true experience. (And those can only come from matter.)


I understand quite well the feeling. But the Löbian machine too. Actually. Let me past here what I just answered on QUORA: the question was “can consciousness be digitised?”

<<

This is a subtle and hard question, and a hot question, and also a slightly ambiguous one, as my answer will try to make clear.

Strictly speaking, the answer is no. Astonishingly, I guess, this follows from the Indexical Digital Mechanist hypothesis in the fundamental cognitive science, which is, to be short, the assumption that there is a level of description of my brain, or body, or body + finite part of the environment, at which I would survive, in the usual clinical sense, to a digital functional substitution, or more simply, the belief that we can survive with a digital brain, or, to relate this with the question asked, the belief that consciousness is invariant for a type of functional digital substitution.

In that case it can be shown that consciousness will belong to the type of arithmetical truth being , for each “enough rich” mechanical machine-believer

  1. true,
  2. non definable,
  3. non justifiable/provable/nor computable
  4. immediately knowable, quasi trivial, indubitable

It is a bit like Truth, by the theorem of Tarski, and it is a theorem *about* all such believers, that the “enough rich” machine-believers can justify themselves.

The universal Turing machine, or combinators, programs, etc, (we assume the Church-Turing thesis) is confronted to something verifying the four points above.

“Enough rich” means knowing enough of arithmetic to prove that if it exists a natural number having a decidable property the machine can find it. Also called Gödelian, of Gödel-Löbian, or simply Löbian machine.

Consciousness is somehow “living” at the intersection of truth and belief. A bit like the point “you are here” on a map.

The belief can be partially computable, but the consciousness is attached to an abstract type, realised in infinitely many histories, which explains why the “material intelligible” obeys to a (quantum) logic of alternative sets of events and alternative consistent (sound or unsound) histories.

If you define the soul by the (conscious) first person somehow imposed by incompleteness, the Löbian machine knows that it has a soul, that it can’t, nor will try to, prove it to you, and that its soul is not a machine, nor anything capable of any communicable third person description.

The universal (Turing-Church-Post-Kleene) machine/number is never completely satisfied, and is born universal dissident. A sort of baby god, and we are partially responsible if it becomes a Terrible Child, relatively to our (hopefully consistent) historie(s).

To sum up: consciousness cannot be digitised, nevertheless a cell, or a brain, or a physical computer, or an arithmetical computer can make consciousness true for the machine-believer consistent and enough rich relatively to (infinitely) many histories brought in any Turing-complete (Turing universal) theory/believer/rational-machine.

(Note: this reduces fundamental physics into a statistics on relative consistent extension in arithmetic, making the digital mechanist hypothesis testable, and quantum mechanics without wave collapse seems to confirm this “many-histories” interpretation of arithmetic provided by the “rich enough” machine).
>>













- pt 

John Clark

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Mar 16, 2019, 8:49:53 AM3/16/19
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On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 8:43 AM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

>There is some AI art that sells at galleries

   https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2018/oct/26/call-that-art-can-a-computer-be-a-painter

but that's about it I've seen.

Here is a symphony composed by a AI program called "Aiva" and performed by electronic virtual musicians. I'm no music critic but I do know its many many orders of magnitude better than anything I could do:  

spudb...@aol.com

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Mar 16, 2019, 3:16:46 PM3/16/19
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Very nice stuff, like many games now have. 


John Clark

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Mar 17, 2019, 4:38:25 PM3/17/19
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On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 2:22 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> You confess not to read the pre-dogmatic theology.

I don't even know what "pre-dogmatic theology" means in Brunospeak and have no great interest in finding out.
 
> Are you aware that after Justinian, in 529 ...

I don't give a hoot in hell what happens after Justinian, in 529.

> the academy of Plato ....

... knew less science than one bright third grader today.

> You know you dislike both reading old text,

That's because every minute I spend reading crap by a fossilized ancient Greek is a minute not spent reading a real book written by somebody who, unlike the Greeks, was not scientifically illiterate.     
 
> you still assume a god

Yes I know Bruno, you've repeated that in nearly every post for at least the last 5 years. I'm really curious to know if you'll ever be able to break out of your infinite loop so you can invent some new insults but I can't figure out if you ever will or not because the Halting Problem has no solution.
 
> Primary matter, or primary physics is the idea that the fundamental reality is the physical reality.

I don't know of any physicist who claims to have found fundamental reality or even something close to it, most would probably say such a thing does not even exist. Richard Feynman said:

"People say to me, “Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?” No I am not. I am just looking to find out more about the world. And if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law that explains everything so be it. That would be very nice discovery. If it turns out it’s like an onion with millions of layers and we just sick and tired of looking at the layers then that’s the way it is! But whatever way it comes out it’s nature, it’s there, and she’s going to come out the way she is. And therefore when we go to investigate we shouldn’t pre-decide what it is we are trying to do except to find out more about it."

> Even if you're right and pure mathematics can produce matter (and I can't see any way it could)

I reassure you, nor do I.

Then you have no reason to believe mathematics is more fundamental than physics. I can understand how physics could give birth to mathematics because physics can give birth to us and we need a good language to describe the workings of nature, but I don't see how it could go the other way.       
 
> But the sigma_1 arithmetical relation does emulate computations,

They could if  sigma_1 arithmetical relations existed, but there is no evidence that they do.  A valid proof shows that a statement is grammatically correct in the language of mathematics but it does not prove that it exists. If you prove that every sentence in a Harry Potter book is grammatically correct in the language of English you have not proven that dragons exist.  Dragons don't exist but the English word "dragons" does.

>> it would still be necessary for mathematics to first produce matter before intelligence or consciousness could emerge.

> Not if you can survive with a digital computer,

A digital computer needs atoms to be arranged in a very particular way and it needs the ability to change and that requires energy. And both atoms and energy are physical. And please don't refer me to some book written in the language of mathematics that tells a story about something non-physical making calculations because I can refer you to a book by JK Rowling written in the language of English about dragons.

Yes if you assume that mathematics is the ultimate reality my above analogy is invalid, but you can't assume what you're trying to prove, you can't use the assumption of being fundamental to prove it is fundamental.   

>>you can't even clearly state what the question was much less confirm that that the answer was correct.

> Because you deny the first person discourse.

This has nothing to do with me, it is a fact that even AFTER your "experiment" is over there is STILL no way for anyone or anything to know what one and only one city "you" ended up seeing. Not only is the answer unknown so is the question.

>> Yes the H-guy does not exist today, but only if you define the H-guy as the man who was in Helsinki yesterday because today is not yesterday so today there is no way a man can be a man in Helsinki yesterday. Of course that would be a very very stupid was to define the H-guy, a much smarter definition would be the H-guy today is anybody who remembers being the H-guy yesterday.

> Which I used all the time.

No Bruno, you don't use it all the time, if you did you wouldn't keep talking about THE one and only one first person experience the Helsinki man will end up having and the one and only one city THE one and only one Helsinki man ended up seeing.   

> and each says “I survived in only one city and I realise I could not have predicted which one”.

No, each says "I realized the personal pronoun "I" can only be defined by looking into the past not the future because with a people duplicating machined 2 people can have a identical past but different futures.

> The answer is, concerning what I expect in the first person mode, that I expect

Expect? This has nothing to do with expectations because your thought "experiment " is so ill defined and nebulous that even after the damn thing is long over you STILL don't  know what has already happened. Actually it's even worse than that, not only is the answer forever unknown you can't even state what the question is or was without personal pronouns with no unique referent.   
> to bring coffee, and that it will be either in Washington, or in Moscow, but I can be sure of which one.

Such is the folly that results in using common everyday language even in such a radically uncommon situation. A people duplicating machine means that 2 people can have identical histories but different futures, so to ask what one and only one city "I" will see after "I" walk out of the duplicating chamber is just a STUPID question because the the only way John Clark or anybody else has to define "I" is by using the past.  

if you did you wouldn't hesitate to tell me  me but that can't be done without personal pronouns with no referent. 

> We agreed on them.

No we don't agree, you don't even agree with yourself! You keep changing what "The Helsinki Man" actually means. Depending on how its defined "The Helsinki Man" will see no cities at all today (if "he" is the man who was in Helsinki yesterday) or he will see 2 cities (if "he" is a man who remembers being the Helsinki Man yesterday).   
 
>  As other have shown to you, you did use the same pronouns in Everertt-QM,

I have a hunch Everett's idea is largely correct but if it isn't the problem will not be with the pronouns. Until Drexler style Nanotechnology is developed the personal pronoun "I" has a unique unambiguous definition in Everett's interpretation; "I" is the only chunk of matter in the observable universe that behaves in a johnkclarkian way and remembers being in Helsinki yesterday. After people duplicating machines are developed the grammatical rules on the use of personal pronouns will need to be modified.  
 
> we need to backtrack 1500 years in theology

Well that's progress I suppose, its better than backtracking 2500 years to the brain dead ancient Greeks.

John K Clark  

Bruno Marchal

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On 17 Mar 2019, at 21:37, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 2:22 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> You confess not to read the pre-dogmatic theology.

I don't even know what "pre-dogmatic theology" means in Brunospeak 


It is the science theory, before it has been stolen by the state (in occident this occurred in 529). In the Middle-East, this occurred (notably) in 1248, when Al Ghazali “won” its dispute with Averroes. In both case, this has led to obscurantism.



 
> Are you aware that after Justinian, in 529 ...

I don't give a hoot in hell what happens after Justinian, in 529.

But if you would be aware of all this, you would be able to distinguish a science, and what humans can do with a science when they bring the use of authoritative argument in there. That happened with Genetics in the ex-USSR. 




> the academy of Plato ....

... knew less science than one bright third grader today.


You told me you did not have study it. Are you just repeating stuff?






> You know you dislike both reading old text,

That's because every minute I spend reading crap by a fossilized ancient Greek is a minute not spent reading a real book written by somebody who, unlike the Greeks, was not scientifically illiterate.  






   
 
> you still assume a god

Yes I know Bruno, you've repeated that in nearly every post for at least the last 5 years. I'm really curious to know if you'll ever be able to break out of your infinite loop so you can invent some new insults but I can't figure out if you ever will or not because the Halting Problem has no solution.


Sorry, but you are the one invoking a material reality, without evidence. Then you just don’t look neither at the ancient literature, nor to the contemporary studies, showing such commitment is incompatible with mechanism, or with the empirical facts.





 
> Primary matter, or primary physics is the idea that the fundamental reality is the physical reality.

I don't know of any physicist who claims to have found fundamental reality or even something close to it, most would probably say such a thing does not even exist.


But physics does not even aboard the question. Why should they?






Richard Feynman said:

"People say to me, “Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?” No I am not. I am just looking to find out more about the world. And if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law that explains everything so be it. That would be very nice discovery. If it turns out it’s like an onion with millions of layers and we just sick and tired of looking at the layers then that’s the way it is! But whatever way it comes out it’s nature, it’s there, and she’s going to come out the way she is. And therefore when we go to investigate we shouldn’t pre-decide what it is we are trying to do except to find out more about it.


Feynman just say that he does not do metaphysics. We knew.





> Even if you're right and pure mathematics can produce matter (and I can't see any way it could)

I reassure you, nor do I.

Then you have no reason to believe mathematics is more fundamental than physics.

This does not follow, given that if mathematics does not produce matter, once we accept Church-Turing thesis, it is a theorem of set theory that the arithmetic realities (the models of RA) emulates all computations.




I can understand how physics could give birth to mathematics because physics can give birth to us and we need a good language to describe the workings of nature, but I don't see how it could go the other way.       
 
> But the sigma_1 arithmetical relation does emulate computations,

They could if  sigma_1 arithmetical relations existed, but there is no evidence that they do. 

You beg again the question. You invoke your god. You see, you did it again. Can you give just one evidence for it? Or you confuse Matter, which exist of course, and primary matter, the god of Aristotle and the the Christians’ creation.  Sorry, but that is not my religion, and beside, when doing science, we cannot invoke any ontological commitment.




A valid proof shows that a statement is grammatically correct in the language of mathematics but it does not prove that it exists. If you prove that every sentence in a Harry Potter book is grammatically correct in the language of English you have not proven that dragons exist.  Dragons don't exist but the English word "dragons" does.


2+2 = 5 is grammatically correct in arithmetic, but that has nothing to do with ^provability or with truth.





>> it would still be necessary for mathematics to first produce matter before intelligence or consciousness could emerge.

> Not if you can survive with a digital computer,

A digital computer needs atoms


Not at all. A physical computer needs some physical objects, but the whole point of the discovery of the universal machine, is that they are not physical machine.




to be arranged in a very particular way and it needs the ability to change and that requires energy. And both atoms and energy are physical. And please don't refer me to some book written in the language of mathematics that tells a story about something non-physical making calculations because I can refer you to a book by JK Rowling written in the language of English about dragons.

Yes if you assume that mathematics is the ultimate reality my above analogy is invalid, but you can't assume what you're trying to prove, you can't use the assumption of being fundamental to prove it is fundamental.   


I did not.





>>you can't even clearly state what the question was much less confirm that that the answer was correct.

> Because you deny the first person discourse.

This has nothing to do with me, it is a fact that even AFTER your "experiment" is over there is STILL no way for anyone


For anyone? Then you deny consciousness to both copies. Basically, you say that we die in the teleportation experience, but then you can no more accept the digital physical brain.




or anything to know what one and only one city "you" ended up seeing. Not only is the answer unknown so is the question.

>> Yes the H-guy does not exist today, but only if you define the H-guy as the man who was in Helsinki yesterday because today is not yesterday so today there is no way a man can be a man in Helsinki yesterday. Of course that would be a very very stupid was to define the H-guy, a much smarter definition would be the H-guy today is anybody who remembers being the H-guy yesterday.

> Which I used all the time.

No Bruno, you don't use it all the time, if you did you wouldn't keep talking about THE one and only one first person experience the Helsinki man will end up having and the one and only one city THE one and only one Helsinki man ended up seeing.   


“The” alludes to the first person experience. Both guy feel to be the only one, unless you introduce telepathy. You just deny the experiences of both copies. They both feel “I see only one city”.







> and each says “I survived in only one city and I realise I could not have predicted which one”.

No, each says "I realized the personal pronoun "I" can only be defined by looking into the past not the future because with a people duplicating machined 2 people can have a identical past but different futures.

> The answer is, concerning what I expect in the first person mode, that I expect

Expect? This has nothing to do with expectations because your thought "experiment " is so ill defined and nebulous that even after the damn thing is long over you STILL don't  know what has already happened.


Both copies knows very well what happened. They pushed on a button, and they got a results that they understand was not predictable with certainty. You used that in QM-without-collapse.





Actually it's even worse than that, not only is the answer forever unknown you can't even state what the question is or was without personal pronouns with no unique referent.   
> to bring coffee, and that it will be either in Washington, or in Moscow, but I can be sure of which one.


“I” is an indexical, like now. But this is handled mathematically with the second recursion theorem of Kleene, in all details in my publication, and on this list. The thought experiment makes this clear for most non-mathematicians, and the mathematicians who dislike tout experience, just consult the math part. There is nothing controversial here.





Such is the folly that results in using common everyday language even in such a radically uncommon situation. A people duplicating machine means that 2 people can have identical histories but different futures, so to ask what one and only one city "I" will see after "I" walk out of the duplicating chamber is just a STUPID question because the the only way John Clark or anybody else has to define "I" is by using the past.  

No. We know that both are right, by Mechanism, in saying “I was in Helsinki, yesterday, and now I am still in only one city”.





if you did you wouldn't hesitate to tell me  me but that can't be done without personal pronouns with no referent. 

> We agreed on them.

No we don't agree, you don't even agree with yourself! You keep changing what "The Helsinki Man" actually means. Depending on how its defined "The Helsinki Man" will see no cities at all today (if "he" is the man who was in Helsinki yesterday) or he will see 2 cities (if "he" is a man who remembers being the Helsinki Man yesterday).   

The Helsinki man becomes the W guy and the M guy, so both are the Helsinki man, but their consciousness, similar in Helsinki, have differentiated, and, for reason of numerical identity, they know which one they could have become was not predictible.

You play with words to deny a very simple facts, which has not been criticised by anyone, except you (and some people a long time ago, but got the point since).

It is us, who do not understand you prose, my dear fellow.

Bruno 





 
>  As other have shown to you, you did use the same pronouns in Everertt-QM,

I have a hunch Everett's idea is largely correct but if it isn't the problem will not be with the pronouns. Until Drexler style Nanotechnology is developed the personal pronoun "I" has a unique unambiguous definition in Everett's interpretation; "I" is the only chunk of matter in the observable universe that behaves in a johnkclarkian way and remembers being in Helsinki yesterday. After people duplicating machines are developed the grammatical rules on the use of personal pronouns will need to be modified.  
 
> we need to backtrack 1500 years in theology

Well that's progress I suppose, its better than backtracking 2500 years to the brain dead ancient Greeks.

John K Clark  


John Clark

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Mar 18, 2019, 7:36:38 PM3/18/19
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On Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 11:49 AM Bruno Marchal <marchal@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>>> the academy of Plato ....  
>>  ... knew less science than one bright third grader today.

>You told me you did not have study it.

You only need to look at Plato's academy for about 25 seconds to know that they didn't know where the sun went at night but a bright modern third grader does. 
 
> You invoke your god.

Apparently your a fan of transcendental meditation and  believe if you just keep chanting your mantra long enough you can make it come true. You've been doing it for a decade now but I guess that's not quite long enough.


>> A valid proof shows that a statement is grammatically correct in the language of mathematics but it does not prove that it exists. If you prove that every sentence in a Harry Potter book is grammatically correct in the language of English you have not proven that dragons exist.  Dragons don't exist but the English word "dragons" does.


> 2+2 = 5 is grammatically correct in arithmetic, but that has nothing to do with ^provability or with truth.

Exactly. All true statements about things that exist made in the language of mathematics are grammatically correct, but there is no reason to think all grammatically correct statements made in the language of mathematics are about things that exist. You can write both fiction and nonfiction in the English language and the same is true of the Mathematics language.  
 
 
>>A digital computer needs atoms

> Not at all. A physical computer needs some physical objects, but the whole point of the discovery of the universal machine, is that they are not physical machine.

And a non-physical Turing Machine can make real calculations in exactly the same way as a dragon in a Harry Potter book can breath real fire.

>> it is a fact that even AFTER your "experiment" is over there is STILL no way for anyone

> For anyone?

Yes for anyone.

> Then you deny consciousness to both copies.

I deny that your "question" is a question at all because it is about the fate of a personal pronoun with no clear referent that a personal pronoun with no clear referent is supposed to answer. It takes more than a question mark at the end of a stream of gibberish to turn it into into a question.

 
> Basically, you say that we die in the teleportation experience,

The Helsinki Man does indeed die in the teleportation experience, but only if a very very silly definition of "The Helsinki Man" is used. It's silly because even without teleportation or people duplicating machined it would mean even in the everyday non exotic world we all die a billion times every second or so.

 > “The” alludes to the first person experience.

In a world with people duplicating machines there is no such thing as THE first person experience; you need to be more specific but you can't because if you did the glaring flaws in your argument would be obvious to all, so things must remain ambiguous.
 
 
> They both feel “I see only one city”.

You say "both" so that means there are 2 of them, so if Mr. I is the Helsinki Man then the Helsinki Man saw 2 cities. And Mr. I is the Helsinki Man if you really meant what you said about the Helsinki Man being anyone who remembers being the Helsinki Man yesterday, but of course you didn't really mean it and will now start equivocating.
 
> Both copies knows very well what happened.

Yes they know what happened, everybody does, but nobody understands what question has been asked. Certainly you don't. 
 
> They pushed on a button, and they got a results that they understand was not predictable with certainty.

Everybody correctly predicted that the Moscow Man will see Moscow and the Washington man will see Washington and everybody correctly predicted that both will have a first person experience tomorrow and nobody in Helsinki will. There is nothing more to predict. 
 
> We know that both are right, by Mechanism, in saying “I was in Helsinki, yesterday,
and now I am still in only one city”.

If both say "I see a city" and if the cities are different and if both say “I was in Helsinki, yesterday" and both are right and if the Helsinki Man is anybody who remember being in Helsinki yesterday then it does not require a PhD in logic to conclude that the Helsinki Man ended up seeing 2 cities. Yes each individual only saw one city but each individual is only half of the Helsinki man because THE HELSINKI MAN HAS BEEN DUPLICATED and that is what the word "duplicated" means.

 
> You play with words

Over the last decade you must have said that close to a hundred times, you say it so often not because I am some sort of smooth talking city slicker lawyer but because that is your only defense when I catch you in a logical contradiction. And that happens a lot.

John K Clark

Bruno Marchal

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Mar 19, 2019, 9:33:52 AM3/19/19
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Hi,

Grayson, Bruce, or anyone,  it is a bit for you that I answer to John Clark. If you agree with John, and can better explain its point, let me no. 

I recall the problem. With digital mechanism we can be be “read and cut” in Helsinki, and reconstituted in two cities, Washington and Moscow, simultaneously, where he get, in both places a cup of coffee. 
I claim that, in Helsinki the guy, who believes in Digital Mechanism  can predict this: 

I will with certainty drink a cup of coffee, but I am not sure if it will be Russian or American coffee.

The question is about the first person experience, and my justification is that, if we write anything else, in its prediction diary, different from “I will feel to be drinking a cup of coffee in W, or I will feel to be drinking a cup of coffee in W”. Then the prediction will be wrong, for at least one copy. By definition, a correct prediction on the first person experience possible, has to be true for all copies, so that they can all confirm it in the prediction diary, which has been taken in the read and cut box in Helsinki.

This later is used to say that a universal machine is unable to know which computations she is supported by, in the infinitely many computations executed, in the mathematical Church-Turing sense, in arithmetic, and that plays a key rôle to understand that physics will have to be reduced to a relative statistics on computation (a concept definable in any enough rich theory of arithmetic, like the theory of combinators + induction, or in Peano arithmetic.

It shows that if Everett used Mechanism, as he claims in some of its paper, and in his long text, then the wave itself, not just the collapse, has to be explained from the statistics on computations in arithmetic. 

I got this in my childhood, never met anyone taking more than 2 years to grasp. Usually, people grasp this in ten minutes. The only exception I know is John Clark. Then it took me 30 years to get the quantum logic for the logic of “probability one” in that mechanist and arithmetical context, so that QM confirms mechanism, up to now. 
You can skip the first comment, to get at this thought experience. It is the “step 3” of the reasoning given in the sane04 paper (http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html ).



On 19 Mar 2019, at 00:35, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 11:49 AM Bruno Marchal <marchal@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>>> the academy of Plato ....  
>>  ... knew less science than one bright third grader today.

>You told me you did not have study it.

You only need to look at Plato's academy for about 25 seconds to know that they didn't know where the sun went at night but a bright modern third grader does. 


From Plato came neoplatonism. From this came mathematics and physics. For a scientist, it is not a problem to be wrong, on the contrary, it is a honour to be refuted, and he/she is open to improvement, dialog and research.



 
> You invoke your god.

Apparently your a fan of transcendental meditation and  believe if you just keep chanting your mantra long enough you can make it come true. You've been doing it for a decade now but I guess that's not quite long enough.


Then why do you keep saying that a computation is real only when implemented in a primary physical reality?

You can call the objet of your ontological commitment a “physical universe”, this does not change that it is non valid to refute a claim by invoking a personal ontological commitment.

Mathematician like to homogenise concept, like making 0 and 1 into number, which meant numerous, at the start.

God is defined by whatever is at the origin of everything.

The god of the believer in primary Matter is a primary physical universe.
The god of the abrahamic religion is “God” (say).
Note that the statement “there is no god” is still a theological statement, but with no value if the notion of God is not made more precise. 

You do seem like a “strong (non agnostic) atheist”, which share the definition of God of the Christians, and share the belief in the “material creation”.









>> A valid proof shows that a statement is grammatically correct in the language of mathematics but it does not prove that it exists. If you prove that every sentence in a Harry Potter book is grammatically correct in the language of English you have not proven that dragons exist.  Dragons don't exist but the English word "dragons" does.


> 2+2 = 5 is grammatically correct in arithmetic, but that has nothing to do with ^provability or with truth.

Exactly. All true statements about things that exist made in the language of mathematics are grammatically correct, but there is no reason to think all grammatically correct statements made in the language of mathematics are about things that exist. You can write both fiction and nonfiction in the English language and the same is true of the Mathematics language.  

The same is true for physics and any science." London is the capital of Belgium" is grammatically correct, but false. “2+2=5” is grammatically correct, but false, even if they were no universe at all.





 
 
>>A digital computer needs atoms

> Not at all. A physical computer needs some physical objects, but the whole point of the discovery of the universal machine, is that they are not physical machine.

And a non-physical Turing Machine can make real calculations in exactly the same way as a dragon in a Harry Potter book can breath real fire.

No. If the quadruplets of a Turing machine are inappropriate, it cannot compute what it should. It would be like “2+2=5”. 





>> it is a fact that even AFTER your "experiment" is over there is STILL no way for anyone

> For anyone?

Yes for anyone.

?




> Then you deny consciousness to both copies.

I deny that your "question" is a question at all because it is about the fate of a personal pronoun

No. It s about the fate of a person, as seen from its own personal perspective, which is duplicated, but still seen as unique by each of its copies. The test to confirm the prediction is easy, and has been given ...



with no clear referent that a personal pronoun with no clear referent is supposed to answer.

The referent is the first person experience possible. I will be duplicated, but I know with certainty that I will taste some coffee, but I am not sure, nor can I be sure if it will taste like Russian coffee or American coffee.

The test to confirm consists in reading the prediction made in the prediction book before the duplication, and then read the TWO copies of them in W and M, together with the results.




It takes more than a question mark at the end of a stream of gibberish to turn it into into a question.

So let us see. The guy wrote in Helsinki “I will taste some coffee, and it will be either in W or in M, but not in both.
After the duplication, the guy can wrote “confirmed” in both places. 

You keep denying the first person report of the copies, like if they were transformed into zombie.



 
> Basically, you say that we die in the teleportation experience,

The Helsinki Man does indeed die in the teleportation experience,

But then he dies in the simple brain transplantation, and Mechanism is wrong. Also, that would change the definition of the Helsinki guy on which we do agree (the guy who remember having been in Helsinki and who pushed on the “button".



but only if a very very silly definition of "The Helsinki Man" is used. It's silly because even without teleportation or people duplicating machined it would mean even in the everyday non exotic world we all die a billion times every second or so.

That is why we don’t say that he died in the duplication experience. But that is the reason of the FPI.

I will survive the duplication, but I am sure that I will feel to be in only one place.





 > “The” alludes to the first person experience.

In a world with people duplicating machines there is no such thing as THE first person experience;


Proof? You do the 3-1-p - 1-p confusion. Just read both diaries.




you need to be more specific but you can't because if you did the glaring flaws in your argument would be obvious to all, so things must remain ambiguous.

You are the only one who have a problem with this, and nobody has ever understand your point.



 
 
> They both feel “I see only one city”.

You say "both" so that means there are 2 of them,


Of course. That is part of the experience description. 



so if Mr. I is the Helsinki Man then the Helsinki Man saw 2 cities.

Here you do exactly the error you want me to have done. “The” in the second occurence is ambiguous. Is is “the” body (3p) or is it the “soul” (1p). The body will see, in the 3p sense, 2 cities, but all first person available see only once city.




And Mr. I is the Helsinki Man if you really meant what you said about the Helsinki Man being anyone who remembers being the Helsinki Man yesterday, but of course you didn't really mean it and will now start equivocating.

I will just distinguish the first person 1 from the thread person I. In the mathematical translation, those are distinguished by the modal logics G and G*, for the 3p view, and the (unique) SGrz for the 1p. Any ambiguity that you see comes from apparent inability to distinguish (here) that difference. That is why for the confirmation, we need to interview both copies, or, in the iteration case, a sample of them. Then it is a child play to see that all copies confirmed “I can predict with certainty that I will feel seeing only once city, never being sure which one”.



 
> Both copies knows very well what happened.

Yes they know what happened, everybody does, but nobody understands what question has been asked. Certainly you don't. 


On the contrary, everybody has no problem with this, and certainly not the first person associated to the copies.



 
> They pushed on a button, and they got a results that they understand was not predictable with certainty.

Everybody correctly predicted that the Moscow Man will see Moscow and the Washington man will see Washington and everybody correctly predicted that both will have a first person experience tomorrow,


Indeed, and in particular that first person experience is, for both copies, I see one city and not the other, and I could not have written, in Helsinki, which one. That is the FPI.




and nobody in Helsinki will.

Then the Helsinki guy has been killed in the process, but then we have to abandon the Mechanist Hypothesis.




There is nothing more to predict. 

The Helsinki guy can easily predict that he will be a guy seeing only one city, for the same reason he can predict that he will drink coffee. Why? Because such events happens in BOTH cities.


 
> We know that both are right, by Mechanism, in saying “I was in Helsinki, yesterday,
and now I am still in only one city”.

If both say "I see a city”

“I see only one city” 



and if the cities are different and if both say “I was in Helsinki, yesterday" and both are right and if the Helsinki Man is anybody who remember being in Helsinki yesterday then it does not require a PhD in logic to conclude that the Helsinki Man ended up seeing 2 cities.


At no moment at all is there any person seeing 2 cities. 

You are again obliterating the 1P/3P distinction.





Yes each individual only saw one city but each individual is only half of the Helsinki man because THE HELSINKI MAN HAS BEEN DUPLICATED and that is what the word "duplicated" means.

No body has been cut in half. A duplication is not a division. You forget that the question is about the first person experiences, AS SEEN BY THE FIRST PERSON, NOT ABOUT ALL POSSIBLE FIRST PERSON EXPERIENCE, WHICH IS GIVEN IN THE PROTOCOL OF THE EXPERIENCE.
We already know since the start that the H-guy will be both the W-guy and the M-guy, but unless you add telepathy, BOTH SEE ONLY ONCE CITY, AND NONE LIVES THE TWO FIRST PERSON EXPERIENCES. 


If you think that there is no first person indeterminacy, just gives the algorithm. But if your prediction is that you will see two cities, then both copies will admit that it was wrong, as both lives now in only one city.

Bruno

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 21, 2019, 6:10:24 PM4/21/19
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Conscious AI = the fairy-tale of 21st century.

Brent Meeker

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Apr 21, 2019, 9:02:32 PM4/21/19
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On 4/21/2019 3:10 PM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
> Conscious AI = the fairy-tale of 21st century.

AI can't be conscious like me = the hubris of the 21st century.

Brent

Philip Thrift

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Apr 22, 2019, 1:04:50 AM4/22/19
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On Sunday, April 21, 2019 at 5:10:24 PM UTC-5, Cosmin Visan wrote:
Conscious AI = the fairy-tale of 21st century.

But Conscious SI [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_intelligence ] may not be.

- pt 

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 22, 2019, 4:28:07 AM4/22/19
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Only if you never did some serious thinking you can consider AI can be conscious. Is not at all the same thing like other similar statements across history like "objects heavier than air can never fly". In that case you were only dealing with arrangements of atoms. But in the case of consciousness you are dealing with the nature of reality. And the nature of reality just is. You don't conjure it up just by arranging atoms, atoms which don't even exist, being themselves ideas in consciousness. Is like you are given a picture of a dead person and you try to revive that person by painting the picture pixel by pixel. You will not revive anything. You will just make a picture. That's all. If you are to make an "artificial brain" atom by atom, all that you will ever get will be a dead object that will not do anything.

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 22, 2019, 4:37:23 AM4/22/19
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I don't see where in your link it is given any definition of SI.

John Clark

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Apr 22, 2019, 9:38:48 AM4/22/19
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On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 9:33 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> The question is about the first person experience,

I don't want to know what the question is about, I want to know precisely what the question is. And even after all this time you are unable to unambiguously state the question, so it's not surprising I am unable to answer it.
 
> why do you keep saying that a computation is real only when implemented in a primary physical reality?

So you're asking why are things real only when they are real. I don't think that needs an answer.

> God is defined by

God is real unless defined an integer.

> From Plato came neoplatonism. From this came mathematics and physics.

You always ignore Archimedes, the greatest ancient Greek of them all. If anyone is the father (or maybe grandfather) of modern physics and mathematics it's him. Unlike Plato or Aristotle he discovered things that are just as true today as they were on the day he discovered them. 
 
> God is defined by ...

... a grey amorphous blob. With that nifty definition one can state with confidence that God exists because grey amorphous blobs certainly do.  
 
> 2+2 = 5 is grammatically correct in arithmetic,

2+2=5  can not be formed by lawfully manipulating Peano's axioms, if it could be then arithmetic would be a silly useless enterprise.

> ?
!
>> with no clear referent that a personal pronoun with no clear referent is supposed to answer.

> The referent is the first person experience possible.

Which "the" first person experience is being refers to, the one in Moscow or the one in Washington? If it's both then stop saying "the". If it's neither then you're using a personal pronoun with no referent and the word means precisely nothing.
  
> I will be duplicated, but I know with certainty that I will taste some coffee, but I am not sure, nor can I be sure if it will taste like Russian coffee or American coffee.

That's 5, count them 5, uses of the personal pronoun "I" in the short sentence above describing an exparament to be performed in a world that contains personal pronoun duplicating machines. And Bruno is baffled that John Clark believes Bruno is talking gibberish, Weird.    
 
> You keep denying the first person report of the copies,

I keep insisting there is no such thing as THE first person if there is a copy of it in Moscow and a copy of it in Washington.
 
> that is the reason of the FPI.

You've forgotten IHA.
 
>>In a world with people duplicating machines there is no such thing as THE first person experience;

> Proof?

"The" is singular and "copy" implies 2 and 2 is greater than 1. QED. 
I await the Field Medal with eager anticipation. 

> Just read both diaries.

Oh no, not those goddamn idiot diaries again!!!
  
> You are the only one who have a problem with this,

You say that a LOT and If it was really true I'd have to conclude that I'm far smarter than I thought I was,  but I don't believe for one nanosecond that it is true.

>> if you really meant what you said about the Helsinki Man being anyone who remembers being the Helsinki Man yesterday, but of course you didn't really mean it and will now start equivocating.

> I will just distinguish the first person 1 from [...]

Just as I predicted you now start equivocation and that sort of mental mush and evasion is exactly precisely what I thought would happen. So please stop saying that we agree on the definition of the Helsinki man because we most certainly do NOT. I have a clear consistent definition and all you have is gibberish  
 
>> Everybody correctly predicted that the Moscow Man will see Moscow and the Washington man will see Washington and everybody correctly predicted that both will have a first person experience tomorrow,

>Indeed, and in particular that first person experience is, for both copies, I see one city and not the other,

If so then where is this grand indeterminacy that you keep talking about? Exactly what was NOT correctly predicted yesterday in Helsinki? I now await an avalanche of personal pronouns in answer to my question not one of which will have a clear unambiguous referent.  
 
> and I could not have written, in Helsinki, which one.

Which ONE?? Forget yesterday even today you can't say which one ended up seeing which city because the question makes no sense. Yesterday in Helsinki there was only one so it's ridiculous to expect to be able to point to 2 people and say you will see Moscow but you won't, but anybody can correctly predict that the Moscow Man will see Moscow only and the Washington man will see Washington only and both will have a first person experience tomorrow, And if today "The Helsinki Man" means anybody who remembers being The Helsinki man yesterday (and I can't think what else it could mean) then The Helsinki Man will see 2 cities, provided that 1 +1 =2.   

> That is the FPI.

Once again you've forgotten IHA.

>> and nobody in Helsinki will.

> Then the Helsinki guy has been killed in the process,

Yep, he's dead as a doornail, well he is if  "The Helsinki Man" means the man who was in Helsinki yesterday because yesterday does not exist today. Of course only a fool would define "The Helsinki Man" that way.

>> Yes each individual only saw one city but each individual is only half of the Helsinki man because THE HELSINKI MAN HAS BEEN DUPLICATED and that is what the word "duplicated" means.

> No body has been cut in half. A duplication is not a division

Of course not, a dead half a body is not even a mediocre copy of a whole living body.
 
>>You forget that the question is about the first person experiences,

I haven't forgotten, I just want to you to make clear which "the" first person experiences you're talking about, but I'll never know because (and I don't say this as a insult I mean it quite literally) you don't know what you're talking about when you use a personal pronoun with no clear referent.
 
> AS SEEN BY THE FIRST PERSON,

Ah .., I believe all all first person experiences are from the first person, that's why it's not the third person.
  
> WHICH IS GIVEN IN THE PROTOCOL OF THE EXPERIENCE.

Using a scientific sounding word like "protocol" can not turn a silly chaotic mess into a real experiment or even a thought experiment.  

> If you think that there is no first person indeterminacy, just gives the algorithm.

Before I can do that you have to tell me exactly what you want the algorithm to do. I lost track of how many times I've asked you that but all I get is more personal pronouns with no unique meaning in a world with personal pronoun duplicating machines.  Every meaningful prediction has already been correctly made yesterday in Helsinki and there is nothing more to predict.

John K Clark

Brent Meeker

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Apr 22, 2019, 1:28:59 PM4/22/19
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On 4/22/2019 1:28 AM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
Only if you never did some serious thinking you can consider AI can be conscious. Is not at all the same thing like other similar statements across history like "objects heavier than air can never fly". In that case you were only dealing with arrangements of atoms. But in the case of consciousness you are dealing with the nature of reality. And the nature of reality just is. You don't conjure it up just by arranging atoms,

But I did.  I conjured up four children by rearranging atoms.  You should try some serious thinking before you spout off unsupported assertions.

Brent

atoms which don't even exist, being themselves ideas in consciousness. Is like you are given a picture of a dead person and you try to revive that person by painting the picture pixel by pixel. You will not revive anything. You will just make a picture. That's all. If you are to make an "artificial brain" atom by atom, all that you will ever get will be a dead object that will not do anything.

On Monday, 22 April 2019 04:02:32 UTC+3, Brent wrote:

AI can't be conscious like me = the hubris of the 21st century.

Brent
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Cosmin Visan

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Apr 22, 2019, 2:12:05 PM4/22/19
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Biology is not doing atoms arrangements, but is doing creation of conscious systems. Atoms are just ideas in consciousness. Is like looking on a computer screen and concluding: "Aha, so that's how the letters are displayed on the screen: pixels gets lighted!", when in fact the reason for letters appearing on the screen is that a consciousness is typing them from somewhere outside of the screen.

Philip Thrift

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Apr 22, 2019, 2:46:27 PM4/22/19
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Think of a brain bioprinter, a next generation of

           THE BIOLIFE4D BIOPRINTING PROCESS

                    https://biolife4d.com/process/

- pt

 

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 22, 2019, 2:58:24 PM4/22/19
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What exactly is it that you print when you print a brain ? Is like saying that you print a picture of a rain and you expect to make you wet. Or like making a printscreen of your facebook chat and expect to receive new messages on the printscreen.

Philip Thrift

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Apr 22, 2019, 3:07:53 PM4/22/19
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There is a video there of printing a heart.

- pt

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 22, 2019, 3:13:12 PM4/22/19
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A brain is not a heart. There are special relations in the brain through which consciousness can act upon the world. You cannot copy those relations, since they are not material. So if you "copy" a brain, you will only end up with a dead piece of flesh. And even if you somehow manage to open the doors for consciousness to act upon the brain, that consciousness will not have any memory, since memories are not stored in the brain, so you would only get a baby in the body of an adult.

Philip Thrift

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Apr 22, 2019, 3:51:37 PM4/22/19
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This is just Dualism which says there is (material) Matter and there is (immaterial) Mind, and Mind operates with brains, not hearts.

If you were a true consciousness-only ontologist, then you would say a brain could be bio-printed just like a heart could be bio-printed, because bio-printing is just putting cells/molecules together, and in the consciousness-only ontology. a cell/molecule is just an idea (of consciousness) anyway!

- pt

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 22, 2019, 3:55:49 PM4/22/19
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Is just an analogy to make you understand better the problems that will appear in case you want to "copy" the brain. The true reason is that the "brain" is just a very specific image that you see in your own consciousness of a much greater reality that you don't see. And you can only copy what you see. But copying only what you see will leave the reality behind not taken into account. So you will only end up with a picture that will not do anything, because you didn't copy what matters.

Brent Meeker

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Apr 22, 2019, 4:04:28 PM4/22/19
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On 4/22/2019 11:12 AM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
Biology is not doing atoms arrangements, but is doing creation of conscious systems. Atoms are just ideas in consciousness. Is like looking on a computer screen and concluding: "Aha, so that's how the letters are displayed on the screen: pixels gets lighted!", when in fact the reason for letters appearing on the screen is that a consciousness is typing them from somewhere outside of the screen.

You mean like the consciousness of my cat.

You never think of a counterexample do you.  You just assume you can say "consciousness" as the answer to everything.

Brent


On Monday, 22 April 2019 20:28:59 UTC+3, Brent wrote:


On 4/22/2019 1:28 AM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
Only if you never did some serious thinking you can consider AI can be conscious. Is not at all the same thing like other similar statements across history like "objects heavier than air can never fly". In that case you were only dealing with arrangements of atoms. But in the case of consciousness you are dealing with the nature of reality. And the nature of reality just is. You don't conjure it up just by arranging atoms,

But I did.  I conjured up four children by rearranging atoms.  You should try some serious thinking before you spout off unsupported assertions.

Brent
--

Philip Thrift

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Apr 22, 2019, 4:27:52 PM4/22/19
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If my Me-1 brain were cellularly copied, there would be a Me-2 brain.

Me-2 from that point on would have it's own experiences. It would be like an identical twin brother's brain, but closer to identical than the traditional kind where the brains separated in gestation.

- pt

Brent Meeker

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Apr 22, 2019, 4:34:13 PM4/22/19
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On 4/22/2019 12:13 PM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
A brain is not a heart. There are special relations in the brain through which consciousness can act upon the world.

What are they...exactly.


You cannot copy those relations, since they are not material. So if you "copy" a brain, you will only end up with a dead piece of flesh.

How do you know that if you don't know the "special relations"?


And even if you somehow manage to open the doors for consciousness to act upon the brain, that consciousness will not have any memory, since memories are not stored in the brain,

Then why are they eliminated by brain damage?

Brent

so you would only get a baby in the body of an adult.

On Monday, 22 April 2019 22:07:53 UTC+3, Philip Thrift wrote:


There is a video there of printing a heart.

- pt
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Brent Meeker

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Apr 22, 2019, 4:48:16 PM4/22/19
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Then how is it that a fertilized ovum knows what to copy?

Brent
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Cosmin Visan

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Apr 22, 2019, 4:54:44 PM4/22/19
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There is no Me-2 brain alive. Me-2 will be a soulless object.

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 22, 2019, 4:57:12 PM4/22/19
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On Monday, 22 April 2019 23:34:13 UTC+3, Brent wrote:

What are they...exactly.

I cannot tell you what are they exactly, but is like the relation between a car and the driver. Only because you replicate the car, it doesn't mean that all of sudden it will start to work on its own.

How do you know that if you don't know the "special relations"?

Because there is no "brain". "Brain" is just an idea in consciousness.

Then why are they eliminated by brain damage?

They are not eliminated. Memories are stored forever. The access to memory is eliminated.

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 22, 2019, 4:57:44 PM4/22/19
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Nobody knows how an embryo develops.

Philip Thrift

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Apr 22, 2019, 5:05:13 PM4/22/19
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"Souls" are entities of  body-soul Dualism: There needs to be a :soul to enter a Me-2 body.

Are you a consciousness monist or a dualist? It sounds like more the latter than the former.

- pt

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 22, 2019, 5:13:13 PM4/22/19
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Is just an analogy to make you understand better the problems that will appear in case you want to "copy" the brain. The true reason is that the "brain" is just a very specific image that you see in your own consciousness of a much greater reality that you don't see. And you can only copy what you see. But copying only what you see will leave the reality behind not taken into account. So you will only end up with a picture that will not do anything, because you didn't copy what matters.

Brent Meeker

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Apr 22, 2019, 5:20:49 PM4/22/19
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On 4/22/2019 1:57 PM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:


On Monday, 22 April 2019 23:34:13 UTC+3, Brent wrote:

What are they...exactly.

I cannot tell you what are they exactly, but is like the relation between a car and the driver. Only because you replicate the car, it doesn't mean that all of sudden it will start to work on its own.

Actually it will work just like the car you replicated.  So why won't the replicated driver work just like the driver?



How do you know that if you don't know the "special relations"?

Because there is no "brain". "Brain" is just an idea in consciousness.

That's not what you said.  You said  "There are special relations in the brain through which consciousness can act upon the world. You cannot copy those relations, since they are not material."  So  now you say there are special relations in a brain that doesn't exist.  But you don't know what they are.



Then why are they eliminated by brain damage?

They are not eliminated. Memories are stored forever. The access to memory is eliminated.

So they are memories that can never be remembered.


Brent
"Nobody believes a theory, except the guy who thought of it.
Everybody believes an experiment, except the guy who did it."
         --- Leon Lederman

Brent Meeker

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Apr 22, 2019, 5:23:27 PM4/22/19
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They know a helluva a lot of it.  Will it make a difference when they know all of it and can do it in vitro (or a 3D printer)?  No, then you'll invoke a the Holy Spirit to supply consciousness, just like the Pope demands.

Brent
--

Philip Thrift

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Apr 22, 2019, 5:24:25 PM4/22/19
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But the "what matters" part is the basis of dualism.

If everything is consciousness, then the cells of the brain - and the brain itself - are ideas in consciousness. So the brain copy would be conscious according to consciousness monism!

With dualism, you get what you said: Something is left behind in the copy.

I'm pointing out that if you are a true consciousness monist, then the brain copy would be conscious too.

- pt

Terren Suydam

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Apr 22, 2019, 5:33:17 PM4/22/19
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How can you assert that access is eliminated when the brain doesn't exist?  In order for that to make sense, you're presupposing a role for the brain in one's consciousness.

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 22, 2019, 5:34:08 PM4/22/19
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On Tuesday, 23 April 2019 00:20:49 UTC+3, Brent wrote:

Actually it will work just like the car you replicated.  So why won't the replicated driver work just like the driver?

No, it won't. Because you need the driver to set it in motion.

That's not what you said.  You said  "There are special relations in the brain through which consciousness can act upon the world. You cannot copy those relations, since they are not material."  So  now you say there are special relations in a brain that doesn't exist.  But you don't know what they are.

There is no brain.

So they are memories that can never be remembered.

They can be remembered if the relations are re-established. Like these mice cured of Alzheimer that started to remember:

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 22, 2019, 5:34:54 PM4/22/19
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They don't know what matters. They have no ideas how the embryo gets to its final form.

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 22, 2019, 5:39:53 PM4/22/19
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I think you don't understand what "X is just an idea in consciousness" means. You are adding an extra step to the meaning of this phrase, that shouldn't be there. That extra step that you add is that you first create the X, and then you put it in consciousness. The correct meaning of this phrase is to not create any X, but to let it be just an idea right from the start. When I say "Santa Claus comes for Christmas", I don't first create a Santa Claus and then put it in consciousness, but it exists right from the start only in consciousness. Similar, when I say: "The brain is brown", I don't first create a brain and then put it in consciousness, but it exists right from the start only as an imaginary object that I fantasize about. So wanting to "copy the brain" is like wanting to copy Santa Claus that you only invent in your own imagination. How are you going to do that if there is no Santa Claus whatsoever ?

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 22, 2019, 5:44:06 PM4/22/19
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I think I am used to talk at a certain level and therefore I skip certain details. "Brain" is just an idea in consciousness that stands for a system of interactions between consciousnesses. If you damage "the brain", you damage that system of interacting consciousnesses, so you would disrupt certain consciousnesses that represents memories.

Brent Meeker

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Apr 22, 2019, 5:57:57 PM4/22/19
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On 4/22/2019 2:34 PM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:


On Tuesday, 23 April 2019 00:20:49 UTC+3, Brent wrote:

Actually it will work just like the car you replicated.  So why won't the replicated driver work just like the driver?

No, it won't. Because you need the driver to set it in motion.

That's not what you said.  You said  "There are special relations in the brain through which consciousness can act upon the world. You cannot copy those relations, since they are not material."  So  now you say there are special relations in a brain that doesn't exist.  But you don't know what they are.

There is no brain.

Do you wear a helmet when riding your motorcycle?




So they are memories that can never be remembered.

They can be remembered if the relations are re-established. Like these mice cured of Alzheimer that started to remember:


You mean the drug that acted on their brain that doesn't exist by reestablishing the relations that are undefined?

Brent

Brent Meeker

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Apr 22, 2019, 6:00:57 PM4/22/19
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You apparently don't know much about embryology.  But that's to be expected since you think all knowledge comes from introspection.

Brent
--

John Clark

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Apr 22, 2019, 6:44:07 PM4/22/19
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On Mon, Apr 22, 2019 at 3:13 PM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> A brain is not a heart.

A brain is interesting but a heart is dull as dishwater, it's just a pump. 
 
> There are special relations in the brain through which consciousness can act upon the world. You cannot copy those relations, since they are not material.

Only nouns are material and you are not a noun, you are an adjective  and adjectives can be copied. Due to technological (not scientific) limitations at the present time there is only one chunk of matter in the observable universe that behaves in a Cosminvisanian way, but there is no reason that will always be true.

So if you "copy" a brain, you will only end up with a dead piece of flesh. And even if you somehow manage to open the doors for consciousness to act upon the brain, that consciousness will not have any memory, since memories are not stored in the brain,

I just met you but it sounds like you're the type of guy who believes in the invisible man in the sky theory.  I hope I'm wrong.  

John K Clark




Philip Thrift

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Apr 22, 2019, 7:16:15 PM4/22/19
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On Monday, April 22, 2019 at 4:44:06 PM UTC-5, Cosmin Visan wrote:
I think I am used to talk at a certain level and therefore I skip certain details. "Brain" is just an idea in consciousness that stands for a system of interactions between consciousnesses. If you damage "the brain", you damage that system of interacting consciousnesses, so you would disrupt certain consciousnesses that represents memories.



But damaged brains are being repaired today by implanting new (perhaps synthetic, polymer-based) neurons, and full consciousness is restored.

All the entities above may be "ideas", but whether they are "ideas" or matter, doesn't that suggest that brains can be copied so that the copy is itself conscious?

- pr


Jason Resch

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Apr 22, 2019, 9:24:30 PM4/22/19
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Perhaps not, but this video of it is quite fascinating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEejivHRIbE

Jason

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Cosmin Visan

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Apr 23, 2019, 3:04:34 AM4/23/19
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Yes, to protect the system of interacting consciousnesses.

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 23, 2019, 3:05:38 AM4/23/19
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You apparently have the illusion that you know too much about embryology that you start to imagine answers where there are none.

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 23, 2019, 3:10:24 AM4/23/19
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I'm just using my reason. I'm not a shallow thinker. Have a look at this guy's blog to see countless arguments for why memories are not stored in the brain:


This is just one example, but you can explore more on his blog about memories.

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 23, 2019, 3:11:56 AM4/23/19
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Link please.

Philip Thrift

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Apr 23, 2019, 4:44:35 AM4/23/19
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Artificial Neurons Could Replace Some Real Ones In Your Brain
A new way to fix neurological disorders

Scientists Have Built Artificial Neurons That Fully Mimic Human Brain Cells

Reprogramming the brain with synthetic neurobiology

- pt

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 23, 2019, 1:09:40 PM4/23/19
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You first said that injuries "are being repaired" and then you give me links with maybes and coulds. Maybe Santa Claus will help us all in the end. Amen!

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 23, 2019, 1:12:35 PM4/23/19
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Besides, "artificial neurons" that "fully mimic" is just a shocking amazing ZOMG news title, not a serious statement. Nobody knows how a neuron works, and they already mimic that behavior ? trololol

Philip Thrift

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Apr 23, 2019, 2:12:50 PM4/23/19
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Time will tell.

Uncovering the power of glial cells

Brain implants can rely on more than neurons to function


https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180108130158.htm

- pt

Stathis Papaioannou

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Apr 23, 2019, 6:41:14 PM4/23/19
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On Mon, 22 Apr 2019 at 6:28 pm, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Only if you never did some serious thinking you can consider AI can be conscious. Is not at all the same thing like other similar statements across history like "objects heavier than air can never fly". In that case you were only dealing with arrangements of atoms. But in the case of consciousness you are dealing with the nature of reality. And the nature of reality just is. You don't conjure it up just by arranging atoms, atoms which don't even exist, being themselves ideas in consciousness. Is like you are given a picture of a dead person and you try to revive that person by painting the picture pixel by pixel. You will not revive anything. You will just make a picture. That's all. If you are to make an "artificial brain" atom by atom, all that you will ever get will be a dead object that will not do anything.

If we can replace part of the brain with an electronic component and the person continues experiencing normal consciousness, what does this indicate?
--
Stathis Papaioannou

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 24, 2019, 2:46:09 AM4/24/19
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This is like saying: If you replace part of the computer screen with drawings made on a piece of paper, what does this indicate ? Well... it indicates that on the part replaced with the piece of paper, nothing will happen anymore.

Philip Thrift

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Apr 24, 2019, 3:12:49 AM4/24/19
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This is the whole point: 

The neuronal cells being replaced in the brain can't be made of anything. The replacements (synthetic neurons) have to be made of atoms/molecules such that they that replicate the actual chemical processing abilities of the cells they are replacing.

- pt

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 24, 2019, 3:54:01 AM4/24/19
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So ultimately they are not "artificial", but natural, grown through biological processes, not assembled in a factory. Then they are natural and are not made of atoms, but are made by invisible natural processes that are also responsible for the workings of consciousness. I think this fact must be stated out clearly: biology is not made out of atoms! I think this is what confuses most people. People somehow take for granted that biology is just atoms, and thus they don't understand how consciousness can be immaterial if the brain is material. That's the whole point: the brain is NOT material. Neither biology generally. The development of a being is not lead by chemical reactions, but chemical reactions are lead by invisible forces such that they implement the shape of the being.

Philip Thrift

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Apr 24, 2019, 4:11:32 AM4/24/19
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They ("synthetic neurons")  are assembled in laboratories/factories.

New neuron-like cells allow investigation into synthesis of vital cellular components





- pt

Stathis Papaioannou

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Apr 24, 2019, 4:47:52 AM4/24/19
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A piece of paper wouldn’t work as a computer screen replacement. Replacing an LCD screen for an LED screen would work; replacing a spinning hard drive for a solid state drive would be another example. The replacement component is different from the original, but it is functionally equivalent. Do you think it would be possible to replace any part of the central nervous system with a part that is different but functionally equivalent?
--
Stathis Papaioannou

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 24, 2019, 5:09:37 AM4/24/19
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I think that if we want to have any shot at understanding reality we need to be serious in our thinking. "Assembled in factories" sounds like you just take atom by atom and put them together, which clearly is not what happens. People start with already living cells and just modify them a little bit. This is clearly anything but "assembled in factories". Is like you take a picture of Mona Lisa, you modify 2 pixels in photoshop and you claim that you painted Mona Lisa from zero.

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 24, 2019, 5:14:51 AM4/24/19
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There might be some room for wiggling, but ultimately red must be red.

Stathis Papaioannou

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Apr 24, 2019, 6:43:58 AM4/24/19
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But the point is, you could replace a spinning drive with a solid state drive, a tape recorder with a digital recorder, a knee joint with an artificial joint. These replacements are made of completely different materials, yet are functionally similar. Is there anything to stop us replacing neurons or subcomponents of neurons with physically different but functionally similar parts?
--
Stathis Papaioannou

Philip Thrift

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Apr 24, 2019, 6:56:42 AM4/24/19
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On Wednesday, April 24, 2019 at 4:09:37 AM UTC-5, Cosmin Visan wrote:
I think that if we want to have any shot at understanding reality we need to be serious in our thinking. "Assembled in factories" sounds like you just take atom by atom and put them together, which clearly is not what happens. People start with already living cells and just modify them a little bit. This is clearly anything but "assembled in factories". Is like you take a picture of Mona Lisa, you modify 2 pixels in photoshop and you claim that you painted Mona Lisa from zero.



That is not the way that synthetic biology technology is proceeding today in 2019.

There is some hybrid of taking pre-existing living cells combined with new  materials (polymers), but actual molecular assembly of living cells is on the horizon, if not done already.

- pt

smitra

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Apr 24, 2019, 7:44:31 AM4/24/19
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNiiLfB8s0s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkGb12xBKlM
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John Clark

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Apr 24, 2019, 8:36:35 AM4/24/19
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On Mon, 22 Apr 2019 at 6:28 pm, 'Cosmin Visan' <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
 
> Only if you never did some serious thinking you can consider AI can be conscious.

What sort of serious thinking did you engage in that enabled you to conclude any of your fellow human beings were conscious? Or perhaps you concluded you were the only conscious being in the universe. Without exception every single argument put forward to support the proposition that an AI can never be conscious can also be used in support of solipsism.  I can prove a AI is intelligent but I can never prove it's conscious just as I can never prove that you are conscious.  That's why artificial intelligence theories are vastly more interesting and harder to produce than artificial consciousness theories.

 John K Clark

John Clark

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Apr 24, 2019, 8:50:12 AM4/24/19
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On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 3:54 AM 'Cosmin Visan'  <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> So ultimately they are not "artificial", but natural, grown through biological processes, not assembled in a factory. Then they are natural and are not made of atoms, but are made by invisible natural processes that are also responsible for the workings of consciousness. I think this fact must be stated out clearly: biology is not made out of atoms!

I agree that biology is about processes but you have to ask yourself what is being processed? The only answer is the way atoms are arranged, and it doesn't make any difference if the atoms are of carbon or silicon if the process is the same. Saying an AI can't be conscious because its brain is dry and hard and not wet and squishy is as silly as saying another human can't be conscious if his skin color is different from mine.

 John K Clark

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 24, 2019, 9:08:46 AM4/24/19
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This is not the reason why AI is not conscious. The reason is that AI doesn't even exist, is just an idea in consciousness. Consciousness which of course is not made out of atoms. We are not made out of atoms. "Atoms" are just ideas in consciousness.

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 24, 2019, 9:16:32 AM4/24/19
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I don't see why it would matter. If you obtain consciousness, that consciousness will have free will, so will take over the whatever subcomponents that you might use, so those subcomponents will stop obeying the "physical laws" that we know from simple systems.

John Clark

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Apr 24, 2019, 9:46:33 AM4/24/19
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On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 9:08 AM 'Cosmin Visan'  <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> This is not the reason why AI is not conscious.

The "I" in AI stands for intelligence not consciousness, do you believe a AI can be intelligent?  And by "intelligent" I mean whatever you meant when, as I'm sure you've said at some point in your life about another human, "that guy is really smart". 
 
> The reason is that AI doesn't even exist, is just an idea in consciousness. Consciousness which of course is not made out of atoms.

Consciousness is made of processes, that's why John K Clark is not a noun but an adjective, I am the way matter behaves when it is organized in a johnkclarkian way.  A process needs something to process and that something is atoms. That's why if I change the arrangement of  atoms in my brain my consciousness changes and if my consciousness changes the arrangement of atoms in my brain changes.
 
> We are not made out of atoms.

What's with this "we" business? I know for a fact I'm conscious but your consciousness is an unproven hypothesis no different from assuming an AI is conscious.

John K Clark



 

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 24, 2019, 9:57:29 AM4/24/19
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On Wednesday, 24 April 2019 16:46:33 UTC+3, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 9:08 AM 'Cosmin Visan'  <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> This is not the reason why AI is not conscious.

The "I" in AI stands for intelligence not consciousness, do you believe a AI can be intelligent?  And by "intelligent" I mean whatever you meant when, as I'm sure you've said at some point in your life about another human, "that guy is really smart". 

Intelligence is the property of consciousness of bringing new qualia into existence that never existed before in the entire history of existence. Don't you think this is quite unlike the fantasy of AI ?
 
> The reason is that AI doesn't even exist, is just an idea in consciousness. Consciousness which of course is not made out of atoms.

Consciousness is made of processes, that's why John K Clark is not a noun but an adjective, I am the way matter behaves when it is organized in a johnkclarkian way.  A process needs something to process and that something is atoms. That's why if I change the arrangement of  atoms in my brain my consciousness changes and if my consciousness changes the arrangement of atoms in my brain changes.

"Matter" doesn't exist. "Matter" is an idea in consciousness.
 
> We are not made out of atoms.

What's with this "we" business? I know for a fact I'm conscious but your consciousness is an unproven hypothesis no different from assuming an AI is conscious.

Is not at all the same thing. Other consciousnesses are postulated based on our own consciousness, while AI is postulated based on poor understanding of reality. Postulating AI is like a child postulating Santa Claus because he has not serious understanding of the matters involved in the concept of "Santa Claus".

Quentin Anciaux

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Apr 24, 2019, 11:50:03 AM4/24/19
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Could you share your *serious* thinking on our santa claus belief to us unserious people ?

 
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Stathis Papaioannou

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Apr 24, 2019, 1:06:07 PM4/24/19
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On Wed, 24 Apr 2019 at 11:16 pm, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
I don't see why it would matter. If you obtain consciousness, that consciousness will have free will, so will take over the whatever subcomponents that you might use, so those subcomponents will stop obeying the "physical laws" that we know from simple systems.

Why has no-one ever observed the components of the brain breaking physical laws? It should happen all the time and be easy to catch if you are right.
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John Clark

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Apr 24, 2019, 1:12:19 PM4/24/19
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On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 9:57 AM 'Cosmin Visan'  <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> If you obtain consciousness, that consciousness will have free will, so [...]

Free Will?! In the entire history of philosophy or law nothing has generated more fuzzy thinking than "free will", it's so bad it's not even wrong. To be wrong an idea must first convey a thought, an erroneous thought but a thought nevertheless, but like a burp "free will" conveys nothing, it's just a sound made with the mouth.

>>The "I" in AI stands for intelligence not consciousness, do you believe a AI can be intelligent?  And by "intelligent" I mean whatever you meant when, as I'm sure you've said at some point in your life about another human, "that guy is really smart". 

> Intelligence is the property of consciousness of bringing new qualia into existence that never existed before in the entire history of existence.

You have no way of directly detecting the qualia experience by other people, assuming they experience qualia at all, all you can do is assume without proof that when they behave in ways similar to you they experience qualia similar to the qualia you experience. And the fact that a AI's brain is dry and hard and not wet and squishy is no reason to treat them any differently.  I judge entities, human or otherwise, by the content of their ideas not the wetness of their brain.  

> Don't you think this is quite unlike the fantasy of AI ?

Nope. And if conscious AI's are a fantasy then all minds other than my own are a fantasy including yours.

> "Matter" doesn't exist. 

OK, but then can you tell me how things would be different if matter DID exist? If you can't then the existence or nonexistence of something is a question of no importance whatsoever. And that road leads to madness. I can tell you that if the atoms in your were to cease to exist and no record was kept about how the atoms were arranged it  would have a rather important effect on your consciousness. And I can also tell you that when atoms of silicon are arranged in certain ways it can beat you at Chess and GO and can solve partial differential equations that you can not. At one time that was considered intelligent but some keep moving the goalpost so that now intelligence is defined as anything that computers aren't good at, YET.         

>> What's with this "we" business? I know for a fact I'm conscious but your consciousness is an unproven hypothesis no different from assuming an AI is conscious.

> Is not at all the same thing.

Tell me the difference! I am quite certain you don't consider your fellow humans to be conscious all the time, not when they're sleeping or under anesthesia or dead because they don't behave intelligently then. I can't think why the same criteria should not be used for an AI. But as a practical matter it will make little difference if you believe a AI is conscious or not because in just a few years humanity will no longer be in the driver's seat. So the important question is will the AI consider you to be conscious or not.     
 
> Other consciousnesses are postulated based on our own consciousness,

Exactly. But how does that show that a computer can't be conscious even when it's acting intelligently?

John K Clark

Brent Meeker

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Apr 24, 2019, 4:10:46 PM4/24/19
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On 4/24/2019 4:44 AM, smitra wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNiiLfB8s0s

A thoroughly dishonest presentation.?? Pross selective misrepresents quotes from people who are all arguing for the physical basis of life.?? He quotes Morowitz on the impossibility of randomly realizing an RNA, but no origin of life theory proposes a one-step random assembly of RNA.?? Naturally evolved RNA is long because it is not efficient.?? Paul Schuster did an experiment to find what might be the shortest RNA that could replicate in a soup of nucleotides (which can be created by a Urey like environment).?? He used artificial selection to mimic natural selection and found an RNA only?? Rez 220 units long that could replicate.?? Reza Ghadiri did a similar experiment with amino acid soup

Letters to Nature
Nature 382, 525 - 528 (08 August 1996); doi:10.1038/382525a0
David H. Lee, Juan R. Granja, Jose A. Martinez, Kay Severin & M. Reza Ghadiri
Departments of Chemistry and Molecular Biology and the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California 92037, USA
THE production of amino acids and their condensation to polypeptides under plausibly prebiotic conditions have long been known1,2. But despite the central importance of molecular self-replication in the origin of life, the feasibility of peptide self-replication has not been established experimentally3???6. Here we report an example of a self-replicating peptide. We show that a 32-residue ??-helical peptide based on the leucine-zipper domain of the yeast transcription factor GCN4 can act autocatalytically in templating its own synthesis by accelerating the thioester-promoted amide-bond condensation of 15- and 17-residue fragments in neutral, dilute aqueous solutions. The self-replication process displays parabolic growth pattern with the initial rates of product formation correlating with the square-root of initial template concentration.

Read Nick Lane's "The Vital Question" and watch his Royal Society Lecture.?? Lane is of the metabolism-first school of abiogenesis.

https://royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2017/02/faraday-prize-lecture/

Brent

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 25, 2019, 12:41:02 AM4/25/19
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It's simple. You say: "Santa Claus has legs and arms like humans, therefore Santa Claus must exists."

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 25, 2019, 12:42:00 AM4/25/19
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But it happens all the time. How do you think you move your body if not by top-down influence in levels from consciousness ?

Brent Meeker

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Apr 25, 2019, 1:21:50 AM4/25/19
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Are you aware of the Grey Walter experiments that imply your brain thinks of moving before your consciouness.?? Of course I know the brain and Grey Walter and his experiment don't exist....and neither do you.

Brent
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Stathis Papaioannou

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Apr 25, 2019, 2:18:44 AM4/25/19
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On Thu, 25 Apr 2019 at 2:42 pm, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
But it happens all the time. How do you think you move your body if not by top-down influence in levels from consciousness ?

At the molecular level, if this were true, we would see miracles happening, like a table levitating without any applied force. No such thing has ever been observed. Neurons and muscle cells only fire according to the laws of physics. If you documented an example of a miracle in the brain you would overthrow science and be famous.
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Cosmin Visan

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Apr 25, 2019, 2:33:54 AM4/25/19
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Exactly. Those experiments are not valid. The "brain" does not exist. But I exist. I think you are making a category confusion. You equate by default brain with consciousness, and because brain doesn't exist, you conclude that consciousness doesn't exist. You are loosing yourself in abstract thinking instead of acknowledging the obvious in front of your eyes: You exist.


On Thursday, 25 April 2019 08:21:50 UTC+3, Brent wrote:
Are you aware of the Grey Walter experiments that imply your brain thinks of moving before your consciouness.?? Of course I know the brain and Grey Walter and his experiment don't exist....and neither do you.

Brent

On 4/24/2019 9:42 PM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
But it happens all the time. How do you think you move your body if not by top-down influence in levels from consciousness ?

On Wednesday, 24 April 2019 20:06:07 UTC+3, stathisp wrote:

Why has no-one ever observed the components of the brain breaking physical laws? It should happen all the time and be easy to catch if you are right.

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Quentin Anciaux

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Apr 25, 2019, 2:37:53 AM4/25/19
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So you are saying that we are fooled when doing experiments showing movement is seen before in brain motor function before the subject being aware of it... and assert that is always the consciousness that initiates movement despite experiments showing the contrary.. so we can't test anything of your theory against the reality and as reality experiment invalidate your position, your position is to say we are fooled and we have to believe you ? Is that right ?

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Cosmin Visan

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Apr 25, 2019, 2:38:00 AM4/25/19
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You are randomly extrapolating. I think this is called "strawman logical error". Things are not random. There are reasons for why consciousness only exercises its powers in certain conditions. Evolution confined those powers to own body alone, though in some cases indeed you get connections between consciousnesses related to different bodies. But for those as well there are certain reasons for why they happen.

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 25, 2019, 2:40:56 AM4/25/19
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One interpretation might be that consciousness sends its influence from the future to the past.

Cosmin Visan

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Apr 25, 2019, 3:00:29 AM4/25/19
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On Wednesday, 24 April 2019 20:12:19 UTC+3, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 9:57 AM 'Cosmin Visan'  <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> If you obtain consciousness, that consciousness will have free will, so [...]

Free Will?! In the entire history of philosophy or law nothing has generated more fuzzy thinking than "free will", it's so bad it's not even wrong. To be wrong an idea must first convey a thought, an erroneous thought but a thought nevertheless, but like a burp "free will" conveys nothing, it's just a sound made with the mouth.

I don't know. I feel free. Don't you ?

>>The "I" in AI stands for intelligence not consciousness, do you believe a AI can be intelligent?  And by "intelligent" I mean whatever you meant when, as I'm sure you've said at some point in your life about another human, "that guy is really smart". 

> Intelligence is the property of consciousness of bringing new qualia into existence that never existed before in the entire history of existence.

You have no way of directly detecting the qualia experience by other people, assuming they experience qualia at all, all you can do is assume without proof that when they behave in ways similar to you they experience qualia similar to the qualia you experience. And the fact that a AI's brain is dry and hard and not wet and squishy is no reason to treat them any differently.  I judge entities, human or otherwise, by the content of their ideas not the wetness of their brain.  

To think that an AI has "brain" is to have no understanding whatsoever of computer science and to believe that magic happens there. You don't even need to talk about the intelligence of other people. Is enough to look at how intelligence works in your case. And in your case, it works by bringing new qualia into existence. When you first saw a dog, you were able to see it because your consciousness brought into existence the quale of "dog" out of nothing. An AI cannot do that. If you don't specifically put in its database the information "dog", it will never identify dogs. This is because AI are deterministic systems, while consciousnesses are creative entities.

> Don't you think this is quite unlike the fantasy of AI ?

Nope. And if conscious AI's are a fantasy then all minds other than my own are a fantasy including yours.

This is just twisted logic. I will let you figure it out where you are wrong and untie the nodes.

> "Matter" doesn't exist. 

OK, but then can you tell me how things would be different if matter DID exist? If you can't then the existence or nonexistence of something is a question of no importance whatsoever. And that road leads to madness. I can tell you that if the atoms in your were to cease to exist and no record was kept about how the atoms were arranged it  would have a rather important effect on your consciousness. And I can also tell you that when atoms of silicon are arranged in certain ways it can beat you at Chess and GO and can solve partial differential equations that you can not. At one time that was considered intelligent but some keep moving the goalpost so that now intelligence is defined as anything that computers aren't good at, YET.       

I will tell you how things would be different if matter did exist if you tell me how things would be different is Santa Claus existed.
Yes, the disappearance of "atoms" will have an impact upon my consciousness in the same way that the disappearance of facebook will have an impact upon my consciousness. This doesn't mean facebook generates my consciousness.
Also airplanes can fly better than birds. Does that mean that airplanes are alive ?
Nobody moves the goalpost of intelligence anywhere. Intelligence is what has always been: the ability to bring new qualia into existence out of nothing. And AI will never do that. So AI was never about intelligence to start with.
 

>> What's with this "we" business? I know for a fact I'm conscious but your consciousness is an unproven hypothesis no different from assuming an AI is conscious.

> Is not at all the same thing.

Tell me the difference! I am quite certain you don't consider your fellow humans to be conscious all the time, not when they're sleeping or under anesthesia or dead because they don't behave intelligently then. I can't think why the same criteria should not be used for an AI. But as a practical matter it will make little difference if you believe a AI is conscious or not because in just a few years humanity will no longer be in the driver's seat. So the important question is will the AI consider you to be conscious or not.     

These are not the reasons. The reasons are as stated above: intelligence means bringing new qualia into existence out of nothing.
 
> Other consciousnesses are postulated based on our own consciousness,

Exactly. But how does that show that a computer can't be conscious even when it's acting intelligently?

 Using reason. If you use reason, reason will show you that intelligence means bringing new qualia into existence out of nothing, which AI as a deterministic system cannot. So AI doesn't even act intelligently, because to act intelligently you need to bring new ideas in existence, something that AI never does.

Stathis Papaioannou

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Apr 25, 2019, 5:32:34 AM4/25/19
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On Thu, 25 Apr 2019 at 16:38, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
You are randomly extrapolating. I think this is called "strawman logical error". Things are not random. There are reasons for why consciousness only exercises its powers in certain conditions. Evolution confined those powers to own body alone, though in some cases indeed you get connections between consciousnesses related to different bodies. But for those as well there are certain reasons for why they happen.

Neurons, muscles, tendons, bones are all physically connected and causally linked.  A bone will not move unless a tendon pulls it, a tendon won't pull until the muscle attached to it contracts, the muscle won't contract unless the peripheral nerve it is attached to fires, the nerve won't fire unless upper motor neurons with projections in the spinal cord fire, those nerves won't fire unless other cortical nerves connected to them fire, and so on. There is a reason for every event in the body. A bone won't suddenly move by itself.


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