A universe where everything exists?

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Mindey I.

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Nov 26, 2020, 12:57:47 PM11/26/20
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Curiously, I found the Everything List, because I wanted to to create a "A Universe Where Everything Can Exist" ( https://mindey.com/world.pdf ), which the Google search of 2007 returned me to my search query "How to create a universe, where everything can exist?"

So, suppose that we create a universe, where everything exists, -- would that universe be a superset of all possible universes, or, just the same set?

Lawrence Crowell

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Nov 26, 2020, 1:20:42 PM11/26/20
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If in general we live in a universe of probabilies, and so long as some state not impossible (eg p = 0) then in principle anything that has some probability to exist must exist somewhere. This has a bit of a multiverse sort of setting to it.

LC

Brent Meeker

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Nov 26, 2020, 6:06:16 PM11/26/20
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On 11/26/2020 9:57 AM, Mindey I. wrote:
Curiously, I found the Everything List, because I wanted to to create a "A Universe Where Everything Can Exist" ( https://mindey.com/world.pdf ), which the Google search of 2007 returned me to my search query "How to create a universe, where everything can exist?"

So, suppose that we create a universe, where everything exists, -- would that universe be a superset of all possible universes, or, just the same set?

You're asking whether some of the universe we create would be impossible?  Well, it depends on what you mean by possible.  If you mean logically possible, not self-contradictory, then the answer is no.  You can't create a universe where there are unicorns and there are no unicorns because that description fails to have meaning.  But if you mean nomologically possible, then sure it's a superset because there are logical possibilities under different physical laws.  The "universe" of Mario Brothers for example.

Brent

Bruno Marchal

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Nov 27, 2020, 5:14:05 AM11/27/20
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On 26 Nov 2020, at 18:57, Mindey I. <min...@mindey.com> wrote:

Curiously, I found the Everything List, because I wanted to to create a "A Universe Where Everything Can Exist" ( https://mindey.com/world.pdf ), which the Google search of 2007 returned me to my search query "How to create a universe, where everything can exist?”

What do you mean? 

In such a universe there would be circle with four sides?

The word" thing” needs a presentation or representation in some theory of  “thing".

I urge people to study a bit of mathematical logic which explains all this.



So, suppose that we create a universe, where everything exists, -- would that universe be a superset of all possible universes, or, just the same set?


”everything” is too much ambiguous without a theory of the things which are assumed. 

All notions of whole, are limited when made precise enough, or are inconsistent. The term “universe” is as bad as the term “god” when used out of an hypothetical frame. 

Today, we can approximate string notion of everything is classical set theory, but like in arithmetic, you will always miss the big whole. The collection of all set cannot be a set. The number of numbers cannot be a number, the whole physical reality cannot be a physical object … Now, this can be doubted if you use a special set theory allowing universal object, like Quine's New Foundation, but this does not prevent other type of limitations.

Bruno




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Lawrence Crowell

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Nov 27, 2020, 9:00:19 AM11/27/20
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This is a part of what I said earlier. Think of this with Bayesian statistics with P(A∩B ) = p(A|B)p(B) = p(B|A)p(A). With an excluded middle with  A∩B = Ø we can only conclude that p(A|B) = p(B|A) = 0 and so these correspond to situation with absolutely zero prior or posterior probabilities. So if some state of affairs is contradictory, then they have zero probability. In quantum logic we can think of this according to destructive interference, so there are physical states that cannot exist by destructive interference.

LC

Tomas Pales

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Nov 27, 2020, 1:35:13 PM11/27/20
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The idea of an all-encompassing set (a set of all sets) is inconsistent, for example because the power set of a set (=the set of all subsets of a set) is an even bigger set. If a set is infinite then its power set has an even bigger infinite size. So there is no biggest set, just as there is no biggest number and no biggest infinity. There just seems to be a never-ending hierarchy of sets, from the empty set upward and maybe there are also sets that have no bottom, that is they contain sets that contain sets etc. without end. But everything needs to be kept consistent and I have heard that according to Godel's second incompleteness theorem there may be inconsistencies lurking in infinities which we may never be able to detect.

Bruno Marchal

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Dec 8, 2020, 9:01:30 AM12/8/20
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On 27 Nov 2020, at 15:00, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is a part of what I said earlier. Think of this with Bayesian statistics with P(A∩B ) = p(A|B)p(B) = p(B|A)p(A).


What are A and B. What is the probability space? (OMEGA). I am not sure what are your assumption. It seems that you assume some probability theory.




With an excluded middle with  A∩B = Ø we can only conclude that p(A|B) = p(B|A) = 0 and so these correspond to situation with absolutely zero prior or posterior probabilities. So if some state of affairs is contradictory, then they have zero probability.

With Mechanism, we assume much less than a probability theory, and eventually, we derive a probability calculus, but this happens only in the derivation of the physical structure/logic/law from elementary arithmetic, as we need to do when we assume that consciousness is invariant for a functional substitution at some level (of description of the body/brain).





In quantum logic we can think of this according to destructive interference, so there are physical states that cannot exist by destructive interference.

That seems interesting, but the quantum structure has to be explained by the statistics on *all* computations (a very solid concept when we assume the Church-Turing thesis, which is a very strong hypothesis in math and philosophy/theology/metaphysics.

With mechanism, we explain the appearance of a physical reality by a measure on all computations as seen from inside, which has been the hard thing to define until I realised that the greeks not only get the solutions, but actually got the unique set of solutions provided by the universal+ Turing machine (universal+ = Gödel-Löbian = “believing in enough induction axioms (like PA)” = "universal and knowing it”.

The mechanist explanation requires us to NOT invoke any ontological commitment (neither a personal god, but also no impersonal god or ontology, except what is needed to define a universal machine, which is only elementary arithmetic, or Turing equivalent (what I called often “universal machinery”, which are the enumeration of programs in some universal programming language, or just the numbers with assiteion and multiplication.

The advantage is that this gives a theory of qualia and quanta, and thanks to the quanta, we can compare it with Nature, and thus refute (or just confirm) Mechanism. We find a quantum structure, and up to now, it fits with observation, unless we speculate on some wave reduction in nature.

When we do physics, we can assume, or not, some physical universe. When doing metaphysics with the scientific method, at some point we have to be very clear about what is assumed, and what is not assumed and instead derived. With Mechanism, elementary arithmetic is all what is assumed, beside the consciousness invariance at the meta-level. 

Bruno




LC

On Friday, November 27, 2020 at 4:14:05 AM UTC-6 Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 26 Nov 2020, at 18:57, Mindey I. <min...@mindey.com> wrote:

Curiously, I found the Everything List, because I wanted to to create a "A Universe Where Everything Can Exist" ( https://mindey.com/world.pdf ), which the Google search of 2007 returned me to my search query "How to create a universe, where everything can exist?”

What do you mean? 

In such a universe there would be circle with four sides?

The word" thing” needs a presentation or representation in some theory of  “thing".

I urge people to study a bit of mathematical logic which explains all this.



So, suppose that we create a universe, where everything exists, -- would that universe be a superset of all possible universes, or, just the same set?


”everything” is too much ambiguous without a theory of the things which are assumed. 

All notions of whole, are limited when made precise enough, or are inconsistent. The term “universe” is as bad as the term “god” when used out of an hypothetical frame. 

Today, we can approximate string notion of everything is classical set theory, but like in arithmetic, you will always miss the big whole. The collection of all set cannot be a set. The number of numbers cannot be a number, the whole physical reality cannot be a physical object … Now, this can be doubted if you use a special set theory allowing universal object, like Quine's New Foundation, but this does not prevent other type of limitations.

Bruno




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Lawrence Crowell

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Dec 9, 2020, 2:31:12 PM12/9/20
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On Tuesday, December 8, 2020 at 8:01:30 AM UTC-6 Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 27 Nov 2020, at 15:00, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is a part of what I said earlier. Think of this with Bayesian statistics with P(A∩B ) = p(A|B)p(B) = p(B|A)p(A).


What are A and B. What is the probability space? (OMEGA). I am not sure what are your assumption. It seems that you assume some probability theory.



A and B just stand for events or outcomes. 

Bayes theorem is really similar to Boolean logic, but where instead of 0 and 1 there are probabilities with a measure in between these two Boolean limits. It really is a generalization of standard logic, and as such embeds the theorems that apply to such. That is a bold unproven statement on my behalf, but it at least makes sense.

LC

Bruno Marchal

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Dec 10, 2020, 9:30:16 AM12/10/20
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On 9 Dec 2020, at 20:31, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, December 8, 2020 at 8:01:30 AM UTC-6 Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 27 Nov 2020, at 15:00, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is a part of what I said earlier. Think of this with Bayesian statistics with P(A∩B ) = p(A|B)p(B) = p(B|A)p(A).


What are A and B. What is the probability space? (OMEGA). I am not sure what are your assumption. It seems that you assume some probability theory.



A and B just stand for events or outcomes. 

But what is the space of probability? What is Kolmogorov OMEGA?




Bayes theorem is really similar to Boolean logic,

Assuming Mechanism, none of the modes of self-reference can justify a classical logic. It works only for the ontology, which is “event free”.

My feeling is that you are assuming a physical universe, which does not work (if you are aware of my arguments, I have given references).

There is no way we can save an ontological physical universe when we assume mechanism. What would it be? And how could it be able to select a (relative) computation among all computations? The usual answer to this is that the “physical reality” makes some computation more real than others, but then, what in matter is needed and is not Turing emulable, and how to still answer “yes” to the digitalist doctor, who will not care of that “matter” per definition of Digital Mechanism?
A Universe still assume some magic, and we can speculate that it exists, and that mechanism is false, of course. Yet, there a no evidences at all, when on the contrary, Mechanism got many evidences, from the direct one, like with genetics, molecular biology, etc, and indirect, like the many-worlds (or better: the many histories) interpretation of quantum mechanics, and its formalism, which are quickly retrieved from Mechanism, where physicists are still unable to provide a comprehensible interpretation.




but where instead of 0 and 1 there are probabilities with a measure in between these two Boolean limits. It really is a generalization of standard logic, and as such embeds the theorems that apply to such. That is a bold unproven statement on my behalf, but it at least makes sense.

May be, but it cannot work with the Mechanist Assumption. It presupposes somehow an alethic modal metaphysics (à-la Leibniz, using the modal logic S5, if you know Modal Logic). But with mechanism, we cannot choose the Modal Logic we want: they are imposed by incompleteness and its variate self-reference logics.

It is like with Jesus. If it was true that Jesus made water into wine, it would still be better to invoke prestidigitation as the most reasonable explanation, given the human credulity and the existence of prestidigitation. Same for a Universe, given the credulity of the universal number, and their tremendous power of prestidigitation. Universal number and brains can make a person believe almost anything…

What many people miss is that the concept of computation is a purely mathematical, even arithmetical notion. You can define what a computation is, and prove the existence of all of them, in very simple, but Turing-complete theory, like those I have given very often here.

I believe, like everybody, that there is a physical reality, and indeed, we observe it all the time. But I don’t have to assume its existence. It follows from some of the self-reference modes of the numbers in arithmetic (or Turing equivalent). With Mechanism, physics is “ultimately” a branch of machine biology, psychology, metaphysics and/or theology, all being branches of elementary arithmetic, once we assume (Digital) Mechanism.

Physics is the bet tool for making predictions, but it fails to relate those prediction with our first person experiences. It needs a strong identity relation between brain and experiences, which is untenable when we assume that our consciousness is preserved through artificial digital implant, where we are obliged to derive those prediction from the “natural” (canonical) statistics inherent to the many-computations reality of any Turing Universal Machinery.

Bruno




Telmo Menezes

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Dec 10, 2020, 10:14:42 AM12/10/20
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Mindey asked a very interesting question, and I've been thinking about it while following the discussion. I don't have a good answer, but I might have a good question. I propose another take: the discussion so far has been in terms of quanta, but what if we reframed it in terms of qualia?

Imagine the "universe" in terms of the set of all first-person experience moments of all of its inhabitants. Is there a limit to novelty here? Or can qualia also display unbounded complexity?

Telmo
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Lawrence Crowell

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Dec 10, 2020, 2:34:09 PM12/10/20
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On Thursday, December 10, 2020 at 8:30:16 AM UTC-6 Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 9 Dec 2020, at 20:31, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, December 8, 2020 at 8:01:30 AM UTC-6 Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 27 Nov 2020, at 15:00, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is a part of what I said earlier. Think of this with Bayesian statistics with P(A∩B ) = p(A|B)p(B) = p(B|A)p(A).


What are A and B. What is the probability space? (OMEGA). I am not sure what are your assumption. It seems that you assume some probability theory.



A and B just stand for events or outcomes. 

But what is the space of probability? What is Kolmogorov OMEGA?


There really is no reference to a sample space or space of probability. Bayes' theorem really works when you lack that knowledge. One must invoke prior estimates. This may be refined with each step from the posterior probability outcome in a regression. There is not much reference to some sample space of all possible outcomes. This is basic Bayes' theorem without reference of "Omega," of Chaitin or Kolmogorov-Chaitin theorems

LC

Brent Meeker

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Dec 10, 2020, 2:48:54 PM12/10/20
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It would seem to need a definition of a "first person experience moment".  Personally I don't think my experiences are very big in information terms.  Notice how easily we are fooled by illusions, which tells me that a lot of our "experience" content is fabricated.  But I don't think by experience comes in "moments".  They have extent in experienced time and even overlap.  And again there is fabrication.  If you look a someone talking on TV, you see their lips and their sounds as synchronized.  And even as you move further away from the TV you continue to perceive them as synchronized...up to a point at which you suddenly start to see the sound as delayed.  Your brain was imposing synchronization earlier.

Brent

PGC

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Dec 10, 2020, 3:48:19 PM12/10/20
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On Thursday, December 10, 2020 at 4:14:42 PM UTC+1 telmo wrote:
Mindey asked a very interesting question, and I've been thinking about it while following the discussion. I don't have a good answer, but I might have a good question. I propose another take: the discussion so far has been in terms of quanta, but what if we reframed it in terms of qualia?

Imagine the "universe" in terms of the set of all first-person experience moments of all of its inhabitants. Is there a limit to novelty here? Or can qualia also display unbounded complexity?

No serious philosopher/linguist I know of argues for a bound there in principle. At least not in my modest reading of antique treatments, and neither more recently in Baumgarten, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Valéry, Heidegger, Adorno, and contemporary thinkers. I wouldn't think Bruno does either with []p & <>t & p. 

And moving from sensation to aesthetic sensation, or sets of sensations pursued as ends in themselves, subjectivity liberates the richness of reality (or Bruno's "p" if you want) to be experienced as a pleasurable confirmation of its broad and limitless accessibility to us. We pursue that unbounded complexity.

Even if experiencing reality is not sharable in its entirety or with absolute precision, the pursuit and analysis of accounts of sensation or experience reports, can be useful in guiding us toward the good stuff, e.g. conjunction of novel/unknown with a particular pleasure. PGC

PGC

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Dec 10, 2020, 4:13:00 PM12/10/20
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On Thursday, December 10, 2020 at 8:48:54 PM UTC+1 Brent wrote:
It would seem to need a definition of a "first person experience moment".  Personally I don't think my experiences are very big in information terms.  Notice how easily we are fooled by illusions, which tells me that a lot of our "experience" content is fabricated. 

Experience is fabricated in its actual execution. Thus, even being fooled by illusions or artificiality assumes, that some meaning is verifiably conveyed; with the "true moment" of experience in German philosophical usage referring to the fact of the experience rather than its duration. 
 
But I don't think by experience comes in "moments".  They have extent in experienced time and even overlap.  And again there is fabrication.  If you look a someone talking on TV, you see their lips and their sounds as synchronized.  And even as you move further away from the TV you continue to perceive them as synchronized...up to a point at which you suddenly start to see the sound as delayed.  Your brain was imposing synchronization earlier.

A fun thing about our brains: run some enjoyable music randomly along with any unrelated film/moving imagery. The brain will spot correspondences and lucky coincidences more than one would think. That's fabrication in action. PGC
 

Telmo Menezes

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Dec 11, 2020, 4:20:10 AM12/11/20
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Am Do, 10. Dez 2020, um 19:48, schrieb 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List:
It would seem to need a definition of a "first person experience moment".

I agree, and this seems particularly tricky and maybe impossible.

Personally I don't think my experiences are very big in information terms.  Notice how easily we are fooled by illusions, which tells me that a lot of our "experience" content is fabricated.  But I don't think by experience comes in "moments".  They have extent in experienced time and even overlap.  And again there is fabrication.  If you look a someone talking on TV, you see their lips and their sounds as synchronized.  And even as you move further away from the TV you continue to perceive them as synchronized...up to a point at which you suddenly start to see the sound as delayed.  Your brain was imposing synchronization earlier.

I agree with all this. I especially agree that "I don't think my experiences are very big in information terms", which is what leads me to the question. Hard as it may be to define, subjective diversity / complexity is what actually matters to us, conscious entities. What does the universal menu of qualia available to conscious entities look like, I guess this is what I am asking...

Right now I'm having coffee and writing an email and it is gray outside, and this feels almost indistinguishable from countless times I had such an experience before.

Telmo.


Brent


On 12/10/2020 7:14 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Mindey asked a very interesting question, and I've been thinking about it while following the discussion. I don't have a good answer, but I might have a good question. I propose another take: the discussion so far has been in terms of quanta, but what if we reframed it in terms of qualia?

Imagine the "universe" in terms of the set of all first-person experience moments of all of its inhabitants. Is there a limit to novelty here? Or can qualia also display unbounded complexity?

Telmo

Am Fr, 27. Nov 2020, um 18:35, schrieb Tomas Pales:
The idea of an all-encompassing set (a set of all sets) is inconsistent, for example because the power set of a set (=the set of all subsets of a set) is an even bigger set. If a set is infinite then its power set has an even bigger infinite size. So there is no biggest set, just as there is no biggest number and no biggest infinity. There just seems to be a never-ending hierarchy of sets, from the empty set upward and maybe there are also sets that have no bottom, that is they contain sets that contain sets etc. without end. But everything needs to be kept consistent and I have heard that according to Godel's second incompleteness theorem there may be inconsistencies lurking in infinities which we may never be able to detect.


On Thursday, November 26, 2020 at 6:57:47 PM UTC+1 Mindey I. wrote:
Curiously, I found the Everything List, because I wanted to to create a "A Universe Where Everything Can Exist" ( https://mindey.com/world.pdf ), which the Google search of 2007 returned me to my search query "How to create a universe, where everything can exist?"

So, suppose that we create a universe, where everything exists, -- would that universe be a superset of all possible universes, or, just the same set?


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Telmo Menezes

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Dec 11, 2020, 4:32:22 AM12/11/20
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Am Do, 10. Dez 2020, um 20:48, schrieb PGC:


On Thursday, December 10, 2020 at 4:14:42 PM UTC+1 telmo wrote:

Mindey asked a very interesting question, and I've been thinking about it while following the discussion. I don't have a good answer, but I might have a good question. I propose another take: the discussion so far has been in terms of quanta, but what if we reframed it in terms of qualia?

Imagine the "universe" in terms of the set of all first-person experience moments of all of its inhabitants. Is there a limit to novelty here? Or can qualia also display unbounded complexity?

No serious philosopher/linguist I know of argues for a bound there in principle. At least not in my modest reading of antique treatments, and neither more recently in Baumgarten, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Valéry, Heidegger, Adorno, and contemporary thinkers. I wouldn't think Bruno does either with []p & <>t & p. 

It did not occur me to ask linguists, but fair enough. I would say that there is a correspondence between language and qualia, but that is a deep rabbit hole. Language clearly has boundless complexity, but this does not convince me that the qualia it points to also do. We can easily fall into Borat's "and is this cheese?" scenarios.

And moving from sensation to aesthetic sensation, or sets of sensations pursued as ends in themselves, subjectivity liberates the richness of reality (or Bruno's "p" if you want) to be experienced as a pleasurable confirmation of its broad and limitless accessibility to us. We pursue that unbounded complexity.

Yes, but what if "richness of reality" is just a qualia without much diversity?

Even if experiencing reality is not sharable in its entirety or with absolute precision, the pursuit and analysis of accounts of sensation or experience reports, can be useful in guiding us toward the good stuff, e.g. conjunction of novel/unknown with a particular pleasure. PGC

Yes, I agree.

Telmo.


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PGC

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Dec 11, 2020, 9:31:22 AM12/11/20
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On Friday, December 11, 2020 at 10:32:22 AM UTC+1 telmo wrote:


Am Do, 10. Dez 2020, um 20:48, schrieb PGC:


On Thursday, December 10, 2020 at 4:14:42 PM UTC+1 telmo wrote:

Mindey asked a very interesting question, and I've been thinking about it while following the discussion. I don't have a good answer, but I might have a good question. I propose another take: the discussion so far has been in terms of quanta, but what if we reframed it in terms of qualia?

Imagine the "universe" in terms of the set of all first-person experience moments of all of its inhabitants. Is there a limit to novelty here? Or can qualia also display unbounded complexity?

No serious philosopher/linguist I know of argues for a bound there in principle. At least not in my modest reading of antique treatments, and neither more recently in Baumgarten, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Valéry, Heidegger, Adorno, and contemporary thinkers. I wouldn't think Bruno does either with []p & <>t & p. 

It did not occur me to ask linguists, but fair enough. I would say that there is a correspondence between language and qualia, but that is a deep rabbit hole. Language clearly has boundless complexity, but this does not convince me that the qualia it points to also do. We can easily fall into Borat's "and is this cheese?" scenarios.

The why is of interest here: that Borat cheese clip illustrated how an extreme form of whataboutism was effective, that remains pertinent given how social media provides everyone a platform to distribute information and form what are effectively "news" networks accordingly; often falling prey to the rhetorical act of constantly raising another issue and/or tweet. Assuming that the store owner was not stupid, this prompts us to ask why he would comply? It is reasonable to bet that Borat's publicist/agent reaching out to the store and offering them coverage, in addition to the presence of a professional camera crew, and Borat's foreign appearance/accent/mannerisms sufficed in staging enough legitimacy for the store manager to accord him practically infinite permission to continue to raise another issue. 

The extreme flavor of this here, was that Borat didn't even have to change the issue. It sufficed for him to pick up another bag of cheese, which was enough to elicit consideration and response, as the store manager felt compelled to continue providing him the floor to pose a question even after a hundred repetitions.That would be a linguistically oriented aesthetic appraisal, where we are less concerned about general or consistent states of affairs, and more concerned about what makes an experience or its product particular and special. If Chomsky wrote about manufacturing consent, the digital age begs the question of manufacturing legitimacy across screens. The ubiquitousness of which may drive folks towards "this is also fabricated".

Re your qualia concern: what is the upper bound to literature that writers produce (fiction and/or scientific)? What would be the absolute boundary of the literary imagination? Sure, it cannot replace experience itself or acquire scientific insights by force, but it is its own kind of experience with the potential of inspiring scientific advances, and can indeed loose or find itself principally describing all possible experience. 
 

And moving from sensation to aesthetic sensation, or sets of sensations pursued as ends in themselves, subjectivity liberates the richness of reality (or Bruno's "p" if you want) to be experienced as a pleasurable confirmation of its broad and limitless accessibility to us. We pursue that unbounded complexity.

Yes, but what if "richness of reality" is just a qualia without much diversity?

The subject's aesthetic awareness would seem confined by virtue of either suffering or believing such a proposition for some reason. Without the ability for openness and awareness towards novelty/uncertainty, people will tend to confuse even the high probability pleasurable future experiences as a danger to their control due to their inherent uncertainty; mostly forgetting that their sense of control is manufactured or, to use Brent's term, "fabricated" by themselves and their usual interactions with the world in the first place. The known miseries being preferable to the unknown potentials for not misery. 

Hopefully we are able to get some control over the pandemic. Then, the next aesthetic chapters for yours truly would be skydiving and learning how to fly airplanes, gliders, anything I can afford. Of course, there is anxiety of making a mistake, lol. Yet, jumping out of an airplane and learning how to fly it, seem to be rich prospects for diversity in what yours truly considers to be real. And there will always be a next thing. personally, the list is huge. There's even sense in saving some of the unexecuted unknown experiences with a high probability of pleasurable content for later points in life, and stating "I'll want to remain naive on that until I run low on inspiration fuel lest I be trapped in fooling myself of having control/stability". There's always another dish, book, experience, etc. PGC 
 

Brent Meeker

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Dec 11, 2020, 3:50:45 PM12/11/20
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On 12/11/2020 1:31 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>
> It did not occur me to ask linguists, but fair enough. I would say
> that there is a correspondence between language and qualia, but that
> is a deep rabbit hole. Language clearly has boundless complexity, but
> this does not convince me that the qualia it points to also do. We can
> easily fall into Borat's "and is this cheese?" scenarios.

The thoughts we will have in language are bounded by birth and death.

Brent

PGC

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Dec 13, 2020, 8:04:48 AM12/13/20
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Hence the bucket list. Contrary to the million blogs out there offering concrete lists, everybody's list is personal. There could be universals, but those appear to happen at some meta-psychoanalytical/social level. I'm not sure as some folks appear to prefer solitude in work, play, and life. PGC

Bruno Marchal

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Dec 13, 2020, 12:11:48 PM12/13/20
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On 10 Dec 2020, at 16:14, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:

Mindey asked a very interesting question, and I've been thinking about it while following the discussion. I don't have a good answer, but I might have a good question. I propose another take: the discussion so far has been in terms of quanta, but what if we reframed it in terms of qualia?

Imagine the "universe" in terms of the set of all first-person experience moments of all of its inhabitants. Is there a limit to novelty here? Or can qualia also display unbounded complexity?


With Mechanism, we have to separate clearly the ontology, which is given by the minimal things that we have to assume because we cannot derive them from simpler thing, and which has to be enough rich to support a universal machine. There is some amount of latitude here, because we can assume any universal machinery(*). As everyone believe already in natural numbers and the laws of addition and multiplication, I use them (albeit in my course I prefer to use the combinators, but once we have them we have the numbers+laws, and vice versa.

Then, everything is explained, even imposed, by the fact that we get all the universal numbers, and that they all discover the nuance imposed on provability by incompleteness, which are the nuances between, truth, belief, knowledge, sharable observation (quanta) and the non sharable observation (qualia).

First incompleteness separate truth (p) from provability ([]p), and it makes provability into a belief predicate, forbidding it to be a knowledge predicate (which can be proven to NOT exist, which is coherent with the fact that consciousness and qualia will not be definable by the machine, but still deferrable too indirectly assuming mechanism and some notion of (arithmetical) truth (itself not definable). This entails that provability-and-truth will obey a knowledge logic, not definable by the machine about itself, but still deferrable, just by using the original idea of Theaetetus: knowledge is true belief, and rational knowledge is true provable belief ([]p & p). Sharable Observation is given by []p & <>t (which leads to probability logic) and private observation (qualia, and “unfortunately” also the quanta (which becomes first person plural, making physics a psychological reality) is given by applying Theatetus’ move again leading to []p & <>t & p.

This gives 8 different mathematical theories, and the observable part (private and public) are testable, and can be said to fit rather well with physics, given that we get a many-histories interpretation of arithmetic, but also a quantum logic for the first person plural locally sharable quanta. In fact we get (up to some details I skip here) an intuitionist logic for the knower, a quantum logic for the observable, and an intuitionist quantum logic for the qualia.

The logical explanation follows:

NUMBER => CONSCIOUSNESS => PHYSICAL-LAWS

We cannot start from consciousness, and we cannot start with matter, which are the notion that we have to explain from numbers, when we assume Mécanisme, and indeed, the universal numbers provide that explanation, and it is testable as it leads to number/machine physical laws, that we can compare with Nature. 

I would have preferred by far that the quanta appears at the []p & <>t level, but they appear only in []p & p, and []p & <>t & p, making physics a first person plural construct (with p’s interpretation limited to the partial computable formula, which are the sigma_1 (true) sentences.

You can see any universal number in arithmetic as the initialisation of a sheave of (aleph_0, or bigger) computational histories, in the universal dovetailing (aka the sigma_1 truth). Those are the differentiating histories which, from the pov of the machine, and below their substitution level, select a continuum of continuations obeying to different mathematics (intutionist, quantum, or both) corresponding to each self-referential modes imposed by incompleteness.

This makes also the universal “virgin” (unprogrammed) machine) already maximally (somehow) conscious, but it is a highly dissociative sort of consciousness, out of time and space. Time and space should arise from the subjective time (canonically related to the intuitionist logic of the knower. (S4Grz and S4Grz1 can be see as a logic of evolving state of knowledge).

The notion of universal machine (Post, Kleene, Turing, Church, Markov, arguably Babbage) structured canonically the classical (sigma_1) arithmetical reality in 8 internal modes, differentiating on their first person histories.

Like in Neoplatonism, but also many eastern school of philosophy, Nature is the product of the universal number self-contemplation.

The bomb here are the discovery of the universal number, mainly by Turing, and the incompleteness which results, and (the subtle point seen by Gödel, but made clear by Hillbert and Bernays, and Löb) that with enough induction axiom (like PA) the universal machine can reflect its incompleteness and its consequences, including that partial “free will”, the hesitations, and the unavoidable complications in the local neighbourhoods. The core of the low level, not reflective, consciousness is the fixed point of a semantical sum up of all histories, a bit like all the numbers satisfy an empty set of equations, or that the unary intersection of the empty set is the collection or classe of all sets. Locally, the universal machine are never “completely” satisfied, but that’s why histories develop. It is a sort of “eternal” travel from G to G*, and fake science/religion comes from confusing one made of self-reference with another.

Bruno

(*) I recall what those things are. Take any formal (Turing) universal programming language. Enumerate the functions with one input/variable, with repetitions, through the enumeration of all the programs, in the lexicographic order (by length, and then alphabetically for those having the same length). This gives the phi_i (that is all the (partial) computable functions  phi_0(n), phi_1(n), phi_2(n), phi_3(n) … That is a universal machinery. They have an important property, related to the fact that this enumeration is itself computable, which is that there are numbers u such that phi_u(<n, m>) = phi_n(m). Here m is called the program/machine, m is called the data or input, and u is called the computer, or the universal machine, or the universal number, or the universal word, depending of the chosen universal machinery.

If, given a universal machinery, you define on N (the set of all natural numbers), an operation * by n * m = phi_n(m), you make N into a combinatory algebra. So the combinators provide both a universal machinery, but also an abstract theory of all universal machineries.  Same in presence of Oracle, and that plays some role in the measure problem. The measures associated with the first person point on view relies on all sigma_1(a), with a “real”, that is why it is a continuum, and the “sum on dreams” seems to be a Lebesgue integral…). The whole phenomenology can be formalised in ZFC + PD (ZF + Choice + Projective indeterminacy).






Telmo

Am Fr, 27. Nov 2020, um 18:35, schrieb Tomas Pales:
The idea of an all-encompassing set (a set of all sets) is inconsistent, for example because the power set of a set (=the set of all subsets of a set) is an even bigger set. If a set is infinite then its power set has an even bigger infinite size. So there is no biggest set, just as there is no biggest number and no biggest infinity. There just seems to be a never-ending hierarchy of sets, from the empty set upward and maybe there are also sets that have no bottom, that is they contain sets that contain sets etc. without end. But everything needs to be kept consistent and I have heard that according to Godel's second incompleteness theorem there may be inconsistencies lurking in infinities which we may never be able to detect.


On Thursday, November 26, 2020 at 6:57:47 PM UTC+1 Mindey I. wrote:
Curiously, I found the Everything List, because I wanted to to create a "A Universe Where Everything Can Exist" ( https://mindey.com/world.pdf ), which the Google search of 2007 returned me to my search query "How to create a universe, where everything can exist?"

So, suppose that we create a universe, where everything exists, -- would that universe be a superset of all possible universes, or, just the same set?


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Brent Meeker

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Dec 14, 2020, 2:22:12 AM12/14/20
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On 12/13/2020 9:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> The logical explanation follows:
>
> NUMBER => CONSCIOUSNESS => PHYSICAL-LAWS
>
> We cannot start from consciousness, and we cannot start with matter,
> which are the notion that we have to explain from numbers, when we
> assume Mécanisme, and indeed, the universal numbers provide that
> explanation, and it is testable as it leads to number/machine physical
> laws, that we can compare with Nature.

Why can't you start from consciousness.  It's more immediately known
than numbers.  Bernard Kastrup favors it .

Brent

PGC

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Dec 14, 2020, 8:04:30 AM12/14/20
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As do many more "cognitive" approaches but Bruno's approach is arithmetical - and thus a metaphysical kind of realism. And as elegantly as it addresses consciousness, its content, the existence of platonic forms, along with our access to it-  I've been wondering about one observation. Let us assume we are mathematical beings in a mathematical reality, who have access to said reality via our minds: how can my ability to play a piano piece or my technique in solving some mathematical problem that I could a few years ago, atrophy over time, if there weren't something - physical or otherwise - that disturbed the access to the land of arithmetical platonia? 

The hard drive of my computer degrades over time for physical reasons but if we allow the same kind of reasoning to apply to the functioning of platonic or computational minds, we have to admit some physical property or some "other thing in the way" that perturbs the access of mind to the realm of pure metaphysical mathematical forms, perhaps on a biological/chemical level of neurology that manifests psychologically. Thus we have a contradiction in addition to the "unnatural observation" that quanta don't appear at the []p & <>t level. 

The arithmetical realist would reply "but if you assume something primary and physical, you can't explain consciousness" and cite MGA, but they'd still have to account for that atrophy and similar discrepancies in learning speed/effects; e.g. why do some minds have more facility for abstraction than others, if all are essentially the same kinds of machines, with the same kind of access, to the assumed arithmetical reality? Classrooms provide evidence of a controlled environment: wouldn't our grades in mathematics be much more uniform? Many of us know this not to be the case, lol.  PGC 


John Clark

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Dec 14, 2020, 8:36:08 AM12/14/20
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On Mon, Dec 14, 2020  'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 >> On 12/13/2020 9:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
>> We cannot start from consciousness,

I agree because the scientific method is of no use for consciousness. So instead start with Intelligent behavior, aka The Turing Test.  
 
> and we cannot start with matter, which are the notion that we have to explain from numbers,

That is an unwarranted assumption on your part. You don't need numbers to explain matter, you need matter to explain numbers.

> Why can't you start from consciousness.  It's more immediately known than numbers. 

Why can't you start from intelligent behavior. It's more immediately known than either. It takes intelligence to conclude "I think therefore I am".

John K Clark

Lawrence Crowell

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Dec 14, 2020, 7:46:12 PM12/14/20
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I wince when people bring consciousness into scientific discussions. It is not entirely clear how consciousness can ever be a fully scientific subject. Maybe within the soft problem limits it can be somewhat scientific. The qualia or hard problem I think is outside of science. 

LC

Brent Meeker

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Dec 14, 2020, 9:22:57 PM12/14/20
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 I agree.  I'm an advocate of the engineering solution to the "hard problem of consciousness".  When we can build AI's that act intelligently and explain their conscious thoughts and we can adjust them so that they are more or less humorous or optimistic v. pessimstic or intuitive v. contemplative, etc...then we will have understood as much as there is to understand about consciousness.

Brent
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Philip Thrift

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Dec 15, 2020, 5:33:09 AM12/15/20
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Bernardo Kastrup is super-critical of those who confuse intelligence with consciousness, especially those who think that that an AI built with silicon chips ("sand") could ever be conscious.


Interview at NeuroTech2020 - Bernardo Kastrup



[ Though chips made with "actual biological neurons, taken from mice and humans" maybe!

@philipthrift

PGC

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Dec 15, 2020, 7:36:27 AM12/15/20
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On Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 3:22:57 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:
 I agree.  I'm an advocate of the engineering solution to the "hard problem of consciousness".  When we can build AI's that act intelligently and explain their conscious thoughts and we can adjust them so that they are more or less humorous or optimistic v. pessimstic or intuitive v. contemplative, etc...then we will have understood as much as there is to understand about consciousness.

It's true that e.g. classical mechanics asserts F = ma independently of discussions that concern topics of truth, consciousness, etc. Most of science, including large parts of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology etc. don't need more than an implicit notion of truth, where if I were to say F = m/a in newtonian contexts, you'd be able to say "false". 

Yet, if for arguments sake, we pursued your proposed engineering solution to the hard problem ignoring philosophy (contradictory, as that IS philosophical already), and were actually able to build the most humorous AI that inherited our taste for resource and power acquisition by any means in all directions, it would take over the world and that would be the funniest t