Re: Barbour's mistake: ..to Bruno

From: <jamikes.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 16:22:52 -0400

Bruno,
kind reply, I was not ironical. You did not deny my position that ALL you do is coming from YOUR mind. However your justification ends with a 'funny' word: FACTS. What would YOU accept as facts and what would I? (Mind-body? our conscious feelings of a 'body(?) and all its accessory jazz is how WE (1st pers?) interpret our response to impacts we realize(d). Pain? Idea? Sport achievement? all from our solipsistic self considered as 'facts' (I start to be impressed by Colin's solipsism).
So I am not impressed by (your) science based on (your) facts. I listen to them an - maybe - accept (in toto or in part).

The Goedel-infection of complex machines (ourselves) was much simpler expressed by George (cannot prove that I am not crazy).
>"So, machine which introspect themselves sufficiently closely can not only guess the existence of something "bigger", but the machine can study the mathematical structure of its ignorance border."<
still does not show that 'it' comprehends the 'items' of such "BIGGER", only that 'it' accepts the existence of (something) such. Even more: it can study its (incomprehending) ignorance.
*
UDA step 1:
do you really 'believe'(?!) that we, identified as (complex) machines are really ONLY the PARTS of the BODY? you seem to be in favor of the 'mind-body' idea (<G>) - where is the mind IN US? you replace (yes doctor) the body-parts and the mind just goes with it? I use YOUR words here, I would say 'mentality' or 'ideation' the part neurologists cannot give account for. Or would you 'make' mentality a bodily organ, not flesh and blood, but of ideational stuff? then 'mind' would merge into body and you are not in favor of that. Anyway such an extended body-concept in my appreciation for Gestalt would please me. Just like "brainS" is not the plural of "brain", the goo. Facilitation of the hard problem.
Materialists cannot come up to such solutions. They measure
mVs - mAmps. So what does (your) body consist of? Or: what do you let go into the 'mind', what the YD does not exchange?

Your 2nd par "*far* from being solved" is not explained by a cloudy allowance that it surely can be mathematically solved. I say similarly cloudily: no, it cannot. My fact.
And I am not impressed by a reference to 'quantum-like rules', to refer to a simplified linear 1-track methodology in understanding something that is complex.
Your 'results' (no matter how much I appreciate them) are still within the comprehension of your thinking, not of a mathematical structuring (Godel) that there is some 'BIG' which is above your comprehension. (QED).
*
I find your reference to atheists irrelevant as far as I am concerned. I simply do not find 'room' for 'supernatural' or any extraneous intelligence that would 'create', 'rule', 'organize' or do any other 'godly' activity over our (not understood) existence.
So: no 'theo' for me. (a- or not). People with similar ideas in earlier times coined the 'pantheist' expression, but that. too, was a variant of the religious formula.
I still stay with my 'scientific agnosticism': I dunno.
But I can criticize.

Best regards

John



----- Original Message -----
  From: Bruno Marchal
  To: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
  Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2006 9:53 AM
  Subject: Re: Barbour's mistake: An alternative to a timless Platonia



  Le 04-oct.-06, à 18:09, <jamikes.domain.name.hidden> a écrit :


    "That is how YOU formulate these concepts in YOUR mind (i.e.
    comprehension),"


  Yes, but I make that comprehension sharable by being clear on the hypotheses.
  I would say that this is how science work. We make theories, which can only just be hypothetical. Then we derive theorems, that is consequences, and we compare them with the facts.




    "Puzzles me: are WE not ALL machines? Can we 'comprehend' the limitations of some "bigger" (=more comprehensive <G>) construct of which we are part of?"


  That is all the point of the limitation phenomena in "digital machine theory" (computer science). Once a machine complexity is higher than a precise "logical" threshold, then the machine can prove its own incompleteness theorem: "If I am consistent then I cannot prove that I am consistent". Still, the machine can bet on such
  So, machine which introspect themselves sufficiently closely can not only guess the existence of something "bigger", but the machine can study the mathematical structure of its ignorance border.




    I think most people understand the first seven steps of the eight [UDA] steps
    "(Do I envy them)"


  (May be you are perhaps just ironical, but I will answer like you were not).
  You can ask question, even on the first step, or on the hypotheses. The basic idea is simple. As David reminds us the game is to search the consequence of comp which is the digital version of the very old mechanist assumption: we are machine. It means there is no part of our body which cannot be substituted at some level by functional artificial (and digital) device. This is the "yes doctor" guess. Then the steps of the UDA follows gently, except the last one which is harder (I talk about the version in 8 steps).

  My original motivation for the UDA was only to explain that the "mind-body" problem is *far* from being solved, but that a simple and natural hypothesis makes it translatable in mathematics; and of course the math appearing there are NOT simple as we can expect. I got results though, like the fact that although comp makes it possible to comprehend the whole of the third person describable reality, it makes impossible to comprehend the whole of any first person reality. I have also results showing that the first person plural reality obeys quantum-like rules. Those are tiny bits of confirmation of the comp hypothesis (not a proof, obviously).

  Only atheist have reason to dislike the consequence of comp. Not because they would be wrong, but because their belief in "nature" is shown to need an act of faith (and atheists hate the very notion of faith).

  Bruno

  http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


  

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Received on Thu Oct 05 2006 - 16:23:43 PDT

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