On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 08:40:40AM -0000, marc.geddes.domain.name.hidden wrote:
>
> All the anthropic reasoning stuff is bunk in my opinion. It's based on
> the faulty idea that one can reason about consciousness by equating
> observer moments with parts of the block universe. But as I suggest
> above, you can't do this.
>
I'm not entirely sure what to make of what you say here, except that
it seems to be a criticism of the ASSA (that each observer moment is
selected independently of any other from an absolute measure distribution).
>
> Bostrom's writings appear to grant validity to anthropic reasoning
> (which I think is bunk) and also appear to identify consciousness
> (sentient observer-moments) with pre-existing computations in the
> block-universe. As I suggested above, consciousness is not reducible
> to physical processes and this is what invalidates anthropic reasoning.
Not all anthropic reasoning maps consciousness to specific physical processes...
>
> um.... now why does your sig say 'professor Russell Standish',
> Mathematics with a academic address given? ;)
>
Its an adjunct position, which mainly means they don't pay me
anything, or give me an office. The main advantages for me are access
to a uni library (and more importantly the electronic journal subscriptions),
and access to supercomputers for running simulations (I still have to
apply, but it doesn't cost me anything). The main advantage to the
school is some credit for my publications (which is worth real money)!
Cheers
--
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
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Received on Thu Oct 12 2006 - 06:17:08 PDT