Re: To observe is to......

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:24:46 +0200

Le 20-oct.-06, à 13:43, David Nyman a écrit :

>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Yes. Matter has to be redefine in term of a measure of the infinitely
>> many computational histories going through my states, and which are
>> undistinguishable relatively to the substitution level. Comp predicts
>> that if we look at ourself below our substitution level, then we can
>> measure the comp first person plural indeterminacy. That makes comp
>> testable, and even already confirmed by the quantum indeterminacy
>> (qualitatively with UDA), quasi-quantitatively by AUDA.
>
> These issues of testability and confirmation seem central. Could you
> articulate this in a more extended way?


Yes. OK ... Not right now. In november I will have much more time.



>
>>> No final
>>> theory of this appears to exist at present
>
> I meant that the 'faith' aspect of 'yes doctor' seems to imply that
> there is no certainty of the doctor having chosen the correct
> substitution level, or indeed demonstrating what this level is. Am I
> failing to grasp some aspect of this?


No you are correct by what you meant. But I don't think it is
equivalent with saying that no "final theory" of this exists at
present. The "final theory" is the one which explains completely why,
for ever, there is no certainty the doctor has chosen the correct
substitution level and why he would necessarily fail to give the proof.
Humans will bet on such level, and some will forget that they are
betting. That could lead to some "ethical" problems.



>
>> Yes yes it exists. UDA even shows that you got it by interviewing a
>> self-introspecting universal machine. That is something I try to
>> explain from time top time in the list, but the hardness comes from
>> the
>> fact that it needs some knowledge in logic and computer science (and
>> then people complained 'cause it is technical).
>>
>> Do you have some background in mathematical logic?
>
> I'm many, many years from my mathematical education - which in any case
> didn't include this area - so I'm busking it! However, If you're
> willing to articulate and explain the formal steps, I'm prepared to do
> some homework to master it.


I appreciate very much your willingness for digging deeper. I think
some people like Tom, George and Russell and some others could welcome
some more technical articulations. Perhaps we could put TECH in the
title so that people not interested in the technic can skip them
easily.
But I can explain all the math. Recursion theory (theoretical computer
science) can be grasped quickly. It is a theory where you can reach the
amazing results in few steps. Quite the contrary of number theory where
you need to read ten hard books to understand the first paragraph of
the average current paper (but that is only a problem for the follow up
of the work).
Mathematical logic is more difficult to explain because examples (of
theories, and proofs in theories) are more boring and long to describe,
but then we need only a tiny part of mathematical logic. Quantum
mechanics is not formally needed. Only, it helps people to know that
for empirical reasons some physicists already talk like if the weird
many-computations aspect of comp was true. That is QM illustrates some
of the comp weirdness (actually QM is still more weird, and, btw, even
more Pythagorean ....)


> BTW, the recent flurry of posts on related
> aspects of comp seem to show yet again that some of your most basic
> points have not registered yet. I'm not sure we can avoid (realising of
> course the pressures on your time) getting back to - THE ROADMAP.


Yes, I am aware. OK. I appreciate your help there :)
I will come back on the roadmap, which is just a planning for the
formal articulation.

Bruno




http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Received on Fri Oct 20 2006 - 10:32:58 PDT

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