Re: Observer-moments

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed Sep 15 06:10:34 1999

James Higgo wrote:

>The concept of the observer-moment is at the heart of much of our thinking.

Yes. With Wei Dai's definition, it appears in the *STRONG* SSA (either
the absolute or the relative one).

>I believe this is a problem, because the very words 'observer moment' are
>self-contradictory.

Apparently, but it depends how you will define it.

>How can you have an observer (a consciousness) in a moment (a snapshot in
>time). Think about it. In which snapshot (universe) did that thought occur?
>I am not proposing any solution to this problem - just pointing out that any
>edifice built on the idea of an observer-moment is bound to crumble.

I would propose to see ``observer-moment" as relative computational
states
of sufficiently reflexive universal machines.

Such states are distributed in a very sparse way in UD*, from a third
person perspective. And they are linked through the possible first person
perspectives. (This follows from the PE-OMEGA thought experience).

Time (like space) is always subjective and basically emerges, from a
first person point of view, from the possible links between all
relative computational states of all sufficiently reflexive universal
machines.
These possible links are ``defined" by the measure we are trying to
isolate.

Your remark is well founded, and that is why I prefer to talk of machine's
states instead of ``observer moment". The moments are a posteriori
constructs.

Bruno.
Received on Wed Sep 15 1999 - 06:10:34 PDT