Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 15:39:18 +0100

Le 27-déc.-06, à 23:40, Jef Allbright a écrit :

>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Le 27-déc.-06, à 19:10, Jef Allbright a écrit :
>
>>> All meaning is necessarily within context.
>> OK, but all context could make sense only to
>> some universal meaning. I mean I don't know,
>> it is difficult.
>
> But this can be seen in a very consistent way. The significance of an
> event is proportional to the scope of its effect relative to the
> values of the observer.



I can agree (could depend about the meaning of "significance").





> With increasing context of self-awareness, subjective values
> increasingly resemble principles of the physical universe.



Apparently you are even more optimistic than me. I just wish you are
correct here. It is fuzzy because the term "resemble" is fuzzy.






> Why? Because making basic choices against the way the universe
> actually works would be a losing strategy, becoming increasingly
> obvious with increasing context of awareness.


OK. I think I do agree with this from some global context. But machine
and nature can make terrible detour and as I said it would be
presomptuous from my part to say I am sure life or physical universe
are not such a detour. I don't believe this, but I cannot be sure of
remnant wishful thinking.




>
> Since all events are the result of interactions following the laws of
> the physical universe,


Hmmm... It is out of topic, but I don't believe this at all. Better I
can show to you that if "I" (or "You") are turing-emulable, then all
events, including the apparition and the development of the physical
laws are the result of the relation between numbers.




> the difference between events and values decreases with increasing
> context of awareness, thus the significance, or meaningfulness of
> events also decreases.


Except that by incompleteness the gap remains always infinite. No worry
for the disparition of meaningfulness, thus. (Actually this shows that
the number question is perhaps less out of topic than I want it to be
for the "moral" threads).



>
> With an ultimate, god's eye view of the universe, there would be no
> meaning at all.


Unless that God is personal (cf Tom Caylor), or just deeply
inaccessible (cf consequence of comp).




> Things would simply be as they are.


Yes. That is an argument for the zero-person aspect of the big
wholeness. I do agree with you on this (but diverge from Tom exactly on
this).



>
> From the point of view of an agent undergoing long-term development
> within the universe, its values would increasingly converge on "what
> works", i.e. principles of effective interaction with the physical
> world, while the expression of those values would become increasingly
> diverse in a fractal manner, optimizing for robust ongoing growth.


A named God hides another One, and a "Physical Universe", conceived as
an explanation per se is just a Name for a God. I hope and think
plausible that we have indeed the power to make what you say "largely
true", but the devil hides in the details ...




>>> Further, there's a great deal of empirical evidence
>>> showing that the subjective experience that people
>>> report is full of distortions, gaps, fabrications,
>>> and confabulations.
>> But this is almost a consequence of the self-referential
>> ability of machine, they can distort their own view, and
>> even themselves. I talk about universal machine
>> *after Godel* (and Post, Turing,..
>
> I'm in interesting in following up on this line of thought given
> available time.


Thanks for telling. No problem. You can find papers in my URL, when
you have the time.

Bruno

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


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Received on Fri Dec 29 2006 - 04:01:36 PST

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