Dear Bruno,
I look at your 'chat' with Max and Juergen with "awe": some words do sound
as if representing some meaning to me, too, from my earlier accumulation of
readings.
My idea about your uncertainty of the application of 'comp' (and 'physical')
could be (poorly) worded in your 'logician', Max's 'physicalistic' and
Juergen's '???(maybe arithmetical)?" positions, all pertaining to a comp in
our so far developed human sense.
The TOE etc. questions are way beyond that, and we all want to draw
conclusions on them from experience AND methodology acquired within.
'We" FORCE conclusions that are not due. The efficient 'comp', serving right
the purpose sought, is 'somewhere' above the numberific etc. simplification
of the features still unknown to us. Both the features and 'that'
comp-quality. ((In "meaning" computation e.g.: Concept x function =
idea?where x is not 'arithmetical' multiplying))
I tend to see the mind-body problem on this so far unachieved plane:
mind is (mentality of) the unlimited TOE and its vision(s), while body (the
somehow limited contraption including the tool for our thinking - call it
brain tissue, physical, digital comp, or - horribile dictu: arithmetical -
anyway within our limited mentality) is an aspect (partial) of it. Problem:
to reach the total from the limitational part - without the possession
(understanding) of the missing rest of it.
This is an idea from the outskirts of your discussion, I do not vouch for
it, just stated -
perhaps provides some good. If not, let it fade away.
John M
On 4/30/07, Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>
>
> Le 26-avr.-07, à 16:31, Juergen Schmidhuber a écrit :
>
>
>
> > Hi Max,
> >
> > in this particular universe it's going well, thank you!
> >
> > As promised, I had a look at your paper. I think
> > it is well written and fun to read. I've got a few comments
> > though, mostly on the nature of math vs computation,
> > and why Goedel is sexy but not an issue
> > when it comes to identifying possible mathematical
> > structures / universes / formally describable things.
> > I think some of the comments are serious enough to affect
> > the conclusions. Some come with quotes from papers in
> > http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/computeruniverse.html<http://www.idsia.ch/%7Ejuergen/computeruniverse.html>
> > where several of your main issues are addressed.
> > Some are marked by "Serious".
> >
> > I am making a cc to the everythingers, although it seems
> > they are mostly interested in other things now - probably
> > nobody is really going to read this tedious response which
> > became much longer than I anticipated.
>
>
>
>
> Don't worry, we are used to some long posts in this list. I am not sure
> you follow the list because the "other things" you are mentioning are
> just the follow up of the search of the theory of everything, except
> that since you leave the list, denying the 1-3 distinction, some years
> ago, most people who continue the discussion now are aware of the
> necessity to take into account that distinction between first and third
> person points of view, and more generally they are aware of the mind
> body problem (or of the 1-person/3-person pov relations). I think most
> of them, except new beginners, have no more any trouble with the first
> person indeterminacy in self-duplication experiments, etc.
>
> I have already made this clear: the hypothesis that there is a physical
> computable universe (physicalist-comp) is just untenable.
> Let me recall you the reason: obviously physicalist-comp entails what
> we are calling comp in this list, that is, the hypothesis that "we" are
> locally emulable by a digital universal machine. I will call it
> "indexical comp" to insist on the difference. So:
>
> PHYSICALIST-COMP => INDEXICAL-COMP
>
>
> Then the Universal Dovetailer Argument shows that comp entails that
> the physical appearances have to be justified *exclusively* by a
> self-duplication like first person (plural) indeterminacy: see the pdf:
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.pdf<http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.pdf>
>
> The main idea is that INDEXICAL-COMP entails that we don't know which
> computations support our local states, and that they are a continuum of
> computational histories (computations + possible "real" oracles) going
> through those states. It can be argued that the first person "physical"
> appearances does emerge from a "sum" on all those computational
> histories, but only *as seen from those 1-person views*. But this
> entails that "apparent physical universe" are not necessarily
> computable objects. Actually, indexical comp entails it exists
> "exploitable" internal indeterminacies. A priori:
>
> INDEXICAL-COMP entails NOT PHYSICALIST-COMP.
>
> It gives to physics a more key role than in Tegmark's idea that the
> physical universe is a mathematical structure of a certain type. Comp
> (indexical comp) relate somehow physics to almost all mathematical
> structures (in a certain sense).
>
>
> This constitutes the main critic of both your approach and Tegmark's
> one in the search of a TOE. You still talk like if the mind body
> relation was a one-one relation, when the mind can only be associated
> to infinities of states/worlds. With indexical-comp there is no obvious
> notion of "belonging to an universe". This has been discussed many
> times on the list with different people.
>
>
> And then, once you realize the fundamental importance, assuming comp,
> of keeping distinct the possible views that a machine has to have about
> arithmetical or mathematical reality, and that physics emerges from one
> such points of view, then it is hard not to take into account the fact
> that any universal machine looking inward cannot not discover those
> points of view; indeed they appear as inevitable modal or intensional
> variant of the godelian provability predicate. This makes Godel's
> theorems (and Lob's generalization, and then Solovay's one) key tools
> for extracting physicalness from number's extensions and their (lobian)
> intensions. And, and this is a major technical point, it makes this
> form of comp testable, by comparing the comp-physics with the empirical
> physics.
>
> Now I have discovered that those modal variant offer a transparent
> arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus hypostases. You are welcome in
> Siena in June where I will present my paper "A purely Arithmetical, yet
> empirically falsifiable, Interpretation of Plotinus' Theory of Matter":
>
> http://www.amsta.leeds.ac.uk/~pmt6sbc/cie07.html<http://www.amsta.leeds.ac.uk/%7Epmt6sbc/cie07.html>
>
> I can send you a copy of the paper later for copyright reason. You can
> also consult my preceding paper:
> Marchal, B., Theoretical Computer Science & the Natural Sciences,
> Physics of Life Reviews, Elsevier, Vol 2/4 pp 251-289, 2005. Available
> here:
> http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1571064505000242
>
>
>
> Max, Juergen, you are still under the Aristotelian physicalist spell,
> and you are still putting the "mind-body" problem under the rug, I'm
> afraid. But I am aware it is a tradition since about 1500 years, when
> scientists, without much choice alas, did abandon theology to
> "politicians" ...
> (scientific theology = theology done with the usual doubting procedure
> of the modest interrogating scientist).
>
>
> Juergen, are you still denying the 1-3 distinction (like in our old
> conversations)? Are you still thinking that there is no 1-first
> person indeterminacy, or that such an indeterminacy has no role in the
> emergence of the physical laws? Could you tell me at which step of the
> UDA you are stuck? (cf the UDA version of the SANE paper, ref above).
>
> I will asap try to explain the arithmetical version of the UDA, the one
> based on Godel and which can be seen as an arithmetical interpretation
> of Plotinus' main "hypostasis" (in case you prefer to read Plotinus
> instead of doing the duplication thought experiment, UDA, ...).
> Some people asks me to do this without too much technics and I have to
> think about how to do that. I recall the UDA is already the "non
> technical" (yet rigorous) argument. The interview of the machine is of
> course formal and technical, and its only need (beside illustrating the
> UDA) comes from the desire to *explicitly*extracts the physical from
> numbers.
>
> Bruno
>
> PS This list, wisely unmoderated by Wei Dai, welcomes, for obvious
> reason giving the hardness and originality of the subject, both
> professional and non professional. By professional I just mean people
> submitting theses, papers or books from time to time, even rarely. So,
> don't hesitate to send us "call of paper" related with comp and or
> everything-like or Everett-like TOEs. Thanks. And don't hesitate to
> participate, 'course!
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ <http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/>
>
>
> >
>
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Received on Mon Apr 30 2007 - 14:57:40 PDT