On 27/07/07, Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> Actually you could be lobian, but unsound, or worst, inconsistent. But
> I have no evidence.
> You could be an "angel" ? (Like the PI-1 complete Anomega?): no,
> because they are lobian too (despite being not turing emulable).
> You could be a "supergod" (non computational entities so close to the
> ONE that they are no more lobian). In that case the reasoning I do
> would not work for you, and in the case you can supply me with an
> argument which convince me that you are indeed a "supergod", I would
> conclude indeed that all human are supergod, But this is academic: not
> only the "supergod hypothesis" is just not my working hypothesis, but I
> do think that we have no evidence at all for it. Still, my way of
> deriving physics works also for that (ridiculous) hypothesis, so
> "supergodness" like "comp" are refutable by deriving the physics and
> compare with observation. Of course if comp really implies an inflation
> of white rabbit provably bigger than the "observed quantum one", that
> would be a case that we are supergods, perhaps.
How will I ever know? I suppose I'm asking: what specifically are the
critical tests?
> > IOW, if computation is to be the basis for
> > 'reality', it must be 'computations all the way down'.
>
> Not if you are realistic on numbers with + and *. You can stop there.
> Of course you can take combinators or n-categories or whatever
> universal system you like. Ontically they are all equivalent. And
> epistemologically, well there are many differences, but those should
> emerge from any ontic reality (like the N,+,*) from inside.
OK, I wasn't precise enough! Well then: "computations all the way
down, with the number realm at the bottom". It's interesting that if
we concede ontic realism to the number realm in this way, then
everything else becomes epistemology. This is metaphysically rather
economical, ISTM, in a way that is apparently increasingly attractive
to physicists (i.e. the numbers, if not necessarily the
computationalism).
> Of course I know that if you are isolated, the "ah ah"
> can take time. perhaps in august we can come back at least on the proof
> of incompleteness based directly on Church thesis?
By all means.
> So the real difficulty now consists in understanding that we can
> provide rules for transforming those strings in a truth preserving way,
> without any understanding of those strings. This is the difficulty of
> logic: to understand where you have to not try to understand strings.
In my former work as a technical director in commercial computing I
often struggled to convince business colleagues that confidence in the
(transformational) equivalence of a new compiler to the one it was
replacing was more fundamental (and much more reliable) than
attempting an explicit re-confirmation of the logic of the entire
suite of compiled applications (i.e. the 'strings').
> Perhaps you could search and peruse the archive with key words like
> "godel number", for example quickly:
> http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_frm/thread/
> f5c02229299f1a02/e135df20765c927d?
> lnk=gst&q=godel+number&rnum=8&hl=en#e135df20765c927d
>
> Or buy the book by Mendelson or the last (fourth) edition of Boolos and
> Jeffrey (and Burguess now).
> before buying those books (or searching them in a library) try to know
> if you are willing to do the effort to understand the real technic. If
> not, try to force me to explain in english the main idea.
Thanks for the pointers. As to the 'effort', I can't yet know whether
the variability of my lamentably dilettantish energy in the
logico-mathematical sphere will be adequate to the attempt, but
nonetheless I'm willing to commence to find out. Either way, could I
implore, cajole, wheedle, or simply ask (but never force) you to
explain the main thrust in English with as few preconceptions as
possible?
> In a sense, it is not funny to be a lobian machine. That consists in
> being a universal machine with all the cognitive abilities necessary to
> worry about the length of its "tape", and the poorness of what she can
> communicate through it, compared to what she can observe, feel, resent,
> etc.
Would you say that what can be directly communicated through the
'tape' is essentially what we may characterise as 'physics',
understood as the third person (or first person plural) narrative per
se? But then by using the contents of the tape to *refer* back to the
first person we obtain the *ostensive* possibility of sharing (with
others, but also actually with 'ourselves') our observations,
feelings, resentments - i.e. the first-personal world: "Look! *This*
is what I see, feel, hear." This seems to be perhaps the fundamental
distinction between ontology and epistemology: the ontic 'origin'
self-manifests fleetingly within the first-person, and although this
is not *communicable* - even to the 'self' - communication can *refer*
to it.
> But then Art will develop among such machine too, as a way to pint on
> the uncommunicable we are all living.
Just so.
David
>
>
> Le 25-juil.-07, à 18:58, David Nyman a écrit :
>
> >
> > On Jul 25, 3:15 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> >
> >> Now, even if you were enough clear so that I could find a
> >> discrepancy between your talk and the machine's one, it would not
> >> necessarily mean you are wrong: it could mean you are not a lobian
> >> machine or entity. My point is just that the comp hyp leads to
> >> assertions about the physical "world" which are enough precise to make
> >> the comp hyp refutable.
> >
> > I realise that I'm not clear about exactly what you mean by saying
> > that I might not be a lobian machine or entity. Do you mean this to
> > apply to me alone, or that the discrepancy might indicate that humans
> > in general might not in fact be lobian? Would my being 'right' in a
> > 'non-lobian' way amount to a proof that my reasoning could not be
> > computationally based? What are the principal assertions of comp that
> > would be refutable in this regard, and how precisely?
>
>
> Actually you could be lobian, but unsound, or worst, inconsistent. But
> I have no evidence.
> You could be an "angel" ? (Like the PI-1 complete Anomega?): no,
> because they are lobian too (despite being not turing emulable).
> You could be a "supergod" (non computational entities so close to the
> ONE that they are no more lobian). In that case the reasoning I do
> would not work for you, and in the case you can supply me with an
> argument which convince me that you are indeed a "supergod", I would
> conclude indeed that all human are supergod, But this is academic: not
> only the "supergod hypothesis" is just not my working hypothesis, but I
> do think that we have no evidence at all for it. Still, my way of
> deriving physics works also for that (ridiculous) hypothesis, so
> "supergodness" like "comp" are refutable by deriving the physics and
> compare with observation. Of course if comp really implies an inflation
> of white rabbit provably bigger than the "observed quantum one", that
> would be a case that we are supergods, perhaps.
>
> >
> >> Sometimes two different persons discussing in the list seems to have
> >> different ideas where I can see that they are both correct, but just
> >> doesn't not look at things from the same angle or perspective. All
> >> this
> >> is obviously related with the very intrinsical difficulty of the
> >> subject itself.
> >
> > Difficult indeed. It would be very helpful if we could all find a
> > shared method to make the perspectives commensurable. I suspect for
> > you this would be comp.
>
> OK, or just the numbers (with their additive and multiplication
> structures). The mimit discourse (John would say "narrative") can be
> studied mathematically (thanks to Goel, Lob, Solovay, ...). "comp"
> points obviously to computer science (and mathematical logic)..
>
>
>
>
> >
> >> Have you understand that the UDA literally gives no choice about what
> >> has to be taken as primitive element for any TOE once we assume the
> >> comp hyp?
> >
> > I think so, although my personal expressions of the intuition have
> > been different. For example I was thinking recently of arguments of
> > the sort that seek to refute computationalism as a theory of
> > consciousness by contrasting, say, a (however 'complete')
> > computational model of digestion with a 'real' stomach digesting
> > 'real' food. No one could mistake one for the other, runs the
> > argument. This seems true. But it occurred to me that it wouldn't
> > necessarily be a mistake if 'real' stomachs and 'real' food were
> > 'computational' too.
>
>
> Of course. Imagine that the comp substitution level is so low that the
> opnly way to "restore" your consciousness artificially consts in
> duplicating at the level of elementary fermions and bosons the entire
> quantum state of the milky way. You can easily see (I think, just tell
> me if not) that the simulation of you in that galaxy simulation will
> call "real stomach" what we, from outside know to be parts of a very
> detailled computations.
>
>
>
> > IOW, if computation is to be the basis for
> > 'reality', it must be 'computations all the way down'.
>
> Not if you are realistic on numbers with + and *. You can stop there.
> Of course you can take combinators or n-categories or whatever
> universal system you like. Ontically they are all equivalent. And
> epistemologically, well there are many differences, but those should
> emerge from any ontic reality (like the N,+,*) from inside.
>
>
>
> > ISTM that the
> > UDA demonstrates rigorously the consequences of assuming otherwise,
> > and hence is a reductio of 'materialistic computationalism'.
>
>
> That is true for the last (8 steps version) of the UDA. To be sure, in
> my theses I separate the UDA and the movie graph. UDA(+Movie-graph)
> shows the absurdity in believing in both primitive matter and
> computationalism indeed.
>
>
> >
> >> Concerning the math, do you know the book by Torkel Franzen on the
> >> uses
> >> and misuses of Godel theorems? Despite some big mistake I will talk
> >> about, it is a quite excellent book which I would recommend the
> >> reading.
> >
> > I don't know it, and having perused the Davis book, I suspect it may
> > be beyond me without a lot of steering in the right direction.
>
>
> You have to have the "ah ah" tilt. You have to understand that those
> matter are simpler than what your prejudice (about yourself probably)
> makes you think. Somehow, Godel original papers is the simpler and best
> presentation of his results.
> Now the Franzen book can certainly give a big help. A good treatise is
> Mendelson book. Of course I know that if you are isolated, the "ah ah"
> can take time. perhaps in august we can come back at least on the proof
> of incompleteness based directly on Church thesis?
>
>
>
> >
> >> Do you have a (passive) knowledge of first order logic? Do you
> >> see that (with x, y ... belonging to the natural numbers).
> >>
> >> (x div y) <-> Ez(x * z = y)
> >> prime(x) <-> (~(x = 1) & Ay((y div x) -> (y = 1 V y = x)))
> >
> > I have a wiki-aided ('just-in-time') understanding, from which I can
> > appreciate the validity of these propositions.
>
> So the real difficulty now consists in understanding that we can
> provide rules for transforming those strings in a truth preserving way,
> without any understanding of those strings. This is the difficulty of
> logic: to understand where you have to not try to understand strings.
>
>
> >
> >> Do you have an idea how Godel manages to define in a similar way the
> >> provability predicate in the arithmetical language (= first order
> >> logical language + the symbols =, 0, +, *, s).
> >
> > It would really help to have the precise steps pointed out.
>
> Perhaps you could search and peruse the archive with key words like
> "godel number", for example quickly:
> http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_frm/thread/
> f5c02229299f1a02/e135df20765c927d?
> lnk=gst&q=godel+number&rnum=8&hl=en#e135df20765c927d
>
> Or buy the book by Mendelson or the last (fourth) edition of Boolos and
> Jeffrey (and Burguess now).
> before buying those books (or searching them in a library) try to know
> if you are willing to do the effort to understand the real technic. If
> not, try to force me to explain in english the main idea.
>
>
> >
> >> Perhaps you could think of making
> >> some short summary of your points. Your last posts, imo, were a bit
> >> fuzzy by over-determination, I said even close to the 1004 fallacy ...
> >
> > I'll try - it may not be until I return from Scotland where I will be
> > all of next week.
>
> Have a good trip :)
>
>
> >
> >> What could go possibly wrong in your approach, with respect of comp
> >> (and/or the lobian interview) is that sometimes I understand that you
> >> want that your most primitive element belongs to the first person
> >> realm. My problem here is that this is consistent with the comp hyp,
> >> but this consistency is irrelevant as far as we are trying to make a
> >> communicable and refutable theory.
> >
> > I think that Plotinus' theology has been helpful for me here in
> > distinguishing the 'primitive' as the 'solipsism of the One' rather
> > than the 'first person'. The point here is that there is an
> > ineliminable identification of the individual self with the One, in
> > the sense of a part being identified with, and deriving its primitive
> > characteristics from, the whole of which it is an aspect. However,
> > although the One is (0) 'personal', it is not 'a person': only the
> > 'parts' are.
>
> Exactly. From the point of view of the unameable self (alias the third
> hypostasis, the first person, S4Grz, the third God, etc.) there is
> indeed no difference between the One and itself. But, us, who are
> studying in a third person way the theology of a simpler lobian machine
> (simpler than us), and who know, by hypothesis, we are taliking on a
> ciorrect (sound) Lobian machine, we can see the gigantic difference
> between the one and the self. But, astonishingly the self does not see
> that difference, cannot even describe it, and is 100% correct about
> that.
>
>
>
> >
> >> This one has to have communicable
> >> (or at lest axiomatizable) third person primitive element. The lobian
> >> "soul" (alias first person or third hypostase) disagrees somehow with
> >> this, but that lobian soul is not completely willing to make science
> >> at
> >> the start!
> >
> > Since communicability and refutability must indeed occur exclusively
> > in terms of the third person, this places severe limits on what can be
> > 'relevant' in this sense.The disagreement, I think, comes from the
> > 'soul's' intuition that no amount of such third person discourse seems
> > to yield an explanation of first person experience as such - only a
> > possible justification of the belief in it. Is it 'unscientific' to
> > be dissatisfied with this?
>
>
>
> Not at all. Because it is a first person statement. What would be
> unscientific, would be to conclude from that first person
> dissatisfaction that such lack of explanation refutes the comp hyp,
> when precisely the comp hyp makes it possible to explain why each first
> person associated to any (correct) machine has to live with that
> frustration. We cannot explain qualia, but we can explain why, in case
> the comp hyp is true, qualia cannot be completely explained in a purely
> third person way.
> In a sense, it is not funny to be a lobian machine. That consists in
> being a universal machine with all the cognitive abilities necessary to
> worry about the length of its "tape", and the poorness of what she can
> communicate through it, compared to what she can observe, feel, resent,
> etc.
> But then Art will develop among such machine too, as a way to pint on
> the uncommunicable we are all living.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
> >
>
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Received on Fri Jul 27 2007 - 07:31:53 PDT