Thanks for these comments Bruno. I have finally braved the dragons of
another university's library and borrowed Challas's book on Modal
logic. You notation stumped me when I read your thesis before.
I was pleased to find modal logic seems to merely be a parallel version
of ordinary logic - well suited to Many Worlds type theories (maybe
that's simplifying things too far, but hopefully good enough to
appreciate your arguments). As being well versed in parallel
programming languages (eg C* or HPF), the mental step of understanding
the expressions does not appear to be too bad.
I will need to reread your thesis and white rabbit paper before
commenting on your criticisms much more. However, I'm a little
surprised by your following comment, because it seems to me that I
solved the WR problem in first person only. (Not that I started out
trying to do this). Maybe I'm solving a different WR problem :)
Cheers
>
> Russell Standish wrote (in his recent paper p.2):
>
> > <<We assume the *self-sampling assumption*, essentially
> > that we expect to find ourselves in one of the
> > universes with greatest measure, subject to the
> > constraints of the anthropic principle. This implies
> > we should find ourselves in one of the simplest
> > possible universes capable of supporting self-aware
> > substructures (SASes). This is the origin of physical
> > laws ....>>
>
> This is only the "third-person" formulation of the problem.
> Even if you succeed to explain the absence of white rabbit
> from that particular form of SSA (self-sampling assumption)
> then, with comp, there are still reason to expect the
> apparition of the rabbit FROM A FIRST PERSON POINT OF VIEW.
>
> It seems that you have not seen the point in the UDA. You
> are still linking the first person univocally to his
> third person describable body.
> Chris Malloney alludes to an explanation power of the
> computational indeterminacy, but the truth is that
> A PRIORI the computational indeterminacy is so strong that
> it looks like a refutation of comp. The UDA shows that with
> comp there are more rabbits to be expected.
>
> I could summarize my critics to your strategy (and
> Schmidhuber's one) in the following way:
>
> You will perhaps explain the absence of third-person view
> of rabbits, but you will still not explain the absence
> of first-person view of rabbits.
>
> I am not saying your strategy is incorrect, I am saying
> it is not enough. Like some physicist you are still keeping
> completely the mind-body problem under the rug.
> Remember that (especially) with comp you cannot associate so
> easily mind/consciousness with matter/physical-process.
> This follows from either UDA + OCCAM, or from the movie graph
> alias Maudlin's argument (cf archive).
>
> Bruno
>
>
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Dr. Russell Standish Director
High Performance Computing Support Unit,
University of NSW Phone 9385 6967
Sydney 2052 Fax 9385 6965
Australia R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
Room 2075, Red Centre
http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
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Received on Thu Nov 18 1999 - 15:36:41 PST