On 07 Nov 2008, at 20:10, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> It's easy enough to agree with "describes", but is describing
> something
> the same as creating it?
Yes, for effective things like numbers and programs, (machines, or
finite pieces of computations).
> How can we decide these entities (what makes
> them entities?) are or are not conscious?
We just cannot decide.
>
>
> I understand that up to the "map of our personal ignorance" =
> "physical
> things" How does our uncertainity as to which histories we are entail
> phyisical things?
Well, this is really the point of the whole reasoning. UDA(1...7) +
UDA.8
I think now that if you have grasped up to step 6. It is really step 7
which explain why the laws of physics have to emerge from computer
science or number theory.
Imagine that in our physical universe (assumed, if only to get the
contradiction) a real concrete UD is running. This makes intuitive
sense. I have implemented in 1991 a UD, and it has run for two weeks.
The UD has no inputs and no outputs. It just runs, and simulate all
possible programs on all possible inputs with all possible (piece of)
oracles. The existence of this UD is not something obvious, but it
does exist, and is even constructible, if we accept Church Thesis.
With Church thesis, even a DU written in FORTRAN, and dovetailing only
on the fortran programs will generates all the program in LISP, but
also in all not yet invented languages, and runs them. OK?
I assume here also (in step 7) that our physical universe is robust
enough to let the UD run forever. If you grasp up to step 6, then you
should understand that if you decide here and now to do any "physical
experiment", like sending a photon on a mirror, or like observing an
apple in a tree", the only real and correct way to predict or evaluate
what will happen, is NO MORE to use the physical laws of your
universe, but to look at all the computational histories generated
through by the UD up to your actual state of mind (this exists because
we assume comp). And what will happen is what happen in most of those
stories. OK?
So, even, without the Movie Graph Argument, if such a concrete UD
exists, if no white rabbits appears and if the photon bounce, or the
apple falls on the ground, you can deduce that the "physical laws'
describe those more common histories.
At this point a mechanist who want to stay naturalist and keep "a
physical lawful universe" can decide that such a universe just cannot
run the UD, nor a too big portion of it. This would indeed evacuate
the comp white rabbits, and reinstate a sense to "physical law".
But then MGA, UDA step 8, shows that such a move don't work.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Sun Nov 09 2008 - 12:28:09 PST