Hi Günther,
I agree with your main point. My comments below concerns only details.
On 03 Jan 2009, at 23:53, Günther Greindl wrote:
>
> Hi Bruno,
>
> first of all thanks for the long answer, and yes, it was very helpful.
>
> You described the production of all reals with a very vivid imagery;
> it
> showed a glimpse of the vastness of the UD. And, I agree, _in the
> limit_
> there will be an infinite number of histories. So, as we have to also
> take into account infinite delay, we must take this limit into account
> and have infinite histories going through a "state" (do I understand
> you
> correctly?).
I guess you were meaning that we have to take into account an infinity
of arbitrary long (but finite) delays. OK.
>
>
> As to the interacting programs: do you consider them purely because
> they
> are part of UD or do you think this is a possible way to share
> histories?
Both.
>
>
> (I am interested in this because I find COMP very convincing, though I
> am still a bit worried about solipsism).
Me too. Without Everett's "confirmation" I would perhaps have
suspected absence of first person plurality, and I would have believed
that comp leads to solipsism (and in that case I would have preferred
to be a plumber or something ...).
>
>
> I am also preparing a few thoughts (in a later post, but see hints
> below) on how consciousness might supervene on large parts of past
> causal histories, thereby also steering a bit away from solipsism
> (arguing via the concept of external realism from analytic philosophy,
> summarized by Putnam's "meaning is not in the head").
I will let you elaborate on this. But note that if my consciousness
"here and now" supervenes on "past activity", then the comp
substitution level has to be very "low" indeed. You will also need a
notion of "block universe". The comp doctor will have to be able to
manipulate "time-lines". Remember that even deep, in the sense of
Bennett(*) , computer state, can be copied efficiently, so that when
you say that consciousness here and now could supervene on the past,
you will have to use not only a low level, but also a rather
sophisticated notion of "block universe". I am not sure making the
level just low will be enough. But from the logical point of view,
this could be conceivable. You should develop perhaps.
(*) Bennett, C. H. (1988). Logical Depth and Physical Complexity. In
Herken, R., editor, The Universal Turing Machine A Half-Century
Survey, pages 227-258. Oxford University Press.
> I also have another question (related to the above issue of
> solipsism):
>
> We have considered COMP and MAT and seen that the two are not really
> compatible.
>
> But you also say that with COMP, the universe itself is not computable
> (I understand why, and I agree with your reasoning as you have
> presented
> it).
>
> But I have one "worry": what if the subsitution level is "at the
> bottom"
> of the universe - (for a moment drawing on materialist intuitions,
> the
> universe in the "normal" sense and not considering infinite histories
> for the moment).
>
> If the universe is a computation, then also an individual in the
> universe is part of this computation. But this individual can't be
> "duplicated" because of the quantum no-cloning theorem (that is what I
> mean with "at the bottom" - not above the quantum level).
>
> Svozil for instance refers in a number of papers to the work of Moore
> and Finkelstein that show, assuming we have an automaton, we would
> witness complementarity.
>
> http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~svozil/publ/publ.html
>
> (see for instance these overview papers:
>
> Svozil, K. ``How real are virtual realities, how virtual is reality?
> The
> constructive re-interpretation of physical undecidability'',
> Complexity,
> 1, 43-54 (1996).
>
> Svozil, K. Computational Universes Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, 2005,
> 25,
> 845-859
>
> Svozil, K. Physical Unknowables physics/0701163, 2007)
I have read all Svozil's book (but none of its papers). I appreciate
and there are complementarities with the UDA reasoning, although it
needs some work to make this precise. By the way the quantum logic
automaton is another example to get a quantum logic in a classical
frame without contradicting the "no-go" theorems that Stephen was
alluding toward.
> The results of course would also apply if we were "solipsist"
> automatons
> and "the whole" not (so the arguments are quite compatible with
> varying
> versions of machine conception (universe/person) ).
>
> I am just saying that we can't know if we are "separable" from the
> universe.
>
> To state it differently (and to make the connection with
> complementarity
> and duplication):
>
> If we assume the whole universe to be an automaton, also it's
> inhabitants would be "mechanical" =effectively computable of course -
> but maybe they could then not be duplicated, because, when person A
> were
> trying to make a scan of the properties of person B, the universe as a
> whole would move into different states and make complementary
> observables - which _could_ be necessary for a duplication -
> unavailable.
OK. But your level has to be really at the bottom, not only below the
quantum level. I recall you that the no-cloning theorem does not
prevent us to be quantum computer. Right: we cannot say yes to any
doctor, yet UDA goes through because at the seventh step the "copy
need" is eliminated. We need only turing emulability, because quantum
states, although not copyable, are "preparable" (in the quantum
"prepare" sense) in many exemplaries, and indeed the UD does doevetail
on all quantum computations.
I think that your bottom really means: my brain is the whole of
reality. This makes the Moore Conway automata a possible explanation
of the quantum.
>
>
> This may only work if consciousness supervenes not on "isolated"
> computations, but only if it is embedded in computations constructing
> whole universes - but then again, we can't exclude this a priori.
>
> And we would still have to consider many worlds, but these would then
> indeed be _worlds_ and not only OMs with incoming/outgoing histories
> (of
> course it would still seem this way from the concrete OM, but with
> greatly reduced danger of white rabbits) - the laws of physics would
> not
> emerge for OM's stranded in the UD deployment but for OM's embedded
> already in highly structured computational environments - we would
> only
> have to take into account duplications of OM's where also whole
> universes are duplicated.
Hmmm.... (I guess I use "OM" in a larger sense: those worlds remain
computable (assuming comp and "bottom-level") and, as such, are
generated by the UD). I guess I should not!
>
>
> So, what I am getting at, wouldn't you have to modify your argument -
> the reversal physics/machine psychology - insofar that not only a
> substitution level exists (COMP), but that this level is "separable"
> from a possible universe-machine (the possibility of which we can't
> exclude at the beginning of the argument). A kind of qualified COMP,
> QCOMP?
OK. (open problem of course. Good idea to evoke Svozil's work with
respect to that problem).
>
>
> Of course, the variant where the whole universe is necessary for
> duplication would still be machine psychology, but at a different
> level
> - at the universe level (classical sense again) and not at the level
> of
> everday conception of persons. Maybe COMP with the assumption that
> consciousness needs whole universes to supervene on (I don't mean
> that a
> universe is conscious; persons, brains would be conscious, but they
> would need the surrounding computations supplied by the universe to
> provide "meaning") is even preferable to the view that one can
> duplicate
> a person from _within_ a universe (because of the white rabbit
> problem).
I am not sure. I believe that the constraint of consistency could be
enough to evacuate the white rabbits, because the comp quantum logic
could be enough "quantum" like for having probability amplitude wave.
In that case all white rabbits will met its anti-white rabbits, like
in Feynman integral. At this stage, despite that the three material
hypostases are promising along that way, it is still a bit wishful
thinking.
>
>
> Reading through my post above again, I believe that your COMP argument
> also works with the above conception.
>
> QCOMP and UNIVERSE-COMP would just be different as to what would be
> possible for us in _this_ universe: for instance, QCOMP would allow
> mind-uploading and teleportation and other such things in _this
> universe_ (materialist intuition again); while UNIVERSE-COMP would
> only
> allow this in Platonia, in the Universal deployment, which is
> inaccessible for manipulation for us inhabitants of the rather small
> (considered against Platonia) visible universe.
Well, if the quantum laws are derived from comp, then the "platonic
histories" are manipulable in a sense similar to the use of parallel
universe (or superposition states) in a quantum computer. Also, the
comp Platonia need not be greater that Sigma_1 Arithmetical truth
(which is a tiny part of arithmetical truth, itself a tiny part of
mathematical truth): the deployment is really just the constructives
consequences of 0, succession, addition and multiplication. And it is
big as seen and infered from inside, cf Hubble and ... the quantum
multiverse. The inaccessibility for manipulation is more of the type:
no one can make 17 even, not even a God.
Best,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Mon Jan 05 2009 - 11:43:42 PST