Ronald,
On 14 May 2009, at 13:19, Ronald (ronaldheld) wrote:
> Can you explain your Physics statement in more detail, which I can
> understand?
>
UDA *is* the detailed explanation of that "physics statement". So it
would be simpler if you could tell me at which step you have a problem
of understanding, or an objection, or something. You can search UDA in
the archives for older or more recent versions, or read my SANE2004
paper:
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html
In a nutshell, the idea is the following. If we are machine we are
duplicable. If we distinguish the first person by their personal
memories, sufficiently introspective machine can deduce that they
cannot predict with certainty they personal future in either self-
duplicating experience, or in "many-identical-states preparation" like
a concrete universal dovetailer would do "all the time".
So, if you are concretely in front of a concrete universal dovetailer,
with the guaranty it will never stop (in some steady universe à-la
Hoyle for example), you are in a high state of first person
indeterminacy, given that the universal dovetailer will execute all
the computations going through your actual state. Sometimes I have to
remind the step 05 for helping the understanding here. In that state,
from a first person perspective you don't know in which computational
history you belong, but you can believe (as far as you are willing to
believe in comp) that there are infinitely many of them. If you agree
to identify an history by its infinite steps, or if you accept the Y =
II principle (that if a story bifurcate," Y ", you multiply their
similar comp-past, so Y gives II), then you can understand that the
cardinal (number) of your histories going through you actual state is
2^aleph_zero. It is a continuum. Of course you can first person
distinguish only a enumerable quotient of it, and even just a finite
part of that enumeration. "Stable consciousness" need deep stories
(very long yet redundant stories, it is deep in Bennett sense) and a
notion of linear multiplication of independent stories.
Now the laws of arithmetic provides exactly this, and so you can, with
OCCAM just jump to AUDA, but you have to study one or two book of
mathematical logic and computer science before. (the best are Epstein
& Carnielli, or Boolos, Burgess and Jeffrey).
Or, much easier, but not so easy, meditate on the eighth step of UDA,
which shows that form their first point of view universal machine
cannot distinguish "real" from "virtual", but they cannot distinguish
"real" from "arithmetical" either, so that the arithmetical realm
defines the intrinsic first person indeterminacy of any universal
machine. Actually the eighth step shows that comp falsifies the usual
mind/physical-machine identity thesis, but it does not falsify a
weaker mind/many-mathematical machines thesis.
If interested I suggest you study UDA in Sane2004, and ask any
questions, or find a flaw etc.
(or wait for a more recent version I have yet to put on my page)
Thanks for the reference to Kent's paper (it illustrates very well the
knotty problems you get into when you keep Everett, materialism and
the identity thesis, but I have read it only diagonally just now).
Hope this helped a bit.
Bruno
>
>
> On May 13, 11:30 am, Bruno Marchal <marc....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>> Thanks Russell, I will take a look. At first sight he makes the same
>> "error" with numbers that Wolfram makes with cellular automata. Those
>> are still mathematical form of physicalism, incompatible with the
>> mechanist thesis in the cognitive science. Of course we converge
>> toward rather similar (recursively isomorphic or weakened)
>> ontologies.
>> But they seems to believe they can recover some physics from that,
>> where, saying "yes" to the surgeon requires to abandon that very
>> idea.
>> Physics, like in Plato and Plotinus, is not a mathematical structure
>> among others, it is a mathematical structure which relate all
>> mathematical structures in a precise way. Physics is somehow much
>> more
>> fundamental than being a thing completely describable by a set of
>> mechanical laws.
>> Pu in another way, such theories are unaware of the mind-body problem
>> and still use an identity relation between a mind and a
>> implementation
>> of a program which UDA forces to abandon, to be frank.
>> This does not mean those works are uninteresting of course, and they
>> may play some role in the unravelling of the Minds and Bodies
>> problems. Sure.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>> On 13 May 2009, at 01:15, russell standish wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Hi Bruno,
>>
>>> Have you come across Victor Korotkikh's stuff? He's got a recent
>>> article out in Complexity:
>>
>>> http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121426751/abstract?CRETRY=
>>> ...
>>
>>> (Complexity, 14, 40-46)
>>
>>> It basically explores the organisational properties of the integers,
>>> prime numbers etc. Which is kind of interesting in a pure
>>> mathematical
>>> way, but he then uses this to model real complex systems, emergent
>>> properties and so on. If you can't get the above paper, here is a
>>> much
>>> earlier one that is not behind a paywall:
>>> http://www.complexity.org.au/ci/vol03/victor2/
>>
>>> I've met him a few times over the years - he's based in Townsville,
>>> about 2000km north of here. He's an intense Russian who's
>>> presentation
>>> is almost impenetrable - but there are people I respect who consider
>>> him a genius.
>>
>>> It struck me this morning how similar in many ways his programme
>>> is to
>>> yours. I suppose you both share a strong neo-platonic viewpoint for
>>> starters.
>>
>>> Cheers
>>
>>> --
>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- -
>>> Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
>>> Mathematics
>>> UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpco....domain.name.hidden
>>> Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- -
>>
>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> - Show quoted text -
> >
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Thu May 14 2009 - 18:22:11 PDT