>
>
> Hi Russell,
>
> I will answer your questions when I will have more time. Also
> I'm not sure I understand all of them.
Fair enough. We're both fairly busy, so lets do this step by step in
easily digestible chunks.
> Here I present just some easy comments and questions.
>
> >See my heirarchy above. COMP \equiv NEURO. One's expectations are
> >constrained by the laws of the QM multiverse. Within that, naturally
> >there is 1-indeterminism. Not all brain states are reachable by
> >computational continuations from a given state.
>
> Remember that I show comp => physics is derivable from machine's
> psychology (= computer science including 1-person machine's discourse).
> So I cannot rely on QM. QM shoulb be derivable from comp, or
> either comp or QM is false.
>
OK - I agree with this statement under the subsitution COMP <-
Schmidhuber, and think that my Occam paper pretty much does that.
> Note: I eliminate the NEURO hypothesis to show that my result
> does not depend on the heavy argumentation (in the philosophy of mind
> community) between so-called externalist (mind supervenes on brain +
> environment) and internalist (mind supervenes on "biological" brain
> only). I just don't care.
OK - I'm not sure what the externalist position even means. But then
I'm not a "philosopher of the mind".
>
> >I was hoping for a transparent explanation of why you *believe*
> >COMP<=>Schmidhuber.
>
> This really astonishes me. I make a big effort, though!
> To be sure I don't understand the difference you see between
> Schmidhuber's assumption and mine. I am not talking of the
> *consequences* we derived from comp.
This is what we need to sort out:
i) COMP means that I can survive the replacement of my brain by some
Turing emulation.
ii) Schmidhuber means that all computations exist. (via UD*)
At first blush, these two assumptions appear to be completely
independent. OK - Schmidhuber admits belief in COMP at the end of his
paper, but it doesn't follow (at least trivially) from his Plenitude
assumption. I could well imagine conscious entities diagonalising the
UD* output to generate an experience which is not an explicit
computation.
And with i), it seems that a classical continuous universe can support
Turing Machines. Assuming that I live in such a universe, but it is
the one and only universe (made by God lets say!) and that I
am a Turing simulation, then COMP is obviously true. However, we've
just assumed Schmidhuber is wrong, but found COMP to be true.
> I'm not postulating more than Schmidhuber, the computationalist
> evrything is UD*, = the great programmer's work.
> With this I show that machines will be confront with continua.
> Schmidhuber miss that point because he confuses 1 and 3 point
> of view. That's all.
> Schmidhuber'plenitude => comp, because if comp is false, then
> with or without NEURO, I cannot exist in that plenitude and then
> it is not a plenitude. Is that not obvious?
>
No it is not obvious. As I said above, what if I'm diagonalising the
output of UD?
> Also, if by Tegmark you mean only the axiomatisable formal theory
> then, from the *ontological* perspective it is easy to show
> that Tegmark = me = Schmidhuber.
> Some of the (seldom) remark by Tegmark in the list gives me
> the feeling that he is quite open to that equivalence.
>
By me - I assume you mean COMP. Lets talk about Tegmark, and yes I
believe Tegmark is referring to formal axiomatic systems (he seems to
go on about them in his paper). I can see clearly that Tegmark \subset
Schmidhuber, however it is less clear that the reverse relationship
holds. If the reverse relationship did hold, then it would make little
difference, apart from the White Rabbit problem vanishing.
> About "digital device". You seem to think that there exists
> digital device which are not Turing emulable, and you gives
> me as an exemple some radioactive (quantum) device.
>
> If you where true Church Thesis would be violated.
> Schroedinger equation and Quantum Discrete devices are
> Turing emulable. The randomnes is seen by the observer when his
> coupling with the 'superposed object" is emulated by the UTM.
> This is quite in the spirit of Everett and any no-collapse
> interpretation of QM. If you believe that a radioactive device
> is not Turing-emulable, then you believe in some form of
> non-computational collapse, and you are again slipping toward
> Penrosian form of non-comp.
>
Of course you can can compute the ensemble (UD*) - this follows from
Schmidhuber's Plenitude. Also (in a sense) you can compute the
wavefunction in Multiverse, which in turn defines a probability
distribution. What you can't compute (or so it seems to me) is the
outcome of a projection (1st postulate of consciousness). It is this
projection that introduces randomness, or indeterminism into the 1st
person view of the world.
> More importantly, please tell me exactly the difference you see
> between "my comp assumption" and Schmidhuber's one.
Schmidhuber doesn't make a COMP assumption - he makes an "All
Universes Hypothesis". I talked about the difference between the two
earlier in my email.
> Is there is a difference I agree that different names should be
> used, but introducing differences where there are none, is still
> more confusing.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
I really am trying to understand your argument. I know I'm from a
different conceptual background, but somewhere either you or I have an
incorrect concept. I can't accept a statement that A is equivalent to
B obviously, when to my understanding A and B are such different things.
Cheers
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 Tue Jan 18 2000 - 16:25:40 PST