As a formally trained Physicist, what do I accept? that Physics is
well represented mathematically? That the Multiverse is composed of
mathematical structures some of which represent physical laws? Or
something else?
Ronald
On Aug 6, 10:23 pm, Brent Meeker <meeke....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> Colin Hales wrote:
>
> > Brent Meeker wrote:
> >> Colin Hales wrote:
>
> >>> Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> >>>> Colin Hales wrote:
>
> >>>>> Man this is a tin of worms! I have just done a 30 page detailed
> >>>>> refutation of computationalism.
> >>>>> It's going through peer review at the moment.
>
> >>>>> The basic problem that most people fall foul of is the conflation of
> >>>>> 'physics-as-computation' with the type of computation that is being
> >>>>> carried out in a Turing machine (a standard computer). In the paper I
> >>>>> drew an artificial distinction between them. I called the former NATURAL
> >>>>> COMPUTATION (NC) and the latter ARTIFICIAL COMPUTATION (AC). The idea is
> >>>>> that if COMP is true then there is no distinction between AC and NC. The
> >>>>> distinction should fail.
>
> >>>>> I found one an one only situation/place where AC and NC part company.
> >>>>> Call this situation X.
>
> >>>>> If COMP is false in this one place X it is false as a general claim. I
> >>>>> also found 02 downstream (consequential) failures that ultimately get
> >>>>> their truth-basis from X, so they are a little weaker as formal
> >>>>> arguments against COMP.
>
> >>>>> *FACT*: Humans make propositions that are fundamentally of an informal
> >>>>> nature. That is, the utterances of a human can be inconsistent and form
> >>>>> an fundamentally incomplete set (we don't 'know everything'). The
> >>>>> quintessential definition of a scientist is a 'correctable liar'. When a
> >>>>> hypothesis is uttered it has the status indistinguishable of a lie.
> >>>>> Humans can participate in the universe in ways which can (apparently)
> >>>>> violate any law of nature. Humans must be able to 'violate' laws of
> >>>>> nature in the process of accessing new/novel formal systems to describe
> >>>>> the unknown natural world. Look at the world. It is not hard to see how
> >>>>> humans exemplify an informal system. All over the world are quite normal
> >>>>> (non-pathologically affected) humans with the same sensory systems and
> >>>>> mental capacities. Yet all manner of ignorance and fervently held
> >>>>> contradictory belief systems are ‘rationally’ adopted.
> >>>>> ===================
> >>>>> COMP fails when:
> >>>>> a) You assume COMP is true and build an artificial (AC/computer)
> >>>>> scientist <Sa> and expect <Sa> to be able to carry out authentic
> >>>>> original science on the a-priori unknown....identically to humans. To do
> >>>>> this you use a human-originated formal model (law of nature) ts to do
> >>>>> this.... your computer 'computes ts, you EMBODY the computer in a
> >>>>> suitable robotic form and then expect it to do science like humans. If
> >>>>> COMP is true then the human scientist and the robot scientist should be
> >>>>> indistinguishable.
>
> >>>>> b) You then discover that it is a fundamental impossibility that <Sa> be
> >>>>> able to debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature.
>
> >>>>> c) Humans can debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature.
>
> >>>>> BECAUSE: (b) <> (c) they are distinguishable. NC and AC are different
> >>>>> THEREFORE: ts cannot be the 'law of nature' for a scientist.
> >>>>> THEREFORE: COMP is false in the special case of (b)
> >>>>> THEREFORE: COMP is false as a general claim.
>
> >>>>> (b) is not a claim of truth or falsehood. It is a claim that the very
> >>>>> idea of <Sa> ever proposing COMP (= doubting that COMP is true) is
> >>>>> impossible. This is because it is a formal system trying, with a fixed,
> >>>>> formal set of rules (even self modifying according to yet more rules) to
> >>>>> construct statements that are the product of an informal system (a human
> >>>>> scientist). The very idea of this is a contradiction in terms.
>
> >>>> I don't see it. I can write a simple computer program that constructs statements which
> >>>> are a subset of those produced by humans (or any other system). Bruno's UD produces *all*
> >>>> such statements. So where's the contradiction?
>
> >>> Yes you can generate all such statements. /But then what*/*so what?
> >>> /*
> >>> *Please re-read the scenario....This situation is very very specific:
>
> >>> 1) Embodied situated robot scientist <Sa> is doing science on the
> >>> 'natural world'.
>
> >>> 2) As a COMP artificial scientist <Sa>, you are software. A formal
> >>> system *ts* computes you.
>
> >>> 3) All you ever do is categorise patterns and cross-correlate patterns
> >>> in massive streams of numbers that arrive from your '/robot scientist
> >>> suit/'.
>
> >>> 4) <Sa> is a SCIENTIST. The entirety of the existence of <Sa> involves
> >>> dealing with streams of numbers that are the result of an encounter with
> >>> the radically unknown, which <Sa> is trying to find a 'universal
> >>> abstraction' for = 'a law of nature'.
>
> >>> 5) There is no 'out there in an environment' for <Sa>. There is only an
> >>> abstraction (a category called) "out there". You cannot project any kind
> >>> of human 'experience' into <Sa>. REASON: If COMP is true, then
> >>> computation (of abstract symbol manipulation of formal *ts*) is all COMP
> >>> <Sa> needs to be a scientist. <Sa> can only be imagined as operating 'in
> >>> the dark'.(I spent a whole section on ensuring this spurious projection
> >>> does not occur in the reader of my paper!)
>
> >>> 6) *ts* has been assumed possible by assuming COMP is true.
>
> >>> 7) The paper is a reductio ad absurdum proof that COMP is false.
>
> >>> 8) The contradiction that I use is that the human and the COMP scientist
> >>> are different (when if COMP is true they should be the same). The
> >>> difference is that a human can postulate COMP is true and be WRONG. _The
> >>> COMP-Sa cannot do this_....because it can never know when it is wrong!
> >>> Humans are an INFORMAL system. Informal systems can break rules.
>
> >>> Broken rules do NOT come labeled as broken.
> >>> Faked authentic rules do not come labeled as forgeries.
>
> >>> <Sa> cannot cope with either. The aberrant behaviour of <Sa> is not that
> >>> it can't in-principle deal with it. _It's that there is not way of <sa>
> >>> knowing that it is a possibility_. If you try and 'fix it' by
> >>> pre-programming what all forgeries or broken rule look like....well you
> >>> can see that is just plain never gonna work.
>
> >>> Get it?
>
> >> Nope. It's just an assertion that informal systems can do something formal systems can't
> >> - which as lawyers say is a fact not in evidence.
>
> >> Brent
>
> > Eh?
> > I wrote a whole para in my original post labelled FACT.
> > *
> > What planet do you live on?*
>
> > On the planet I live on It is not hard to see how humans exemplify an
> > informal system. All over the world are quite normal (non-pathologically
> > affected) humans with the same sensory systems and mental capacities.
> > Yet all manner of ignorance and fervently held contradictory belief
> > systems are ‘rationally’ adopted. That very same brain material, with a
> > bit of added evidential rigor, becomes a scientist.
> > Scientists are rationally WRONG in completely free, correctable ways
> > that a formal system cannot match. The formal system can be equally
> > wrong....but it CANNOT correct itself like a human. When you try and get
> > a formal (Turing) machine to behave as per (specifically) a human
> > scientist _you fail_ for that reason.
>
> > 1) You have a planet load of evidence of an informal system (human
> > scientists)
> > 2) You have COMP being true critically dependent on a formal system
> > being able to do what humans do.
> > 3) It can't do 01 very specific thing... be WRONG in the way a human can
> > (in the specific fashion cited)
>
> That's the point in question. It's seems to me a formal system can be wrong and it can
> discover it is wrong just like anybody else by receiving new information. Are you
> assuming the AI is a closed formal system, while allowing that humans scientists are open?
> What exactly is your definition of an informal system? How can you know whether a given
> system is informal or just hasn't been formalized?
>
>
>
> > I didn't "assert", I "measured".
>
> > "fact not in evidence" be damned! Open your eyes.
>
> My eyes are open. Try writing without the caps key - shouting doesn't help.
>
> Brent
> "If the facts are against you, pound on the law.
> If the law is against you, pound on the facts.
> If they're both against you, pound on the table."
> -- lawyering maxim, from Chris Savage- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
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 Fri Aug 07 2009 - 20:20:00 PDT