Jacques Mallah wrote:
> I'm a quantum platonist :)
Laugh if you want but one day we will be obliged to
put clearly our ontological carts on the table, if only to
satisfy Hal Ruhl in his (long term) search for an
*everything* faq :-)
Well, let me recall you mine: numbers. (natural numbers,
positive integers).
Kronecker said "God creates the natural numbers, all the
rest has been created by humans" (or something similar to that)
My favorite current paraphrasing of it is:
God creates the natural numbers, all the rest are dreamed
by universal machines (numbers).
All the rest: from the negative numbers to your servitor :-)
Note that dreams are first person phenomena.
Some dreams are partially shared because there are entangled with
deep computational histories. A continuum of histories
which makes first person plural discours possible, which
makes rich nich of local third personne realities : worlds,
universes, multiverses, multimultiverses, and well beyond.
Godel's theorem implies that arithmetic seen from inside
seems *very* big. To be sure, there isn't one drop of
Cantor Paradise which could not help us to measure this internal
bigness "feeling".
Even George's plenitude seems ridiculously tiny in comparison.
(Sorry George for this 100% easy and incorrect but funny argument).
And I am a classical platonist about the truth on numbers and
their relations, definable or relatively definable ...
My scientific (third person) ontology = numbers and their relations.
But then I accept intensional interpretations, which adds
in my set of "ontological truth" the whole of computer science,
provability logics, ... and ... you and me.
First person ontology includes the physical laws and you, and me.
I hope it is first person plural. With comp, QM (MW) gives
empirical evidences we share a deep computational history.
> You're the one who tried to distinguish it as "a concrete UD".
Yes, but only for the sake of an argument. It helps those who still
believe in a magical concrete universe to abandon that belief or
to abandon comp!
>I take it, from your above statement, that you do not object to my use
>of the term "implemented". It seems that, in fact, your claim that while I
>have a problem because I need a precise definition of "implementation", you
>supposedly don't, was totally groundless.
Implementation must be some sort of relative computations.
> It's hard to define "existance", isn't it?
No. Positive integers exists. Nothing else.
I have no problem if you want more, but in general I don't need it.
The "right"frontier is somehow arbitrary.
I *do* "abus de langage" like saying Hilbert Space exists.
But it just means that (some) numbers find Hilbert space useful for
classifying the apparent computational histories their are
apparently going through.
>Certainly, I would say that
>whatever structure is responsible for my own thoughts must exist in this
>sense. I only distinguish a "strong sense" from the weaker sense used in
>mathematics, which basically just means self-consistent.
Consistency is an attribute of theories or machines or talking ducks,
not of mathematical object like numbers. Your use of "basically"
hide a confusion between an object and a machine's conception of that
object.
>> And why do you want to classify as physical any mathematical
>> structures.
>
>That's the "everything" idea, that all math exists, and that
>the physics
>we see is just a subset of that TOE.
Yes, but why any mathematical structures?
When I say that the number 439 exists, I mean it exists
with its fellow 438 and 440 in Platon Heaven.
Of course 439 can incarnate itself in a deeper
computational history like being the number of pages
of your current favorite novel.
You cannot just say physical = mathematical.
I agree of course, but it is not obvious. It is part of our
work to make that clear. In particular, in
that case, we must be able to prove F = ma, or SE.
What I say is that we have the following reduction with
comp: physicalness emerges (in some Darwinian/turing-tropic
way) from the psychological, which also emerges (in the *same*
Darwinian/turing-tropic) from numbers and their relations.
> We use "physical" to refer to the structure that we guess exists in the
>strong sense. If you believe in the AUH, then the distinction disappears.
>Most people don't.
The distinction disappears ontologically only, but the appearance
of the distinction does not disappear and must be explained.
> Of course, we can also use it to refer to things directly related to
>what we are seeing. This leads to statements like "the branch of the
>wavefunction that I see is physically real, while the rest aren't". I don't
>like that kind of statement.
I am glad with that! But why a wave function ? remember you cannot
answer that we infere it from observation. It would not be
purely "mathematical" in that case.
>>Tegmark, like Everett, *do* distinguish the first and third person, which
>>helps to make sense of that idea.
>
> Leave Everett alone, he is dead and can't defend himself against your
>abuse of his name.
How dare you saying that! And beside have you read Everett?
I quote it:
<<We shall be able to introduce into the theory systems which represent
observers. Such systems can be conceived as automatically functioning
machines (servomechanisms) possessing recording devices (memory) and
which are capable of responding to their environment. The behavior
of these observers shall always be treated within the framework of
wave mechanics. Furthemore, we shall deduce the probabilistic assertions
of Process 1 [the collapse] as *subjective* appearances to such
observers, thus placing the theory in correspondence with experience.
We are then led to a novel situation in which the formal theory is
objectively continuous and causal while subjectively discontinuous and
probabilistic.>>
(The theory of the universal wave function, Everett in DeWitt & Graham
page 9).
In my thought experience (UDA and the like) I use *exactly* the
Everett notion of subjective/objective. I call them first person and
third person as in classical philosophy of mind.
Only in my formal part I give a more sophisticated definition based
on the definition of knowledge by Thaetetus in the Platon's Thaetetus.
Note that Everett is wrong in assuming the total psycho/physico
parallelism, and this explain why he has not see that the continuum itself
is subjective !
>I'm sure that, otherwise, he would find my approach to
>be the logical next step for the MWI.
Now I have the definitive evidence that you or your ancestor are
french, Monsieur Jacques Mallah, le roi Lion.
>It sounds more like you want to say that the "view" seen by a conscious
>observer-moment is his "physical world view".
No.
>If so, this has absolutely
>nothing to do with your terms "first person vs. 3rd person views"
>as it has nothing to do with time evolution or measure.
...
>I don't like to call a thought's view his physical world view, but I
>might call it "his effective physical world view". (Ever notice how the
>main change that is needed in using the English language, to make it
>correct, is to preface almost every word with "effective"?)
I have rather big and effective doubts about that!
>Sure. Yes. UD implements all computations, and even all implementations
>>of all computations.
> Great. So you need a precise definition of "implementation" in order to
>find the measure distribution. So much for your claim not to need it.
It is the other way round. I know it is hard to swallow or even just
to realise I'm serious (and not just poetical) but the physical
emerges from the wole set of possible consistent continuations, so that
the "physical implementation" appears only in the logical end.
An another way to put it is that the physical world is defined by all
implementations with the weaker sense of any relative computation.
No first person can ever know how it is implemented.
With comp the solidity of the physical worlds is a result of the complete
invariance of first person experience for change among implementations.
> In any case, we see once again that the fabled "first person point of
>view" has absolutely nothing to do with the subject under discussion.
It is true that physics and science has evolved through the abandon
of the first person (Galileo, Einstein). And even Everett does that by
showing how to evacuate the collapse assumption under the subjective
appearance. But here I come and show that with comp even the
schroedinger equation can be explained as a subjective appearance.
And I explain this in an objective way with an objective definition
of the subjective. Physics is really reduced to psychology which is
really reduced to number theory.
> You need to realize that. Thoughts exist. Thoughts have
>characteristics such as the set of things seen by a thought. Indexical
>information is important (and guessing it is how I bring effective
>probabilities into QM). "1st person point of view", as used on this
> list to mean something to do with QTI, is nonsense [...]
>and does not mean anything.
?
>Anything real can be stated in objective terms.
I totally agree with you. In particular subjective experience are real,
and objective proposition can be stated on them (through informal or
formal definition).
>Just because I realize that some reality has objective existance,
>doesn't mean I don't have conscious experiences (with, indeed, particular
>characteristics). It's just that I know better than to confuse
>"what I see"
>with "what I should believe in".
Sure.
>If you say, prior to the duplication "I will either end up
>in Washington xor in Moscow", that's an objectively false statement.
Correct. I hope you will agree that if you say , prior to the
duplication, "I will feel myself ending up
in Washington xor in Moscow", that's an objectively true statement.
(objectively with comp).
>> > The difference between the first person and the third person is
>> > basically the same as the difference between having an headache and
>> > having a friend having an headhache.
>
> The above statement makes no sense, unless it is the same as the
>difference between having a headache, and having had a headache.
Perhaps. Sure if you are willing to believe there is eventually only
one person. I am open to that idea but quite not convince yet.
>>Concerning *believes* the case is arguable. For *knowledge* I don't
>>think you will ever succeed in describing them in some provable
>>(objectively, 3-person) way.
>>This can be proved with very reasonable definition.
>>See ref by Benacerraf, or Kaplan and Montague in my thesis.
>
> Why don't you explain it here?
Because it would be long and technical, I say a little more in
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m2487.html
>>Some time ago "merde" was considered as very vulgar, but since then
>>it has been overthrown by "shit", or worse ... "Merde" seems almost
>>polite in comparison.
>
> So does it mean feces?
You mean faeces ?
Bruno
Received on Wed Mar 07 2001 - 06:08:38 PST