Jesse Mazer wrote:
... Discussion deleted for compactness ...
>
>
> A lot of people have a lot of different ideas about TOE's on this list, so
> maybe the global measure issue could help clarify where we all stand in
> relation to each other...do people have specific proposals about this? I
> guess the other relevant question is, what is the set of "everything" that
> you're putting the measure on...all computations? All mathematical
> structures? All observer-moments?
>
> Let me know what you think...
>
> Jesse
> _________________________________________________________________
> Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
>
My thoughts are fairly well contained in my "Why Occam's Razor"
paper. Basically, I show that a global measure is not required, since
the question should be "Given I am the observer I am, what is the most
likely universe I will see?". Since many different descriptions can be
equivalenced, the most likely universe will be the one with the
largest equivalence class.
The question of what is the most likely form of consciousness may
never be answered, and the issue of whether there really is a global
measure may end up being no more important than "how many angels can
dance on a pin", but we can start by making assumptions about what
are necessary requirements for consciousness, since the curdest
approximation to a probability distribution is its support function
(S(p,x)={0: p(x)=0, 1: p(x)>0}).
Cheers
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Russell Standish Director
High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965
Australia R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
Room 2075, Red Centre
http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Wed Mar 14 2001 - 16:41:08 PST