RE: Immortality

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu Oct 11 12:18:31 2001

Charles Goodwin wrote:
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Brent Meeker [mailto:meekerdb.domain.name.hidden]
>> Sent: Wednesday, 10 October 2001 2:23 a.m.
>>
>> But then why do you say that a duplicate of your brain processes in a
>> computer would not be conscious. You seem to be
>> discriminating between
>> a biological duplicate and a silicon duplicate.
>
>The use of the word 'duplicate' seems contentious to me. The question is
>whether you *can* duplicate the processes in the brain at a
>suitable level of abstraction, and whether (if you can) such a duplicate
>would be conscious. I don't think anyone knows the answer
>to this (yet) !


To answer "yes" to that question is exactly what I mean by the
comp *hypothesis*.

The comp hypothesis is the hypothesis that there exist a level of
digital functional description of myself such that I can survive through
a substitution made at that level.
The practitionners of comp are those who say yes to their
digital-specialist doctor.

It is an hypothesis that has the curious property of entailing its
own necessarily hypothetical character. Comp entails no one will *never*
know it to be necessarily true.

It comp is true, no consistent machines will ever prove it.

The honest doctor does never assure the succes, and confesses betting
on a level (+ probable other more technical bets for sure).

If you meet someone pretending knowing he/she or you are machine,
you better run!

The real question is: will the consistent machines remains consistent
by betting on it?

Suggestion: derive "the" physics from comp, compare with
empirical physics. Judge.

If comp is true there is a danger for the practicionners: having
survive so many times, having said and resaid yes to their digital
brain specialist surgeon, and having gone "literaly" through so much
digital nets that they begin to believe they know comp true. (Then they
became inconsistent).

Comp entails some trip *near* inconsistencies. Actually I guess
that's life. The miracle occurs at each instant. (Not only at
the mechanist hospital). Well with comp the fall into inconsistency
*can* occur at each instant too.

Bruno


PS The reasoning I propose does not depend on the level of
substitution. Only that it exists. You can choose the universal
wave function as a description of your brain (low level), or
approximation of concentration of chemicals (high level),
or disposition of neural dynamics (higher level)
...
...
... or the bible (very very high level). By the bible I mean
Boolos 1993 of course :-). My thesis in a nutshell is that FOR is
a missing chapter of that book. FOR and other everything efforts.

The book bears about what self-referentially correct machines can
say, and cannot say, about themselves and about their (necessarily
hypothetical) consistent extensions.It's The manual of machine's
psychology (my term, sure). If you don't know logic, here is
a shortcut:
Jeffrey: Logic, its scope and limit.
Boolos and Jeffrey: Computability and Logic
Boolos 1993.

Or Boolos 1979, it is lighter and easier to digest.

And recall Smullyan's "Forever Undecided".
You told me Smullyan is your favorite philosopher,
or was I dreaming?
Received on Thu Oct 11 2001 - 12:18:31 PDT