Your Honored Divinity! (Name: God Bruno M):
Semantics is a great thing. I agree.
Since IMO "we all" (meaning as you said not only humans, or livings)
interfere in all changes of the world (here restricted to our universe)
multilaterally, your 'god' definition holds and so theology can be called
part of the 'natural sciences' we try to handle.
(But as a fellow-god, please. don't deny the "s" from my last name.)
Divinely yours
John Mikes
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruno Marchal" <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
To: "Danny Mayes" <dmayes.domain.name.hidden>
Cc: "Stathis Papaioannou" <stathispapaioannou.domain.name.hidden>;
<amalcolm.domain.name.hidden>; <everything-list.domain.name.hidden.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2005 10:49 AM
Subject: Re: Belief Statements
> At 09:16 13/01/05 -0500, Danny Mayes wrote:
>
> >Could you explain this last line?
> >
> >Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >
> >>At 10:24 13/01/05 +1100, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> >>
> >>>As for the "failure of induction" if all possible worlds exist, I
prefer
> >>>to simply bypass the problem.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>Mmm... I think you make the same mistake as David Lewis (In the
plurality
> >>of worlds, but in
> >>"counterfactuals" it partially fix the mistake ...).
> >>You bypass the most interesting problem which actually makes refutable
> >>classes of mathematical "theologies".
>
>
> I will try. I will also try to be short and you can consult
> my URL for more explanations including posts to this list.
> The starting point is the assumption that I (we, you) are turing emulable.
> Now computations are mathematical objects, and with some amount
> of arithmetical realism or platonism all computations exists in the
> same sense that all constructive reals exists. But some thought
> experiment show that if we are turing emulable then we cannot know
> which computations support us. Both Stathis and David Lewis are aware
> that with a many-worlds postulate, or even just with many
> computations postulates, there is a "failure of induction"
> problem. Indeed, a priori, if you make induction from all the
computationnal
> histories going through your states you get many "white rabbit stories" if
> not just
> "white noise", unless you discover that computations and observer relative
> to them are highly non trivial mathematical object so that the "induction"
> problem could perhaps be solved technically (and indeed progress has
> been made and sometimes I make attempt to convey a little bit of it).
> Solving the induction problem means in this context that we are able to
> justify why the average observer can predict some normal (reversible,
linear)
> computation at the bottom and below.
> 'The term "theology" could be justified because it reminds us that once
you
> accept the idea that your immediate most probable "future" consistent
> extension is determined by a mean on all your 2^Aleph0 maximal
> consistent extensions, and that you "survive" always on the most
normal/near
> comp history, then the "dying"notion seems to belong to the category
> of wishful thinking (making us more ignorant). But "theology", in this
context
> can also just be defined by the study of what machines can correctly (or
just
> consistently) prove and infer about themselves and their most probable
> computations, and here deep results in mathematical logic and in
theoretical
> computer science give huge lightning (but necessitate of course some
> math work). (Now I am not sanguine about any words but I recall the term
> "theology" had been used by Plato to mean the study of the Gods, and then
> if you are willing to believe (with Alan Watts) that we are all Gods ...
>
> And, (this I add to John Mike, if you permit Danny,) when I say we are
> Gods, John, I don't see any reason to limit the understanding of "we" to
> the humans. You know I talk on something far larger yet non trivial.
>
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
Received on Thu Jan 13 2005 - 15:09:22 PST