Hi Stephen,
On 27 Aug 2005, at 07:35, Stephen Paul King wrote:
> Why does this "bet" remind me of Pascal's Wager?
Because there is a resemblance. This is related to the paradox of the
pro-life doctor. He is committed to save his patient life, using the
available technic and at the same time he does not believe that his
patient is a machine, but then he transforms his patient into a machine!
But YD and (comp) is far less demanding than Pascal Wager. It can be
seen a a self-finiteness principle saying I am not actually infinite
from some possible correct third person point of view. Caution: the
first person is arguably actually infinite. This you can explained by
the fact that the first person is related to its infinity (continuum)
of arithmetically realizable "observer-moments". The first person of
a machine cannot feel to be a finitely describable machine!
> This is the main source of my irritation with your thesis, it ask
> me to believe some postulate without even a hope that it can be
> proven.
That is the main irritation I have with some physicist. They ask me
to believe F = ma or things like that. No hope to give proves, except
by deeper postulates. All theory ask you to be believed, or assumed
for the sake of refutability.
> (This is not about your *proof* that a machine is unable to *know*
> what it's program is. That is easy to derive from the idea that a
> map can not be created of a dynamic territory that includes a copy
> of the map... I accept your idea here without trepidation.)
Sorry but here you make a mistake, if you are willing to bear my
frankness. All my work, and actually one halve of computer science
and 100% of the Godel Lob provability logic is based on the fact that
machine can refer to themselves relatively to a universal (probable)
neighborhood. The reason why the machine cannot identify itself with
such a presentation, although intuitively easy (your copy looks like
some other!) is far more difficult to explain and is related to the
"Theaetetical moves".
> Being raised by Fundamentalist parents has something to do with
> this "allergy" of mine. Please do not take this personally, but you
> must admit that there is a lot at stake in this bet!
I agree and I even insist on that! But in the literature only
Penrose has made explicit a "non-comp" assumption. Even Searle
follows the comp hyp in the weak sense I take it here. He would
probably not accept this statement, but it can be derived from the
larger consistent part of his writing.
But I told you I respect all hypothesis. Given that you seem to
belief in some physical multiverse, you are quite coherent by
refusing the comp hyp.
>
>
>
>>> or some other equivalent that can be implemented in a finite
>>> number of steps in a physically realizable machine.
>>>
>>
>>
>> No. YD does not presuppose the existence of any "physically
>> realizable machine".
>>
>
> [SPK]
>
> Ok, then what connects the idea of YD to the real world
> possibility of uploading my subjective sense of self into a
> blinking and whirring cube of silicon?
But this is really what the UDA is supposed to explain. In a nutshell
the whirring cube of silicon is dreamed by a continuum of very
similar lobian machine in Platonia. The constraints of theoretical
computer science are enough to explain how coherence conditions arise
from the computations making some collective dreams first plural
person sharable. Numbers by themselves defined a sort of "natural"
video game", if you want. But such image is too much restrictive and
should not handle with some care. Time, and space and energy-
information are defined indexically and internally (in arithmetical
terms).
>
>
>
>>> It is my belief that such TM are equivalent to Boolean algebras
>>> which have been proven to not be able to faithfully represent
>>> any QM system having more than 2 dimensions.
>>>
>>
>>
>> OK, but YD asks only that the mind can be implemented in some
>> (classical or quantum) digital machine. And we know that all
>> digital machine (classical or quantum) can be runned on a
>> classical (and immaterial) Turing machine.
>>
>
> [SPK]
>
> That tears it! I can accept a computational system that does not
> have a "where" or "there" assosiated with it, but I am being asked
> to accept an "immaterial" one? Ok, I will let that slide, but I
> really need to understand your insistence that the "Machina sans
> corpus" be a "classical machine"?
> A quantum machine can do far more exponentially faster, so why
> the insistence? Can we safely assume that we all agree that the
> Multiverse is Quantum Mechanical at its primal core?
You remember me a joke. It concerns a math student who decide to
follow a course on Group Theory. At the last lesson the student asked
its professor if we could safely assume the existence of a neutral
element in Group and what would happen if some group appears to lack
a neutral element. Of course a group has a neutral element by
definition of group! It is a joke because it shows the student has
not understand the axiomatic method.
Look, your theory assumes a quantum multiverse and assume non-comp.
My theory assumes no multiverse (nor no-multiverse, the theory is
agnostic) and assumes comp. And my results guarantee your relative
consistency. So, why do you argue? It looks you want to convince me
that comp is false?, unreasonable? or what? (Ah!, I see below).
>
> [SPK]
>
> Your point is well taken so long as one assumes that no aspect
> of consciousness requires QM aspects, such as entanglement and
> quantum statistics (Bose, Fermi, etc.). I am still waiting
> patiently for something that looks like a derivation of QM's
> wierdness from Classical logics.
I disagree. My point is well taken so long as one assumes that no
aspect of consciousness requires uncomputationnal (gravitation a la
Penrose like) feature of some physical theory.
> I am still waiting patiently for something that looks like a
> derivation of QM's wierdness from Classical logics.
What has been proved: If comp is true then QM follows from Classical
logic and Arithmetic.
What has been already verified: the non booleanness of the comp-
observability logics, and more things hard to explain without digging
in the details. But comp has already succeeded some tests.
> Bruno, you can do better than this! Please understand that I
> would very much like your theory to be true (it is beautiful!), but
> will not let my desire over come my need for falsifiabilty. (back
> off, Chris Peck!)
>
Stephen, you can be skeptical on my claims but all my point is that
the comp hyp is refutable/falsifiable. It is hard to imagine a more
naive and vulnerable theory.
The Universal Dovetailer Argument (UDA) shows that necessarily comp
makes physics a branch of number theory/computer science.
And then I eliminate the use of YD (alias folk or grandmother
psychology) to make the proof constructive and I have done the
extraction of physics.
Physics with comp = COMP-PHYS = SOL(THEAE(COMP(G))). Where G is a
precise mathematical object and SOL, THEAE, COMP are precise
mathematical transformation. COMP-PHYS can be shown non-boolean, and
even quantum, although some discrepancies exist, which are either
hinting to the falsity of comp or of some SWE ...
So please, you can refer to my results with all the possible
skepticism of someone who has not *thoroughly* study my work with all
the details, but the *result* is that comp is falsifiable. But not
yet falsified.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Sat Aug 27 2005 - 10:10:46 PDT