Consciousness is information?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 23 May 2009, at 18:54, Brent Meeker wrote:


>
> I think it is related.  I'm just trying to figure out the implications
> of your theory for the problem of creating artificial, conscious
> intelligences. What I gather from the above is that you think there  
> are
> degrees of consciousness marked by the ability to prove things.


Hmm ... It is more a degree of self-reflexivity, or a degree of  
introspective ability. RA, although universal (in the Church Turing  
thesis sense) is a *very* weak theorem prover. RA is quite limited in  
its introspection abilities. I am open to the idea that RA could be  
conscious, but the interview does not lead to a theory of consciousness.
It is not a lobian machine like PA (= RA + induction). Lobianity  
begins with weaker theory than PA though, somewhere between RA and PA,  
and Lobianity is persistant, it concerns all sound extensions of PA,  
even hyperturing extension actually.

Also, I don't think I have a theory. I work in a very old theory:  
mechanism. It is not mine, and I use it because it makes possible to  
use computer science to prove things. Enough things to show mechanism  
empirically refutable.
For AUDA you need to accept the Theatetical approach to knowledge, all  
right.

I recall that in Smullyan "Forever Undecided", which introduces to the  
logic of self-reference G, a nice hierarchy of reasoners is displayed  
up to the Lobian machine.



>  To
> consider another view, for example, John McCarthy thinks there are
> degrees of consciousness marked by having narratives created and
> remembered and meta-narratives.  Either of these ideas is definite
> enough that they could actually be implemented (in contrast to many
> philosophical ideas about consciousness).

It is not bad. PA has the meta-narrative ability, and RA lacks it. You  
can see this in that way.



> I have some reservation
> about your idea because I know many people that I think are conscious
> but who couldn't prove even the simplest theorem in PA.

Because they lack the familiarity with the notations, or they have  
some math trauma, or because they are impatient or not interested. But  
all human beings, if you motivate them and give them time, can prove  
all theorems of PA, and, more importantly believe the truth of those  
theorems.

I have to add this last close, because even RA can prove all theorems  
of PA, given that RA is turing universal. But RA, without becoming PA,  
cannot really understand the proofs, like the guy in the chinese room  
can talk chinese, yet cannot understand its talk. It is the place  
where people easily make a confusion of level similar to Searle  
confusion (described by Dennett and Hofstadter). I can simulate  
Einstein's brain, but this does not make me Einstein. On the contrary  
this makes possible to discuss with Einstein. It is in that sense that  
RA can simulate PA without becoming PA. Likewise, all theories can  
simulate all effective theories. PA is probably still very simple  
compared to any human, except highly mentally disabled person or  
person in comatose state of course.




> Are we to
> suppose they just have a qualitatively different kind of  
> consciousness?

I don't think so, but in the entheogen forums people can discuss at  
infinitum if under such or such plants people experience a  
qualitatively different kind of consciousness. Given the hardness to  
just discuss on consciousness you can understand that this is a bit of  
a premature question.

Many estimate that to be conscious is always to be conscious of some  
qualia. In that case I could argue that even "me today" has already a  
qualitatively different kind of consciousness compared with "me  
yesterday".  Now, my opinion (which plays no role in the UDA-
reasoning) is that consciousness can be qualia independent, and is  
something qualitatively stable, as opposed to the content of  
consciousness, which can vary a lot.

Now, if you compare RA (non lobian) and PA (lobian), then it is far  
more possible that they have a different kind of consciousness, and  
even lives in a different kind of physics, as a consequence. RA could  
be closer to a "universal consciousness notion". It would mean that PA  
could already be under some illusions ...
I don't know. Real hard questions here.

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Kelly Harmon]

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 8:47 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> wrote:

>
>
>> To repeat my
>> earlier Chalmers quote, "Experience is information from the inside;
>> physics is information from the outside."  It is this subjective
>> experience of information that provides meaning to the otherwise
>> completely abstract "platonic" symbols.
>
>
> I insist on this well before Chalmers. We are agreeing on this.
> But then you associate consciousness with the experience of information.
> This is what I told you. I can understand the relation between
> consciousness and information content.

Information.  Information content.  Hmmmmmmmm.  Well, I'm not entirely
sure what you're saying here.  Maybe I don't have a problem with this,
but maybe I do.  Maybe we're really saying the same thing here, but
maybe we're not.  Hmmmmm.


>> Note that I don't have Bruno's fear of white rabbits.
>
> Then you disagree with all reader of David Lewis, including David
> lewis himself who recognizes this inflation of to many realities as a
> weakness of its modal realism. My point is that the comp constraints
> leads to a solution of that problem, indeed a solution close to the
> quantum Everett solution. But the existence of white rabbits, and thus
> the correctness of comp remains to be tested.

True, Lewis apparently saw it as a cost, BUT not so high a cost as to
abandon modal realism.  I don't even see it as a high cost, I see it
as a logical consequence.  Again, it's easy to imagine a computer
simulation/virtual reality in which a conscious observer would see
disembodied talking heads and flying pigs.  So it certainly seems
possible for a conscious being to be in a state of observing an
unattached talking head.

Given that it's possible, why wouldn't it be actual?

The only reason to think that it wouldn't be actual is that our
external objectively existing physical universe doesn't have physical
laws that can lead easily to the existance of such talking heads to be
observed.  But once you've abandoned the external universe and
embraced platonism, then where does the constraint against observing
talking heads come from?

Assuming platonism, I can explain why "I" don't see talking heads:
because every possible Kelly is realized, and that includes a Kelly
who doesn't observe disembodied talking heads and who doesn't know
anyone who has ever seen such a head.

So given that my observations aren't in conflict with my theory, I
don't see a problem.  The fact that nothing that I could observe would
ever conflict with my theory is also not particularly troubling to me
because I didn't arrive at my theory as means of explaining any
particular observed fact about the external universe.

My theory isn't intended to explain the contingent details of what I
observe.  It's intended to explain the fact THAT I subjectively
observe anything at all.

Given that it seems theoretically possible to create a computer
simulation that would manifest any imaginable conscious being
observing any imaginable "world", including schizophrenic beings
observing psychodelic realities, I don't see why you are trying to
constrain the platonic realities that can be experienced to those that
are extremely similar to ours.


> It is just a question of testing a theory. You seem to say something
> like "if the theory predict that water under fire will typically boil,
> and that experience does not confirm that typicality (water froze
> regularly) then it means we are just very unlucky". But then all
> theories are correct.

I say there is no water.  There is just our subjective experience of
observing water.  Trying to constrain a Platonic theory of
consciousness so that it matches a particular observed physical
reality seems like a mistake to me.

Is there a limit to what we could experience in a computer simulated
reality?  If not, why would there be a limit to what we could
experience in Platonia?

>> The double-aspect principle stems from the observation that there is a
>> direct isomorphism between certain physically embodied information
>> spaces and certain phenomenal (or experiential) information spaces.
>
> This can be shown false in Quantum theory without collapse, and more
> easily with the comp assumption.
> No problem if you tell me that you reject both Everett and comp.
> Chalmers seems in some place to accept both Everett and comp, indeed.
> He explains to me that he stops at step 3. He believes that after a
> duplication you feel to be simultaneously at the both place, even
> assuming comp. I think and can argue that this is non sense. Nobody
> defends this on the list. Are you defending an idea like that?

I included the Chalmers quote because I think it provides a good image
of how abstract information seems to supervene on physical systems.
BUT by quoting the passage I'm not saying that I think that this
appearance of supervenience is the source of consciousness.  I still
buy into the putnam mapping view that there is no 1-to-1 mapping from
information or computation to any physical system, which of course
makes physicalism untenable as an explanation for consciousness.

As for Everettian MWI, I don't think that quantum mechanics has
anything to do with conscious experience.  The fact that we see a
world which is apparently quantum mechanical in nature is a
coincidence.  A fluke.  In keeping with an unconstrained platonic
theory of consciousness, I would expect that there are other conscious
observers who experience other very different worlds where they make
observations that are not consistent with quantum mechanics.


> Perhaps. I don't see the relevance. It is quite coherent with comp
> that some form of meaning can be approached in this or similar ways.
> Assuming comp, what can be considered as lacking is the self-reference
> of the universal machine involved in the attribution of meaning.

I included the LSA discussion because I think it gives a good image of
how I see information being structured in a platonic sense, as
relationships between symbols, and also because it said some
interesting things about the symbol grounding problem.


> With comp, those other "sensory modalities" are coded before being
> processed by the brain, or the universal machine under consideration.

I agree, other sensory modalities are just more ungrounded tokenized
information that is included in the web of relationships which
ultimately, when consciously experienced "from the inside", provides
meaning to the otherwise purely abstract "ungrounded" platonic
symbols.


> Kelly, the question is: do we disagree?

I've wondered that too.  It could be that we only differ on a few
relatively minor points.


> I criticize your statement
> "consciousness = information" for vagueness, but only BECAUSE you have
> oppose it to the computationalist hypothesis,

I don't deny that there are computational/arithmetical descriptions of
how instances of consciousness can be related.  We agree on that.  I
just question what role, OTHER than describing the possible
relationships between sets of information, that computation plays.
Given that many algorithms can produce the same output from the same
input, I am inclined to say that it's the output that matters for
consciousness, not the algorithm.

It seems to me that connections between instances of consciousness are
implied, but that there's nothing "real" actually binding these
instances together other than the subjective feelings of continuity
arising from the memory each instant has of previous instances.  But
"memory" would seem to be a informational/data related concept I'd
think, not an algorithmic one.

If an algorithm results in the overwriting or erasure of memory, then
there is no longer the flow of conscious experience.  The algorithm
doesn't provide that "subjective" connection between instances of
consciousness.  The information stored in memory does.

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[Kelly Harmon]

On May 23, 12:54 pm, Brent Meeker <meeke...@...> wrote:
>
> Either of these ideas is definite
> enough that they could actually be implemented (in contrast to many
> philosophical ideas about consciousness).

Once you had implemented the ideas, how would you then know whether
consciousness experience had actually been produced, as opposed to the
mere appearance of it?

If you don't have a way of definitively detecting the hoped for result
of consciousness, then how exactly does being "implementable" really
help?  You run your test...and then what?


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[Bruno Marchal]

OK. So, now, Kelly, just to understand what you mean by your theory, I  
have to ask you what your theory predicts in case of self-
multiplication.
You have to see that, personally, I don't have a theory other than the  
assumption that the brain is emulable by a Turing machine, and by  
brain I mean any portion of my local neighborhood needed for surviving  
the comp functional substitution. This is the comp hypothesis.

Because we are both modal realist(*), and, true, worlds (histories)  
with white rabbit exists, and from inside are as actual as our present  
state. But then, I say that, as a consequence of the comp hyp, there  
is a relative probability or credibility measure on those histories.  
To see where does those probabilities come from, you have to  
understand that 1) you can be multiplied (that is read, copy (cut) and  
pasted in Washington AND Moscow (say)), and 2) you are multiplied (by  
2^aleph_zero, at each instant, with a comp definition of instant not  
related in principle with any form of physical time).

What does your theory predicts concerning your expectation in such an  
experience/experiment.

The fact is that your explanation, that we are in an typical universe,  
because those exist as well, just does not work with the comp hyp. It  
does not work, because it does not explain why we REMAIN in that  
typical worlds. It seems to me that, as far as I can put meaning on  
your view, the probability I will see a white rabbit in two seconds is  
as great than the probability I will see anything else, and this is in  
contradiction with the fact. What makes us staying in apparent lawful  
histories?

What does you theory predict about agony and death, from the first  
person point of view? This is an extreme case where comp is sensibly  
in opposition with "Aristotelian naturalism".

May be you could study the UDA, and directly tell me at which step  
your "theory" departs from the comp hyp. It has to depart, because you  
say below that we are in a quantum reality by chance, where the comp  
hyp explains why we have to be (even after death) in a quantum reality.

Bruno

(*) Once and for all, when I say I am a modal realist, I really mean  
this "I have an argument showing that the comp theory imposes modal  
realism".  I am really not defending any theory. I am just showing  
that the comp theory leads to precise and verifiable/refutable facts.  
I am a logician: all what I show to people is that IF you believe this  
THEN you have to believe that. It is part of my personal religion that  
my personal religion is personal and private (and evolvable).



On 23 May 2009, at 23:56, Kelly Harmon wrote:

>
> On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 8:47 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>  
> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> To repeat my
>>> earlier Chalmers quote, "Experience is information from the inside;
>>> physics is information from the outside."  It is this subjective
>>> experience of information that provides meaning to the otherwise
>>> completely abstract "platonic" symbols.
>>
>>
>> I insist on this well before Chalmers. We are agreeing on this.
>> But then you associate consciousness with the experience of  
>> information.
>> This is what I told you. I can understand the relation between
>> consciousness and information content.
>
> Information.  Information content.  Hmmmmmmmm.  Well, I'm not entirely
> sure what you're saying here.  Maybe I don't have a problem with this,
> but maybe I do.  Maybe we're really saying the same thing here, but
> maybe we're not.  Hmmmmm.
>
>
>>> Note that I don't have Bruno's fear of white rabbits.
>>
>> Then you disagree with all reader of David Lewis, including David
>> lewis himself who recognizes this inflation of to many realities as a
>> weakness of its modal realism. My point is that the comp constraints
>> leads to a solution of that problem, indeed a solution close to the
>> quantum Everett solution. But the existence of white rabbits, and  
>> thus
>> the correctness of comp remains to be tested.
>
> True, Lewis apparently saw it as a cost, BUT not so high a cost as to
> abandon modal realism.  I don't even see it as a high cost, I see it
> as a logical consequence.  Again, it's easy to imagine a computer
> simulation/virtual reality in which a conscious observer would see
> disembodied talking heads and flying pigs.  So it certainly seems
> possible for a conscious being to be in a state of observing an
> unattached talking head.
>
> Given that it's possible, why wouldn't it be actual?
>
> The only reason to think that it wouldn't be actual is that our
> external objectively existing physical universe doesn't have physical
> laws that can lead easily to the existance of such talking heads to be
> observed.  But once you've abandoned the external universe and
> embraced platonism, then where does the constraint against observing
> talking heads come from?
>
> Assuming platonism, I can explain why "I" don't see talking heads:
> because every possible Kelly is realized, and that includes a Kelly
> who doesn't observe disembodied talking heads and who doesn't know
> anyone who has ever seen such a head.
>
> So given that my observations aren't in conflict with my theory, I
> don't see a problem.  The fact that nothing that I could observe would
> ever conflict with my theory is also not particularly troubling to me
> because I didn't arrive at my theory as means of explaining any
> particular observed fact about the external universe.
>
> My theory isn't intended to explain the contingent details of what I
> observe.  It's intended to explain the fact THAT I subjectively
> observe anything at all.
>
> Given that it seems theoretically possible to create a computer
> simulation that would manifest any imaginable conscious being
> observing any imaginable "world", including schizophrenic beings
> observing psychodelic realities, I don't see why you are trying to
> constrain the platonic realities that can be experienced to those that
> are extremely similar to ours.
>
>
>> It is just a question of testing a theory. You seem to say something
>> like "if the theory predict that water under fire will typically  
>> boil,
>> and that experience does not confirm that typicality (water froze
>> regularly) then it means we are just very unlucky". But then all
>> theories are correct.
>
> I say there is no water.  There is just our subjective experience of
> observing water.  Trying to constrain a Platonic theory of
> consciousness so that it matches a particular observed physical
> reality seems like a mistake to me.
>
> Is there a limit to what we could experience in a computer simulated
> reality?  If not, why would there be a limit to what we could
> experience in Platonia?
>
>
>>> The double-aspect principle stems from the observation that there  
>>> is a
>>> direct isomorphism between certain physically embodied information
>>> spaces and certain phenomenal (or experiential) information spaces.
>>
>> This can be shown false in Quantum theory without collapse, and more
>> easily with the comp assumption.
>> No problem if you tell me that you reject both Everett and comp.
>> Chalmers seems in some place to accept both Everett and comp, indeed.
>> He explains to me that he stops at step 3. He believes that after a
>> duplication you feel to be simultaneously at the both place, even
>> assuming comp. I think and can argue that this is non sense. Nobody
>> defends this on the list. Are you defending an idea like that?
>
> I included the Chalmers quote because I think it provides a good image
> of how abstract information seems to supervene on physical systems.
> BUT by quoting the passage I'm not saying that I think that this
> appearance of supervenience is the source of consciousness.  I still
> buy into the putnam mapping view that there is no 1-to-1 mapping from
> information or computation to any physical system, which of course
> makes physicalism untenable as an explanation for consciousness.
>
> As for Everettian MWI, I don't think that quantum mechanics has
> anything to do with conscious experience.  The fact that we see a
> world which is apparently quantum mechanical in nature is a
> coincidence.  A fluke.  In keeping with an unconstrained platonic
> theory of consciousness, I would expect that there are other conscious
> observers who experience other very different worlds where they make
> observations that are not consistent with quantum mechanics.
>
>
>> Perhaps. I don't see the relevance. It is quite coherent with comp
>> that some form of meaning can be approached in this or similar ways.
>> Assuming comp, what can be considered as lacking is the self-
>> reference
>> of the universal machine involved in the attribution of meaning.
>
> I included the LSA discussion because I think it gives a good image of
> how I see information being structured in a platonic sense, as
> relationships between symbols, and also because it said some
> interesting things about the symbol grounding problem.
>
>
>> With comp, those other "sensory modalities" are coded before being
>> processed by the brain, or the universal machine under consideration.
>
> I agree, other sensory modalities are just more ungrounded tokenized
> information that is included in the web of relationships which
> ultimately, when consciously experienced "from the inside", provides
> meaning to the otherwise purely abstract "ungrounded" platonic
> symbols.
>
>
>> Kelly, the question is: do we disagree?
>
> I've wondered that too.  It could be that we only differ on a few
> relatively minor points.
>
>
>> I criticize your statement
>> "consciousness = information" for vagueness, but only BECAUSE you  
>> have
>> oppose it to the computationalist hypothesis,
>
> I don't deny that there are computational/arithmetical descriptions of
> how instances of consciousness can be related.  We agree on that.  I
> just question what role, OTHER than describing the possible
> relationships between sets of information, that computation plays.
> Given that many algorithms can produce the same output from the same
> input, I am inclined to say that it's the output that matters for
> consciousness, not the algorithm.
>
> It seems to me that connections between instances of consciousness are
> implied, but that there's nothing "real" actually binding these
> instances together other than the subjective feelings of continuity
> arising from the memory each instant has of previous instances.  But
> "memory" would seem to be a informational/data related concept I'd
> think, not an algorithmic one.
>
> If an algorithm results in the overwriting or erasure of memory, then
> there is no longer the flow of conscious experience.  The algorithm
> doesn't provide that "subjective" connection between instances of
> consciousness.  The information stored in memory does.
>
> >

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Brent Meeker-2]

Kelly wrote:

>
> On May 23, 12:54 pm, Brent Meeker <meeke...@...> wrote:
>  
>> Either of these ideas is definite
>> enough that they could actually be implemented (in contrast to many
>> philosophical ideas about consciousness).
>>    
>
> Once you had implemented the ideas, how would you then know whether
> consciousness experience had actually been produced, as opposed to the
> mere appearance of it?
>
> If you don't have a way of definitively detecting the hoped for result
> of consciousness, then how exactly does being "implementable" really
> help?  You run your test...and then what?

It's no different than any theory (including yours).  You draw some
conclusions about what should happen if it's correct, you try it and you
see if your predictions work out.  If I program/build my robot a certain
way will it seem as conscious as a dog or a chimpanzee or a human?  Can
I adjust my design to match any of those?  Can I change my brain in a
certain way and change my experienced consciousness in a predictable
way.   If so, I place some credence in my theory of consciousness.  If
not - it's back to the drawing board.  Many things are not observed
directly.  No theory is certain; it may be true but we can never be
certain it's true.

Brent

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[Brent Meeker-2]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

> ...
>
> (*) Once and for all, when I say I am a modal realist, I really mean  
> this "I have an argument showing that the comp theory imposes modal  
> realism".  I am really not defending any theory. I am just showing  
> that the comp theory leads to precise and verifiable/refutable facts.  
> I am a logician: all what I show to people is that IF you believe this  
> THEN you have to believe that. It is part of my personal religion that  
> my personal religion is personal and private (and evolvable).
>  

I understand that.  And just so I'm not misunderstood, when I refer to
"your theory" I don't mean to imply that it is something you believe. I
just mean the theory that you have elucidated.  I understand that you
could put forth several different theories and believe any of them.

Brent
"Nobody believes a theory except the guy who thought of it.  Everybody
believes an experiment except the guy who did it."
             --- Leon Lederman

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[Kelly Harmon]

On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 1:54 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> wrote:
>
> May be you could study the UDA, and directly tell me at which step
> your "theory" departs from the comp hyp.

Okay, I read over your SANE2004 paper again.

From step 1 of UDA:

"The scanned (read) information is send by traditional means, by mails
or radio waves for instance, at Helsinki, where you are correctly
reconstituted with ambient organic material."

Okay, so this information that is sent by traditional means is really
I think where consciousness lives.  Though not literally in the
physical instantiation of the information.  For instance if you were
to print out that information in some format, I would NOT point to the
large pile of ink-stained paper and say that it was conscious.  But
would say that the information that is represented by that pile of ink
and paper "represents", or "identifies", or "points to" a single
instant of consciousness.

So, what is the information?  Well, let's say the data you're
transmitting is from a neural scan and consists of a bunch of numbers
indicating neural connection weights, chemical concentrations,
molecular positions and states, or whatever.  I wouldn't even say that
this information is the information that is conscious.  Instead this
information is ultimately an encoding (via the particular way that the
brain stores information) of the symbols and the relationships between
those symbols that represent your knowledge, beliefs, and memories
(all of the information that makes you who you are).  (Echoes here of
the Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) stuff that I referenced before)


From step 8 of UDA:

"Instead of linking [the pain I feel] at space-time (x,t) to [a
machine state] at space-time (x,t), we are obliged to associate [the
pain I feel at space-time (x,t)] to a type or a sheaf of computations
(existing forever in the arithmetical Platonia which is accepted as
existing independently of our selves with arithmetical realism)."

So instead I would write this as:

"Instead of linking [the pain I feel] at space-time (x,t) to [a
machine state] at space-time (x,t), we are obliged to associate [the
pain I feel at space-time (x,t)] to an [informational state] existing
forever in Platonia which is accepted as existing independently of
ourselves."


> You have to see that, personally, I don't have a theory other than the
> assumption that the brain is emulable by a Turing machine

I also believe that, but I think that consciousness is in the
information represented by the discrete states of the data stored on
the Turing machine's tape after each instruction is executed, NOT in
the actual execution of the Turing machine.  The instruction table of
the Turing machine just describes one possible way that a particular
sequence of information states could be produced.

Execution of the instructions in the action table actually doesn't do
anything with respect to the production of consciousness.  The output
informational states represented by data on tape exists platonically
even if the Turing machine program is never run.  And therefore the
consciousness that goes with those states also exists platonically,
even if the Turing machine program is never run.


> OK. So, now, Kelly, just to understand what you mean by your theory, I
> have to ask you what your theory predicts in case of self-
> multiplication.

Well, first I'd say there aren't copies of identical information in
Platonia.  All perceived physical representations all actually point
to (similarly to a C-style pointer in programming) the same
platonically existing information state.  So if there are 1000
identical copies of me in identical mental states, they are really
just representations of the same "source" information state.

Piles of atoms aren't conscious.  Information is conscious.  1000
identically arranged piles of atoms still represent only a single
information state (setting aside putnam mapping issues).  The
information state is conscious, not the piles of atoms.

However, once their experiences diverge so that they are no longer
identical, then they are totally seperate and they represent (or point
to) seperate, non-overlapping conscious information states.


> To see where does those probabilities come from, you have to
> understand that 1) you can be multiplied (that is read, copy (cut) and
> pasted in Washington AND Moscow (say)), and 2) you are multiplied (by
> 2^aleph_zero, at each instant, with a comp definition of instant not
> related in principle with any form of physical time).

Well, probability is a tricky subject, right?

An interesting quote:

"Whereas the interpretation of quantum mechanics has only been
puzzling us for ~75 years, the interpretation of probability has been
doing so for more than 300 years [16, 17]. Poincare [18] (p. 186)
described probability as "an obscure instinct". In the century that
has elapsed since then philosophers have worked hard to lessen the
obscurity. However, the result has not been to arrive at any
consensus. Instead, we have a number of competing schools (for an
overview see Gillies [19], von Plato [20], Sklar [21, 22] and Guttman
[23])." (http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0402/0402015v1.pdf)


> The fact is that your explanation, that we are in an typical universe,
> because those exist as well, just does not work with the comp hyp. It
> does not work, because it does not explain why we REMAIN in that
> typical worlds.

Some Brunos will remain in typical worlds, and never see any other
type of world.  But other Brunos are finding themselves in
white-rabbit-worlds at every instant.

You are a "typical world Bruno", and there will ALWAYS be typical
world Brunos who ask "If Kelly's theory is correct why am I still in a
typical world?"

And the answer is, since every possible Bruno exists, there must exist
some Brunos who only see typical worlds.

So with this in mind, how could some Brunos NOT REMAIN in a typical
world?  What could possibly explain the absence of all "typical world
Brunos"?


> It seems to me that, as far as I can put meaning on
> your view, the probability I will see a white rabbit in two seconds is
> as great than the probability I will see anything else, and this is in
> contradiction with the fact. What makes us staying in apparent lawful
> histories?

The probability that a Bruno will see a white rabbit in 2 seconds is
100%.  The probability that a Bruno will NOT see a white rabbit in 2
seconds is ALSO 100%.

The key part here is the use of "a", as in "a Bruno".

Future Brunos are independent of "present Bruno", except for their
memory of you.  Again, there's nothing "real" that ties together
instants of consciousness except for the "feeling" of continuity
that's provided by memory.

So with probability, you're asking "what is the likelyhood that I will
see X as opposed to Y".  But YOU aren't going to see anything, you're
tied to the present.  Some future version of you will see X.  And a
different future version of you will see Y.  And there will be other
future versions of you that see A through W also.

So here I guess we get into issues of personal identity over time, and
maybe also questions of transworld identity.  From SEP
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/):

"What does it take for a person to persist from one time to
another—that is, for the same person to exist at different times? What
sorts of adventures could you possibly survive, in the broadest sense
of the word 'possible'? What sort of event would necessarily bring
your existence to an end? What determines which past or future being
is you? Suppose you point to a child in an old class photograph and
say, “That's me.” What makes you that one, rather than one of the
others? What is it about the way she relates then to you as you are
now that makes her you? For that matter, what makes it the case that
anyone at all who existed back then is you? This is the question of
personal identity over time. An answer to it is an account of our
persistence conditions, or a criterion of personal identity over time
(a constitutive rather than an evidential criterion: the second falls
under the Evidence Question below)."


> What does you theory predict about agony and death, from the first
> person point of view?

Well, I'm guessing that there is no first person death.  We are all
subjectively immortal, and all possible futures await.  Some of them
very bad.  Some of them very good.

In one of my futures I will never experience a good thing again.  It
will be nothing but suffering, misery, and humiliation for eternity.

BUT, on the plus side, in another future I will never experience
another bad thing again.  It's blue skies and flowers for as far as
the eye can see.

Most futures will be some mix of the two.

To be honest, the thought of the good futures doesn't make up for the
thought of the bad futures.  BUT, such is life.  I suspect.

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 25 May 2009, at 07:41, Kelly Harmon wrote:

>
> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 1:54 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>  
> wrote:
>>
>> May be you could study the UDA, and directly tell me at which step
>> your "theory" departs from the comp hyp.
>
> Okay, I read over your SANE2004 paper again.
>
> From step 1 of UDA:
>
> "The scanned (read) information is send by traditional means, by mails
> or radio waves for instance, at Helsinki, where you are correctly
> reconstituted with ambient organic material."
>
> Okay, so this information that is sent by traditional means is really
> I think where consciousness lives.  Though not literally in the
> physical instantiation of the information.  For instance if you were
> to print out that information in some format, I would NOT point to the
> large pile of ink-stained paper and say that it was conscious.  But
> would say that the information that is represented by that pile of ink
> and paper "represents", or "identifies", or "points to" a single
> instant of consciousness.

This like confusing the universal dovetailer and the counting algorithm.
Such information have no absolute content, they depend on universal  
number.

>
>
> So, what is the information?  Well, let's say the data you're
> transmitting is from a neural scan and consists of a bunch of numbers
> indicating neural connection weights, chemical concentrations,
> molecular positions and states, or whatever.  I wouldn't even say that
> this information is the information that is conscious.  Instead this
> information is ultimately an encoding (via the particular way that the
> brain stores information) of the symbols and the relationships between
> those symbols that represent your knowledge, beliefs, and memories
> (all of the information that makes you who you are).  (Echoes here of
> the Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) stuff that I referenced before)
>
>
> From step 8 of UDA:
>
> "Instead of linking [the pain I feel] at space-time (x,t) to [a
> machine state] at space-time (x,t), we are obliged to associate [the
> pain I feel at space-time (x,t)] to a type or a sheaf of computations
> (existing forever in the arithmetical Platonia which is accepted as
> existing independently of our selves with arithmetical realism)."
>
> So instead I would write this as:
>
> "Instead of linking [the pain I feel] at space-time (x,t) to [a
> machine state] at space-time (x,t), we are obliged to associate [the
> pain I feel at space-time (x,t)] to an [informational state] existing
> forever in Platonia which is accepted as existing independently of
> ourselves."

Same remark.

>
>
>
>> You have to see that, personally, I don't have a theory other than  
>> the
>> assumption that the brain is emulable by a Turing machine
>
> I also believe that, but I think that consciousness is in the
> information represented by the discrete states of the data stored on
> the Turing machine's tape after each instruction is executed, NOT in
> the actual execution of the Turing machine.

I agree with this. It is the comp hyp. Except it is a bit fuzzy, and  
contradict what
you say above and in other posts.
 From now on I will assume you are assuming comp.




> The instruction table of
> the Turing machine just describes one possible way that a particular
> sequence of information states could be produced.


OK.



> Execution of the instructions in the action table actually doesn't do
> anything with respect to the production of consciousness.


Are you talking about the physical execution, in which case what you  
say is a consequence of the MGA, or of a platonic execution?




> The output
> informational states represented by data on tape exists platonically
> even if the Turing machine program is never run.  And therefore the
> consciousness that goes with those states also exists platonically,
> even if the Turing machine program is never run.


In platonia all Turing machines run. Or you mean: never run in our  
physical universe, in which case we agree.

>
>
>
>> OK. So, now, Kelly, just to understand what you mean by your  
>> theory, I
>> have to ask you what your theory predicts in case of self-
>> multiplication.
>
> Well, first I'd say there aren't copies of identical information in
> Platonia.

It is a bit ambiguous, but the UD, in platonia makes a lot of  
*relmative* copies, a bit like the Mandebrot set contains an infinity  
of copies of itself. It is a ket point because those relative copies  
will explain eventually the vansihing of the white rabbits and explain  
the origin of the believe in physical space-time and dynamics in the  
static context of platonia.




> All perceived physical representations all actually point
> to (similarly to a C-style pointer in programming) the same
> platonically existing information state.  So if there are 1000
> identical copies of me in identical mental states, they are really
> just representations of the same "source" information state.


The UD runs C++ in Platonia, but also amm ways to implement all  
programs including those who makes many relative copies, like the e-
mail will multiplied this posts.



>
>
> Piles of atoms aren't conscious.


OK.




> Information is conscious.


A person is conscious. Animals can be conscious, perhaps plant.
Actually I still have no clue of what you mean by "information".




> 1000
> identically arranged piles of atoms still represent only a single
> information state (setting aside putnam mapping issues).


There is no mapping issue. The mapping always makes sense relatively  
to a mapping machine, and eventually on the basic mapping you whoose  
and which has to be part of the theory. I have chosen, to fix the  
things, elementary arithmetic, although they are in infinity of  
equivalent mappings. We need one as basic immaterialist ontology if we  
don't want been lead to zombies or nihilism.




>  The
> information state is conscious, not the piles of atoms.


Is not an information state a pile of 1 and 0?



>
>
> However, once their experiences diverge so that they are no longer
> identical, then they are totally seperate and they represent (or point
> to) seperate, non-overlapping conscious information states.


This can make a bit more sense.

>
>
>
>> To see where does those probabilities come from, you have to
>> understand that 1) you can be multiplied (that is read, copy (cut)  
>> and
>> pasted in Washington AND Moscow (say)), and 2) you are multiplied (by
>> 2^aleph_zero, at each instant, with a comp definition of instant not
>> related in principle with any form of physical time).
>
> Well, probability is a tricky subject, right?

That is what a politician told me when I show him, years ago, that its  
argument was a misuse of statistic. A good way for not answering. In  
our context the notion of consciousness is far more tricky than the  
notion of probability. And you don't answer the question.

>
>
> An interesting quote:
>
> "Whereas the interpretation of quantum mechanics has only been
> puzzling us for ~75 years, the interpretation of probability has been
> doing so for more than 300 years [16, 17]. Poincare [18] (p. 186)
> described probability as "an obscure instinct". In the century that
> has elapsed since then philosophers have worked hard to lessen the
> obscurity. However, the result has not been to arrive at any
> consensus. Instead, we have a number of competing schools (for an
> overview see Gillies [19], von Plato [20], Sklar [21, 22] and Guttman
> [23])." (http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0402/0402015v1.pdf)

On all interesting subject there are competing views. It is a non  
argument.

>
>
>
>> The fact is that your explanation, that we are in an typical  
>> universe,
>> because those exist as well, just does not work with the comp hyp. It
>> does not work, because it does not explain why we REMAIN in that
>> typical worlds.
>
> Some Brunos will remain in typical worlds, and never see any other
> type of world.  But other Brunos are finding themselves in
> white-rabbit-worlds at every instant.

I agree. The question is this: how is it that I find in worth to  
prepare a cup of coffee. How is it that it is reasonnable to bet, as I  
do all the time that I will stay in anon rabbit world so that, for  
example, it makes sense to type on this keyboard? My point is that  
with comp, we can no more use the usual explanation that we are living  
in a lawful universe.



>
>
> You are a "typical world Bruno",


Thanks. But for how long?



> and there will ALWAYS be typical
> world Brunos who ask "If Kelly's theory is correct why am I still in a
> typical world?"
>
> And the answer is, since every possible Bruno exists, there must exist
> some Brunos who only see typical worlds.
>
> So with this in mind, how could some Brunos NOT REMAIN in a typical
> world?


? Because of you say above. Some 3-Bruno will be separated and some  
will belong to non typical world. My question is what is the  
probability for the 1-Bruno, here and now, to wake up in the body of  
such white rabbit sort of 3-bruno?



> What could possibly explain the absence of all "typical world
> Brunos"?


We already agree that all worlds exist. Both the typical and the non  
typical. The question remains: why should I bet I will stay during the  
next second in a typical universe. yet I am typing on this keyboard  
because I find it worth to do it, meaning I am betting I will stay in  
such a typical universe, at least for some time. The question is: how  
to justify those bets once we abandon the notion of primitive physical  
universe. Where does the appearance of a lawful and stable physical  
universe come from. Of course I have the beginning of the answer in  
the comp theory (cf UDA+AUDA).

>
>
>
>> It seems to me that, as far as I can put meaning on
>> your view, the probability I will see a white rabbit in two seconds  
>> is
>> as great than the probability I will see anything else, and this is  
>> in
>> contradiction with the fact. What makes us staying in apparent lawful
>> histories?
>
> The probability that a Bruno will see a white rabbit in 2 seconds is
> 100%.

A Bruno. Or Bruno? I begin to feel you talk like if 1-Bruno = 3-Bruno,  
but this would mean you stop at the second step of UDA.





> The probability that a Bruno will NOT see a white rabbit in 2
> seconds is ALSO 100%.


I am talking about the relative probabilities. The question is really:  
what is the probability that in two seconds I will see a white rabbit.  
If you tell me 100%, then let me do the experiment/experience. I wait  
for two seconds. I have not seen a white rabbits. Your 100% prediction  
is refute. Your theory is incorrect. Given that comp has not yet been  
refuted today, it means that your theory is not comp, or you have a  
wrong interpretation of comp.



>
>
> The key part here is the use of "a", as in "a Bruno".


OK, then. So I reiterate the question you again, and please note that  
I am asking for the 1-personal expectations. The difference between  
"Bruno" and the infinitely many 3-Bruno is the key to understand the  
UD reasoning.



>
>
> Future Brunos are independent of "present Bruno", except for their
> memory of you.  Again, there's nothing "real" that ties together
> instants of consciousness except for the "feeling" of continuity
> that's provided by memory.


With comp, what ties the instants of consciousness are the infinitely  
many universal numbers which generates (in platonia) the computations  
between the computational states corresponding to those relative  
instants of consciousness. Only we cannot know which one are "acting",  
and below our level of substitution, they are all "acting" at once  
"acting" in the mathematical computer science sense (it is a globally  
static and platonic sense).



>
>
> So with probability, you're asking "what is the likelyhood that I will
> see X as opposed to Y".  But YOU aren't going to see anything, you're
> tied to the present.  Some future version of you will see X.  And a
> different future version of you will see Y.  And there will be other
> future versions of you that see A through W also.


If that was true, planning anything would make no sense at all.

>
>
> So here I guess we get into issues of personal identity over time, and
> maybe also questions of transworld identity.  From SEP
> (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/):
>
> "What does it take for a person to persist from one time to
> another—that is, for the same person to exist at different times? What
> sorts of adventures could you possibly survive, in the broadest sense
> of the word 'possible'? What sort of event would necessarily bring
> your existence to an end? What determines which past or future being
> is you? Suppose you point to a child in an old class photograph and
> say, “That's me.” What makes you that one, rather than one of the
> others? What is it about the way she relates then to you as you are
> now that makes her you? For that matter, what makes it the case that
> anyone at all who existed back then is you? This is the question of
> personal identity over time. An answer to it is an account of our
> persistence conditions, or a criterion of personal identity over time
> (a constitutive rather than an evidential criterion: the second falls
> under the Evidence Question below)."

One of my oldest paper "Mechanism and personal identity" points on the  
comp answer, which is the answer above. It raises a mathematical  
problem of probability (UDA), and the logic of self-reference (AUDA)  
provides the math for evaluating those probabilities. The "probability  
one" has been shown to obey a quantum logic, and that is the beginning  
of the comp justification of the well founded beliefs in the  
appearance and stability of a physical universe, and this without  
invoking it a priori, which is forbidden by the UD reasoning.



>
>
>
>> What does you theory predict about agony and death, from the first
>> person point of view?
>
> Well, I'm guessing that there is no first person death.


OK.



> We are all
> subjectively immortal, and all possible futures await.  Some of them
> very bad.  Some of them very good.


With different probabilities. That is why we are partially responsible  
of our future. This motivates education and learning, and commenting  
posts ...

>
>
> In one of my futures I will never experience a good thing again.  It
> will be nothing but suffering, misery, and humiliation for eternity.
>
> BUT, on the plus side, in another future I will never experience
> another bad thing again.  It's blue skies and flowers for as far as
> the eye can see.
>
> Most futures will be some mix of the two.
>
> To be honest, the thought of the good futures doesn't make up for the
> thought of the bad futures.  BUT, such is life.  I suspect.

Hmm...  Life provides tools for planning. If you jump out of a window,  
there is a high probability you will experience some bad future, but  
if you plan to take the lift, you diminish, at least locally, the  
probability that you end up in that bad future.

My diagnostic is that you miss the universal numbers and their  
relative probabilities. You confuse the notion of (apparent) physical  
running, and the many platonic "running" existing (in the usual  
mathematical sense)  in Platonia (alias elementary arithmetic).

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Kelly Harmon]

On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> wrote:
>
>
> Actually I still have no clue of what you mean by "information".

Well, I don't think I can say it much better than I did before:

In my view, there are ungrounded abstract symbols that acquire
meaning via constraints placed on them by their relationships to other
symbols.  The only "grounding" comes from the conscious experience
that is intrinsic to a particular set of relationships.  To repeat my
earlier Chalmers quote, "Experience is information from the inside;
physics is information from the outside."  It is this subjective
experience of information that provides meaning to the otherwise
completely abstract "platonic" symbols.

Going a little further:  I would say that the relationships between
the symbols that make up a particular mental state have some sort of
consistency, some regularity, some syntax - so that when these
syntactical relationships are combined with the symbols it does make
up some sort of descriptive language.  A language that is used to
describe a state of mind.  Here we're well into the realm of semiotics
I think.

To come back to our disagreement, what is it that a Turing machine
does that results in consciousness?  It would seem to me that
ultimately what a Turing machine does is manipulate symbols according
to specific rules.  But is it the process of manipulating the symbols
that produces consciousness?  OR is it the state of the symbols and
their relationships with each other AFTER the manipulation which
really accounts for consciousness?

I say the latter.  You seem to be saying the former...or maybe you're
saying it's both?

As I've mentioned, I think that the symbols which combine to create a
mental state can be manipulated in MANY ways.  And algorithms just
serve as descriptions of these ways.  But subjective consciousness is
in the states, not in how the states are manipulated.


> With different probabilities. That is why we are partially responsible
> of our future. This motivates education and learning, and commenting
> posts ...

In my view, life is just something that we experience.  That's it.
There's nothing more to life than subjective experience.  The feeling
of being an active participant, of making decisions, of planning, of
choosing, is only that:  a feeling.  A type of qualia.

Okay, it's past my bedtime, I'll do probability tomorrow!

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[Bruno Marchal]

Kelly,

Since you told me that you accept comp, after all, and do no more  
oppose it to your view, I think we agree, at least on many things.
Indeed you agree with the hypothesis, and your philosophy appears to  
be a consequence of the hypothesis. That is all my work is about.  
Indeed I show you are right in a constructive way, which leads to the  
testability of the computationalist hypothesis.

It remains possible that we have a disagreement concerning the  
probability, and this has some importance, because it is the use of  
probability (or credibility) which makes the consequences of comp  
testable. More in the comment below.

Also, I will from now on, abandon the term machine for the term  
number. Relatively to a fixed chosen universal "machine", like  
Robinson arithmetic, such an identification can be done precisely. I  
will come back on this to my explanation to Kim, if he is still  
interested, and patient enough ...


On 27 May 2009, at 09:05, Kelly Harmon wrote:

>
> On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>  
> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Actually I still have no clue of what you mean by "information".
>
> Well, I don't think I can say it much better than I did before:
>
> In my view, there are ungrounded abstract symbols that acquire
> meaning via constraints placed on them by their relationships to other
> symbols.

Exactly. And those constraints makes sense once we make explicit the  
many universal numbers involved. I will have opportunities to say more  
on this later.




> The only "grounding" comes from the conscious experience
> that is intrinsic to a particular set of relationships.


I agree, but only because I have succeeded to make such a statement  
utterly precise, and even testable.




> To repeat my
> earlier Chalmers quote, "Experience is information from the inside;
> physics is information from the outside."


Again this is fuzzy, and I think Chalmers is just quoting me with  
different terms (btw). I prefer to avoid the word information because  
it has different meaning in science and in everyday talk. Either you  
use it in the sense of Shannon, or Kolmogorov, or Solomonov, or  
Solovay or even Landauer (which one precisely?), in which case  
"information = consciousness" is as much non sensical than saying  
"consciousness is neuron's firing", or you use it, as I think you do,  
in the everyday sense of information like when we ask "do you know the  
last information on TV?". In that case information corresponds to what  
I am used to call "first person view", and your identity  
"consciousness = information" is correct, and even a theorem with  
reasonnably fine grained definitions. So we are OK here.



>  It is this subjective
> experience of information that provides meaning to the otherwise
> completely abstract "platonic" symbols.

As I said.


>
>
> Going a little further:  I would say that the relationships between
> the symbols that make up a particular mental state have some sort of
> consistency, some regularity, some syntax - so that when these
> syntactical relationships are combined with the symbols it does make
> up some sort of descriptive language.  A language that is used to
> describe a state of mind.  Here we're well into the realm of semiotics
> I think.

Here you are even closer to what I say in both UDA and AUDA. No  
problem. It takes me 30 years of work to explain this succesfully to a  
part of the experts in those fields, so as to make a PhD thesis from  
that. Sorry to let you know that this has been already developed in  
details. My originality is to take computer science seriously when  
studying computationalism.



>
>
> To come back to our disagreement, what is it that a Turing machine
> does that results in consciousness?


 From the third point of view, one universal number relates the 3-
informations.
 From the first person point of view, all universal and particular  
numbers at once imposes a probability measure on the histories going  
through the corresponding 1-information.




> It would seem to me that
> ultimately what a Turing machine does is manipulate symbols according
> to specific rules.

In the platonic sense, yes. And it concerns 3-information or relative  
computational states.



> But is it the process of manipulating the symbols
> that produces consciousness?


No. Nothing, strictly speaking, ever produce consciousness. It will  
appear to be the unavoidable inside view aspect of numbers in  
arithmetical platonia. AUDA explains this thanks to the fact that self-
consistency belongs to the G* minus G theory. It is the kind of things  
which a number (machine) can "produce as true" without being able to  
communicate it scientifically (prove) to another machine, including  
itself.




> OR is it the state of the symbols and
> their relationships with each other AFTER the manipulation which
> really accounts for consciousness?


Preferably indeed. The "manipulations" are all existing in the static  
Platonia.



>
>
> I say the latter.  You seem to be saying the former...or maybe you're
> saying it's both?

No, I say the later. We agree on this, I think.


>
>
> As I've mentioned, I think that the symbols which combine to create a
> mental state can be manipulated in MANY ways.

Exactly. This is the key point which, when made precise, will show  
that we can deduce the laws of the observables (physics) from computer  
science/number theory, making comp a scientific theory, that is an  
empirically refutable theory in the sense of Popper.



> And algorithms just
> serve as descriptions of these ways.  But subjective consciousness is
> in the states, not in how the states are manipulated.


You can say that, although I could explain that you could run into  
some subtle but unimportant language difficulties related to the MGA,  
but it is OK. The key point if that the stability of the "subjective  
consciousness" "or first person views" is determined by some relative  
measure on the relatively consistent histories, which are related to  
the universal (or particular) numbers generating those histories in  
the universal deployment. This makes sense mathematically thanks to  
Church thesis and its incompleteness consequences. CF UDA-7 and AUDA.

>
>
>
>> With different probabilities. That is why we are partially  
>> responsible
>> of our future. This motivates education and learning, and commenting
>> posts ...
>
> In my view, life is just something that we experience.  That's it.
> There's nothing more to life than subjective experience.  The feeling
> of being an active participant, of making decisions, of planning, of
> choosing, is only that:  a feeling.  A type of qualia.

Here we differ. Frankly, you say above that "I would say that the  
relationships between the symbols that make up a particular mental  
state have some sort of consistency, some regularity, some syntax - so  
that when these syntactical relationships are combined. It does make  
up some sort of descriptive language.  A language that is used to  
describe a state of mind.  Here we're well into the realm of semiotics  
I think". Why not taking yourself seriously on this point. Life is not  
"just" something we experience. Consciousness is "just" something we  
experience, but life and histories related those experience in such a  
way that our planning makes sense relatively to realities and reality.  
Now, if you take computer science seriously enough, then you can  
replace the fuzzy semiotics by the mathematical theory of meaning  
(model theory) and work on the conclusion of your assumption. It is as  
fun as a (first person) salvia experience, and 100% third person  
sharable (unlike salvia!). It is much more informative and leads to  
precise way to test comp, and up to no, crazily enough, the quantum  
theory (without collapse) confirms comp, even its most startling  
aspect (like the fact that we are multiplied into continuum of version  
"all the time").
You also mention the role of the relationship between the states  
above. Again: why not taking them into account to explain why I see  
red things in front of stable subjective and relative object supported  
by computational histories?

>
>
> Okay, it's past my bedtime, I'll do probability tomorrow!

Don't tell me you have a problem with the first person indeterminacy,  
because we would be back to the beginning of the talk on this list,  
and usually, people who refuses the 1-indeterminacy are those  
materialist who understand very well all the UDA steps, but are  
allergic to idealism, so they try to stop the reasoning at its root.  
It would be a pity that you just disagree with the point which make  
your own philosophy a scientific theory.

But of course if you have a *real* trouble with the notion of first  
person indeterminacy, it is a pleasure for me to explain, give more  
examples,  or discuss it in details. First person indeterminacy is my  
oldest "discovery", and I am used to people taking some time to  
swallow it, but after it is like they found it by themselves ... It is  
the Columbus Egg of indeterminism. It is simple, and with the abandon  
of the physical supervenience thesis, it is what can transform your  
comp-correct intuition into a real workable and refutable theory. Of  
course, you can also just enjoy your cute philosophy and take pleasure  
in just knowing it has already been working out. But comp makes the  
use of computer science, including mathematical logic, unavoidable,  
when we look at the details. Is that not obvious?

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Kelly Harmon]

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> wrote:
>
> Since you told me that you accept comp, after all, and do no more
> oppose it to your view, I think we agree, at least on many things.
> Indeed you agree with the hypothesis, and your philosophy appears to
> be a consequence of the hypothesis.

Excellent!


> It remains possible that we have a disagreement concerning the
> probability, and this has some importance, because it is the use of
> probability (or credibility) which makes the consequences of comp
> testable. More in the comment below.

So my only problem with the usual view of probability is that it
doesn't seem to me to emerge naturally from a platonic theory of
conscious.  Is your proposal something that would conceivably be
arrived at by a rational observer in one of the (supposedly) rare
worlds where white rabbits are common?   Does it have features that
would lead one to predict the absence of white rabbits, or does it
just offer a way to explain their absence after the fact?

As I mentioned before, assuming computationalism it seems to me that
it is theoretically possible to create a computer simulation that
would manifest any imaginable conscious entity observing any
imaginable "world", including schizophrenic beings observing
psychedelic realities.  So, then further assuming Platonism, all of
these strange experiences should exist in Platonia.  Along with all
possible normal experiences.

I don't see any obvious, non-"ad hoc" mechanism to eliminate or
minimize strange experiences relative to normal experiences, and I
don't think adding one is justified just for that purpose, or even
necessary since an unconstrained platonic theory does have the obvious
virtue of saying that there will always be Kellys like myself who have
never seen white rabbits.

As for your earlier questions about how you should bet, I have two responses.

First that there exists a Bruno who will make every possible bet.
One particular Bruno will make his bet on a whim, while another Bruno
will do so only after long consideration, and yet another will make a
wild bet in a fit of madness.  Each Bruno will "feel" like he made a
choice, but actually all possible Brunos exist, so all possible bets
are made, for all possible subjectively "felt" reasons.

Second, and probably more helpfully, I'll quote this paper
(http://www.kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c6/04/17/78/manymindsandprobs.doc) by
David Papineau, which sounds reasonable to me:

"But many minds theorists can respond that the logic of statistical
inference is just the same on their view as on the conventional view.
True, on their view in any repeated trial all the different possible
sequences of results can be observed, and so some attempts to infer
the probability from the observed frequency will get it wrong.  Still,
any particular mind observing any one of these sequences will reason
just as the conventional view would recommend:  note the frequency,
infer that the probability is close to the frequency, and hope that
you are not the unlucky victim of an improbable sample.  Of course the
logic of this kind of statistical inference is itself a matter of
active philosophical controversy.  But it will be just the same
inference on both the many minds and the conventional view.

[...]

It is worth observing that, on the conventional view, what agents want
from their choices are the desired results, rather than that these
results be objectively probable (a choice that makes the results
objectively probable, but unluckily doesn't produce them, doesn't give
you what you want).  Given this, there is room to raise the question:
why are rational agents well-advised to choose actions that make their
desired results objectively probable?  Rather surprisingly, is no good
answer to this question.  (After all, you can't assume you will get
what you want if you so choose.)  From Pierce on, philosophers have
been forced to conclude that it is simply a primitive fact about
rational choice that you ought to weight future possibilities
according to known objective probabilities in making decisions.

The many minds view simply says the same thing.  Rational agents ought
to choose those actions which will maximize the known objective
probability of desired results.  As to why they ought to do this,
there is no further explanation.  This is simply a basic truth about
rational choice.

[...]

I supect that this basic truth actually makes more sense on the many
minds view than on the conventional view.  For on the conventional
view there is a puzzle about the relation between this truth and the
further thought that ultimate success in action depends on desired
results actually occurring.  On the many minds view, by contrast,
there is no such further thought, since all possible results occur,
desired and undesired, and so no puzzle:  in effect there is only one
criterion of success in action, namely, maximizing the known objective
probability of desired results.  However, this is really the subject
for another paper, not least because the idea that agents ought to
maximize the known objective probability of desired results itself
hides a number of complexities which I have been skating over here."

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[Kim Jones-2]

On 28/05/2009, at 12:21 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

> Also, I will from now on, abandon the term machine for the term
> number. Relatively to a fixed chosen universal "machine", like
> Robinson arithmetic, such an identification can be done precisely. I
> will come back on this to my explanation to Kim, if he is still
> interested, and patient enough ...
>


Am still interested and possessed of infinite patience

Kim

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[m.a.-2]

Some parts of this message have been removed. Learn more about Nabble's security policy.

Bruno,

             If there was never a physical world to which living creatures adapted after millions of years  and which after further eons prompted the evolution of consciousness, do we conclude that comp and numbers alone created such a universe and then created people to experience it...all through the chance combinations of numbers? Are we saying that monkeys on typewriters authored everything we see about us?  If so, how did such purposefulness and intentionality get into pure comp?  

                                                                                                                                    marty a.

 

 

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Kelly Harmon" <harmonk00@...>

To: <everything-list@...>

Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 3:02 AM

Subject: Re: Consciousness is information?

>

> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> wrote:
>>
>> Since you told me that you accept comp, after all, and do no more
>> oppose it to your view, I think we agree, at least on many things.
>> Indeed you agree with the hypothesis, and your philosophy appears to
>> be a consequence of the hypothesis.
>
> Excellent!
>
>
>> It remains possible that we have a disagreement concerning the
>> probability, and this has some importance, because it is the use of
>> probability (or credibility) which makes the consequences of comp
>> testable. More in the comment below.
>
> So my only problem with the usual view of probability is that it
> doesn't seem to me to emerge naturally from a platonic theory of
> conscious.  Is your proposal something that would conceivably be
> arrived at by a rational observer in one of the (supposedly) rare
> worlds where white rabbits are common?   Does it have features that
> would lead one to predict the absence of white rabbits, or does it
> just offer a way to explain their absence after the fact?
>
> As I mentioned before, assuming computationalism it seems to me that
> it is theoretically possible to create a computer simulation that
> would manifest any imaginable conscious entity observing any
> imaginable "world", including schizophrenic beings observing
> psychedelic realities.  So, then further assuming Platonism, all of
> these strange experiences should exist in Platonia.  Along with all
> possible normal experiences.
>
> I don't see any obvious, non-"ad hoc" mechanism to eliminate or
> minimize strange experiences relative to normal experiences, and I
> don't think adding one is justified just for that purpose, or even
> necessary since an unconstrained platonic theory does have the obvious
> virtue of saying that there will always be Kellys like myself who have
> never seen white rabbits.
>
> As for your earlier questions about how you should bet, I have two responses.
>
> First that there exists a Bruno who will make every possible bet.
> One particular Bruno will make his bet on a whim, while another Bruno
> will do so only after long consideration, and yet another will make a
> wild bet in a fit of madness.  Each Bruno will "feel" like he made a
> choice, but actually all possible Brunos exist, so all possible bets
> are made, for all possible subjectively "felt" reasons.
>
> Second, and probably more helpfully, I'll quote this paper
> (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c6/04/17/78/manymindsandprobs.doc) by
> David Papineau, which sounds reasonable to me:
>
> "But many minds theorists can respond that the logic of statistical
> inference is just the same on their view as on the conventional view.
> True, on their view in any repeated trial all the different possible
> sequences of results can be observed, and so some attempts to infer
> the probability from the observed frequency will get it wrong.  Still,
> any particular mind observing any one of these sequences will reason
> just as the conventional view would recommend:  note the frequency,
> infer that the probability is close to the frequency, and hope that
> you are not the unlucky victim of an improbable sample.  Of course the
> logic of this kind of statistical inference is itself a matter of
> active philosophical controversy.  But it will be just the same
> inference on both the many minds and the conventional view.
>
> [...]
>
> It is worth observing that, on the conventional view, what agents want
> from their choices are the desired results, rather than that these
> results be objectively probable (a choice that makes the results
> objectively probable, but unluckily doesn't produce them, doesn't give
> you what you want).  Given this, there is room to raise the question:
> why are rational agents well-advised to choose actions that make their
> desired results objectively probable?  Rather surprisingly, is no good
> answer to this question.  (After all, you can't assume you will get
> what you want if you so choose.)  From Pierce on, philosophers have
> been forced to conclude that it is simply a primitive fact about
> rational choice that you ought to weight future possibilities
> according to known objective probabilities in making decisions.
>
> The many minds view simply says the same thing.  Rational agents ought
> to choose those actions which will maximize the known objective
> probability of desired results.  As to why they ought to do this,
> there is no further explanation.  This is simply a basic truth about
> rational choice.
>
> [...]
>
> I supect that this basic truth actually makes more sense on the many
> minds view than on the conventional view.  For on the conventional
> view there is a puzzle about the relation between this truth and the
> further thought that ultimate success in action depends on desired
> results actually occurring.  On the many minds view, by contrast,
> there is no such further thought, since all possible results occur,
> desired and undesired, and so no puzzle:  in effect there is only one
> criterion of success in action, namely, maximizing the known objective
> probability of desired results.  However, this is really the subject
> for another paper, not least because the idea that agents ought to
> maximize the known objective probability of desired results itself
> hides a number of complexities which I have been skating over here."
>
>

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 28 May 2009, at 09:18, Kim Jones wrote:

> Am still interested and possessed of infinite patience


Nice!

Soon !  (in the relative platonist way ... :)

Bruno




http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Bruno Marchal]

On 28 May 2009, at 09:02, Kelly Harmon wrote:

>
> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>  
> wrote:
>>
>> Since you told me that you accept comp, after all, and do no more
>> oppose it to your view, I think we agree, at least on many things.
>> Indeed you agree with the hypothesis, and your philosophy appears to
>> be a consequence of the hypothesis.
>
> Excellent!

Glad you say so.

>
>
>
>> It remains possible that we have a disagreement concerning the
>> probability, and this has some importance, because it is the use of
>> probability (or credibility) which makes the consequences of comp
>> testable. More in the comment below.
>
> So my only problem with the usual view of probability is that it
> doesn't seem to me to emerge naturally from a platonic theory of
> conscious.

It does not in Platonia-before-Gödel.
After Godel we know machines (and even most "gods"), when they observe  
they neighborhoods are confronted to many modalities which reflect the  
gap between truth, intelligibility, observability, sensibility.  
Rational probabilities, qualia sensibilities, quanta probabilities  
emerge by the reflection, for each normal universal machine/number, of  
their personal and collective border of their (abyssal) ignorance.  
After Godel we know that such an ignorance has a mathematical creative/
productive shape.
But just UDA should convince you that probabilities emerge. I will  
come back on this.



>  Is your proposal something that would conceivably be
> arrived at by a rational observer in one of the (supposedly) rare
> worlds where white rabbits are common?


White rabbits are never common. When a white rabbit is common and  
regular, we call it a particle.
Today, the problem with comp is that it still could predict a priori  
too much white rabbits, and not enough particles, to be short ...
A priori the universal machine dreams too much ...



>   Does it have features that
> would lead one to predict the absence of white rabbits, or does it
> just offer a way to explain their absence after the fact?

The UD reasoning has to justify the observation that they are very  
rare. We have to justify why our neighborhoods seems to obey  
computable and compressible laws, when we know that below our  
substitution level we are supported by a continuum of computations.  
Well, computer science and mathematical logic are promising with that  
respect. That continuum has a mathematical shape.


>
>
> As I mentioned before, assuming computationalism it seems to me that
> it is theoretically possible to create a computer simulation that
> would manifest any imaginable conscious entity observing any
> imaginable "world", including schizophrenic beings observing
> psychedelic realities.

The UD does exactly that.
The first price of its universality is that it will not only do that,  
but it will do that *redundantly*. The redundance is big and  
unavoidable.
The second price is that it will generate (in its platonic static way)  
non terminating histories, from which a continuum will be projected as  
viewed from "inside".

The UD is redundant, like the Mandelbrot set. See
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6DD1k4BAUg&feature=channel_page
It is an impressive zoom on compact representation of a universal  
dovetailng (most probably) and illustrates the redundancy, and the  
presence of a rich structure. It is generated by a very little program.



> So, then further assuming Platonism, all of
> these strange experiences should exist in Platonia.  Along with all
> possible normal experiences.

Yes. But clearly we don't see them, or very rarely. This has to be  
explained from the general indeterminacy.
The special indeterminacy is the indeterminacy in a relative to this  
"cosmos" self-duplication à-la Washington/Moscow.
The global indeterminacy is you in front of a (material or immaterial,  
platonic) Universal Dovetailer (UD).

Elementary arithmetic defines already a universal dovetailer.

>
>
> I don't see any obvious, non-"ad hoc" mechanism to eliminate or
> minimize strange experiences relative to normal experiences, and I
> don't think adding one is justified just for that purpose, or even
> necessary since an unconstrained platonic theory does have the obvious
> virtue of saying that there will always be Kellys like myself who have
> never seen white rabbits.

This explains the Kelly of here and now. But it does not explain where  
my assurance comes from that the Kelly which I hope will read this  
mail will still share my history, in which the white rabbit has not  
made an apparition.
Given that you are already idealist, UDA is just UDA1-7, lucky you!

UDA1-7 is the explanation where the probabilities (or credibilities)  
come from, and why they have to be quantum-like unless comp or quantum  
mechanics are flawed.

>
>
> As for your earlier questions about how you should bet, I have two  
> responses.
>
> First that there exists a Bruno who will make every possible bet.
> One particular Bruno will make his bet on a whim, while another Bruno
> will do so only after long consideration, and yet another will make a
> wild bet in a fit of madness.  Each Bruno will "feel" like he made a
> choice, but actually all possible Brunos exist, so all possible bets
> are made, for all possible subjectively "felt" reasons.

Here I disagree as far as I understand something .. I am not sure to  
which Bruno you are talking.
And I agree with Papineau's paper you quote (see below), but it seems  
to me that it pleads in the favour of the use of objective in (quantum  
or not) self-multiplication.

Let me ask you the following question. I have already ask the list.
I propose you the following experience/experiment.

I multiply [you-in-front of a (16180x10000) black and white pixels  
screen] so that each of your future "you" (third person) will be in  
front of each of the 2^(16180*10000) configurations of the screen.  I  
will do this concretely in this universe, tomorrow.

Actually, I repeat it 24 times per second during 1h30 (60 * 90  
seconds). So after a lapse of 1h30, you will be multiplied in  
2^(16180*10000*60*90*24) exemplars, and, of course, each of those  
resulting exemplars will have the memory of having seen ONE  
"movie" (in a larger sense than usual) .

And I am asking you, here and now, what do you expect the most  
probable experience you will feel tomorrow, when I will do that  
experiment.
It is easy to predict that you will feel, from your first person point  
of view, with certainty, (assuming comp and the correct choice of  
level) seeing a movie, one movie.

What do you thing is the more probable events that you will live which  
one is the more probable? What is your most rational choice among

1) I will see a Monty Python with chinese subtitle
2) I will see the beginning of Space Odyssey (black and white version)
3) I will see a black screen
4) I will see a white screen
5) I will see white noise, but looking in the details, the black and  
white sequence gives the decimal of PI in binary.
6) I will see white noise, and looking in the details I will not find  
a program generating that sequence.

?


Bruno

>
>
> Second, and probably more helpfully, I'll quote this paper
> (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c6/04/17/78/manymindsandprobs.doc) by
> David Papineau, which sounds reasonable to me:
>
> "But many minds theorists can respond that the logic of statistical
> inference is just the same on their view as on the conventional view.
> True, on their view in any repeated trial all the different possible
> sequences of results can be observed, and so some attempts to infer
> the probability from the observed frequency will get it wrong.  Still,
> any particular mind observing any one of these sequences will reason
> just as the conventional view would recommend:  note the frequency,
> infer that the probability is close to the frequency, and hope that
> you are not the unlucky victim of an improbable sample.  Of course the
> logic of this kind of statistical inference is itself a matter of
> active philosophical controversy.  But it will be just the same
> inference on both the many minds and the conventional view.
>
> [...]
>
> It is worth observing that, on the conventional view, what agents want
> from their choices are the desired results, rather than that these
> results be objectively probable (a choice that makes the results
> objectively probable, but unluckily doesn't produce them, doesn't give
> you what you want).  Given this, there is room to raise the question:
> why are rational agents well-advised to choose actions that make their
> desired results objectively probable?  Rather surprisingly, is no good
> answer to this question.  (After all, you can't assume you will get
> what you want if you so choose.)  From Pierce on, philosophers have
> been forced to conclude that it is simply a primitive fact about
> rational choice that you ought to weight future possibilities
> according to known objective probabilities in making decisions.
>
> The many minds view simply says the same thing.  Rational agents ought
> to choose those actions which will maximize the known objective
> probability of desired results.  As to why they ought to do this,
> there is no further explanation.  This is simply a basic truth about
> rational choice.
>
> [...]
>
> I supect that this basic truth actually makes more sense on the many
> minds view than on the conventional view.  For on the conventional
> view there is a puzzle about the relation between this truth and the
> further thought that ultimate success in action depends on desired
> results actually occurring.  On the many minds view, by contrast,
> there is no such further thought, since all possible results occur,
> desired and undesired, and so no puzzle:  in effect there is only one
> criterion of success in action, namely, maximizing the known objective
> probability of desired results.  However, this is really the subject
> for another paper, not least because the idea that agents ought to
> maximize the known objective probability of desired results itself
> hides a number of complexities which I have been skating over here."
>
> >

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Bruno Marchal]

Marty,

On 28 May 2009, at 15:41, m.a. wrote:

             If there was never a physical world to which living creatures adapted after millions of years  and which after further eons prompted the evolution of consciousness, do we conclude that comp and numbers alone created such a universe and then created people to experience it...all through the chance combinations of numbers? Are we saying that monkeys on typewriters authored everything we see about us?  If so, how did such purposefulness and intentionality get into pure comp?  

No, it is not the combination by chance, it is, on the contrary, due to the extreme richness and complexity of the relation between numbers.  It makes it possible to take the numbers, when structured by addition and multiplication, as the source of the emerging very long and deep computational histories, themselves filtered, and non trivially restructured, by they possible self-aware universal numbers. No chance is at play there. That is even why you can extract the physical laws and justify why they are laws.

Probabilities appears as internal first person modalities because no machine, and thus not us (assuming comp) can ever know in which histories they are. They can know this (betting on comp), and they can infer that they are supported by many histories, leading to a many-world interpretation of arithmetic.

Monkeys on typewriter authored all the books, like a counting algorithm. You can say it generates all programs, but it execute none of those programs. The monkeys will generate books describing computation, but never any non trivial computations.

The universal dovetailer, and the arithmetical truth (actually a tiny part of it) not only generate all programs, but execute them, in the platonic static sense, but still, the arithmetical true relations defines computations, not just description of computation.

Look at the Mandelbrot set link I give to Kelly. There is nothing really random in that structure, yet the more you zoom in, the more intricate the structure appears. You can perhaps intuit that something is evolving there.

After Gödel the mathematicians have to abandonthe idea to ever find an unifying complete theory of the numbers with their additive and multiplicative structure. The monkey's type writing is trivial. 

You cannot faithfully embed computer science in the numbers or in the monkey's typewitting, but you can fully embed computer science in the additive and multiplicative structure of the numbers. It is lawful and unpredictable by complexity and deepness, not by chance and randomness.

Monkeys = numbers = not very rich.

Universe emerge not from numbers, but from the logical relations among the numbers. That is so rich that there is no TOE for that!

Bruno

 

 

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Kelly Harmon" <harmonk00@...>

To: <everything-list@...>

Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 3:02 AM

Subject: Re: Consciousness is information?

> 
> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> wrote:
>>
>> Since you told me that you accept comp, after all, and do no more
>> oppose it to your view, I think we agree, at least on many things.
>> Indeed you agree with the hypothesis, and your philosophy appears to
>> be a consequence of the hypothesis.
> 
> Excellent!
> 
> 
>> It remains possible that we have a disagreement concerning the
>> probability, and this has some importance, because it is the use of
>> probability (or credibility) which makes the consequences of comp
>> testable. More in the comment below.
> 
> So my only problem with the usual view of probability is that it
> doesn't seem to me to emerge naturally from a platonic theory of
> conscious.  Is your proposal something that would conceivably be
> arrived at by a rational observer in one of the (supposedly) rare
> worlds where white rabbits are common?   Does it have features that
> would lead one to predict the absence of white rabbits, or does it
> just offer a way to explain their absence after the fact?
> 
> As I mentioned before, assuming computationalism it seems to me that
> it is theoretically possible to create a computer simulation that
> would manifest any imaginable conscious entity observing any
> imaginable "world", including schizophrenic beings observing
> psychedelic realities.  So, then further assuming Platonism, all of
> these strange experiences should exist in Platonia.  Along with all
> possible normal experiences.
> 
> I don't see any obvious, non-"ad hoc" mechanism to eliminate or
> minimize strange experiences relative to normal experiences, and I
> don't think adding one is justified just for that purpose, or even
> necessary since an unconstrained platonic theory does have the obvious
> virtue of saying that there will always be Kellys like myself who have
> never seen white rabbits.
> 
> As for your earlier questions about how you should bet, I have two responses.
> 
> First that there exists a Bruno who will make every possible bet.
> One particular Bruno will make his bet on a whim, while another Bruno
> will do so only after long consideration, and yet another will make a
> wild bet in a fit of madness.  Each Bruno will "feel" like he made a
> choice, but actually all possible Brunos exist, so all possible bets
> are made, for all possible subjectively "felt" reasons.
> 
> Second, and probably more helpfully, I'll quote this paper
> (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c6/04/17/78/manymindsandprobs.doc) by
> David Papineau, which sounds reasonable to me:
> 
> "But many minds theorists can respond that the logic of statistical
> inference is just the same on their view as on the conventional view.
> True, on their view in any repeated trial all the different possible
> sequences of results can be observed, and so some attempts to infer
> the probability from the observed frequency will get it wrong.  Still,
> any particular mind observing any one of these sequences will reason
> just as the conventional view would recommend:  note the frequency,
> infer that the probability is close to the frequency, and hope that
> you are not the unlucky victim of an improbable sample.  Of course the
> logic of this kind of statistical inference is itself a matter of
> active philosophical controversy.  But it will be just the same
> inference on both the many minds and the conventional view.
> 
> [...]
> 
> It is worth observing that, on the conventional view, what agents want
> from their choices are the desired results, rather than that these
> results be objectively probable (a choice that makes the results
> objectively probable, but unluckily doesn't produce them, doesn't give
> you what you want).  Given this, there is room to raise the question:
> why are rational agents well-advised to choose actions that make their
> desired results objectively probable?  Rather surprisingly, is no good
> answer to this question.  (After all, you can't assume you will get
> what you want if you so choose.)  From Pierce on, philosophers have
> been forced to conclude that it is simply a primitive fact about
> rational choice that you ought to weight future possibilities
> according to known objective probabilities in making decisions.
> 
> The many minds view simply says the same thing.  Rational agents ought
> to choose those actions which will maximize the known objective
> probability of desired results.  As to why they ought to do this,
> there is no further explanation.  This is simply a basic truth about
> rational choice.
> 
> [...]
> 
> I supect that this basic truth actually makes more sense on the many
> minds view than on the conventional view.  For on the conventional
> view there is a puzzle about the relation between this truth and the
> further thought that ultimate success in action depends on desired
> results actually occurring.  On the many minds view, by contrast,
> there is no such further thought, since all possible results occur,
> desired and undesired, and so no puzzle:  in effect there is only one
> criterion of success in action, namely, maximizing the known objective
> probability of desired results.  However, this is really the subject
> for another paper, not least because the idea that agents ought to
> maximize the known objective probability of desired results itself
> hides a number of complexities which I have been skating over here."
> 
> 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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[m.a.-2]

Some parts of this message have been removed. Learn more about Nabble's security policy.

Bruno,

            Thank you for this detailed reply. May I pose one follow-up question? Is the universal dovetailer some sort of God/Machine that is mathematical like the rest of creation but separate from it and of a higher order of purpose? If so, is there an explanation for its existence that doesn't exclude a deity?

                                                                                                                                                                                                        marty a.

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: marchal@...

To: everything-list@...

Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 4:33 PM

Subject: Re: Consciousness is information?

Marty,

On 28 May 2009, at 15:41, m.a. wrote:

             If there was never a physical world to which living creatures adapted after millions of years  and which after further eons prompted the evolution of consciousness, do we conclude that comp and numbers alone created such a universe and then created people to experience it...all through the chance combinations of numbers? Are we saying that monkeys on typewriters authored everything we see about us?  If so, how did such purposefulness and intentionality get into pure comp?  

No, it is not the combination by chance, it is, on the contrary, due to the extreme richness and complexity of the relation between numbers.  It makes it possible to take the numbers, when structured by addition and multiplication, as the source of the emerging very long and deep computational histories, themselves filtered, and non trivially restructured, by they possible self-aware universal numbers. No chance is at play there. That is even why you can extract the physical laws and justify why they are laws.

Probabilities appears as internal first person modalities because no machine, and thus not us (assuming comp) can ever know in which histories they are. They can know this (betting on comp), and they can infer that they are supported by many histories, leading to a many-world interpretation of arithmetic.

Monkeys on typewriter authored all the books, like a counting algorithm. You can say it generates all programs, but it execute none of those programs. The monkeys will generate books describing computation, but never any non trivial computations.

The universal dovetailer, and the arithmetical truth (actually a tiny part of it) not only generate all programs, but execute them, in the platonic static sense, but still, the arithmetical true relations defines computations, not just description of computation.

Look at the Mandelbrot set link I give to Kelly. There is nothing really random in that structure, yet the more you zoom in, the more intricate the structure appears. You can perhaps intuit that something is evolving there.

After Gödel the mathematicians have to abandonthe idea to ever find an unifying complete theory of the numbers with their additive and multiplicative structure. The monkey's type writing is trivial. 

You cannot faithfully embed computer science in the numbers or in the monkey's typewitting, but you can fully embed computer science in the additive and multiplicative structure of the numbers. It is lawful and unpredictable by complexity and deepness, not by chance and randomness.

Monkeys = numbers = not very rich.

Universe emerge not from numbers, but from the logical relations among the numbers. That is so rich that there is no TOE for that!

Bruno

 

 

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Kelly Harmon" <harmonk00@...>

To: <everything-list@...>

Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 3:02 AM

Subject: Re: Consciousness is information?

> 

> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> wrote:
>>
>> Since you told me that you accept comp, after all, and do no more
>> oppose it to your view, I think we agree, at least on many things.
>> Indeed you agree with the hypothesis, and your philosophy appears to
>> be a consequence of the hypothesis.
> 
> Excellent!
> 
> 
>> It remains possible that we have a disagreement concerning the
>> probability, and this has some importance, because it is the use of
>> probability (or credibility) which makes the consequences of comp
>> testable. More in the comment below.
> 
> So my only problem with the usual view of probability is that it
> doesn't seem to me to emerge naturally from a platonic theory of
> conscious.  Is your proposal something that would conceivably be
> arrived at by a rational observer in one of the (supposedly) rare
> worlds where white rabbits are common?   Does it have features that
> would lead one to predict the absence of white rabbits, or does it
> just offer a way to explain their absence after the fact?
> 
> As I mentioned before, assuming computationalism it seems to me that
> it is theoretically possible to create a computer simulation that
> would manifest any imaginable conscious entity observing any
> imaginable "world", including schizophrenic beings observing
> psychedelic realities.  So, then further assuming Platonism, all of
> these strange experiences should exist in Platonia.  Along with all
> possible normal experiences.
> 
> I don't see any obvious, non-"ad hoc" mechanism to eliminate or
> minimize strange experiences relative to normal experiences, and I
> don't think adding one is justified just for that purpose, or even
> necessary since an unconstrained platonic theory does have the obvious
> virtue of saying that there will always be Kellys like myself who have
> never seen white rabbits.
> 
> As for your earlier questions about how you should bet, I have two responses.
> 
> First that there exists a Bruno who will make every possible bet.
> One particular Bruno will make his bet on a whim, while another Bruno
> will do so only after long consideration, and yet another will make a
> wild bet in a fit of madness.  Each Bruno will "feel" like he made a
> choice, but actually all possible Brunos exist, so all possible bets
> are made, for all possible subjectively "felt" reasons.
> 
> Second, and probably more helpfully, I'll quote this paper
> (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c6/04/17/78/manymindsandprobs.doc) by
> David Papineau, which sounds reasonable to me:
> 
> "But many minds theorists can respond that the logic of statistical
> inference is just the same on their view as on the conventional view.
> True, on their view in any repeated trial all the different possible
> sequences of results can be observed, and so some attempts to infer
> the probability from the observed frequency will get it wrong.  Still,
> any particular mind observing any one of these sequences will reason
> just as the conventional view would recommend:  note the frequency,
> infer that the probability is close to the frequency, and hope that
> you are not the unlucky victim of an improbable sample.  Of course the
> logic of this kind of statistical inference is itself a matter of
> active philosophical controversy.  But it will be just the same
> inference on both the many minds and the conventional view.
> 
> [...]
> 
> It is worth observing that, on the conventional view, what agents want
> from their choices are the desired results, rather than that these
> results be objectively probable (a choice that makes the results
> objectively probable, but unluckily doesn't produce them, doesn't give
> you what you want).  Given this, there is room to raise the question:
> why are rational agents well-advised to choose actions that make their
> desired results objectively probable?  Rather surprisingly, is no good
> answer to this question.  (After all, you can't assume you will get
> what you want if you so choose.)  From Pierce on, philosophers have
> been forced to conclude that it is simply a primitive fact about
> rational choice that you ought to weight future possibilities
> according to known objective probabilities in making decisions.
> 
> The many minds view simply says the same thing.  Rational agents ought
> to choose those actions which will maximize the known objective
> probability of desired results.  As to why they ought to do this,
> there is no further explanation.  This is simply a basic truth about
> rational choice.
> 
> [...]
> 
> I supect that this basic truth actually makes more sense on the many
> minds view than on the conventional view.  For on the conventional
> view there is a puzzle about the relation between this truth and the
> further thought that ultimate success in action depends on desired
> results actually occurring.  On the many minds view, by contrast,
> there is no such further thought, since all possible results occur,
> desired and undesired, and so no puzzle:  in effect there is only one
> criterion of success in action, namely, maximizing the known objective
> probability of desired results.  However, this is really the subject
> for another paper, not least because the idea that agents ought to
> maximize the known objective probability of desired results itself
> hides a number of complexities which I have been skating over here."
> 
> 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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[Bruno Marchal]

Hi Marty,

On 29 May 2009, at 02:32, m.a. wrote:

Bruno,

            Thank you for this detailed reply. May I pose one follow-up question? Is the universal dovetailer some sort of God/Machine that is mathematical like the rest of creation but separate from it and of a higher order of purpose?

The universal dovetailer (UD) is a program. A finite piece of code, which, when executed, generates all programs, in all possible programming languages, and which also executes all those programs, by dovetailing on those executions. In that sense the UD is "just" a program among all programs. When it runs (platonistically or not) it generates itself, and executes itself, an infinity of times.

I will explain this in all details to Kim. It is not a trivial subject, and the more you know about the diagonalization technic, the more you are amazed that the UD can exist. But its existence is a consequence of simple axioms defining addition and multiplication of the natural numbers. Its "universal" character is a consequence of Church's thesis, which is needed for accepting the generality of incompleteness and limitation theorems.

If so, is there an explanation for its existence that doesn't exclude a deity?

You can explain the existence of the UD without invoking any deity. But this does not exclude any (non naïve or literal) deity. 

Then, if you are willing to define deities by "non turing emulable" (mathematical) subject or objects, like actual infinities, then, even machines (like us, with comp) cannot NOT invoke deities when trying to learn some truth about just the numbers and the machines. We need even a transfinite ladder of deities to grasp more and more the machine's abilities.

The opposition between science and religion is a red herring. Science is opposed only to authoritative arguments. The confusion comes from the fact that many religions, including some form of atheism, are based on authoritative arguments, apparently as a consequence of their temporal institutionalization. 

But real, ideal perhaps, science leads only to modesty and respect, especially in regard with fundamental question.

Science cannot have definite answers on fundamental questions, it can only enlarge the awe, the astonishment. 

Science cannot kill the mystery, but it can clean it better and better from the superstitions and the fake mysteries, generally brought by the fear sellers and the egocentric manipulators.

If you follow the explanation to Kim, there will be a point where you will understand that science is really what breaks down all possible form of reductive or reductionist explanation. This can explain why the pseudo religious authoritarians are used to fight against science, and against freedom.

Comp superficially looks like a reductionism, but it is the most powerful vaccine against reductionism.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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[John Mikes]

Bruno, and List:

 

I think Marty's question brought us to the point when everybody's pesonal belief (worldview? mindset?) comes into consideration. Some base the totality upon the (consciousness(?) provided) Platonsim, numbers, even physical world - view, others upon mysticism, religion, diverse phylosophies (ontologies) and a vast variety of mixtures among all these and others.

To base anything 'upon' consciousness has the prerequisite of such, preceeding (even if reversely denied) the theory in favor FOR the generation of such. We (asumed that we are) are 'thinking' out our theories HOW to think out anything.

"If there was never a physical world..."  can be asked in a negative connotation only by an extreme solipsist

"...comp and numbers alone created such a universe and then created people to experience it...."

rather: generated in their experience the idea of 'comp and numbers'? (which is universe-related) AFTER they were created by what they created. 

"...how did [such] purposefulness and intentionality get into pure comp?   did it indeed? isn't comp as anything reasonable, deterministic in the sense that relations provide relations? that no relations occur if only unrelated (random?) elements come into play? (Isn't THAT also a human idea by the darn consciousness?)

 

I planed to illustrate "my" basis and presently developed best own belief system, but it is not of general interest and I don't want to persuade (convert? seduce?) anybody to similar position.

 

Peace!

 

John Mikes

 

 

 

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 9:41 AM, m.a. <marty684@...> wrote:

Bruno,

             If there was never a physical world to which living creatures adapted after millions of years  and which after further eons prompted the evolution of consciousness, do we conclude that comp and numbers alone created such a universe and then created people to experience it...all through the chance combinations of numbers? Are we saying that monkeys on typewriters authored everything we see about us?  If so, how did such purposefulness and intentionality get into pure comp?  

                                                                                                                                    marty a.

 

 

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Kelly Harmon" <harmonk00@...>

To: <everything-list@...>

Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 3:02 AM

Subject: Re: Consciousness is information?

>
> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> wrote:
>>
>> Since you told me that you accept comp, after all, and do no more
>> oppose it to your view, I think we agree, at least on many things.
>> Indeed you agree with the hypothesis, and your philosophy appears to
>> be a consequence of the hypothesis.
>
> Excellent!
>
>
>> It remains possible that we have a disagreement concerning the
>> probability, and this has some importance, because it is the use of
>> probability (or credibility) which makes the consequences of comp
>> testable. More in the comment below.
>
> So my only problem with the usual view of probability is that it
> doesn't seem to me to emerge naturally from a platonic theory of
> conscious.  Is your proposal something that would conceivably be
> arrived at by a rational observer in one of the (supposedly) rare
> worlds where white rabbits are common?   Does it have features that
> would lead one to predict the absence of white rabbits, or does it
> just offer a way to explain their absence after the fact?
>
> As I mentioned before, assuming computationalism it seems to me that
> it is theoretically possible to create a computer simulation that
> would manifest any imaginable conscious entity observing any
> imaginable "world", including schizophrenic beings observing
> psychedelic realities.  So, then further assuming Platonism, all of
> these strange experiences should exist in Platonia.  Along with all
> possible normal experiences.
>
> I don't see any obvious, non-"ad hoc" mechanism to eliminate or
> minimize strange experiences relative to normal experiences, and I
> don't think adding one is justified just for that purpose, or even
> necessary since an unconstrained platonic theory does have the obvious
> virtue of saying that there will always be Kellys like myself who have
> never seen white rabbits.
>
> As for your earlier questions about how you should bet, I have two responses.
>
> First that there exists a Bruno who will make every possible bet.
> One particular Bruno will make his bet on a whim, while another Bruno
> will do so only after long consideration, and yet another will make a
> wild bet in a fit of madness.  Each Bruno will "feel" like he made a
> choice, but actually all possible Brunos exist, so all possible bets
> are made, for all possible subjectively "felt" reasons.
>
> Second, and probably more helpfully, I'll quote this paper
> (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c6/04/17/78/manymindsandprobs.doc) by
> David Papineau, which sounds reasonable to me:
>
> "But many minds theorists can respond that the logic of statistical
> inference is just the same on their view as on the conventional view.
> True, on their view in any repeated trial all the different possible
> sequences of results can be observed, and so some attempts to infer
> the probability from the observed frequency will get it wrong.  Still,
> any particular mind observing any one of these sequences will reason
> just as the conventional view would recommend:  note the frequency,
> infer that the probability is close to the frequency, and hope that
> you are not the unlucky victim of an improbable sample.  Of course the
> logic of this kind of statistical inference is itself a matter of
> active philosophical controversy.  But it will be just the same
> inference on both the many minds and the conventional view.
>
> [...]
>
> It is worth observing that, on the conventional view, what agents want
> from their choices are the desired results, rather than that these
> results be objectively probable (a choice that makes the results
> objectively probable, but unluckily doesn't produce them, doesn't give
> you what you want).  Given this, there is room to raise the question:
> why are rational agents well-advised to choose actions that make their
> desired results objectively probable?  Rather surprisingly, is no good
> answer to this question.  (After all, you can't assume you will get
> what you want if you so choose.)  From Pierce on, philosophers have
> been forced to conclude that it is simply a primitive fact about
> rational choice that you ought to weight future possibilities
> according to known objective probabilities in making decisions.
>
> The many minds view simply says the same thing.  Rational agents ought
> to choose those actions which will maximize the known objective
> probability of desired results.  As to why they ought to do this,
> there is no further explanation.  This is simply a basic truth about
> rational choice.
>
> [...]
>
> I supect that this basic truth actually makes more sense on the many
> minds view than on the conventional view.  For on the conventional
> view there is a puzzle about the relation between this truth and the
> further thought that ultimate success in action depends on desired
> results actually occurring.  On the many minds view, by contrast,
> there is no such further thought, since all possible results occur,
> desired and undesired, and so no puzzle:  in effect there is only one
> criterion of success in action, namely, maximizing the known objective
> probability of desired results.  However, this is really the subject
> for another paper, not least because the idea that agents ought to
> maximize the known objective probability of desired results itself
> hides a number of complexities which I have been skating over here."
>
>

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[Kelly Harmon]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> wrote:
>
> What do you thing is the more probable events that you will live which
> one is the more probable? What is your most rational choice among

So if nothing is riding on the outcome of my choice, then it seems
rational to choose the option that will make me right in the most
futures, which is option 6, white noise.  If there's one world for
each unique pattern of pixels, then most of those worlds will be
"white noise" worlds, and making the choice that makes me right in the
most worlds seems as rational as anything else.

Though, if there is something significant riding on whether I choose
correctly or not, then I have to decide what is most important to me:
minimizing my suffering in the worlds where I'm wrong, or maximizing
my gains in the worlds where I'm right.

If there isn't significant suffering likely in the losing worlds, then
I will be much more likely to base my decision on the observed or
calculated probabilities, as Papineau suggests.

BUT, if there is significant suffering likely in the worlds where I
lose, I might very well focus making a choice that will minimize that
suffering.  In which case I will generally not base much of my
decision on the "probabilities", since it is my view that all outcomes
occur.

However, going a little further, this assumes that I only make one
bet.  As I mentioned before, I think that I will make all possible
bets.  So, even if I make the "safe" suffering-minimizing bet in this
branch, I know that in a closely related branch I will make the risky
"gain-maximizing" bet and say to hell with the Kellys in the losing
worlds.

So I know that even if I make the safe bet, there's another Kelly two
worlds over making the risky bet, which will result in a Kelly
suffering the consequences of losing over there anyway.  So maybe I'll
say, "screw it", and make the risky bet myself.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter.  Every Kelly in every situation with
every history is actualized.  So my subjective feeling that I am
making choices is irrelevant.  Every choice is going to get made, so
my "choice" is really just me taking my place in the continuum of
Kellys.


> And I am asking you, here and now, what do you expect the most
> probable experience you will feel tomorrow, when I will do that
> experiment.

So to speak of expectations is to appeal to my "single world"
intuitions.  But we know that intuition isn't a reliable guide, since
there are many aspects of reality that are unintuitive.  So I think
the fact that I have an intuitive expectation that things will happen
a certain way, and only that way, is neither here nor there.

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