Wow, that’s all kinds of crazy. I’m not sure how much as I’m not a mathematical physicist—MWI and quantum mechanics implied by Newton? Really? - but one big flag for me is pg187-188 where he doggedly insists that the universe isclosed, although as far as I know the current cosmological consensus is the opposite, and I trust them a heck of a lot more than a fellow who tries to prove his Christianity with his physics.
(This is actually convenient for me: a few weeks ago I was wondering on IRC what the current status of Tipler’s theories were, given that he had clearly stated they were valid only if the universe were closed and if the Higgs boson was within certain values, IIRC, but I was feeling too lazy to look it all up.)
And the extraction of a transcendent system of ethics from a Feynman quote...
A moment’s thought will convince the reader that Feynman has described not only the process of science, but the process of rationality itself. Notice that the bold-faced words are all moral imperatives. Science, in other words, is fundamentally based on ethics. More generally, rational thought itself is based on ethics. It is based on a particular ethical system. A true human level intelligence program will thus of necessity have to incorporate this particular ethical system. Our human brains do, whether we like to acknowledge it or not, and whether we want to make use of this ethical system in all circumstances. When we do not make use of this system of ethics, we generate cargo cult science rather than science.
This is just too wrong for words. This is like saying that looking both ways before crossing the street is obviously a part of rational street-crossing—a moment’s thought will convince the reader (Dark Arts) - and so we can collapse Hume’s fork and promote looking both ways to a universal meta-ethical principal that future AIs will obey!
An AI program must incorporate this morality, otherwise it would not be an AI at all.
Show me this morality in the AIXI equation or GTFO!
After all, what is a computer program but a series of imperative sentences?
A map from range to domain, a proof in propositional logic, or a series of lambda equations and reductions all come to mind...
In fact, I claim that an ethical system that encompasses all human actions, and more generally, all actions of any set of rational beings (in particular, artificial intelligences) can be deduced from the Feynman axioms. In particular, note that destroying other rational beings would make impossible the honestly Feynman requires.
One man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens. That the ‘honestly’ requires other entities is proof that this cannot be an ethical system which encompasses all rational beings.
Hence, they will be part of the community of intelligent beings deciding whether to resurrect us or not. Do not children try to see to their parents’ health and well-being? Do they not try and see their parent survive (if it doesn’t cost too much, and it the far future, it won’t)? They do, and they will, both in the future, and in the far future.
Any argument that rests on a series of rhetorical questions is untrustworthy. Specifically, sure, I can in 5 seconds come up with a reason they would not preserve us: there are X mind-states we can be in while still maintaining identity or continuity; there are Y (Y < X) that we would like or would value; with infinite computing power, we will exhaust all Y. At that point, by definition, we could choose to not be preserved. Hence, I have proven we will inevitably choose to die even if uploaded to Tipler’s Singularity.
(Correct and true? Dunno. But let’s say this shows Tipler is massively overreaching...)
What a terrible paper altogether. This was a peer-reviewed journal, right?
The quote that stood out for me was the following:
The nineteenth century physicists also believed in the aether, as did Newton. There were many aether theories available, but only one was consistent with observation: H.A. Lorentz’s theory, which simply asserted that the Maxwell equations were the equations for the aether. In 1904, Lorentz showed (Einstein et al., 1923) that this theory of the aether—equivalently the Maxwell equations—implied that absolute time could not exist, and he deduced the transformations between space and time that now bear his name. [...] That is, general relativity is already there in 19th century classical mechanics.
Now, all that’s well and good, except for one, tiny, teensy little flaw: there is no such thing as aether. Michelson and Morley proved that quite conclusively in 1887. Tipler, in this case, appears to be basing his argument on a theory that was discredited over a century ago. Yes, some of the conclusions of aetheric theory are superficially similar to the conclusions of relativity. That, however, doesn’t make the aetheric theory any less wrong.
Hi, Quanticle. You state that “there is no such thing as aether. Michelson and Morley proved that quite conclusively in 1887.” For the details on how General Relativity is inherently an æther theory, see physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler and mathematician Maurice J. Dupré′s following paper:
Maurice J. Dupré and Frank J. Tipler, “General Relativity as an Æther Theory”, International Journal of Modern Physics D, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Feb. 2012), Art. No. 1250011, 16 pp., doi:10.1142/S0218271812500113, bibcode: 2012IJMPD..2150011D, http://webcitation.org/6FEvt2NZ8 . Also at arXiv:1007.4572, July 26, 2010, http://arxiv.org/abs/1007.4572 .
Also, this makes me wonder if the SIAI’s intention to publish in philosophy journals is such a good idea. Presumably part of the point was for them to gain status by being associated with respected academic thinkers. But this isn’t really the kind of thinking anyone would want to be associated with...
The way I look at it, it’s ‘if such can survive peer review, what do people make of things whose authors either did not try to pass peer review or could not pass peer review? They probably think pretty poorly of them.’
I can’t speak to this particular article, but oftentimes special editions of journals, like this one (i.e. effectively a symposium on the work of another), are not subjected to rigorous peer review. The responses are often solicited by the editors and there is minimal correction or critique of the content of the papers, certainly nothing like you’d normally get for an unsolicited article in a top philosophy journal.
But, to reiterate, I can’t say whether or not the Journal of Consciousness Studies did that in this instance.
I can’t speak to this particular article, but oftentimes special editions of journals, like this one (i.e. effectively a symposium on the work of another), are not subjected to rigorous peer review.
On the one hand, this is the cached defense that I have for the Sokal hoax, so now I have an internal conflict on my hands. If I believe that Tipler’s paper shouldn’t have been published, then it’s unclear why Sokal’s should have been.
Someone think the visibility for philosophers have pratically impact for the solution of technical problems? Apparently who can possibly cause some harm in the near time are AI researchs, but much of these people are scalating Internet flux or working on their own projects.
Gaining visibility is a good thing when what’s needed is social acceptance, or when is necessary more people to solution a problem. Publishing in peer reviews (philosophical)journals can give more scholars to the cause, but more people caring about AI don’t mean a good thing per se.
What a terrible paper altogether. This was a peer-reviewed journal, right?
Some things even peer-review can’t cure. I looked through a few of their back-issues and was far from impressed. On the other hand, this ranking puts them above Topoi, Nous, and Ethics. I’m not even sure what that means—maybe their scale is broken?
I’m very grateful to the undergraduate professor of mine that introduced me to Penrose and Tipler as a freshman. I think at that time I was on the cusp of falling into a similar failure state, and reading Shadows of the Mind and The Physics of Immortality shocked me out of what would have been a very long dogmatic slumber indeed.
One man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens. That the ‘honestly’ requires other entities is proof that this cannot be an ethical system which encompasses all rational beings.
And yet humans kill eachother. His only possible retort is that some humans are not rational. Better hope that nobody builds an “irrational” AI.
Hi, Gwern. You asked, ”… MWI and quantum mechanics implied by Newton? Really?” Yes, the Hamilton-Jacobi Equation, which is the most powerful formulation of Newtonian mechanics, is, like the Schrödinger Equation, a multiverse equation. Quantum Mechanics is the unique specialization of the Hamilton-Jacobi Equation with the specification imposed that determinism is maintained: since the Hamilton-Jacobi Equation is indeterministic, because when particle trajectories cross paths a singularity is produced (i.e., the values in the equations become infinite) and so it is not possible to predict (even in principle) what happens after that. On the inherent multiverse nature of Quantum Mechanics, see physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler’s following paper:
Regarding the universe necessarily being temporally closed according to the known laws of physics: all the proposed solutions to the black hole information issue except for Prof. Tipler’s Omega Point cosmology share the common feature of using proposed new laws of physics that have never been experimentally confirmed—and indeed which violate the known laws of physics—such as with Prof. Stephen Hawking’s paper on the black hole information issue which is dependent on the conjectured String Theory-based anti-de Sitter space/conformal field theory correspondence (AdS/CFT correspondence). (See S. W. Hawking, “Information loss in black holes”, Physical Review D, Vol. 72, No. 8 [Oct. 15, 2005], Art. No. 084013, 4 pp.) Hence, the end of the universe in finite proper time via collapse before a black hole completely evaporates is required if unitarity is to remain unviolated, i.e., if General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics—which are what the proofs of Hawking radiation derive from—are true statements of how the world works.
Pertaining to your comments doubting “a universal meta-ethical principal that future AIs will obey!”: Prof. Tipler is quite correct regarding his aforecited discussion on ethics. In order to understand his point here, one must keep in mind that the Omega Point cosmology is a mathematical theorem per the known physical laws (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics) that requires sapient life (in the form of, e.g., immortal superintelligent human-mind computer-uploads and artificial intelligences) take control over all matter in the universe, for said life to eventually force the collapse of the universe, and for the computational resources of the universe (in terms of both processor speed and memory space) to diverge to infinity as the universe collapses into a final singularity, termed the Omega Point. Said Omega Point cosmology is also an intrinsic component of the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics, of which TOE is itself mathematically forced by the aforesaid known physical laws. Thus, existence itself selects which ethics is correct in order for existence to exist. Individual actors, and individuals acting in groups, can of course go rogue, but there is a limit to how bad things can get: e.g., life collectively cannot choose to extirpate itself.
You go on to state, “there are X mind-states we can be in while still maintaining identity or continuity; there are Y (Y < X) that we would like or would value; with infinite computing power, we will exhaust all Y. At that point, by definition, we could choose to not be preserved. Hence, I have proven we will inevitably choose to die even if uploaded to Tipler’s Singularity.” Yet if Y is infinite, then this presents no problem to literal immortality. Traditional Christian theology has maintained that Y is indeed infinite.
Interestingly, the Omega Point final singularity has all the unique properties (quiddities) claimed for God in the traditional religions. For much more on Prof. Tipler’s Omega Point cosmology and the details on how it uniquely conforms to, and precisely matches, the cosmology described in the New Testament, see my following article, which also addresses the societal implications of the Omega Point cosmology:
Additionally, in the below resource are different sections which contain some helpful notes and commentary by me pertaining to multimedia wherein Prof. Tipler explains the Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model TOE.
In much the same way rhetorically asking ‘After all, what is a computer program but a proof in an intuitionistic logic?’ doesn’t rule out ‘a series of imperative sentences’.
That also isn’t an AI in the relevant sense, as it doesn’t actually exist. Tipler would simply deny that such an AI would be able to anything for Searlian reasons. You can’t prove that an AIXI-style AI will ever work, and it’s presumably part of Tipler’s argument that it won’t work, so simply asserting that it will work is sort of pointless. I’m just saying that if you want to engage with his argument you’ll have to get closer to it ’cuz you’re not yet in bowshot range. If your intention was to repeat the standard counterargument rather than show why it’s correct then I misinterpreted your intention; apologies if so.
Tipler would simply deny that such an AI would be able to anything for Searlian reasons. You can’t prove that an AIXI-style AI will ever work, and it’s presumably part of Tipler’s argument that it won’t work, so simply asserting that it will work is sort of pointless.
The AIXI proofs seem pretty adequate to me. They may not be useful, but that’s different from not working.
More to the point, nothing in Tipler’s paper gave me the impression he had so much as heard of AIXI, and it’s not clear to me that he does accept Searlian reasons—what is that, by the way? It can’t be Chinese room stuff since Tipler has been gung ho on uploading for decades now.
The AIXI proofs seem pretty adequate to me. They may not be useful, but that’s different from not working.
It’s really not obvious that if you run an AIXI-like AI it will actually do anything other than self-destruct, no matter how much juice you give it. There have been various papers on this theme recently and it’s a common LW meme (“AIXI drops an anvil on its head”).
By “Searlian reasons” I mean something like emphasizing the difference between syntax and semantics and the difficulty of the grounding problem as representative of this important dichotomy between narrow and general intelligence that philosophers of mind get angry with non-philosophers of mind for ignoring.
I don’t think Tipler’s not having heard of AIXI is particularly damning, even if true.
It’s really not obvious that if you run an AIXI-like AI it will actually do anything other than self-destruct, no matter how much juice you give it. There have been various papers on this theme recently and it’s a common LW meme (“AIXI drops an anvil on its head”).
I don’t think it’s obvious it would self-destruct—any more than it’s obvious humans will not self-destruct. (And that anvil phrase is common to Eliezer.) The papers you allude to apply just as well to humans.
I don’t think Tipler’s not having heard of AIXI is particularly damning, even if true.
I believe you are the one who is claiming AIXI will never work, and suggesting Tipler might think like you.
Tipler paper
Wow, that’s all kinds of crazy. I’m not sure how much as I’m not a mathematical physicist—MWI and quantum mechanics implied by Newton? Really? - but one big flag for me is pg187-188 where he doggedly insists that the universe is closed, although as far as I know the current cosmological consensus is the opposite, and I trust them a heck of a lot more than a fellow who tries to prove his Christianity with his physics.
(This is actually convenient for me: a few weeks ago I was wondering on IRC what the current status of Tipler’s theories were, given that he had clearly stated they were valid only if the universe were closed and if the Higgs boson was within certain values, IIRC, but I was feeling too lazy to look it all up.)
And the extraction of a transcendent system of ethics from a Feynman quote...
This is just too wrong for words. This is like saying that looking both ways before crossing the street is obviously a part of rational street-crossing—a moment’s thought will convince the reader (Dark Arts) - and so we can collapse Hume’s fork and promote looking both ways to a universal meta-ethical principal that future AIs will obey!
Show me this morality in the AIXI equation or GTFO!
A map from range to domain, a proof in propositional logic, or a series of lambda equations and reductions all come to mind...
One man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens. That the ‘honestly’ requires other entities is proof that this cannot be an ethical system which encompasses all rational beings.
Any argument that rests on a series of rhetorical questions is untrustworthy. Specifically, sure, I can in 5 seconds come up with a reason they would not preserve us: there are X mind-states we can be in while still maintaining identity or continuity; there are Y (Y < X) that we would like or would value; with infinite computing power, we will exhaust all Y. At that point, by definition, we could choose to not be preserved. Hence, I have proven we will inevitably choose to die even if uploaded to Tipler’s Singularity.
(Correct and true? Dunno. But let’s say this shows Tipler is massively overreaching...)
What a terrible paper altogether. This was a peer-reviewed journal, right?
The quote that stood out for me was the following:
Now, all that’s well and good, except for one, tiny, teensy little flaw: there is no such thing as aether. Michelson and Morley proved that quite conclusively in 1887. Tipler, in this case, appears to be basing his argument on a theory that was discredited over a century ago. Yes, some of the conclusions of aetheric theory are superficially similar to the conclusions of relativity. That, however, doesn’t make the aetheric theory any less wrong.
Hi, Quanticle. You state that “there is no such thing as aether. Michelson and Morley proved that quite conclusively in 1887.” For the details on how General Relativity is inherently an æther theory, see physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler and mathematician Maurice J. Dupré′s following paper:
Maurice J. Dupré and Frank J. Tipler, “General Relativity as an Æther Theory”, International Journal of Modern Physics D, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Feb. 2012), Art. No. 1250011, 16 pp., doi:10.1142/S0218271812500113, bibcode: 2012IJMPD..2150011D, http://webcitation.org/6FEvt2NZ8 . Also at arXiv:1007.4572, July 26, 2010, http://arxiv.org/abs/1007.4572 .
Argh.
Also, this makes me wonder if the SIAI’s intention to publish in philosophy journals is such a good idea. Presumably part of the point was for them to gain status by being associated with respected academic thinkers. But this isn’t really the kind of thinking anyone would want to be associated with...
The way I look at it, it’s ‘if such can survive peer review, what do people make of things whose authors either did not try to pass peer review or could not pass peer review? They probably think pretty poorly of them.’
I can’t speak to this particular article, but oftentimes special editions of journals, like this one (i.e. effectively a symposium on the work of another), are not subjected to rigorous peer review. The responses are often solicited by the editors and there is minimal correction or critique of the content of the papers, certainly nothing like you’d normally get for an unsolicited article in a top philosophy journal.
But, to reiterate, I can’t say whether or not the Journal of Consciousness Studies did that in this instance.
On the one hand, this is the cached defense that I have for the Sokal hoax, so now I have an internal conflict on my hands. If I believe that Tipler’s paper shouldn’t have been published, then it’s unclear why Sokal’s should have been.
Oh dear, oh dear. How to resolve this conflict?
Perhaps rum...
Someone think the visibility for philosophers have pratically impact for the solution of technical problems? Apparently who can possibly cause some harm in the near time are AI researchs, but much of these people are scalating Internet flux or working on their own projects.
Gaining visibility is a good thing when what’s needed is social acceptance, or when is necessary more people to solution a problem. Publishing in peer reviews (philosophical)journals can give more scholars to the cause, but more people caring about AI don’t mean a good thing per se.
Some things even peer-review can’t cure. I looked through a few of their back-issues and was far from impressed. On the other hand, this ranking puts them above Topoi, Nous, and Ethics. I’m not even sure what that means—maybe their scale is broken?
Maybe there’s some confounding factor—like sudden recent interest in Singularity/transhumanist topics forcing the cite count up?
Unlikely, they have been highly ranked for a long time and singularity/transhumanist topics are only a very small part of what JCS covers.
Tipler did some excellent work in mathematical relativity before going off the rails shortly thereafter.
I’m very grateful to the undergraduate professor of mine that introduced me to Penrose and Tipler as a freshman. I think at that time I was on the cusp of falling into a similar failure state, and reading Shadows of the Mind and The Physics of Immortality shocked me out of what would have been a very long dogmatic slumber indeed.
And yet humans kill eachother. His only possible retort is that some humans are not rational. Better hope that nobody builds an “irrational” AI.
Hi, Gwern. You asked, ”… MWI and quantum mechanics implied by Newton? Really?” Yes, the Hamilton-Jacobi Equation, which is the most powerful formulation of Newtonian mechanics, is, like the Schrödinger Equation, a multiverse equation. Quantum Mechanics is the unique specialization of the Hamilton-Jacobi Equation with the specification imposed that determinism is maintained: since the Hamilton-Jacobi Equation is indeterministic, because when particle trajectories cross paths a singularity is produced (i.e., the values in the equations become infinite) and so it is not possible to predict (even in principle) what happens after that. On the inherent multiverse nature of Quantum Mechanics, see physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler’s following paper:
Frank J. Tipler, “Quantum nonlocality does not exist”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 111, No. 31 (Aug. 5, 2014), pp. 11281-11286, doi:10.1073/pnas.1324238111, http://www.pnas.org/content/111/31/11281.full.pdf , http://webcitation.org/6WeupHQoM .
Regarding the universe necessarily being temporally closed according to the known laws of physics: all the proposed solutions to the black hole information issue except for Prof. Tipler’s Omega Point cosmology share the common feature of using proposed new laws of physics that have never been experimentally confirmed—and indeed which violate the known laws of physics—such as with Prof. Stephen Hawking’s paper on the black hole information issue which is dependent on the conjectured String Theory-based anti-de Sitter space/conformal field theory correspondence (AdS/CFT correspondence). (See S. W. Hawking, “Information loss in black holes”, Physical Review D, Vol. 72, No. 8 [Oct. 15, 2005], Art. No. 084013, 4 pp.) Hence, the end of the universe in finite proper time via collapse before a black hole completely evaporates is required if unitarity is to remain unviolated, i.e., if General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics—which are what the proofs of Hawking radiation derive from—are true statements of how the world works.
Pertaining to your comments doubting “a universal meta-ethical principal that future AIs will obey!”: Prof. Tipler is quite correct regarding his aforecited discussion on ethics. In order to understand his point here, one must keep in mind that the Omega Point cosmology is a mathematical theorem per the known physical laws (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics) that requires sapient life (in the form of, e.g., immortal superintelligent human-mind computer-uploads and artificial intelligences) take control over all matter in the universe, for said life to eventually force the collapse of the universe, and for the computational resources of the universe (in terms of both processor speed and memory space) to diverge to infinity as the universe collapses into a final singularity, termed the Omega Point. Said Omega Point cosmology is also an intrinsic component of the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics, of which TOE is itself mathematically forced by the aforesaid known physical laws. Thus, existence itself selects which ethics is correct in order for existence to exist. Individual actors, and individuals acting in groups, can of course go rogue, but there is a limit to how bad things can get: e.g., life collectively cannot choose to extirpate itself.
You go on to state, “there are X mind-states we can be in while still maintaining identity or continuity; there are Y (Y < X) that we would like or would value; with infinite computing power, we will exhaust all Y. At that point, by definition, we could choose to not be preserved. Hence, I have proven we will inevitably choose to die even if uploaded to Tipler’s Singularity.” Yet if Y is infinite, then this presents no problem to literal immortality. Traditional Christian theology has maintained that Y is indeed infinite.
Interestingly, the Omega Point final singularity has all the unique properties (quiddities) claimed for God in the traditional religions. For much more on Prof. Tipler’s Omega Point cosmology and the details on how it uniquely conforms to, and precisely matches, the cosmology described in the New Testament, see my following article, which also addresses the societal implications of the Omega Point cosmology:
James Redford, “The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything”, Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708, https://archive.org/download/ThePhysicsOfGodAndTheQuantumGravityTheoryOfEverything/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf , http://sites.google.com/site/physicotheism/home/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf .
Additionally, in the below resource are different sections which contain some helpful notes and commentary by me pertaining to multimedia wherein Prof. Tipler explains the Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model TOE.
James Redford, “Video of Profs. Frank Tipler and Lawrence Krauss’s Debate at Caltech: Can Physics Prove God and Christianity?”, alt.sci.astro, Message-ID: jghev8tcbv02b6vn3uiq8jmelp7jijluqk[at sign]4ax[period]com , July 30, 2013, https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.sci.astro/KQWt4KcpMVo , http://archive.is/a04w9 .
Not to rescue Tipler, but:
None of these possibilities seem to exclude being also a series of imperative sentences.
In much the same way rhetorically asking ‘After all, what is a computer program but a proof in an intuitionistic logic?’ doesn’t rule out ‘a series of imperative sentences’.
The “AIXI equation” is not an AI in the relevant sense.
Fine, ‘show me this morality in a computable implementation of AIXI using the speed prior or GTFO’ (what was it called, AIXI-tl?).
That also isn’t an AI in the relevant sense, as it doesn’t actually exist. Tipler would simply deny that such an AI would be able to anything for Searlian reasons. You can’t prove that an AIXI-style AI will ever work, and it’s presumably part of Tipler’s argument that it won’t work, so simply asserting that it will work is sort of pointless. I’m just saying that if you want to engage with his argument you’ll have to get closer to it ’cuz you’re not yet in bowshot range. If your intention was to repeat the standard counterargument rather than show why it’s correct then I misinterpreted your intention; apologies if so.
The AIXI proofs seem pretty adequate to me. They may not be useful, but that’s different from not working.
More to the point, nothing in Tipler’s paper gave me the impression he had so much as heard of AIXI, and it’s not clear to me that he does accept Searlian reasons—what is that, by the way? It can’t be Chinese room stuff since Tipler has been gung ho on uploading for decades now.
It’s really not obvious that if you run an AIXI-like AI it will actually do anything other than self-destruct, no matter how much juice you give it. There have been various papers on this theme recently and it’s a common LW meme (“AIXI drops an anvil on its head”).
By “Searlian reasons” I mean something like emphasizing the difference between syntax and semantics and the difficulty of the grounding problem as representative of this important dichotomy between narrow and general intelligence that philosophers of mind get angry with non-philosophers of mind for ignoring.
I don’t think Tipler’s not having heard of AIXI is particularly damning, even if true.
I don’t think it’s obvious it would self-destruct—any more than it’s obvious humans will not self-destruct. (And that anvil phrase is common to Eliezer.) The papers you allude to apply just as well to humans.
I believe you are the one who is claiming AIXI will never work, and suggesting Tipler might think like you.
You might enjoy reading this for more context.
Yes: nonsense.