All I see here is Tegmark re-hashed and some assertions concerning the proper definitions of words like “real” and “existence”. Taboo those, are you still saying anything?
Have you read any of Paul Almond’s thoughts on the subject? Your position might be more understandable if contrasted with his.
All I see here is Tegmark re-hashed and some assertions concerning the proper definitions of words like “real” and “existence”. Taboo those, are you still saying anything?
I’m saying that our intuitive concepts of “real” and “existence” have no referents, that Tegmark’s restriction to computable structures is unnecessary, that nesting (ie. simulation) of worlds is an explicit causal dependence, and that Platonism needn’t be as silly and naïve as it sounds. Also to the extent that I am rehashing Tegmark, I’m doing so in order to combine it with Syntacticism and several other prerequisites in order to build a framework that lets me talk about “the existence of infinite sets”, because I think Eliezer’s ‘infinite set atheism’ is a confusion.
Have you read any of Paul Almond’s thoughts on the subject? Your position might be more understandable if contrasted with his.
I’ll read “Minds, Substrate, Measure and Value” (which seems relevant) and then get back to you on that one, ok?
To Minds, Substrate, Measure and Value Part 2: Extra Information About Substrate Dependence I make his Objection 9 and am not satisfied with his answer to it. I believe there is a directed graph (possibly cyclic) of mathematical structures containing simulations of other mathematical structures (where the causal relation proceeds from the simulated to the simulator), and I suspect that if we treat this graph as a Markov chain and find its invariant distribution, that this might then give us a statistical measure of the probability of being in each structure, without having to have a concept of a physical substrate which all other substrates eventually reduce to.
However, I’m not sure that any of this is essential to my OP claims; the measure I assign to structures for purposes of forecasting the future is a property of my map, not of the territory, and there needn’t be a territorial measure of ‘realness’ attached to each structure, any more than there need be a boolean property of ‘realness’ attached to each structure. I note, though, that, being unable to explain why I find myself in an Everett branch in which experiments have confirmed the Born rule (even though in many worlds (without mangling) there should be a ‘me’ in a branch in which experiments have consistently confirmed the Equal Probabilities rule), I clearly do not have an intuitive grasp of probabilities in a possible-worlds or modal-realistic universe, so I may well be barking up the wrong giraffe.
EDIT: In part 3, Almond characterises the Strong AI Hypothesis thus:
A mind exists when the appropriate algorithm is being run on a physical system.
I characterise my own position on minds thus:
A mind exists when there is an appropriate algorithm, whether that algorithm is being run on a physical system or not. If the existence-of-mind inheres in the interpretative algorithm rather than the algorithm-that-might-be-run, then the interpretative algorithm is the appropriate one; but the mind still exists, whether the interpretative algorithm is being run on a physical system or not.
This is because the idea of a ‘physical system’ is an attachment to physical realism which I reject in the OP.
All I see here is Tegmark re-hashed and some assertions concerning the proper definitions of words like “real” and “existence”. Taboo those, are you still saying anything?
Have you read any of Paul Almond’s thoughts on the subject? Your position might be more understandable if contrasted with his.
I’m saying that our intuitive concepts of “real” and “existence” have no referents, that Tegmark’s restriction to computable structures is unnecessary, that nesting (ie. simulation) of worlds is an explicit causal dependence, and that Platonism needn’t be as silly and naïve as it sounds. Also to the extent that I am rehashing Tegmark, I’m doing so in order to combine it with Syntacticism and several other prerequisites in order to build a framework that lets me talk about “the existence of infinite sets”, because I think Eliezer’s ‘infinite set atheism’ is a confusion.
I’ll read “Minds, Substrate, Measure and Value” (which seems relevant) and then get back to you on that one, ok?
Thanks, that’s a concise and satisfying reply. I look forward to seeing where you take this.
To Minds, Substrate, Measure and Value Part 2: Extra Information About Substrate Dependence I make his Objection 9 and am not satisfied with his answer to it. I believe there is a directed graph (possibly cyclic) of mathematical structures containing simulations of other mathematical structures (where the causal relation proceeds from the simulated to the simulator), and I suspect that if we treat this graph as a Markov chain and find its invariant distribution, that this might then give us a statistical measure of the probability of being in each structure, without having to have a concept of a physical substrate which all other substrates eventually reduce to.
However, I’m not sure that any of this is essential to my OP claims; the measure I assign to structures for purposes of forecasting the future is a property of my map, not of the territory, and there needn’t be a territorial measure of ‘realness’ attached to each structure, any more than there need be a boolean property of ‘realness’ attached to each structure. I note, though, that, being unable to explain why I find myself in an Everett branch in which experiments have confirmed the Born rule (even though in many worlds (without mangling) there should be a ‘me’ in a branch in which experiments have consistently confirmed the Equal Probabilities rule), I clearly do not have an intuitive grasp of probabilities in a possible-worlds or modal-realistic universe, so I may well be barking up the wrong giraffe.
EDIT: In part 3, Almond characterises the Strong AI Hypothesis thus:
I characterise my own position on minds thus:
This is because the idea of a ‘physical system’ is an attachment to physical realism which I reject in the OP.
Thanks for following up on Almond. Your statements align well with my intuition, but I admit heavy confusion on the topic.