Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Role of Observer is not Relevant

From: Eugen Leitl <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:38:01 +0200

On Tue, Mar 27, 2007 at 04:04:15PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

> ### Do prime numbers exist? I have never seen one. What would it mean

Some animals can count, but only people (as far as we know) do primes.

> to "observe" a prime number, or indeed any mathematically describable
> structure?

You can't. They don't exist, but in people's heads, and in hardware
derived from people's heads.

Neither plasma nor interstellar ice grains can count. It takes people
or computers to do that.
 
> I feel that you are invoking the razor in vain. It is not intended to
> shave the number of entities but rather the number of ideas we have
> about entities.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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From: Eugen Leitl <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 21:44:38 +0200

On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 10:07:06AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

> ### What does it mean "not to exist" for a number? Does the number 2
> not exist? If it doesn't exist, is it equal to nothing?

A number is an abstraction, a measurement upon a physical system/it's
configuration. It takes a) a physical system b) an appropriate configuration
c) a system doing the measurement (an observer)

a) + b) are cheap, but c) is not. Notice that human-derived systems are
causally entangled to observers it took evolution some 4 gigayears to 
build. That's a lot of work. Bootstrapping infoprocessing systems
doesn't come cheap.
 
> Do chickens exist? If chickens exist, how do we know they do, while
> the number 2 doesn't?

Did the number 0x0bd11a0bb188f291956549705169a996110841d4 exist?
Until a few seconds ago (until I made it) it didn't. Now it exists
in multiple copies, in multiple places. When these places are gone,
so will be this number. Until someone/something creates it again.
 
> How come numbers "exist" in silicon, or gray matter but not in the
> number of chickens?

Chickens can count a bit, actually.

> ### Some mathematical predictions of quantum theory have been
> confirmed to the 7th or 9th (?) significant digit. Not only does
> plasma count, it counts a lot.

Plasma doesn't do measurements. People do. Whatever plasma does,
it's not associated with pigment marks on dead tree, or pixels on
a display.

---

From: Eugen Leitl <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 22:17:07 +0200

On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 01:47:55PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

>    Are you saying real world consequences are required, or would doing
>    all this in software, in a simulated environment without external
>    input, suffice?

No, behaviour is independent of substrate.

---

From: A B <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 14:31:52 -0700 (PDT)

Isn't it already mathematically established that any
number (for example: 9) is inherently a calculation.

For example: 

 9 = 4 * 2 + 1

and 

 9 = 3 + 1 + 5

etc.

But, maybe I'm wrong. I haven't yet studied number
theory.

Best Wishes,

Jeffrey Herrlich

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From: "Jef Allbright" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 16:18:19 -0700

> But, maybe I'm wrong. I haven't yet studied number

Jeffrey, it's not number theory, but philosophy.  See pages such as
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/> for some background.

Some good minds believe it makes good sense.  My problem with it is
the same as the earlier  disagreement over Occam's Razor.  It
postulates entities unnecessarily and I would argue on an information
theoretic basis that we should prefer a finite but unknown ensemble of
cosmic principles (or "algorithms") to the "existence" of a "platonic
plenum" of an infinity of infinities of abstract entities.

The observation that we are embedded in the very "reality" that we
strive to understand both enables and confounds such speculation.  I
therefore frame all such measures of "truth" in probabilistic terms
while acknowledging that I can never rule out that an unknown but
relevant parameter might turn things around.

- Jef

- Jef

---

From: "Lee Corbin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 07:46:02 -0700

Stathis writes

> > When you write "I suppose that it isn't impossible that the subject's 
> > consciousness is rapidly flickering during this interval", you are
> > perhaps referring to the subjective quality of the experience. To the
> > degree that you are so referring, I don't look at it quite in the same 
> > way. There would, to me, be absolutely no perception of any
> > flickering, or of anything unusual at all.  It's just that the objective
> > *amount* of consciousness going on there inside the system must
> > (if all my hypotheses are right) be diminished by some fraction. 
> 
> Yes, it would be rather as if I were dead every other second: I wouldn't
> notice anything, but my consciousness per unit time would be halved.
> Actually, I don't know if this would be such a bad thing, if zombie me
> didn't do anything I wouldn't do during the dead periods. Suppose I were
> offered a 10% salary increase if I volunteered to be dead half the time.
> If I took it up, I would only be able to really enjoy 55% of my current
> salary; on the other hand, I would *think* I was enjoying 110% of my
> current salary, at the cost of only a twinge of discomfort from knowing
> what was really going on. Should I take up the offer? 

This is an example, quite interesting itself, where the language of "benefit"
clarifies the situation. One very likely shouldn't live at all if one does not
have a life worth living. Likewise, the 10% increase in salary will deliver
some amount of benefit.  So this reduces to the question of whether on
the whole, given say that we exist only finitely long in one particular
universe, it would be better to live twice as long (but with reduced
benefits).  Of course, it your example here, a ten percent increase in
salary doesn't sound like much.

By the way, thanks very much for the careful understanding you extended
to a position that you don't really agree with. 

> You can't harm the consciousness in a rock by crushing the rock,
> because the whole idea is that it does not depend on any particular
> configuration of matter. In the final analysis, the consciousness is
> entirely contained in the not-actually-realized table mapping
> arbitrary physical states to computational states... 
> 
> Thus, this rock-is-conscious idea is another way of saying that all
> conscious computations are realized merely by virtue of their
> status as platonic objects. Strange though it may seem, it is
> consistent with the basic idea of functionalism, which is that
> consciousness resides in the form, not the substance. 

Yes, I guess that's right. Perhaps Putnam was right: functionalism
if taken to extremes does lead to the entirely counter-intuitive idea
that rocks and dust---and even collections of photons anywhere---
undertake all the same computations and have all the same
experiences as we do.  (I consider that to be surely quite wrong.)

So then let me amend the question that I was asking:

     It seems quite inescapable that conscious 
     robots could, and shortly will exist, and that it will be possible to 
     take such a program and single-step through its deterministic
     execution.  And that such a program---either perhaps suffering
     horribly or gaining a great deal of satisfaction---compels us to make
     a moral choice.  But if rocks continue to be conscious whether 
     pulverized or not, as does any system that can take on many states,
     (together with a fantastically loose definition of "system"), then of
     what special status or value are humans and animals? Is caring for
     another human being completely inconsequential because either
     saving them from grief or inflicting grief upon them doesn't change
     the platonic realities at all?

(It's funny that in all the discussions of abstract computing, I don't recall
much discussion of the repercussions in our daily lives of accepting
the implications of these weird doctrines.)

By clinging to the "ad hoc" causal requirement that there has to be
local information flow in a local system for any of the things we value
to obtain, I escape the dilemma.  What do you do?

Lee

---

From: "Lee Corbin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 16:49:18 -0700

Jef writes (I hope that this is not a re-post but cannot be sure)

> I've been arguing against the Cartesian Theater in its many
> disguises in so many ways for so many years that I am truly
> at a loss with you [for having suggested that I, Jef, am making
> this kind of suggestion]

Well, reconsider what you wrote earlier:

> It's significant that you accept that there can be distortion in the
> sensory channels but fail to accept--or even consider--that
> when I say fnord "we have no simple direct unbiased access to
> reality, because we're embedded in it," fnord I mean that these
> biases run throughout the entire system that you consider you.

In the rather philosophic discussion we are having---wondering
how a person sees an object---we must say where to draw the
boundary of the person. I don't think (in this discussion)
it is right to draw the boundary of the person so tightly that his
or her sensory channels are outside.  It was only this, and your
implication that the indirectness extended very very far (perhaps
infinitely far), that reminded me of the Cartesian Theatre. Sorry to
have perplexed you. 

But I guess that you will not like this either:  "The entire system
of a person---his higher brain functions down to his lower brain
functions down to V1-V4 and even including all the structures of
the eye---, that system directly sees an object.  Or would you?

Lee

By the way, was that a test?   I could see the word "fnord".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fnord .  But knowing you, there
was probably something even more subtle underfoot  :-)
Or---this would be a gas---you might have suspected that
I was skimming your writing so fast that I'd miss that word!

---

From: "Lee Corbin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:00:11 -0700

Jef writes

Lee

By the way, was that a test?   I could see the word "fnord"

---

From: "John K Clark" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2007 01:20:40 -0400

> number (for example: 9) is inherently a calculation.

A very very few rare numbers (only the smallest form of infinity) such at 9
are easily calculable. But there are numbers such as PI that are far more
numerous (a larger infinity) that can only be calculated if you are willing
to do an infinite number of calculations.

But that's still not big enough, most numbers, nearly all in fact, can't be
calculated at all, not even if you had infinite time at your disposal.

 John K Clark

---

From: "Jef Allbright" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2007 09:55:06 -0700

> calculated at all, not even if you had infinite time at your disposal.

Amplifying John's point here, if you were to imagine throwing a dart
at a perfect number line representing the range from 0 to 1, you would
have zero chance of exactly hitting a rational number.

- Jef

---

From: Eugen Leitl <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2007 21:58:03 +0200

On Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 03:09:36PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

> > Not all circuits can count, it take special ones.
> 
> ### You evaded the question. What is so special about certain material
> objects (human brains, ink on paper, certain circuits) that makes

Ink on paper, no, (unless it's one of them fancy inkjet-printed
electronics which is smart enough to count). Human brains and certain circuits, 
yes, because through evolutionary optimization (all smart human artifacts are 
causally entangled with said optimization, which is not true for dumb
objects, man-made, or otherwise) they have evolved to be able to make 
measurements on their environment/tracking certain aspects of state 
(including themselves), which is externally denoted (in your, mine, 
and a fair number of other heads) as "counting" and "numbers". 

The pigment marks on dead tree are completely meaningless without any
such systems and said measurements (unless it's one damn smart paper).

> their states able to support the existence of numbers (and be
> absolutely necessary to the existence of numbers), while other
> material objects do support the existence of numbers?

The numbers are not in the object but the observer (the systems 
have to agree on a common code as to configuration states of the object, which
requires communication, or a common point of origin acting as
a communication channel equivalent). Observer complex, external
encoding trivial. Sufficiently so that the observer can encode
internally, without breaking a sweat.

Any borderline smart critter (evolved here or elsewhere) will
need a capability of track resources and fellow critters (assuming,
it's not completely asocial), so it will evolve one. Much smarter
critters which need to make sense of the universe will have to
come up with some functional equivalent of technology/science, which,
however, will be rather alien to us.

All of this is completely orthogonal to the low level processes 
of the universe or even metaverse, because you can make abacuses
from opterons, by drilling a neat hole through them and putting
them on strings.

Now I sound like a philosopher. Ptui, must go wash my mouth with soap.

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---

From: Eugen Leitl <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 18:24:55 +0200

On Fri, Apr 06, 2007 at 12:13:17PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

> In what way are the referents of the concept "chicken" existentially
> different from the referents of the concept "17"?

No different, as long as you don't count them before they hatch.

More seriously, when you track your external environment, you have 
to do both the quantity and the quality part. Numbers are not at
all different from chickens, as far as neuron spike-counters are
concerned.

Mmh, all this talk about beans and chickens is making me hungry.

---

From: "Jef Allbright" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 11:10:00 -0700

On 4/6/07, Rafal Smigrodzki <[email-masked]> wrote:
> On 4/1/07, Jef Allbright <[email-masked]> wrote:
> > On 4/1/07, Rafal Smigrodzki <[email-masked]> wrote:
> > > On 3/30/07, Eugen Leitl <[email-masked]> wrote:
> > > >
> > > ### Yes! Always and forever, timeless, just as any element of the
> > > platonic plenum.
> >
> > Rafal, I don't pretend to be able to dissuade anyone from any abstract
> > belief, but along with infinite primes and infinite variations on
> > infinities, do you also believe that "redness" "exists" in the
> > "platonic plenum?"
>
> ### Yes, I can even see it sometimes.

Thanks, your response contributes significantly to my understanding of
your position.  If I may ask another calibrating question:  Do you
have an opinion on the validity of subjective Bayesian probability?

> There is a problem with believing in too few entities - if one insists
> that entities not proven to exist should be assumed not to exist, then
> one necessarily places himself at the conceptual center of the
> universe.

I agree with Einstein's statement that explanations should be as
simple as possible, but not simpler.

My POV is that *every* agent is necessarily at the "conceptual center"
of their universe, and by recognizing this one forms a more accurate
model of "the way things work", formerly known as "reality."

Since understanding is essentially modeling, at various levels of
abstraction, it seems obvious to me that a model gains nothing (and
necessarily loses by misallocating its probability mass which must sum
to unity) by positing entities for which there is no evidence.  This
is not the same as denying the possibility of other entities, (indeed,
acknowledgment of the inherent incompleteness of any model implies the
existence of entities outside the model) but only saying there is
nothing to say about them, so for *all* practical purposes, they don't
exist.

Let's keep in mind though that all observation is necessarily indirect
to some extent so it's not as if we're ruling out any of the fringe
observations, highly indirect and nearly in the noise that must be
included in our observational unity.

> If I say that there is nothing beyond the most distant
> object I can see, then my position is very special.

We should distinguish between "saying there is nothing", and "there is
nothing to say".
-- Zen Jef

If I were to say "there is nothing", that would imply a claim of
additional information outside my model, and such a claim is clearly
incoherent. I am left with "nothing to say." This seems to me the
strongest possible argument for the necessity of the subjective point
of view.

The logical incoherence in your rendition of platonism may be more
apparent if we point out that by positing the "existence" of
unobservable entities, we must admit that there's nothing to
distinguish between highly probable unobservable entities and highly
improbable unobservable entities.  Therefore, it seems to me, the
"platonic plenum" amounts to a meaningless mush.

> Since I don't think I am that special, I am forced to assume that
> there are entities in existence (i.e. having at least one property)
> that I have not observed, nor will ever be able to observe or think of
> even in principle. This leads me to modal realism, and therefore, yes,
> "redness" exists.

To address your repeated point that you are not justified in thinking
you are special, I certainly agree.  You take this to mean that you
are forced to reason from an approximation of an objective view.  I
take it to mean that any agent reasons from an expanding subjective
view.  The essential difference is that my view is ontologically
simpler.

- Jef

---

From: "Rafal Smigrodzki" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:39:45 -0400

On 4/6/07, Jef Allbright <[email-masked]> wrote:

  If I may ask another calibrating question:  Do you
> have an opinion on the validity of subjective Bayesian probability?
### Can you expand on the question?

---------------------------------------

> model of "the way things work", formerly known as "reality."

### Is there any thing else than the "model"?

--------------------------------

> nothing to say about them, so for *all* practical purposes, they don't

### Do you think that there are stars that are too far from us to ever
reach the Earth, given the expansion of the universe? If yes, what are
their spectral characteristics? Are they the same as the
characteristics of local stars? Different? In principle unknowable?

If you really believe that your location is not special, then you have
to ascribe the same spectral characteristics to stars in your vicinity
and stars that are too far be seen, even in principle. And if they
have spectral characteristics, they exist.

You cannot say "there is nothing to say" about entities that are
entailed by the existence of known entities.

-----------------------------------
> "platonic plenum" amounts to a meaningless mush.

### Do you think the likelihood that unobservable stars have the same
spectral characteristics as observable ones is identical to their
likelihood of having any other arbitrary characteristics?

Knowledge about the observable universe informs you about the
unobservable parts as well. You can and should have an opinion about
the probabilities of various unobservable entities (i.e. measures of
the relative sizes of the parts of the plenum that make up these
entities).

I can suggest to you "The End of Time" by the theoretical physicist,
Julian Barbour for a discussion of the plenum.

Rafal

---

From: "Rafal Smigrodzki" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:40:56 -0400

> all different from chickens, as far as neuron spike-counters are

### But what about the existence of the referents of these spikes? Do
they exist?

Rafal

---

From: "Jef Allbright" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 15:22:17 -0700

> ### Can you expand on the question?
The philosophical foundation of Bayesian probability highlights the
ultimate subjectivity of any observer (although embedded in a
consistent, but only indirectly knowable reality.)  That is the view I
am promoting.  I figured that it would provide another highly relevant
data point to get your view on that topic.  I thought there was also a
chance that it might trigger in you a better understanding of my
position, because it's clear to me that I'm not making myself clear to
you.

> ### Is there any thing else than the "model"?
That depends very much on the context of your question, which isn't
clear to me.  In the view I am promoting here there is an agent, with
a model of its "reality" and its interactions with that local reality.
 It seems that your view has much the same, with the ontological
addition of a "platonic plenum" containing a hyperinfinite set of
somehow "real" entities.

> characteristics of local stars? Different? In principle unknowable?

I would certainly infer that there are stars beyond our observation,
and (if Gordon gts wasn't watching) I would apply the Principle of
Indifference and infer that their properties are distributed similar
to the stars that we do observe.  But this gives me absolutely zero
new information about any of those hypothetical stars, and this is
key.

But it appears that you take this even further, and believe not only
that those hypothetical stars exist, but their specific mathematical
coordinates exist in some sense independent of any observer.

If there were a row of boxes, and inside each box I found a ball, then
(all else being equal) with increasing number of boxes I would develop
increasing confidence that a subsequent box held a ball, but it could
easily be empty. My inference doesn't provided any information about
the actual existence of a ball in the next box.  I would claim a high
probability that there is a ball in the box, but I wouldn't be
justified in claiming that there IS a ball in the box independent from
some observation, no matter how indirect.

> have spectral characteristics, they exist.

As argued above.

> entailed by the existence of known entities.

Inductive inference does not entail entailment.

Is this perhaps the crux of our disagreement?

> the relative sizes of the parts of the plenum that make up these

It appears that the crux of our disagreement is your implication that
inference adds information.  Did you ever review our earlier
disagreement about Occam's Razor?  It might be related.

> Julian Barbour for a discussion of the plenum.

I read this several years ago, and a similar concept in _Time's Arrow
and Archimedes' Point_ by Huw Price a few years earlier.  The "block
universe" concept is intriguing, mainly because it aims to reduce the
number of ontological entities by eliminating time, but I remember Huw
Price in particular, explicitly backing away from what this might mean
in subjective terms.

- Jef

---

From: Eugen Leitl <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2007 04:42:55 +0200

> ### But what about the existence of the referents of these spikes? Do

Yes, there was a system observing another system. If there were no
systems, there would be no measurements, and no spikes.