<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 5:52 PM Stuart LaForge <</span><a href="mailto:avant@sollegro.com" target="_blank" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">avant@sollegro.com</a><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">> wrote:</span><br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"></blockquote><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><i>
<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>It's not the potential for FTL signals that is the problem. It is the<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>instantaneous nature of collapse. If you and I are space-like separated<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>and we are both studying the same entangled quantum system, then the first<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>one of us to observe our entangled particle instantly collapses the wave<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>function for both of us. But according to relativity, the concept of<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>"first" between two space-like separated events is meaningless.</i></blockquote><div><br></div><font size="4">There is no way we can use that wave collapse as a signal to synchronize distant clocks and establish a universal time standard, so it doesn't violate relativity. And relativity doesn't <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">say</span> that 2 observers can never agree which of 2 events came first, it just says they can't always agree. If 2 observers are not moving relative to each other and know how far apart they are then they can agree on which of 2 events came first.</font><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>So which<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>one of us actually collapsed the wave function?</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font size="4"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"></font>If the 2 are not moving with respect to each other and thus can agree on when "now" happens then that question is meaningful because it has observable consequences, but if they are moving with respect to each other the question is ambiguous because it implies that the ideas of "before" and "after" are well defined but in this situation they are not. </font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><font size="4">Forget General Relativity and forget Quantum Mechanics, that sort of weirdness is inherent even in Special Relativity. If you and I pass each other at close to the speed of light I see your clock running slower than mine and you see my clock running slower than yours. I admit that it seems weird that both clocks are running slower than the other, but there is no contradiction. When we both use stopwatches to measure how long it takes our super fast cars to travel between 2 marks on the road we confirm that each others stopwatch is running slower than the other but contradiction is avoided precisely because we can't agree about when "now" happens and thus we can't agree on when the correct time to start and stop our stopwatches when we pass those marks on the road is.</font><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"></blockquote><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">></span> <font size="4">That is only from the viewpoint of somebody outside the multiverse<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>looking in at it, and that viewpoint does not exist.</font></blockquote>
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<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">></span>I am not sure I understand this objection. I can never directly observe<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>the fusion occurring in the heart of the sun, yet I can be confident it<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>occurs based on theory</i></blockquote><div><br></div><font size="4">It would be difficult to engineer such an observing platform but in theory you could observe the<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>heart of the sun, however an observer outside of the multiverse looking in at it would not only violate physical law it would be a flat out logical contradiction.</font><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><i>
<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>If the multiverse contains all possible arrangements of matter and energy<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> i</span>n all possible space-times then the multiverse as a whole cannot change.</i><br></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">No observer can see the multiverse as a whole, the very idea is self contradictory. The multiverse is at least a 4D object, maybe 5D or even more, but however many dimensions it has one thing we know for sure is that it's not homogeneous, it does change along all its time dimensions and it does change along all its spatial dimensions.</font></div></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">></span> <font size="4">When speaking about the multiverse and Many Worlds the use of personal<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>pronouns like "you" and "your" can easily become ambiguous.</font></blockquote>
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<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>True. Where the multiverse is concerned you are no longer an individual<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>but an entire category of individuals that share certain properties.</i><br></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"></font><font size="4">Even if we found out that the entire multiverse idea was wrong the problem of establishing individuality would remain. Once Drexler style Nanotechnology has been achieved people duplicating machines will become practical and then this will no longer be just a rarefied philosophical puzzle it will be a matter of life and death. I am John Clark because I remember being John Clark yesterday, and because people duplicating machines don't exist yet I can be confident no other being in the observable universe can remember that; but no breakthrough in science or the discovery of some new law of physics is required to achieve Drexler's Nanotechnology, all that is needed is improved engineering skill.</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><font size="4">I signed up with Alcor to be frozen in liquid nitrogen after my death not because I thought there was any chance of of anybody ever reviving my body, I signed up because I thought there was a nonzero chance the liquid nitrogen would preserve information in my brain to create a being that remembers being me today. I believe that being would be me, so I signed up. Most people disagree and think such a being would not be them, and so they have not signed up. As I said this is a matter of life and death.</font><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"></blockquote><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><font size="4">
><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">></span> Alan Guth's Inflation theory explains that very nicely, the distant parts<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>of the universe we see with our largest telescopes are not causally<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>connected now but at one time there were, and then the universe expanded<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>much faster than light and that's why they are in thermal equilibrium<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>now.</font></blockquote>
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<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>I have some serious misgivings of physics that supposedly worked once and<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>only once in the entire history of the universe solely for the purpose of<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>patching holes in our models.</i></blockquote><div><br></div><font size="4">But Guth's inflation field solved 3 different apparently unrelated problems, the thermal equilibrium problem , the flatness problem, and the monopole problem. And Inflation made an amazingly accurate prediction of what the slight variations in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation would look like 30 years before if was actually observed. And inflation also correctly predicted the amount of Hydrogen and deuterium and Helium-3 and Helium-4 and Lithium-6 and Lithium-7 that the Big Bang would create. I think that's pretty impressive.</font><br><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">></span><i> superluminal inflation would<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>have super-cooled the universe requiring a "reheating" period which is<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>just kind of glossed over.</i></blockquote><div><br></div><font size="4">An expanding gas isn't always cooled, for example if I divide a chamber in two and there is a gas at high pressure in half of it and a vacuum in the other half and I suddenly remove the barrier between the two the gas expands to fill the entire chamber<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">,</span> but the gas isn't cooled because it did no work. Work is force over distance and that didn't happen. During the exponential expansion phase Guth's inflation field did the work not the hot gas. </font><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"></blockquote><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><i>
<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">></span>I think you are conflating reason with cause.</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">Different words same idea.</font></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> <i></i></span><i>I can choose to save my<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>money to buy a car in the future. Such a choice has no cause</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">Yes it does, the cause of you saving your money was your desire to buy a car. Why did you have a desire to buy a car? I don't know but I do know there are only 2 possibilities, there was a reason for your desire in which case it was deterministic or there was no reason for your desire to buy a car in which case it was random.</font></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>because<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>classic causation presumably follows the arrow of time.</i></blockquote><div><br></div><font size="4">You had a desire to buy a car before you saved your<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></span> money and bought the car. Cause preceded effect in accordance with the arrow of time.</font><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><i>
<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>Humans can make decisions based upon preferences for future states that do<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>not yet exist.</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">But brain states that hypothesize about the future DO exist in the present. </font></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">><i> </i></span><i>Not all reasons for doing things are causes since some reasons for doing<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>things are the effects of whatever it is that your are doing.</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">Sorry, I don't know what that means.</font></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>And doing<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>something to bring about a desired effect is neither random or irrational.</i><br></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"></font><font size="4">If you are doing something to bring about a desired effect, or doing it for any reason whatsoever, then you are doing it for a reason and thus by definition it is rational. It may not be a good or moral reason, it might not even be consistent with other reasons you have for doing other things, but it is a reason nevertheless. But if you are doing something for no reason at all then it is irrational, aka random.</font></div></div>
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<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span><i>Neither me nor evolution would be able to see the intelligence of John<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>Clark if he were implemented on a computer so slow that it took days to<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>process the image of a dangerous predator stalking him. </i></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">And that is exactly why Evolution never produced such a slow witted John Clark.</font></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"></blockquote><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><i>
<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>I think intelligence is more than just the sheer number of states a system<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>has but also how fast the system can change between those states. </i></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">If we're talking practicality then speed is vastly important and along with energy usage is the most important engineering consideration, but we were talking philosophy not engineering and for that speed is irrelevant. </font></div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> <i></i></span><i>I think intelligence is more than just the sheer number of states a system </i></span><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><i>has but also how fast the system can change between those states.</i></span></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">Then a AI has yet another huge advantage over us.</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">John K Clark</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><br>
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