<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 12:37 AM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:</span><br></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr"><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);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"><font size="4">> </font></span><font size="4">one observer will see the electron go left for no<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>apparent reason and another observer will see the electron go right for no<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>apparent reason. But in reality the reason is that everything that can<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>happen will happen.</font></blockquote>
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<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>I don't disagree, but such a thing requires either the lavish extravagance of infinity or some nigh-magical FTL book-keeping.</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4">All it requires is one universal wave function that <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">evolves</span> a<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">s</span> Schrodinger's <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">d</span>eterministic equation<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> says </span>wave function<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">s should evolve. That's it.</span> </font></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><i>
<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>it would require consciousness to be a quantum phenomena. How else could all the different John Clarks be expected to obey quantum unitarity and choose differently in different branches?<br></i></blockquote><div><br></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></span><font size="4">Maybe. I am most certainly not saying consciousness does not exist, in fact the thing that I am most certain of is that at least one consciousness does exist, and probably many billions more. What I'm saying is that "free will" is like a burp, it's not true and it is not false either, it's just a burp. "Free will" doesn't exist and "free will" doesn't not exist either, and the only thing that can simultaneously exist and not exist is gibberish. So I have to ask, why did you change the title of this thread to something nonsensical like "Free will"?</font></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></span></div><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><i>Turing also proved there is no way to tell if a Turing machine ever halts with output<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>except to wait and see</i></blockquote><div><i> </i></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">True, and that wait may never end (or it might end in the next two seconds), so the process of adding more tape may never end too, but after any finite amount of time the machine will have only used a finite amount of tape. </font></div><div><br></div><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">> <i></i></span><i>except to wait and see. A Turing machine that never halts must have infinite tape to compute forever.</i><br></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4">You may <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">someday </span>look upon a Turing <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">M</span>achine that will never h<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">alt, but no human being will ever look upon a Turing Machine that has never halted. Every Turing Machine ever observed or will ever be observed will have only used a finite amount of tape, and every Turing Machine that has been successful and halted and actually produced an answer to the question posed has only used a finite amount of tape to produce that answer.</span></font></div><div><br></div></div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote"><div class="gmail_quote"><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"><font size="4">>></font> </span><font size="4">the Busy Beaver function for example is<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>not computable. The first four Busy Beaver numbers have been computed, they<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>are 1, 6, 21, and 107, the fifth is suspected by some of being 47,176,870<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>but that has not been proven and may never be proven. It has been proven that the 748'th Busy Beaver number, although well-defined and finite, is not computable, if God exists even He doesn't know what the 748'th Busy<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>Beaver number is, He may not even know for sure what the fifth Busy Beaver<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>number is.<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span></font><span style="font-size:large">There is only a countable infinity of computable numbers while there are an uncountable infinity of real numbers and and almost all real numbers are uncomputable.</span></blockquote></div></blockquote><div class="gmail_quote"><div><br></div><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><i>The busy beaver numbers are not special in that regard.</i></blockquote><div><br></div><font size="4">All the Busy Beaver numbers are well defined and finite and some of them I'm not even particularly large, the first 4 are not large and they can and have been computed, but that might be that only the first 4 that can be computed, or maybe a few more can be, nobody knows. It wouldn't surprise me very much if 47,176,870 really is the fifth busy Beaver Number but it can never be computed or proven to be so, if so then 47,176,870 being a Busy Beaver number would be a effect without a cause, that is to say a brute fact, a <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">brute</span> fact that human beings or even God will never know. </font><div><br></div><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"><i>> </i></span><i>But their epistemic existence does make it less likely that the universe is a Turing machine even with infinite tape.</i><br></blockquote><div><br></div><font size="4">I don't see why. A Turing Machine is needed to even define a Busy Beaver number. But the fact that a physical Turing Machine can't produce a Busy Beaver number just means the physical universe does not need to know what the 748'th Busy Beaver number is for it to operate.</font></div><div class="gmail_quote"><font size="4"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_quote"><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><i>Of course if the continuum i.e. aleph-1 ontologically exists as a physical entity, </i></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4">That is a very big if!<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span> It could be that the <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">R</span>eal <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">N</span>umbers are not really real<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> because there </span><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></span>are only about<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> 10^83 atoms in the observable universe and physics has never discovered a googolplex number of anything much less a </span>aleph-<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">0 or </span>aleph-1 <span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">infinite number of them. </span></font></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></div><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><i>then uncomputable numbers could be physically manifest</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">If <span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">uncomputable numbers are </span><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">physically manifest then our physical eyes should see evidence for at least one of them being at work in the physical universe, but so far there is no such evidence.</span></font></div><div><br></div><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">><i> </i></span><i>without actually ever needing to be computed. Just like the hypotenuse of the unit square ontologically exists even though its length cannot be computed in finite time.<br></i></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4">I think it would be a mistake<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">, the same sort of mistake Plato made,</span> to say<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> the physical </span>hypotenuse of <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">a</span> cardboard square is just an approximation of the hypotenuse of the <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></span>abstract<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>unit square,<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> I think it would be much more accurate to say </span>the hypotenuse of the <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></span>abstract<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>unit square<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>is just an approximation of the hypotenuse of<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> a physical cardboard square. Approximations are simpler than the real deal, and a computer model of a hurricane is much simpler than a real physical hurricane. </span></font></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);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> Nobody thinks General Relativity can be true with the Planck scale, if you<br>try to calculate things at that scale you always get the same answers,<br>infinite energy, infinite density, infinite curvature, infinite momentum<br> ,,,, that's useless. That's why we need a quantum theory of gravity.<br>Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity are our two best physical<br>theories, One does a good job explaining the weak and strong nuclear <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">></span>forcesand electromagnetism, and the other does a good job explaining gravity, but<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>they are incompatible, they don't play nice with each other.</font></blockquote>
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<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>If quantum events at the Planck scale are constantly creating new universes with alternate histories, then maybe the infinities one calculates at the Planck scale are in fact what is actually physically manifesting.<br></i></blockquote><div><br></div><font size="4">Theories are only useful when they <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">can</span> make testable predictions, when they start predicting infinities that robs them of their ability to do that. The Planck scale Is the point where Quantum Mechanics stops being useful, and the center of a Black Hole marks the point where General Relativity stops being useful. What if anything goes on a scale smaller than the Planck scale and at the center of black holes is unknown.</font><br><div> </div><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> The scientists either chose to perform the experiment for a reason in which<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>case they're cuckoo clocks, or they decided to perform the experiment for<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>no reason in which case they are roulette wheels.</font><br>
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<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>I don't like this analogy of yours for several reasons. First of all, cuckoo clocks operate with a mechanism that follows simple direct cause and effect.</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4">People are more complex than cuckoo clocks<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> but that's a difference in degree not of kind</span><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">. </span> <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">One cause and one effect can be simple but 10^23 Interacting causes and 10^23 </span> <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">effects is not simple, </span>but both either do things for a reason or they don't do things for a reason<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">.</span></font></div><div><br></div><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">><i></i></span><i>Cuckoo clocks don't actually make decisions;</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4">What <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">exactly </span>is it that people do th<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">at</span> cuckoo clock<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">s</span> <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">don't? </span>There is nothing mystical about a <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">"</span>decision<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">", it was either made for a reason in which case we call it a rational </span><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">d</span>ecision<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">,</span> <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">or it </span>was made for no reason <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">in </span>which case we call <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">it a</span> irrational decision<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">. </span></font></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>they simply repeat the exact same actions over and over in a periodic fashion until they run out of energy.</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4"><span class="gmail_default" style="">Some Turing Machines</span> behave that way, some do not<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">, all of them are deterministic. </span></font> </div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>Secondly roulette wheels are deterministically chaotic but not actually random.</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4">That's a pretty weak object<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">ion. </span><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></span>If you don't like roulette wheels then replace them with the decay of a <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">U</span>ranium <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">o</span>r <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">P</span>otassium 40 nucleus<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">. </span> </font></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><i>
<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>Intelligent agents, those with the ability to make decisions</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4">Decisions?<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>Please strip that word down to its simplest essentials and tell me what it means.<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span> </font></div><div><br></div><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><i>and presumably having a will that is more or less free,</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4">Free from what, outside influence?<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> If a person's behavior was not influenced by light reflecting off of a brick wall it will most certainly be influenced when his head comes into contact with that wall. </span> </font></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>In other words, things that make decisions, always do so deliberately.</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4">And <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">a thing</span> does something<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>deliberately<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> if it has decided to do so. And round and round we go. </span></font></div><div><br></div><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">><i> </i></span><i>So for example in nature, temperatures dropping precipitously could never directly cause the spontaneous combustion of fuel.</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">Not so, all that</font></span><font size="4"> would be needed for that to happen would be a battery<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">,</span> a thermostat<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">. and a</span> match head.<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span> </font></div><div><font size="4"><br></font></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">John K Clark</font></div></div></div></div>