X-Message-Number: 7989 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: no subject (file transmission) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 21:40:42 -0800 (PST) From daemon Tue Apr 1 21:38:38 1997 Return-Path: <Mailer-Daemon> Received: from localhost (localhost) by netcom2.netcom.com (8.6.13/Netcom) id VAA04053; Tue, 1 Apr 1997 21:38:38 -0800 Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 21:38:38 -0800 From: Mailer-Daemon (Mail Delivery Subsystem) Subject: Returned mail: User unknown Message-Id: <> To: thomasd Status: RO The original message was received at Tue, 1 Apr 1997 21:38:38 -0800 from ----- The following addresses had delivery problems ----- cryonet.org (unrecoverable error) ----- Transcript of session follows ----- 550 cryonet.org... User unknown ----- Original message follows ----- Return-Path: <thomasd> Received: (from ) by netcom2.netcom.com (8.6.13/Netcom) id VAA04051; Tue, 1 Apr 1997 21:38:38 -0800 From: thomasd (Thomas Donaldson) Message-Id: <> Subject: no subject (file transmission) To: cryonet.org Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 21:38:37 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 7619 Hi everyone! Now I have several issues of Cryonet to deal with, and as you've noticed I've been relatively silent. I will discuss Mike Perry's views because in their way they bear most on consciousness etc. Here is the problem: no, even mathematics is not clearly universal. Certainly it is set up so that all the theorems we prove in it are true, but (as I said in a previous posting) in return for this we give up the notion that it will be always APPLICABLE. That is, no one can claim Euclidean geometry is not true, given its postulates. But by now we have quite definitely noticed places where it ceases to be applicable at all. But that's not the worst of it. We don't make our math in a vacuum. There's always the attempt to make it applicable to something, even if that is other mathematics. A bit of history: we now think of the numbers (including the real numbers --- called floating point numbers in computerspeak --- as all on one single line stretching from -infinity to +infinity). The Greeks, who (as we would put it now) discovered the possibility of irrational numbers, thought about these things quite differently. First, there was the class of integers. Then, as a completely separate kind of thing, there were the numbers we would get if we (say) measured lengths in Euclidean geometry. These were thought of as different kinds of animal. And now look at the issue from the standpoint of some other intelligent race, from far far away in both time and space. Just what makes you think that they will even have any concept of prime number? For that, for instance, you need first the notion of integer, and also the idea that this class of integers can sometimes divide one another and two integers can always be multiplied together. It's not obvious that a country or people would necessarily need that notion at all. Perhaps they would, but perhaps isn't good enough. After all, if they wanted to measure objects, they would not generally get results which really had integer values. Even our mathematics is a symbolic system which we construct. It has no separate existence outside of us. If we find some species with whom we can communicate using OUR mathematics it will be most likely a species very very close to us in history, body, physiology, etc. Even when you hear a mathematician saying that some piece of math is beautiful, he betrays his humanity when he says this --- and also the human origins of mathematics. Admittedly, my argument has an experimental tinge to it. We could test it (conceptually) by finding out just how several entirely separate societies, each "technological" ie. putting a value on what we call rationality and experiment, would develop over several thousand years. Perhaps we will do that. If they all independently develop the same fundamental notions of mathematics, I will stand corrected. I am saying that we now have no reason to believe that will happen. It may be even worse, in a way. Right now, we use computers a lot. As a result, the way in which we express numbers in computers has become much more prominent. Not only that, but even children may use calculators and other such tools. If that race with which we try to communicate is thousands of years in advance of us, its members may have all forgotten OUR mathematics entirely, as a quaint, primitive system their savage ancestors used long long ago. They just might have a far better system -- better in their terms, and once we understand it, better in ours. The growing prominence of computer versions of numbers may only be a start. But even that is not the end of the matter. Our mathematics does nothing for us unless we somehow use the patterns it contains in the world we deal with. It is when we make that correspondence that we set a meaning to the symbols. As with any other language, that correspondence is something WE provide. It is not inherent in the symbolic system, no matter how extensive it may be, nor can we assume that our correspondence will always tell us about the world (think again about Euclidean geometry). For Mr. Strout: No, I don't attach profound significance to the idea I shall explain, but have found it interesting, and you might also. You ask how it might happen that consciousness even came into existence. Here is a basic sketch of how: as you know, we are very highly parallel devices --- though our normal awareness does not give us any signs of that. On one side (figuratively) we have many different desires, always pulling at us. On the other side, we have our memories, our knowledge of the world ie. our understanding of facts as separate from values and desires. The one action which cannot be made parallel is the choice of WHAT WE ARE TO DO, given all the parallelism in our desires and the parallelism in our knowledge. And that is the origin of consciousness: that somewhere in our brains, we must have SOMETHING which operates sequentially. (I do not speak of us here as computers, because that word has too many connotations which fail to describe us --- but many activities in our brain go in parallel, while our consciousness operates sequentially). I doubt very much that any theory suggesting that "somehow" consciousness just "arises" from a sufficiently complex machine will prove at all adequate. After all, it leaves unexplained just how that "arises" might happen. Once more, the magic demon inside our brain... Any theory explaining consciousness must deal with several simple observations, which I would be amazed if you too have not made. Our consciousness, no matter what underlies it, seems always to exist as a continuous stream; we have no sense of difference when we turn from looking at a tree to savoring a pancake, even though our brain activities can change radically between them. This tells me that something must patch together all these different brain activities: it's not enough to wave a wand and declare a magic unity. Second, brain research has found that almost all our brain processing goes on without us being conscious of it. Any theory (I'm repeating something I've said to you, now, on Cryonet) of consciousness must not only explain how we are conscious but also why we are unconscious of so much. Choice requires much more than a symbolic system. It requires desires and alternatives. And it is that which (I suggest) led to consciousness in our mammalian ancestors, when it first arose. As to the Fermi paradox, it is only a paradox if you insist that there MUST be other civilizations out there. The simplest solution is that there are not. (That may prove fortunate for us, indeed, if we want to lay claim to the Galaxy). The reasons why we may be the only ones aren't hard to find, as hypotheses. It may take longer than the average lifespan of habitability on a planet to develop an intelligent race. It may also be that we really are the first --- after all, some species would have to be first. Or (if we want to become very speculative) the universe may not be the best place for intelligence, which goes somewhere else as soon as it can. Whether LIFE exists elsewhere is a separate question... I suspect it does. And I would add that the idea that we are the only civilization within megaparsecs remains a question to be investigated empirically, not just accepted. One thing which has not been done so far, of course, is to look for signs of intelligence not in this Galaxy or even local group but much farther away... though that would require very powerful radio telescopes. That's all for this reply. Long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7989