X-Message-Number: 9252
Date:  Sat, 07 Mar 98 22:28:12 
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #9246 - #9250

Peter Merel, #9247, quotes me (#9244):

> >Basically, the "digital business" amounts to a claim that all 
> >significant events happen in discrete jumps, and events involving finite 
> >constructs such as you and me have finite descriptions and form a 
> >denumerable set, rather than being like the real numbers which occupy 
> >a larger, nondenumerable set. (It leads to the conclusion that a 
> >universal resurrection ought to be possible in principle, in a 
> >universe that supports the immortality of some sentient beings.)
> 

and then says

> This raises the same question in my mind that Tipler's stuff does. If,
> as we've experimentally verified, there are non-local correlations
> binding together all the parts of the universe, then how can we have
> a finite description of some finite part?
> 
Once again: there are no non-local correlations under the 
many-worlds interpretation, they are apparent not real. Is 
many-worlds likely to be true? It's too much for me to argue the case 
here (though I've tried before). Look at *The Fabric of Reality* by 
Deutsch. But whether many-worlds is true or not, the fact that it at 
least makes correct predictions without invoking non-locality is 
significant in its own right and counts, I think, toward the 
digital argument I am trying to make.

Thomas Donaldson, #9250, writes

> The first thing I thought when I read about the nonTuring neural net was 
> that it was a counterexample to the notion that not all machines must be
> Turing machines. The particular features of the counterexample aren't so 
> important: what it tells us, more than anything else, is that we cannot make
> the ASSUMPTION that Turing machines can emulate everything we find in the 
> world. We have to use much more argument to get there.
>
You mean "a counterexample to the notion that all machines must be 
Turing machines." The paper, I think, is interesting and does point 
to some possibilities for violations of the classical Church-Turing 
thesis, but without doing more than conjecturing that these 
violations will actually be observed. We still don't have any device 
that is actually built, functional, and non-Turing. But even if we 
did, it does not follow, necessarily, that it must be non-digital, as 
I read it, because, for example, a Turing machine with infinitely 
inscribed tape would still be digital, though more powerful than the 
CT-thesis allows.
 
> Now frankly for this particular argument I don't care what Dennett had to
> say.

I think you mean Deutsch--that's the one I referred to. I could go 
into his arguments in more detail but there is limited space and 
time.

...
> my own understanding of quantum mechanics is that
> it does not claim the world is digital, but that under some circumstances
> things behave as quanta rather than waves, and other circumstances as
> waves. What's the difference?

When events are happening, you have quanta. In-between, waves. Ergo, 
events are digital. At least that's how I read it--I know this is 
grossly oversimplified and maybe distorted but you get the idea.

> Suppose that everything was quantal; nowhere
> do we know that these quanta are COMMENSURATE. Jumps of sqrt(2) or pi 
> are not disallowed. Considering that objects move, relativity itself
> suggests that their mass need not be commensurate, even if they are
> the same kind of particle. Light may sometimes appear as quanta, but the 
> spread of light in a spectrum goes through the whole range.
>
Interestingly enough, I think things could be non-commensurate under 
appropriate conditions and still not violate the digital paradigm as 

I see it, which is really more general than the CT thesis. Depends on other 
details.
According to Deutsch (sorry to be "invoking authority" again but 
can't practicably avoid it) a universal VR simulator is possible, 
which more or less confirms my digital hypothesis.

> As you might guess, I am dubious of the notion that we will return
> automatically in any reasonable sense. Sure, if we really were both digital 
> and finite, that's easy to argue, but I suspect we are neither digital nor
> finite, seen long term. 
>
If by "long term" you mean "forever" I certainly hope we are not 
finite--that would fly in the face of immortality. But shorter term I 
do think we are both digital and finite. And I do think a case can be made 
that we will return automatically, under *some* conditions, but that 
we will have to work for the conditions we want, or to better the 
chances of the type of return we want. With some arguing along 
these lines, I make a case in my book that we ought to choose
cryonics over alternatives, regardless of other resurrection 
possibilities, something Bob Ettinger has also done.
...
> if the world is
> finite and digital we will have assurance of our eventual return: so 
> that we can argue this question, with these very words, on Cryonet an
> infinite number of times. What a horrible, boring kind of resurrection 
> that would be.

Actually that would be a form of Eternal Return, and not true 
immortality (see *The Physics of Immortality* by Tipler). *But* what 
I think is a definite possibility is that we are both finite and 
digital, but *growing* without limit, over infinite time, so "we" 
won't  be doing the same things over and over--though it appears that 
bounded subsets of ourselves will.

Endless best to all,

Mike Perry

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