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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=9252