A Creator and Idealism vs Computational Simulations

[excreationist]

Note that the dream speech URL stopped working then I found an alternative URL, now it gives zero results for a search for "Hinduism".
Here is an archive.org link: (hopefully there are no legal problems with me using that link)

1.2.3. - Mythology of Hinduism - Pt. 1

I wonder, I wonder, what you would do if you had the power to dream at night, any dream you wanted to dream. And you would of course be able to alter your time-sense and slip, say seventy-five years of subjective time into eight hours of sleep. You would, I suppose, start out by []

web.archive.org

Many people on the Alan Watts reddit were absolutely certain that it wasn't intended to be in a supernatural way.... maybe they didn't want me to use a link to the website for point of views (simulation) they disagree with.

@abaddon:
Those questions I asked are in response to people who said things like "It's nothing to do with having god-like abilities", etc - and that our life is all there is.

So anyway basically all of the first three and a bit paragraphs can be interpreted as talking about a simulation.... that is very significant - I mean a lot of parts of the Bible are meant to fit together but they involve a lot more problems.

Also that speech involves a few religions like Hinduism and Christianity - which millions of people take literally. Though the title of the speech is "Mythology of Hinduism".

What do you think of my interpretation of it being about a simulation? I think it fits that much, much better than it fits their belief that it is purely about our earthly life - see those questions I addressed to them.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

None of us are philosophical zombies.

That's exactly what a philosophical zombie would say.

No. They would say "What are braaaaaaaaaains?"

 

[steve_bank]

Philosophical zombies are very hard to kill/ The usual stake in the heart does not work.

 

[Jarhyn]

Philosophical zombies are very hard to kill/ The usual stake in the heart does not work.

I think you're more thinking philosophical vampires. For zombies, I'm afraid it's decapitation and/or destruction of the head you are looking for.

 

[steve_bank]

Philosophical zombies are very hard to kill/ The usual stake in the heart does not work.

I think you're more thinking philosophical vampires. For zombies, I'm afraid it's decapitation and/or destruction of the head you are looking for.

I keep decapitating you(metaphorically of course), and you just put your head back on and keep going.

I'll have to come up with a different strategy.

 

[abaddon]

What do you think of my interpretation of it being about a simulation?

The closest I can get to interpreting Watts as talking about a simulation, is he's suggesting you should wake up from it and realize there's no alien engineer who inflicts your life upon you.

 

[Jarhyn]

Philosophical zombies are very hard to kill/ The usual stake in the heart does not work.

I think you're more thinking philosophical vampires. For zombies, I'm afraid it's decapitation and/or destruction of the head you are looking for.

I keep decapitating you(metaphorically of course), and you just put your head back on and keep going.

I'll have to come up with a different strategy.

Perhaps try thinking about how what you know and believe is in fact built on set theory first and foremost.

Just take a look at it and figure out if you can get away from the idea of a "conclusion", or "fact", or "measurement". It's all based on this fundamental assumption that the universe does not change when you shut your eyes, it only changes when you think the thoughts that move your meat around, and only as a function of swinging meat.

Then look at how well the ideas of conclusions built on expressing true facts about measurements works.

As I keep saying, believing otherwise is believing in exactly the kind of magic that doesn't work.

The kind of magic that does work is engineering a mechanism of stuff whose material properties achieve useful, if slightly exotic goals, on the basis of known truths about those material properties.

 

[excreationist]

What do you think of my interpretation of it being about a simulation?

The closest I can get to interpreting Watts as talking about a simulation, is he's suggesting you should wake up from it and realize there's no alien engineer who inflicts your life upon you.

I'm not sure what aliens have to do with it. I'm talking about a specific kind of simulation - where it is like a sandbox and there are easy to use tools (e.g. post #8)

I'll just mention many ways it fits extremely well with a simulation:
About the only problem is it talks about dreams but simulation movies often use the dream analogy....

...you had the power to dream at night, any dream you wanted to dream....
.....start out by fulfilling all your wishes....
....one touch beep, would give you anything you wanted....

In a simulation with god mode on (dev mode/cheats/mods) you can have whatever experience you wanted.

be able to alter your time-sense and slip, say seventy-five years of subjective time into eight hours of sleep

This can be done in simulations such as the Roy game from Rick and Morty:

rescue princesses from dragons

This is easy to do with a simulation - "dragons" don't make sense if this is purely about our earthly lives.

Make wonderful explosions and blow them up

Sounds like a video game rather than having anything to do with real life

forget that you were dreaming so that you would think it was all for real. And to be anxious about it. Because it’d be so great when you wake up

That also applies to the Roy game

You would, I suppose, start out by fulfilling all your wishes. You could design for yourself what would be the most ectatic life. Love affairs, banquets, dancing girls, wonderful journeys. Gardens, music beyond belief

Those are the kinds of wishes that a human would make - not a god who has only ever existed as some like of eternal pure consciousness or something.

Because all perfectly known futures as I pointed out are past. They have happened, virtually. It is only the true future is a surprise

If you had complete control over a simulation you would eventually get bored - including being able to sense the state of the universe through a brain computer interface or uploaded mind. If this is just about a regular human life I don't think it is relevant at all

 

[Jarhyn]

What do you think of my interpretation of it being about a simulation?

The closest I can get to interpreting Watts as talking about a simulation, is he's suggesting you should wake up from it and realize there's no alien engineer who inflicts your life upon you.

There's not an isolated singular alien engineer that inflicts life on anyone in particular.

The problem is that we are alien engineers that do inflict life on things, more often every day in stranger and more isolated settings.

Ironically enough, the observable truths about systems made by such alien engineers (us) is that there is no singular event that spins up any such system in particular. We frequently share the recipes so people can reproduce and study the systems we make, to explicitly explore the same identity.

It means there is no point in worshipping so much as simply doing what is right by each other. It's the only thing we can possibly do that has observably resulted in us having more time to live and enjoy all this around us.

Further, it might help to recognize under what conditions you would, as an alien engineer inflicting life on folks, allow said folks you inflict life on to exit from the life you inflict on them into the same manner of life and interaction inflicted on you.

i personally wouldn't let anything that didn't love everyone, forgive me, accept the errors of others to the extent that a diverse population's mean wishes to accept errors, and to mitigate all errors as effectively as possible, out of any system I made.

But the thing is, that's the same list of things that is recommended for handling each other and living a longer life as a member of the community and to hear our stories sung well by our fellows: to love everyone, forgive others to the extent you can make yourself, and accept the errors of others to the extent that the group expresses ability, and to mitigate the errors of others which you will forgive.

So as I mentioned, there's no point in wasting effort worshipping when we should be spending our effort dreaming and then working to fulfill those dreams on earth for each other.

It's not worth thinking about except to use the concept as a logical prop or lever against an obscure set of questions in set theory.

 

[steve_bank]

Philosophical zombies are very hard to kill/ The usual stake in the heart does not work.

I think you're more thinking philosophical vampires. For zombies, I'm afraid it's decapitation and/or destruction of the head you are looking for.

I keep decapitating you(metaphorically of course), and you just put your head back on and keep going.

I'll have to come up with a different strategy.

Perhaps try thinking about how what you know and believe is in fact built on set theory first and foremost.

Just take a look at it and figure out if you can get away from the idea of a "conclusion", or "fact", or "measurement". It's all based on this fundamental assumption that the universe does not change when you shut your eyes, it only changes when you think the thoughts that move your meat around, and only as a function of swinging meat.

Then look at how well the ideas of conclusions built on expressing true facts about measurements works.

As I keep saying, believing otherwise is believing in exactly the kind of magic that doesn't work.

The kind of magic that does work is engineering a mechanism of stuff whose material properties achieve useful, if slightly exotic goals, on the basis of known truths about those material properties.

Set theory, of course. Why didn't I think of that. That makes all the differnce.

Don't have a clue how that relates to the OP, but you will come up with something from your imagination.

The kind of magic that does work is engineering a mechanism of stuff whose material properties achieve useful, if slightly exotic goals, on the basis of known truths about those material properties.

You are stating the obvious. No working engineer would call it truths. We just call it proprieties, parameters, or specications.

Engineering goes back to early civilizations. Harnessing natural forces like wind and water. It predates what we call science today.

You might say science is the fulfillment of magic and archenemy which tried to manipulate natural forces, albeit with spells and incantations not chemical equations.

You seem to be drifting into woo land. On the contrary you do not understand measurements. All measurements are measured as a difference compared to a standard. Volts, amps, kilograms, seconds, meters.

I know something has changed when a measured parameter changed whether my eyes are closed or not.

You can try and transcend it all intellectually, just leave yourself a trail of breadcrumbs so you can find your way back to reality.

 

[Jarhyn]

Don't have a clue how that relates to the OP, but you will come up with something from your imagination.

Computers are mechanized operators of set theory,

No working engineer would call it truths. We just call it proprieties, parameters, or specications.

All synonyms for "logical truths about the system".

The properties of the system are merely "things that are true about the system". Most engineers accept that their understanding of the truth contains error, but that it is an approximation of something solid and absolute.

Your No-True-Scotsman is uninspiring.

 

[steve_bank]

Computers are mechanized operators of set theory,

How so?

I did take a class in Theory Of Commutation. It strtedd with graohs and trees, language gerators and ending with Turing Machines.

Are yiu familiar with Bakus-Nauer form used to define languages?

Your posts tend towards what I call New Age Mysticism.

 

[Jarhyn]

Computers are mechanized operators of set theory,

How so?

I did take a class in Theory Of Commutation. It strtedd with graohs and trees, language gerators and ending with Turing Machines.

Are yiu familiar with Bakus-Nauer form used to define languages?

Your posts tend towards what I call New Age Mysticism.

It's literally a set of defined operations on a cardinal set.

I'm not sure they even teach the class in the same way as they did when you took it, but the class is called "computer organization" in at least some modern universities. Perhaps occasionally called "computer architecture?"

The fundamental theorem of binary computing is building fundamental units (gates) which implement logical operations on the basis of a binary state, such that it constructs operations such as integer addition (and more exotic operations).

A second or third year student will pretty solidly understand that any such assembly will have a statistical logical truth that is an expression of physical truth and immediate physical implementation. This is understood quickly when observing that we call this basic assembly of facts about stuff a "truth table".

Then the system comes to have a truth about it. The system literally has a logical definition, all the way down, and it has to or else when I click "compile", I wouldn't know what I was getting!

The state diagram builds on the foundation of set theory, though. It is proven to represent the more messy truth tables without requiring writing out each individual state.

Then this can be extended into floating point and even complex computing with various transition functions, but again that's set theory operating right there, even when one is working in a medium of neurons.

The way we understand the world, everything, is built on an assumption that set theory allows representation.

Independent evolution has repeatedly selected for acknowledgement of representation being a valid form of retaining and operating on knowledge. It has been the only way we have ever found to be able to know something, even if that knowledge contains errors.

I'm rather surprised you don't know that set theory is the foundation of the Turing machine. All intelligence is an emergence of set theory in operation, of representing one system with another using some kind of assumption of "truth".

As to what this has to do with the OP at this point, it merely indicates that no matter what we experience it may be simulated, but that there is no one discrete thing simulating it.

If one were to observe somehow the act of this simulation through a reflection of information as part of our systemic truth -- if we were to have a way to "see out" -- then the system would act much like a wave passing a detector and thus become rather "particular", but only to the extent that it must be.

 

[steve_bank]

Way off topic.

Cardinal sets applied to how computers work, any books or articles or papers to reference?

Hardware design reduces to quantum mechanics at the transistor level.

Computer languages are context free, meaning rules must cover all possibilities. Intuitively obvious. Compilers. There are rules and methods for language design

Boolean Algebra, a form of formal logic, is used to design digital logic.

Don't see where set theory comes in.


Personally I never had any intervening philosophy between theory and thinking. I grew up in blue collar family.

To me engineering was a job. A skill you learmed from knowledge, theory, and experience. Nothing mysterious or philosophical. I do not relate to your philosophizing.

There are chimps who pick stones from a quarry area, carry then to a wok area, and chip them into tools to crack nuts. The skill ispassed on bu observation and mimic. No language or philosophy.

 

[Jarhyn]

Cardinal sets applied to how computers work, any books or articles or papers to reference

You do realize everything in a Turing machine is related to addressing, yeah? This is very basic stuff. Or perhaps "low level"?

Addresses, registers, states, these are all operations on sets. For example there is a set of four single bit truths (unity, zero, inversion, identity). From these binary truths a system may be arranged in a number of ways such that they express larger gates, eight of which are larger scale versions of the single bit truths applied by only one input, and eight of which make define meaningful interactions.

Do you not see how the graph model of a computer is built from set theoretical operations?

We can define "addition" in these terms, and addition with carry, but we can also define such operations on floating point numbers, or fractions or even complex numbers, it just becomes a little more complicated: linear rather than boolean algebras come into play.

All of this is the assembly of assumptions that materials behave in some fixed way.

I don't need to rely on QM properties of transistors either. I can make as much out of water valves or redstone torches or dwarven water pumps or gear assemblies...

Anything at all, so long as it behaves in such a fixed way can be so modeled.

There is in fact language and philosophy operated even by chimps, as basic as it may be. There is as much done by slime mold amoebae: to send a message, a chemical is released, as limiting as this vocabulary may be, generally to "everyone on me, let's make a slime-mold slug" or "orgy time". Some slime molds in the action of this accomplish exploring various philosophies for how to respond to this, through the process of "survival selection" of adaptation. It's not a very effective strategy, doesn't allow a wide complexity of action, nor does it make for a wide availability of adaptation.

With chimps, a scream and an aggressive act operate much of social interactions, though philosophy can be spread in simple terms. As it is, we already have seen various troops of chimps inducting new members into a differing culture that puts focus on less violence among their population.

Occasionally we even observe chimos engaging in group reprisals for those who do not honor their traditions, yet more primitive philosophy.

I think it's quite silly to think that our near ancestors have so little in common with us. As it is, I literally have cats, in my house right now, that know how to speak. As to philosophy, while I know they have them, it is impenetrable as to what they may be.

I think the (absent) level of charity you afford to the world around you will not serve you very well.

 

[excreationist]

@Jarhyn
In order to minimise computing resources I think our possible simulation would use something like AI.
e.g.

Amazing new AI system - GPT-3 and generating images from text

GPT-3 is based on 175 billion weights such as a lot of Internet content... It can be used in many novel ways... It is pretty good at comprehending natural language - though sometimes has problems.... https://lacker.io/ai/2020/07/06/giving-gpt-3-a-turing-test.html Recently it was used to...

iidb.org

OpenAI's impressive text-based AI

You can sign up for it - here are some examples.... https://beta.openai.com/playground Complete the story: Once upon a time there was a messageboard called Internet Infidels discussion board and it had an offbeat poster called excreationist. One day, excreationist decided to post a thread...

iidb.org

This talks about "one pixel attacks"

Deep Neural Networks are Easily Fooled – Here’s How Explainable AI Can Help

Many deep neural networks (DNNs) make their predictions from behind an incomprehensible “black box,” which leads domain experts to question the internal

www.enterpriseai.news

The blue shows the percentage confidence.... I don't think set theory has a fuzzy confidence like that.....
BTW I'd say that set theory involves idealism since it is so well-defined - while the AI I'm talking about is fuzzy.... extra randomness is sometimes also introduced so it is more creative when generating text, images, etc.

 

[Jarhyn]

I don't think set theory has a fuzzy confidence like that

AI is still a massive construction of stuff built on digital binary processes.

Set Theory allows expression of all kinds of limits, facts about inequalities, sets, and the relations between numbers as operated according to fixed logical truth

 

[steve_bank]

Stil do not see anything about cardinal sets as relevant. I think you tend to conflating things.

My Theory Of Computation class paper was comparing the TM to modern processors. I know how processors work down to the transistor level.

In the original TM concept there was no linear addressing per se. The read-write head could move the tepe backwards or froward a number of cells., read and write arbitrary symbol on the tap, read symbols, and interpret symbols.

In Turing's time paper tape was used for sequencing machines and storing information. Teletype communication machines used paper tape, they were in use up through the 80s. Digital encoding of charterers goes back to the 19th century, believe it or not. The first 'Daisy Wheel' printer goes back to the 19th century.

That Turing used an infinte paper tape as memory in his concpet is understandable. It was the technology of the day.

 

[excreationist]

Stil do not see anything about cardinal sets as relevant. I think you tend to conflating things.

My Theory Of Computation class paper was comparing the TM to modern processors. I know how processors work down to the transistor level.

BTW the OP involves a computer made down to the redstone level which is basically the same as transistors....

 

[excreationist]

Stil do not see anything about cardinal sets as relevant. I think you tend to conflating things.

My Theory Of Computation class paper was comparing the TM to modern processors. I know how processors work down to the transistor level.

BTW the OP involves a computer made down to the redstone level which is basically the same as transistors....

About redstone circuits - perhaps transistors involve more parts especially NOT.