X-Message-Number: 8010
Date:  Fri, 04 Apr 97 17:32:30 
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #7993-#7997

Bob Ettinger wrote

>"Hacker" (#7975) says, in effect, that someone at a different 
>location (from mine) can't be me. And presumably nobody is
> going to get HIM into a beam-me-up machine. (Me either, in
> our present state of knowledge.) But both he and the infofreaks
>(sorry--just a convenient abbreviation) are wrong, in
>the sense that they are selective in their survival criteria with no 
>clear, rigorous rationale for what they accept and what they reject.

I (an admitted "infofreak") have been trying hard to remedy this in 
the book I am writing.

>NO MATTER WHAT POSITION YOU TAKE, I CAN PRODUCE A
>THOUGHT EXPERIMENT THAT  DEMONSTRATES (or
>strongly suggests)THE OPPOSITE. 

I think I can address the problems raised by the 20 experiments on
identity that are described in *The Prospect of Immortality*--my
answers won't please everyone of course, but I find them 
satisfactory.

>Remember Grey Walter's turtles? They were small, crude, rolling 
>automatons that sought out electric outlets to "feed" (recharge). They 
>exhibited goal-directed behavior and some adaptability--which we
>might call a degree of intelligence. They displayed a disjuncture
>between "self" and environment also--but we have no reason at all
>to think they had the slightest consciousness.

Their consciousness at best couldn't have been high, but I'm bothered 
by the conclusion, "we have no reason at all to think they had the
slightest consciousness." The description of their behavior makes
it sound instead as if they had a dim level of consciousness. And
I'm not familiar with the details of their operation or construction, 
but I imagine devices with similar behavior could be based 
around a modern microprocessor chip. (Indeed,
such a device could probably outperform them considerably and show
much more apparent "consciousness.") We might then say, of
such devices, that their "experience" was "nothing but" a lot of 
flipping of bits by a microprocessor, therefore it could not be
consciousness. However, I would draw a distinction between
an underlying processor or "platform" and a system being emulated
or "run" on that platform. It is possible that the one could be 
unconscious and the other conscious, and in fact this seems a
very likely possibility, under appropriate circumstances.

This, I think, could explain how
consciousness could arise out of an unconscious substrate, e.g. how
humans can be conscious but the interacting atoms they are made
of are not. Indeed, it might be said that a whole environment
consisting of a collection of atoms that could be formed into
one or more objects with various properties, is not, in and of
itself, "conscious." But on the other hand (assuming enough
of the right constituents are present) it could be so affected or 
"programmed" that a functioning human results, and
that human would be conscious.
If this is accepted then it seems we must accept degrees of
consciousness rather than a sharp dichotomy. Devices that appear
to be dimly conscious may be just that, even if they are "running"
on systems that aren't.

Thomas Donaldson wrote

>As for the patterns we see, just what would it MEAN for them to be
> in the world? 

Many patterns can be noticed directly from nature:
think about rainbows, the spherical shape of the sun, the
geometric forms of crystals, the Archimedean spiral of the
nautilis shell, etc. More generally, however, we find that
the patterns that one person sees are not unrelated to those of
another investigator, but the same patterns recur over and over, 
and are arrived at independently. Its a philosophical point perhaps,
but to me it is more reasonable to think the patterns are "out
there"--waiting to be discovered--and not simply "within us."

>Nor will I so blithely assume that a civilization (say)
>consists of morons because they have not noticed
>prime numbers.

People do not become morons for not having noticed the
prime numbers. But if they *cannot* notice them--that is
another matter. And if they can notice them, then sooner
or later I think they will, and not forget them either. 

>If they too have space travel and a technology, possibly
>one capable of much more than our own (or possibly one 
>which is both more and less than our own, an even
>more fascinating possibility), then I will accept that they
>are intelligent even if they understand nothing of our
>mathematics.

I don't it's likely they would have space travel, with
all the undertstanding that would have to go with that,
yet "understand nothing of our mathematics." I'll
believe it when I see it.

>It has turned out on study of Greek mathematics that
>their idea of numbers was quite different from ours. 

If we understand their idea, it is our idea too. It's
another way to look at something--and some will
find that of interest, and may even develop the
concept further. In saying this I'm reminded of
infinitesimals--quantities different from zero but
closer to it than any other number.
Useful for calculus, sometimes--but utter rubbish from
the standpoint of mathematical rigor, so it was said. 
So the infinitesimal was "laughed out of
existence"--according to something I read
many years ago. But this doesn't mean the idea was
forgotten or lost--it was still there for those who wanted
to look, and some did. One in fact was a mathematician,
Abraham Robinson, who, around 1960, found a way to
rigorize it and make it mathematically respectable.

>I do not think you can even find a retreat for your views
>in mathematics. We simply have no reason to believe 
>that it is universal, or for that matter that OUR
>mathematics bears much relationship to whatever
>equivalent ideas we may develop in 10,000 years.
>And if OUR mathematics becomes outmoded,
>or unnecessary, then no one will BOTHER to
>remember such notions as that of prime numbers.

I do think mathematics is universal (very probably)--but
for the record this is not a dogma with me but, like other
things, a "working hypothesis." While proof is lacking,
we do have "reason to believe that it is universal"--the
way its different branches are held in high regard and
added to, never "pruned," the power of our physics
and computers which are based on it, and so on. I don't
know what we'll do in 10,000 years, but if present trends
are an indication, barring catastrophe, it seems unlikely 
that major parts of our mathematical knowledge will be
lost.

>As for intelligence, I'd rely much more on what these
>people do than what theories they have to explain what
>and how they do it. If their spaceships work but they have
>nothing that we recognize as corresponding to our math,
>it is their spaceships that provide the unanswerable test
>of their intelligence.

Again, I'll believe it when I see it. This presumably would
mean they know nothing about computers or comutable
functions, or what we would call mechanics, relativistic or
Newtonian. To me it starts to sound supernatural.

>Nor for that matter can we really accept that even our basic
>scientific ideas will remain the same for the next thousand
>years. All past scientific history suggests the opposite.

A large part of scientific history suggests we are building up
a body of knowledge about reality that is truly telling us
"how it is." Our theories may change, but often that is
in the direction of refinement, so the old structure actually
remains, only better than ever. Think of Newtonian
mechanics vs. relativity, for instance. For many purposes,
Newton's theory is still quite adequate and useful, and it
is also a starting point if you want to understand the
theory that superseded it.

>the belief that what you are doing is universal and cannot
>be questioned is indeed seductive, but very dangerous.

One should not be too dogmatic--I agree. 

>For if you have such a belief you will lose interest in any
>experimental tests of your science, or any new ideas or
>systems in your math.

I'm all for experimental tests in science. And I see no threat
to mathematics from "new ideas or systems," but benefits
instead--a good reason itself why mathematics is probably
universal.

Mike Perry

http://www.alcor.org

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