From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Jan 05 2003 - 15:04:42 MST
Nathaniel writes
> [Lee Corbin wrote]
> >To illustrate, consider the integer
> >
> > 8051212150013250014011305000919001205050003151802
> > 09140000002505190009000113000114000914200507051802
> > which by a most transparent cipher reads
> >
> > "Hello my name is Lee Corbin. Yes I am an integer
> > but my pattern is that of a real person existing
> > on Earth 2003 AD. I am less than a googol long
> > but still as you will see there is no doubt that
> > I am he. I have his DNA, his memories, his beliefs
> > and personality dispositions. Consult the weighty
> > table of contents directly following..."
>
> If human code were capable to run all the variations
> of human combinations what would that solve?
> Obviously you would have to define all the combinations
> of humans as "All genetic and environmental factors which
> cause the human code to change".
You are speaking here of identity over time, and yes,
you are correct in that another class of integers is
indicated by the particular one above: we might write
I(t+1) = I(t, environmental-input)
However, this is a multi-valued function in that a
very large number of integers must be interpreted
as unambiguously meaning me a second later.
Anyway, that's what I think you're getting to when you write
"cause the human code to change". I don't understand how
this applies to more than one person at a time.
> In other words, all the humans would have the same code
> without these factors.
How do you understand a human being to be without these
factors? Doesn't "environment+heredity" cover it?
> If the combinations were to have new [non-human] genes and new
> traits they would be inhuman. Or if the combinations would
> live in a new environment and get new stimuli they would be
> inhuman.
Yes.
> So a certain set of factors has to be established to
> define the non-existing human combinations. Wouldn't
> these combinations change as the alive humans change
> and they have different genes and have different
> environments?
Well, yes, because what we would consider human would
and perhaps will change over time. At one point, humans
that didn't have the right skin color weren't considered
human.
But for the purposes of this discussion, I think that it
would be best to keep a fixed meaning of the term "human",
and so the "non-human" (alien or animal) concept also
remains fixed.
> The answer is the human code can only be defined in the
> present, for a second later it has changed.
Well, as I say, (a) the human code---by which I mean the
fuzzy set of all bit strings that represent human beings
---relies entirely on its genetic and environmental
factors, and (b) we ought not to consider those to be
undergoing any great change over the course of our
discussion in comparison to the enormous amount of
information already therein.
> What mathematical formula could we use to define
> the changing human code?
The formula I gave above for a single individual could
perhaps be extended to cover all humans at time t, and
perhaps you'd like to do so, obtaining your "changing
human condition" over time as a result.
> Being human is it possible for our code to predict
> the future and then predict ourselves?
While these are technically computable functions, they
are not computable in practice. It would turn out that
super-human machinery would be necessary for the
computation, and I also think that it is likely this
is one of those cases where we would implicitly
experience the calculation. E.g., if it predicts
the 22nd century from the present data, then human
civilization will experience it just the same as we
are doing anyway, or we might already be that computation.
Lee
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