From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Jan 06 2003 - 10:38:06 MST
Eugen writes
> > A particular integer of this class exists as certainly
> > as does the number 17, and like 17 has many objective
> > properties. That this integer is not as *manifest*
> > to human intelligence as the number 17 doesn't change
> > the reality.
>
> No, that integer does not exist as long as you don't write it down, all of
> it, or at least have given a production system allowing to reconstruct
> that integer in a given shared context. Once you've scanned yourself, and
> encoded that pattern into a material carrier, you can truthfully state
> that number exists. Before, it's just a promise.
Are you claiming that there was a particular point in history
at which the integer 1729 came into existence? Might I ask
when this occurred? Might I ask where it came into existence?
In the vicinity of the Earth, or did its existence propagate
with speed c away from the solar system?
Universal constraints exist and have always existed that forbid
certain arrangements of matter. We call some of those constraints
mathematics. However vast the universe is, and however far back in
time it goes, you will look in vain to find seventeen particles in
deep space arranged in a rectangle with more rows than one. This
is because seventeen is prime, and has always been prime. We do
not invent these constraints; we discover them!
> > That patterns already exist is something which doesn't come
> > easily to even most 21st century people.
>
> Patterns are information. Information doesn't exist without
> a material carrier.
That sounds logical, but I don't really believe it is. The Mandelbrot
set, for example, carries a lot of information, but we are ill-advised
to suppose that it only came into existence with the work of Julia.
Like the above, it was another universal constraint that human beings
happened upon in a certain year, but that other intelligent material
will chance upon or have chanced upon themselves.
> > "Permutation City" raised consciousness on this topic as
> > so often science fiction writers are the first to do. With
> > his "Theory of Dust", he helps to prepare minds for the idea
> > that whether a pattern exists on in computer memory, or on
> > disk, or on paper cards, or in a biological organism, or at
> > certain places in intergalactic space in the form of dust
> > particles, doesn't matter a whit. Patterns are forever.
>
> A pattern is meaningless in absence of an encoding and
> decoding system. The Mars face is only a face as long
> there are monkeys which can interpret that pattern as
> faceness.
I think that there really is or is not a face on Mars.
(Almost certainly not.) But if there is a face---in
sufficient detail to provide isomorphism to bipedal
symmetrical creatures who have a pair of eyes, a nose,
and a mouth---then this is just a fact. A detailed
isomorphism exists, or it does not. If it does, then
a signature test is that (as I said before) even mildly
intelligent machinery from anywhere in the universe can
discern this fact.
> IIRC, the extreme position of the 'dust theory' is that an enumeration of
> all possible patterns -- regardless of sequence of occurrence, whether
> temporal or spatial -- implements all known realities. I don't agree with
> this interpretation.
Nor do I. And you give a great reason here:
> Assuming I have a specific system's evolution trajectory,
> can I randomly jumble the frames, and still claim it's the
> same trajectory? I don't think so. Each frame follows
> from another via iterative transformation. I cannot skip
> frames, short-cutting terrain in between without actually
> doing the computation work.
Yes. This is where Egan went wrong (though he makes it clear
that he doesn't always believe what his books suggest). I
have called this a "succession of frozen states", and it cannot
replace or emulate states that pass information.
> > Why should some strings such as the above get run time
> > and not others? More importantly, who should decide?
> > The answers are clear if you cast away ancient prejudices
> > and try to be logical.
>
> This is not logic, Lee. You've built your system on a set of random
> axioms. Not shared by most people. I notice you're making a pattern
> of being consistently unreasonable.
I'm noticing that you're making a pattern of falling
into wasteful dismissals unsupported by argument, and
which then sometimes fall further into ad hominem
(though not this time, thanks! Other posters the
last week or so weren't so lucky as I.)
"No! It's you who is being unreasonable!"
"No! It's you who are resorting to bad axioms!"
"No! You're the one who isn't using logic!"
Ya see, anybody could do that, and it gets
us exactly... nowhere. It beats me why so many
people waste their time that way, and you are
hardly the worst offender! But I digress.
Lee
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