It's like saying that things fall "because of gravity".
But that's precisely what we say. Things fall "because this equation describes how they fall" (math just allows for a more precise description than natural languages).
"This equation describes how they fall" is a sensible thing to say. "Because of gravity" is only sensible if it refers to that mathematics. The usage I intended to refer to is when someone says that who doesn't know the mathematics and is therefore not referring to it -- a member of the general public doing nothing but repeating a word he has learned.
A model-builder so computationally unlimited as to make any finite computation in epsilon time is too magical to make a useful thought experiment.
Well, you can reject Omega-type thought experiments with the same reasoning.
I do reject some of them, and have done so here in the past. Not all of these thought experiments make any sense. Omega works great for formulating Newcomb's problem. After that it's all downhill.
Also, Turing Machines.
Turing machines do not perform arbitrary computations instantly.
Think of it this way: Would two supremely powerful model-builders come up with "chair", independently? If there's reason to answer "no", then chair is just a label useful to some model-builders, as opposed to something fundamental to the territory.
I think there is reason to answer "yes". (I assume these model-builders are looking at human civilisation, and not at intelligent octopuses swimming in the methane lakes of Titan.) Less parochially, they will come up with integers, real numbers, calculus, atoms, molecules, fluid dynamics, and so on. Is "group" (in the mathematical sense) merely a computational hack over the "base level" of ZF (or some other foundation for mathematics)?
What does it actually mean to claim that something is "just a computational hack", in contrast to being "fundamental to the territory"? What would you be discovering, when you discovered that something belonged to one class rather than the other? Nobody has seen a quark, not within any reasonable reading of "to see". Were atoms just a computational hack before we discovered they were made of parts? Were protons and neutrons just a computational hack before quarks were thought of? How can we tell whether quarks are just a computational hack? Only in hindsight, after someone comes up with another theory of particle physics?
That's rather a barrage of questions, but they are intended to be one question, expressed in different ways. I am basically not getting the distinction you are drawing here between "base-level things" and "computational hacks", and what you get from that distinction.
"Because of gravity" is only sensible if it refers to that mathematics.
Well, that's where we disagree (I'd agree with "useful" instead of "sensible"). The mathematical description is just a more precise way of describing what we see, of describing what a thing does. It is not providing any "justification". The experimental result needs no justification. It just is. And we describe that result, the conditions, the intermediate steps. No matter how precise that description, no matter what language we clad it in, the...
I've read a fair amount on Less Wrong and can't recall much said about the plausibility of some sort of afterlife. What do you guys think about it? Is there some sort of consensus?
Here's my take:
Edit: People in the comments have just taken it as a given that consciousness resides solely in the brain without explaining why they think this. My point in this post is that I don't see why we have reason to reject the 3 possibilities above. If you reject the idea that consciousness could reside outside of the brain, please explain why.