A system with fixed deterministic rules and known initial conditions has an outcome that can be predicted. OTOH, the rules of QM are as fixed--unchanging--as you like, but do not allow definite prediction of experience.
We don't know anything about FW, including whether it is determined by the environment.
You can predict experiences quite reliably in aggregate. You can determine the percentages of you which will have experience A or B. The only uncertainty is which aspect of the amplitude flow you'll feel like you're in.
I'm not sure what you mean by a GLUT? A static table obviously wouldn't be conscious, since whatever the details consciousness is obviously a process. But, the way you use GLUT suggests that you are including algorithms for processing the look-ups, how would that be different from other algorithmic reasoning systems using stored data (memories)?
The lookup algorithms in question are not processing the meaning of the inputs and generating a response as needed. The lookup algorithms simply string-match the conversational history to the list of inputs and output the next line in the conversation.
An algorithmic reasoning system, on the other hand, would seem to be something that actually reasons about the meaning of what's been said, in the sense of logically processing the input as opposed to string-matching it.
Am I the only one who hears Eliezer's "Never ever never for ever" voiced roughly like HJPEV?
Some of the people you believe are dead are actually alive, but no matter how hard they try to get other people to notice them, their actions are immediately forgotten and any changes caused by those actions are rationalized away.
Fabulous story idea.
I've been reading a book similar to what you have in mind I think. It's "Mathematics: From the birth of numbers" (http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Birth-Numbers-Jan-Gullberg/dp/039304002X). It starts very basic but covers all sorts of advanced topics. It's designed for someone with no higher math learning. I'm about 1/4 of the way through it and so far very impressed.
First off, that book looks wonderful. It looks, just from the description, like it goes deeper into Math, rather than covering the math of other fields. As delightful as Math can be, I'd be much more interested in having a primer on the math of all sorts of other things.
Eliezer_Yudkowsky: I'm not sure I see the relevance of evolutionary theory to Enron. According to the characterization you quoted, the problem was that the stakes were so high that people cheated. Why do evolution's insights help me see that? That mishap can be explained through poor incentive alignment: what was optimal behavior for a trader was not regarded by Enron as optimal behavior. The disutility to Enron of "false profits" was not reflected in an individual trader's utility curve.
So Skilling picked a bad incentive structure. Does everyone who picks a bad incentive structure fancy himself an evolution conjurer?
So Skilling picked a bad incentive structure. Does everyone who picks a bad incentive structure fancy himself an evolution conjurer?
If one thinks of evolution as the process of deriving "better" results through a selection criteria and a change process, then yes, Skilling was conjuring evolution, though he did not realize it. He established a selection criteria (individual performance numbers) and the employees themselves provided the change process. As he repeatedly selected against the weakest performers (according to his insufficiently rational criteria), the employees changed through what they found the easiest way to achieve "better performance". The company evolved as the employees changed their behavior.
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I think Will made my point. It doesn't seem to me like anything you wrote demonstrated that human choice is non-illusory. Granted that we seem to be part of physics, we can have experiences that make us think we're engaging in choice, we can experience cause and effect in our different points in configuration space, I don't see how that adds up to us actually engaging in choosing (as opposed to us experiencing thoughts and feelings of choosing, each of which are different parts of that configuration space).
I'm trying to see exactly where your assertion that humans actually have choice comes in. It's not clear to me, and the evidence I've seen is that cognitive scientists have already exposed much of the free will/human choice experience as illusory. So it seems reasonable to me that all of the human choice experience could be illusory (although the illusory experience could be a part of physics and normality too).
Human choice: why it exists, despite being inside of physics. Intelligence is the decision-making process. This is how our actions are determined. The experience of this decision-making process is called alternately "choice" and "free will". The causal relationship of our environments to our actions extends from observation, through our mental state and decision-making process, to our actions. If I use a different decision-making process, I make different decisions. This is still entirely inside of physics, but it hasn't been explained away. It can even be absolutely deterministic, when viewed from a third-person perspective. Saying we don't have "choice" is about as helpful as anything in the debate about free will