Caledonian: What I mean by "time" is whatever Eliezer means by it, and what I mean by "exist" is that thing that Eliezer says causality does but time doesn't. It seems to me that time and causality are so intertwined that they are surely the same thing; if you have causality but not time, then I don't understand what this "time" thing is that you don't have.
When Eliezer says things like "Our equations don't need a t in them, so we can banish the t and make our ontology that much simpler", perhaps I need a better und...
Nick: IL, to do what you suggest you'd have to actually compute the history of your universe, meaning the causal relations would exist, so there wouldn't be any problem with there being consciousness.
I don't think that's correct. You could populate your model with random data, and if that data happens to be an accurate representation of the timeless universe, then poof you have created consciousness with no computation required (unless you believe that acquiring random data and writing it to RAM is "computation" of the kind that should create ca...
Caledonian: thanks for the reply, but that wasn't what I was getting at. I can see that things in a temporal sequence may not be causally related - e.g. the light flashes and then the bell rings, but the light didn't cause the bell. My question was about the reverse implication: if causality exists, such that A causes B, does that not necessarily imply that A preceded B and that time exists? If not, what aspect of time is not included within the notion of causality such that we can have causality but not time?
The only case I can think of offhand would b...
Don't think that any of this preserves time, though, or distinguishes the past from the future. I am just holding onto cause and effect and computation and even anticipation for a little while longer.
What is the difference between a time-like relationship and a causal relationship? How have you not preserved time by preserving causality?
You've never been so intoxicated that you "lose time", and woken up wondering who you threw up on the previous night? You've never done any kind of hallucinogenic drug? You don't ... sleep?
I have in fact done at least two of the above three. (Perhaps if I slept I wouldn't need to take drugs so often...)
But you're taking my words too literally and missing my point. Indeed, it is very possible for me to fail to perceive time; I've done it before, and at some point I'll do it forever. But the very fact that I can sit here, now, and talk about &qu...
Assuming that dust theory or the block universe or Barbourian timelessness are true... I fail to see how it matters to any of us.
Presumably, we are all timeful beings. I know I am (cogito, ergo tempus fugit), and I assume the rest of you are, too. Whether I and my memories and my perception of time passing only exist as collections of block slices or as neighboring nodes in the static quantum foam in configuration space or as relationships between specks of dust... or even as time-slices in a computer simulation, or as integers in MathSpace which is the ...
And for those of us who haven't read Permutation City at all, here's an explanation of this whole "dust theory" thing they're talking about.
(The FAQ Z.M.Davis points to has answers to several good questions about dust theory, but not the question "what is it?")
Stephen, thanks for your thoughts on Eli's thoughts. I'm going to have to think on them further - after all these helpful posts I can pretend I understand quantum mechanics, but pretending to understand how conscious minds perceive a single point in configuration space instead of blobs of amplitude is going to take more work.
I will point out, though, that the question of how consciousness is bound to a particular branch (and thus why the Born rule works like it does) doesn't seem that much different from how consciousness is tied to a particular point in ...
Thanks to Eliezer's QM series, I'm starting to have enough background to understand Robin's paper (kind of, maybe). And now that I do (kind of, maybe), it seems to me that Robin's point is completely demolished by Wallace's points about decoherence being continuous rather than discrete and therefore there being no such thing as a number of discrete worlds to count.
There seems to be nothing to resolve between the probabilities given by measure and the probabilities implied by world count if you simply say that measure is probability.
Eliezer objects. We're...
Eliezer: So when I say that two punches to two faces are twice as bad as one punch, I mean that if I would be willing to trade off the distance from the status quo to one punch in the face against a billionth (probability) of the distance between the status quo and one person being tortured for one week, then I would be willing to trade off the distance from the status quo to two people being punched in the face against a two-billionths probability of one person being tortured for one week.
So alternatives that have twice the probability of some good thing ...
There are no natural utility differences that large. (Eliezer, re 3^^^3)
You've measured this with your utility meter, yes?
If you mean that it's not possible for there to be a utility difference that large, because the smallest possible utility shift is the size of a single particle moving a planck distance, and the largest possible utility difference is the creation or destruction of the universe, and the scale between those two is smaller than 3^^^3 ... then you'll have to remind me again where all these 3^^^3 people that are getting dust specks in their ...
Eliezer's creation (the AI-Box Experiment) has once again demonstrated its ability to take over human minds through a text session. Small wonder - it's got the appearance of a magic trick, and it's being presented to geeks who just love to take things apart to see how they work, and who stay attracted to obstacles ("challenges") rather than turned away by them.
My contribution is to echo Doug S.'s post (how AOL-ish... "me too"). I'm a little puzzled by the AI-Box Experiment, in that I don't see what the gatekeeper players are trying to... (read more)