Yes, that series has a first step, but not a last one. You can number the steps in the series if you start at the big steps. Similarly, you can number the dichotomy steps in reverse order, since the big steps are at the end.a set like N = {30, 15, 15/2}? Does that not include a first step? — ToothyMaw
If there's a smallest sliver of time, there is no bijection with the set of natural numbers since there are only a finite number of steps.And would that sum not eventually terminate given a smallest sliver of time exists
'Continue indefinitely' is a phrase implying 'for all time', yet all the steps are taken after only a minute, so even if time is infinitely divisible, the series completes in short order.or continue indefinitely given time is infinitely divisible?
No. In the dichotomy scenario, there is no first step to which that number can be assigned.Can we not count the intervals starting with 1 — ToothyMaw
OK, that meaning of 'count'. In that case, I don't see how mathematical counting differs from physical counting. That bijection can be done in either case. In the case with the tortoise, for any physical moment in time, the step number of that moment can be known.To count a set means to place it into bijection with: — fishfry
I also would hate to have to talk about the poor kilometerage that Bob's truck gets.Depends on the exchange rate. — fishfry
The lamp scenario asks it, which is why the comment was relevant.It [the even-oddness of ω]is neither, and who's asking such a thing? — fishfry
I think the person to whom I was replying was suggesting that somebody had asserted a proof that a physical supertask was possible. But I did not recall anybody posting such an assertion.Some supertasks are coherent and consistent, therefore logically logically possible. In this case, that is the proof that they are "possible" — Metaphysician Undercover
Interesting. Is it a countable set? I suppose it is, but only if you count the 1 first. The set without the 1 can be counted in order. The set with the 1 is still ordered, but cannot be counted in order unless you assign ω as its count, but that isn't a number, one to which one can apply operations that one might do to a number, such as factor it. That 'final step' does have a defined start and finish after all, both of which can be computed from knowing where it appears on the list.the set {1/2, 3/4, 7/8, ..., 1} — fishfry
Which works until you ask if ω is even or odd.and we inquire about the final state at ω
Totally agree, but I'm not aware of anybody claiming a proof that supertasks are possible. Maybe I missed it.Using mathematics to try to prove that supertasks are possible is a fallacy. — Michael
The relativity thing was more of a refinement and had little practical value for some time. Newtonian physics put men on the moon well over a half century later.Well physics is of course exempt from math and logic. The world does whatever it's doing. We humans came out of caves and invented math and logic. The world is always primary. Remember that Einstein's world was revolutionary -- overthrowing 230 years of Newtonian physics. — fishfry
What is this 'the former'? The physical activity of making a declaration? There's definitely some abstraction going on there, as there is with any deliberate activity.in math I can invoke the axiom of infinity, declare the natural numbers to be the smallest inductive set guaranteed by the axiom, and count it by placing its elements into order-bijection with themselves. The former is a physical activity taking place in the world and subject to limitations of space, time, and energy. The latter is a purely abstract mental activity.
No argument here.if thoughts are biochemical processes; are not our thoughts of infinity a kind of physical manifestation?
Depends on what you mean by count, and especially countable, since plenty of equivocation is going on in this topic.So bottom line it's clear to me that we can't count the integers physically
Sorry, but what? I still see no difference. What meaning of 'count them' are you using that it is easy only in mathematics?but we can easily count them mathematically
That doesn't follow at all since by this reasoning, 'as far as we know' we can do physically infinite things.And the reason I say that we can't physically do infinitely many things in finite time "as far as we know," is because the history of physics shows that every few centuries or so, we get very radically new notions of how the world works.
They've been a possibility already, since very long ago. It's just not been proven. Zeno's premise is a demonstration of one.Nobody can say whether physically instantiated infinities might be part of physics in two hundred years.
QM does very much suggest the discreetness of matter, but Zeno's premise doesn't rely on the continuity of matter. It works best with a single fundamental particle moving through continuous space and time, and overtaking another such particle.We split the atom, you know. That was regarded as a metaphysical impossibility once too.
They were never off the table since current physics doesn't forbid them. Maybe future physics will for instance quantize either space or time (I can think of some obvious ways to drive that to contradiction). Future findings take things off the table, not put new ones on. The initial state of physics is "I know nothing so anything is possible'.The next shift just may well incorporate some notion of infinitary set theory; in which case actual supertasks may be on the table.
Heh, despite the detractor standing on an obvious example of such a geometry.I analogize with the case of non-Euclidean geometry; at first considered too absurd to exist
Octonians shows signs of this sort of revolution.then when shown to be logically consistent, considered only a mathematician's plaything, of no use to more practical-minded folk; and then shown to be the most suitable framework for Einstein's radical new geometry of spacetime.
Actually, the big bang theory already does that much.eternal inflation. That's a theory of cosmology that posits a fixed beginning for the universe, but no ending.
It is a mistake to talk about 'time creating these other universe'. Time, as we know it, is a feature/dimension of our one 'universe' and there isn't that sort of time 'on the outside'. There is no simultaneity convention, so it isn't meaningful to talk about if new bubbles are still being started or that this one came before that one.Physicists are vague on this point, but if time is eternally creating new universes, why shouldn't there be infinitely many of them.
That's the type III.And two, the many-world interpretation of quantum physics.
I don't buy into MWI, but bullshit is is not. It is easily the most clean and elegant of the interpretations with only one simple premise: "All isolated systems evolve according to the Schrodinger equation". That's it.In some other universe I didn't write this. I know it sounds like bullshit,
Everett's work is technically philosophy since, like any interpretation of anything, it is net empirically testable.These are just two areas I know about in which the idea of infinity is being taken seriously by speculative physicists.
Ah, local boy. I am more used to interacting with those who walk a km. There's more of em.Well I can walk a mile
That wording implies a sort of meaningful simultaneity that just doesn't exist.But let me riddle you this. Suppose that eternal inflation is true; so that the world had a beginning but no end, and bubble universes are forever coming into existence. — fishfry
The universes in eternal inflation theory are not countable.And suppose that in the first bubble universe, somebody says "1".
You're not going to get past step 10 at best. I just takes longer than the step duration to recite a syllable. I don't think this is your point, but it's a poor wording due to this. Yes, step 13 has a defined duration at known start and stop times. The duration simply isn't long enough to recite anything.P1. It takes me 30 seconds to recite the first natural number, 15 seconds to recite the second natural number, 7.5 seconds to recite the third natural number, and so on ad infinitum. — Michael
No. It means 'without final step'. You're apparently equivocating "without end" to mean that the process is incomplete after any amount of time.P2. 30 + 15 + 7.5 + ... = 60
C1. The sequence of operations1 described in P1 ends at 60 seconds without ending on some final natural number.
But given that ad infinitum means "without end",
There we go with the finite definition again.What else does "the sequence of operations ends" mean if not "the final operation in the sequence is performed"?
Good source. It says that the limit is approached as the input approaches the specified value.Calculating the limit does not entail a process that reaches that limit. This is a misinterpretation of the concept of limit.This article describes it this way:
In mathematics, a limit is the value that a function (or sequence) approaches as the input (or index) approaches some value... — Relativist
Read carefully. I didn't say that.Are you saying that you believe that there would still be an April 29, even if there never was any human beings with their time measuring techniques, and dating practises? — Metaphysician Undercover
That we coin the term “X” to refer to some Y isn’t that Y depends on us referring to it using the term “X”. This is where you fail to make a use-mention distinction. — Michael
My personal beliefs in this matter are irrelevant. I simply know what somebody means when they treat Y as something independent of "X".And do you believe that...
What is it about 'physical' that makes this difference? Everybody just says 'it does', but I obviously can physically move from here to there, so the claim above seems pretty unreasonable, like physics is somehow exempt from mathematics (or logic in Relativist's case) or something.I agree that it's impossible to do infinitely many physical thinks in finite time according to present physics. — fishfry
We seem to be talking in circles, with all logic from the 'impossible' side being based on either there being a last infinite number, or on non-sequiturs based on the lack of said last number.
The goal is not unreachable. That simply doesn't follow from arguments based on finite logic, and it is in defiance of modus ponens. It's just necessarily not reached by any specific act in the list.
— Relativist
You defined the second task as a non-supertask, requiring infinite time. That's why not.There is a bijection yes. It does not imply that both or neither completes.
— noAxioms
Why not?
Exactly so.That's like saying today would be April 29 even if there was never any human beings to determine this. — Metaphysician Undercover
For the record, I am personally advocating that they have not been shown to be physically impossible. All the 'paradoxes' that result are from inappropriately wielding finite logic in my opinion.I'm not the one advocating for supertasks — fishfry
Does it? It seems to be a more complex model that suggests stupid sizes for 'what is', but not 'actual infinite' more than the standard flat model that comes from the cosmological principle. Yes, I know the page you link mentions 'hypothetically infinite' once. I have a deep respect for the eternal inflation model since something like it is necessary to counter the fine-tuning argument for a purposeful creation.I would invite you to read up on eternal inflation, a speculative cosmological theory that involves actual infinity. — fishfry
No, you didn't. You merely asserted: "The PSA statement (that there is a step that reaches the goal) directly violates the premise that any given step gets only halfway to the goal." There is no direct violation. — Relativist
Here's valid logic:
1. A halfway step cannot reach the goal.
2. All steps are halfway
3. Therefore the goal cannot be reached.
This shows that no specific halfway step reaches the goal, which is the same as saying that the goal cannot be reached in a finite number of steps.
It seems that every post seems to attempt finite logic on an unbounded situation. If you accept that motion is possible, there is a flaw in at least one of the premises.
— Relativist
Yea, I do, don't I? I'm not enough of the mathematician to regurgitate all the axioms and processes involved in the accepted validity of the value of a convergent series. Attack them if you will. The do require some axioms that are not obvious, so there's a good place to start. Nevertheless, I can do more than just handwave, by several unrelated methods.You merely asserted the goal is reached (directly contradicting #3) but didn't explain how the sequence of halfway steps somehow reaches the goal.
There is a temporal end to it, a final moment if not a final step.The process does not continue forever, however there is no end to the process.
There is a bijection yes. It does not imply that both or neither completes.But this process has a 1:1 correspondence to the supertask -- for every step taken in one scenario, there's a parallel step taken in the other. This suggests that either they both complete, or neither completes.
The 'process' can go beyond the end of the line despite it ending before the goal. This is sort of a different issue since you're putting an uncountable set of points between 0 and 1. Why not just 1/2, 1/4, ...The number line in question is an interval that is open on the right: i.e. it includes all points <1, but not including 1. There are infinitely many points in this interval, but the point "1" isn't one of them. So the process cannot reach 1, and 1 is the goal of the process.
Disagree. The kinematic process isn't restricted to only points on the number line.The goal is therefore unreachable by the kinematic process.
I showed that for a supertask, the PSA is not correct. So no, this cannot be for a supertask.Or the PSA is correct, and the goal can't be met. — Relativist
Because a contradiction results from making that additional assertion. In the example given, it is a very direct contradiction.Why would it matter if the number of steps is infinite? — Relativist
If the process continues forever, by definition it isn't a supertask. It's a different process than the one being discussed.What does it even mean for a kinematic process to be infinite? My answer: it means the process continues forever and does not end. What's your answer. — Relativist
I don't know what is meant by this. 'Concurrently' means 'at the same time' and there isn't time defined for a number line.Points on a number line exist concurrently (in effect). — Relativist
OK. I buy that. But this works mathematically as well, so 'kinetic' doesn't add anything. I can draw the worldlines of Achilles and the tortoise on some medium and all you get is two lines that cross at some point. The axes on the plot are x and t, so in this mathematical representation, the steps do not occur simultaneously, but are separate durations of time. What did 'kinetic' add to that?Steps in a kinetic process do not: they occur sequentially, separated by durations of time. — Relativist
OK, this has been about the stairway. There is no objective kinematics about that since it involves a space-like worldline, so the steps are not unambiguously ordered in time. The ordering of the steps becomes ambiguous due to relativity of simultaneity, and it becomes meaningless to use the word 'sequential' in this context.the Achilles/tortoise problem ... just clouds the issue with the stairway supertask. — Relativist
The PSA statement (that there is a step that reaches the goal) directly violates the premise that any given step gets only halfway to the goal.Show the PSA is false. — Relativist
Simply asserting that such a step is necessary doesn't make it so, especially when it being the case directly violates the initial premise. That violation does very much demonstrate not only the lack of necessity of a final step, but the impossibility of it, given the premise.Simply denying a final step is necessary doesn't make it so
I don't know how the task being 'kinetic' changes the argument. You can phrase it as a n inertial object overtaking a slower one in frictionless space.you have to explain why it's not necessary for a kinetic task to require a final step in order to be completed.
The lack of a defined number for the last task does not prevent completion (by the all-tasks definition), so I regard your statement as a non-sequitur.And so it is meaningless to claim that such a supertask can complete. — Michael
Several here have been defining completion effectively as measuring the value of the final task, and that instance I suppose differs from Zeno's that specifies no such requirement.Maybe I've misunderstood what a supertask is. Are there not different kinds of cases? — Ludwig V
Well, keystone suggested that Zeno denies this, and M-U suggests that time somehow stops due to the offense we've given it. Anyway, I agree with you, but it requires that implied premise that empirical evidence is valid.I mean that we know that Achilles will pass the tortoise
This suggests fallacious reasoning in the second presentation. Most of the fallacies I've seen posted seem to be based on the premise of there being a limiting step. It's why I like Bernadete's Paradox of the Gods (see post ~30) which explicitly leverages the lack of there being a limiting step, and drives that to a seemingly paradoxical result. That's a harder one to wave off.But then the same problem, presented in a different way, seems to suggest that it cannot.
Just not physically. Mathematically it can, but then the story mentions 'the bottom' which implies something final that 'no more stairs' does not. So it lacks rigor.The staircase ... gives us a task (going down the infinite stairs) that cannot be completed
I'm trying to get a justification of that claim without the addition of the necessity of a final step, which would by definition be contradictory.But I'm making the stronger claim that it is logically impossible. — Relativist
Has always meant 'prostate specific antigen' to me. I get my PSA checked at least once a year.PSA
OK, 'act' is a step (go half the remaining way to the goal). 'task' is a goal (pass the tortoise).Taking a single step is an act. The acts are performed in a sequence (from step n to step n+1)..
Countably infinite means that any step can be assigned a number. It does not in any way mean that there is a meaningful count of steps.My point is that the stairs are countably infinite. — Relativist
It does, I'm quite aware. Just not in Zeno's argument.The article discusses the issue
I pretty much quoted exactly Black's remarks just above. Yes, the task is not complete by this finite definition despite every step having been taken, and that final step must be taken for your counter to have a defined value after a minute.Max Black (1950) argued that it is nevertheless impossible to complete the Zeno task, since there is no final step in the infinite sequence...
Again, the stairs is utterly abstract. There's no kinematics to it. Not so with the tortoise. I can pass the tortoise, thus completing (by the 'all steps' definition) the supertask.The mathematical series completes, but this is an abstract, mathematical completion. The kinetic activity of descending the stairs does not complete.
How does the abstract mathematics not account for the physical ability of me passing the tortoise?The SEP article leaves it there, but the implication seems clear: the abstract mathematics does not fully account for the kinetic activity.
I cannot parse this. What is an 'act' that is distinct from a 'task'? The word 'sequence' seems to refer to the entire collection.PSA:
The performance of a sequence of successive acts does not complete a particular task unless it is completed by the performance of one of the acts in the sequence.
I'm trying to focus on the completion of all tasks and not on the measurement of a nonexistent value.That's what I see going on with the posters who focus only on the mathematical series.
But I think you have. Your attempted counter (or the color change thing in the recent post) treats it as a number, and suggests taking its modulus relative to base 10 or 3. What is the lowest digit of the number of the final step? If there is no such number, then the output of your scenario is undefined, which is very differnt from the digit counter displaying a value of 'undefined', or an undefined lamp state somehow violating the law of excluded middle by being in some state between on and off.I agree we can't treat infinity as a number, and haven't suggested you should.
Infinity means unbounded, which means there is a physical location and time interval.for any task n That's what makes it meaningful, and it only works if physicality is presumed not discreet.But for the supertask to be meaningful, you have to identify where infinity fits in the kinetic task description. I'm saying it entails a never-ending sequence of tasks. Identifying the limit doesn't make this disappear.
I can pass a tortoise without contradiction. That shows that at least one of three (two explicit, one implicit) premises are false. But it doesn't necessarily have to be the premise you just mentioned there, that supertasks are impossible.I'll add that supertask scenarios actually are NOT coherent- because they entail a contradiction.
I'm ignoring it because those contradictions arise from a 4th premise (that there is a final step), one which I don't accept.You seem to be avoiding the contradiction by ignoring the incompleteness of the infinitely many kinematic steps. The presence of the contradiction implies supertasks are logically impossible (not merely physically impossible).
Why is the passing of a tortoise necessarily not a supertask, as described by Zeno, and given a presumption of continuous physics?What puzzles me is why they are not dismissed out of hand. — Ludwig V
Undefined by the description. That is to say, the color of the box afterwards is not a defined thing, which is different than it displaying the color of 'undefined'.A white box turns red when the Earth completes a half-orbit, turns blue when it completes another quarter-orbit, turns back to white when it completes another eighth-orbit, and so on.
What colour is the box when the Earth completes its orbit around the Sun? — Michael
Michael did very nicely with his first line in his reply.If someone would explain to me, in a way which makes sense, a better perspective, then I'd happily switch. — Metaphysician Undercover
The physical process of descending stairs is not a supertask. I couldn't think of a way to make it a supertask, even by making each step smaller. A supertask has no final (or first, respectively) step, so by counterexample, the assertion "there has to be a final step." is incorrect.if a physical process ends, there has to be a final step.
— Relativist
This is equivalent to asserting that 'infinity' is the largest integer.
— noAxioms
Wrong. The statement applies universally to the physical process of descending stairs. — Relativist
I had not mentioned a completion of a count. The supertask is to complete all steps, not to count them, and not to complete a specific step that is nonexistent.A contradiction is introduced when this statement ("a completed step counting entails a final step)
I notice the SEP article correctly doesn't claim that the last step is taken.The SEP article says:
"... From this perspective, Achilles actually does complete all of the supertask steps in the limit as the number of steps goes to infinity"
Agree. But the only attempted step counting processes are examples like the lamp or Michael's digit counter, and those examples are not physical. The Achilles example can be physical, but it isn't counting anything.As I noted above, a physical, step-counting process that completes must entail a final step.
There being a final step leads directly to contradiction, and you say I'm copping out by pretending there isn't a final step?Your preferred perspective ignores this - or pretends there can't be a final step because that introduces a contradiction.
Kind of like I ignore the green ball in the bag, yes.I agree with this, but this simply ignores the implication of the physical process of step-counting.
I cannot accept this assertion. I cannot accept a view of completeness that treats infinity as a specific number.For the scenario to be coherent, BOTH view of completeness have to be true.
:up:No they mustn’t. — Michael
This is equivalent to asserting that 'infinity' is the largest integer. Does nobody else see that making such an assertion is going to lead to contradiction? It doesn't mean that there cannot be an unbounded thing.if a physical process ends, there has to be a final step. — Relativist
This depends on one's definition of completing a process. The SEP article on supertasks has this to say about it:I'm asserting that an infinite process is necessarily never completed - by definition. — Relativist
And a different page than me.Good. Then we're on the same page! — keystone
Zeno's argument is that X is possible, and another that X is not possible.(1) We accept Zeno's premise as valid, asserting that in a presentist world where only a single state exists, motion is impossible. — keystone
OK, so now we have point cuts separating shorter strings, each with nonzero extension.The cuts themselves are the points (think Dedekind cuts).
Any interpretation that denies wave function collapse has everything in superposition at all times. One simply finds ones self in superposition with the observed state. So I observe both the dead and the live cat, presuming that "I" dong the observing is the same person as the person a moment ago with the closed box.One can observe a superposition directly? Please share a link.
Moton is change of postion over time. The block universe very much has that for any moving object. The worldline of that object is a different spatial locations at different times. All of Zeno's arguments still apply, and are still contradictory.in a block universe where the block itself remains unchanged (i.e., no global motion), yet the entities within it experience change (i.e., local motion).
The first premise would be demonstrably false. The second premise (that supertasks are impossible) would be moot, but arguably true then.If the universe is discrete, then Zeno's paradoxes cannot occur as he described them
You seem to do this by reducing the universe to a point (your 'photo'), which is not something that is continuous. A point in time at least, which is the same as denial of time at all.What I'm suggesting is that in a continuous universe, the scenarios depicted in Zeno's paradoxes can indeed unfold precisely as he described them, without necessitating the completion of supertasks.
There are no empirical differences, agree. Presentism is the movie reel being played (a sort of literal analogy of the moving spotlight version of presentism). The reel by itself is eternalism (even if it still represents a preferred frame, which eternalists typically deny). The photo is just a frame, and not even that, since it is just a mental state since nothing in the present can be detected. If the state is all there is, then all memories are false and do not constitute evidence of anything.ZENO'S PARADOX
Instead of presentism vs. eternalism, let's talk about the photo vs. movie reel. For the photo and every frame of the movie reel the characters believe they're in the present. — keystone
There is a way to disprove GR, but it is similar to proving/disproving an afterlife: You cannot report the findings in a journal. Both premises of SR contradict presentism, so different premises must be used to take that stance. This has been done, but the theory was generalized about a century after GR came out. It necessarily denies things like black holes and the big bang.Reconciling general relativity with presentism is quite challenging.
I beg to differ, but again, the addition of a premise of a preferred moment has nothing to do with the validity of Zeno's assertions. He makes no mention of the present in any of them. If you disagree, then you need to say how the additional premise interferes with Zeno's logic.Plus, adopting eternalism helps to render Zeno's Paradoxes largely non-paradoxical.
Not sure of the difference. If I cut a string, I don't get points, I get shorter strings.Consider reversing this perspective: adopt a parts-from-whole approach. Start with a single continuous line and then, as if it were a string, cut it to create discrete points (which correspond to the gaps). I encourage you to explore this mindset; I'm eager to discuss it more with you.
You can under some interpretations.You cannot directly observe a particle in a superposition state
I don't think QM states are like points. The analogy is going way off track it seems.I bring in QM, not to sound fancy, but there is an analogy here between observed states (which are like points)
It's one of the things I'm discussing. Zeno's arguments are of the form (quoted from the Supertask Wiki page):I believe you are discussing whether time is discrete or continuous.
Necessary only if the first premise is to be accepted.In the context of Zeno's Paradoxes, it's necessary to consider space and time as continuous (as you later noted).
Yet again, one's interpretation of time isn't relevant to the above analysis.I'm not sure what you're referring to with time being continuous or discrete from a presentist perspective, especially since Zeno's arguments suggest that time does not progress in a presentist's view of the world.
Fine, Then it's a mathematical line segment.I explicitly wrote abstract string.
You're going to have to spell out exactly how an eternalist stance makes a difference here. All I see is an assertion that it makes a difference, but I don't see how.let’s say that adopting an eternalist perspective allows someone to reframe the impossibility of supertasks, turning it's non-existence from having unacceptable consequences to acceptable consequences.
It takes some minimum time to explicitly comprehend/experience a step in a series of steps. Hence the explicit experience of each step of a supertask cannot be completed in finite time.Additionally, none of the paradoxes explicitly rule out (experience of each task) as a possible solution.
Hence needing to see them being irrelevant.If there is a continuous film reel capturing the ticking counter, the limits of observation dictate that there are just some frames that we cannot see.
That sounds like a Boltzmann Brain, a mere state from which all is fiction and nothing can be known. Under this sort of presentism, there is nothing but a mental state and no experience at all, so no Achilles, Tortoise, stairs, or whatever. Just a mental state with memories of unverifiable lies.Zeno contends that change is impossible, leading to stark implications depending on one's philosophical stance on time. Under presentism, this translates to an unchanging, static present—life as nothing more than a photograph. — keystone
There is no 'past, present. future' defined under eternalism. All events share equal ontology. The view differs fundamentally from presentism only in that the latter posits a preferred location in time, relative to which those words have meaning.In contrast, the eternalist perspective views this as a static block universe, a continuous timeline that encompasses past, present, and future
Irrelevant, but I prefer the one that doesn't posit the additional thing for which there is zero empirical evidence. This is my rational side making that statement.Which view do you think is more reasonable?
That sounds like Zeno's arrow thing, a attempted demonstration that a nonzero thing cannot be the sum of zeroes, a sort of analysis of discreet vs continuous. Under the discreet interpretation, there are a finite number of points making up a finite length line segment. Under the continuous interpretation, no finite number of points can make up a line segment, but a line segment can still be defined as (informally) all points from here to there.Consider whether it is easier to draw a one-dimensional line by assembling zero-dimensional points consecutively or to cut a string (akin to dividing a line into segments).
But he cannot indicate a time that isn't represented by such a point, so I don't think he's shown this.Zeno would argue that the first option is impossible: a timeline cannot be constructed from mere points in time.
Irrelevant, per above. The block universe can still be interpreted as discreet or not, just like the presentist view. The difference between the two has nothing to do with any of the scenarios Zeno is describing.Instead, modern Zeno would suggest that the entire timeline already exists as a block universe
You do if it is discreet. A physical string is very much discreet, but that is neither space nor time. Zeno seems to favor the continuous model since all his paradoxes seem to presume it. E.g: "That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal", a statement that simply isn't true under a discreet view.However, there's a twist: abstract strings, like time, are infinitely divisible. No matter how many cuts we make (one after another), we never actually reduce the string to mere points.
Nonsense. It says no such thing. It is only a difference in the ontology of events.the eternalist perspective reframes the impossibility of supertasks from an unacceptable notion—that motion itself is impossible
This also seems irrelevant since none of his paradoxes seem to reference observation or comprehension. Surely it would take forever to comprehend the counting from 1 on up. Michael's digital counter runs into this: the positing of something attempting to measure the number of steps at a place where the thing being measured is singular.that observing every instant in history is impossible.
Non sequitur. It presumes the length of the staircase is a number, which is contradictory.If there is a parallel staircase where the steps start at 1 and increase as you go up, then there must be a point where the step numbers on both staircases align. — keystone
Case in point.Presumable it would be at (the number of steps in the first staircase divided by 2) — Ludwig V
Doesn't follow, since clearly I can overtake the tortoise in a universe that is continuous.But the last step down is not defined, which means it can't be reached. — Ludwig V
This seems to be an assertion, not a logical consequence of the premise. In fact it leads to a contradiction of the premise, hence demonstrating that the journey being able to start very much does follow from the premise, unless you can also drive that to contradiction, in which case the premise has been shown to be false.It does follow that the journey cannot start. — Michael
I swear you changed this. You had something that logically followed from your assertion. The conclusion that movement is discreet contradicts Zeno's premise that "That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal". So by contradiction, the journey not being able to start doesn't follow from the premise.Therefore given that the journey can start then the premise that there is no first division is false.
No, the reals are not countable. The example we've been using is. There is no final count of steps in Zeno's dichotomy, so there is no demonstrated requirement of a 'first step' or any kind of final count of steps. Insistence otherwise seems to be leading to contradictions.Given that each division is some 1/n then such a movement is akin to counting all the real numbers from 0 to 1 in ascending ordering. Such a count cannot start because there is no first number to count after 0. — Michael
Applying this to Zeno's cases, or to the OP: All three seem to be true. I disagree that only two can be.As for the OP, its triad of premises are inconsistent. For only two of the three following premises can be true of a sequence
i) The length of the sequence is infinite.
ii) The sequence is countable
iii) The sequence is exhaustible — sime
Ah, thank you for that. I sort of remembered the story but not the name/author.Bernadete's Paradox of the Gods: — Michael
But I've been arguing that the above reasoning is fallacious. Yes, each division must be passed, and each division is preceded by other divisions (infinitely many), and yes, from that it can be shown that there is no first division. All that is true even in a physical journey (at least if distance is continuous).It's the same principle as Zeno's dichotomy, albeit Zeno uses distance markers rather than barriers. Given that each division must be passed before any subsequent division, and given that there is no first division, the sequence of events cannot start.
Mathematically it is, and mathematics seems to have no problem with it. Yes, I believe certain axioms must be accepted, but I'm no expert there.The solution, similar to my proposed solution above, is that movement is not infinitely divisible
I don't find that to be a contradiction.If movement is continuous then an object in motion passes through every marker in sequential order, but there is no first marker, so this is a contradiction. — Michael
OK, if you deny the continuous nature of both space and time, then the number of iterations is finite, and the argument falls apart. My arguments presume a more mathematical interpretation: the continuous nature of both. If space is discreet, Achilles passes the tortoise after finite iterations. There would be a last one, after which the tortoise is passed. The conclusion of the inability to overtake doesn't follow because the premise upon which it is based becomes false.The false premise for Zeno is that each distance, and each time period will always be divisible. — Metaphysician Undercover
Presentism is still presentism even if time is continuous. You seem to describe a discreet view there, which runs into problems.In his era, the dominant philosophical view was presentism, which posits that only the present moment is real, and it unfolds sequentially, moment by moment. — keystone
Block view also defines motion as change in position over time, and thus motion is very much meaningful under the view.n this comprehensive perspective, motion is impossible. — keystone
All these are trips from beginning to end. Zeno's initial state (0) to the point where the tortoise is passed (1). In your OP, 0 is time zero, and 1 is time 1-minute.rip from 0 to 1-I don't get it. — keystone
This seems to contradict yourlelf. You say time is discreet, in which case the number of digit changes is finite, and there is an answer. You also seem to deny that the sum of the converging series is not 1, or that time somehow is obligated to stop, which is the same thing.Yes, that is the point. Your expressed conceptualization "60 seconds will pass in the universe" is not consistent with the conceptualization prescribed by the OP. But this conceptualization — Metaphysician Undercover
The mathematics is clear. The sum of the infinite series 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 ... is 1, not more, not less. Nobody has claimed 'under a minute'.Surely even if halfing the time with every step, a minute will still eventually be exceeded somewhere along the infinite steps and before this so called "finite bottom" to an infinite staircase?!? Doesn't make sense mathematically either. — Benj96
Well, the counterexamples have shown otherwise. I can subdivide the trip from 0 to 1 the other way around, with the smallest steps coming first, thus showing that it can be physically traversed in either direction.The most interesting thing I found about this is the unidirectional counting. You can count from 1 toward infinity but you can't begin counting from infinity toward 1. — Benj96
This is not true. Perhaps you are reading a different account of the story than I did, which is the one on wiki, which says simply:From the description there is always further distance for Achilles to move before he overtakes the tortoise. — Metaphysician Undercover
Same non-sequitur. It is not true that Icarus always has more steps to take, only that he does while still on a step, but the time to complete all the remaining steps always fits in the time remaining in his minute.In the OP [...] the premises imply that a minute cannot pass for Icarus, who always has to take more steps before a minute can pass.
Sort of. I agree It has no basis in physical reality like Zeno's examples do. The OP poetry is only mathematical in nature and isn't meaningfully translated into physics. No amount of physical acceleration can traverse an infinite physical distance in finite coordinate time.So, in the OP, the false premise is the description of acceleration.
Then it concludes, that after a minute has passed, the end has been reached.[/quote]No. It concludes that all of the steps have been traversed. It does not assert that there is a last one. In this suggestion, the OP at least does not commit the fallacy that Zeno does.there cannot be an end to pi.
OK, which premise then is false in the Zeno case? The statement is really short. One premise that I see: "the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started", which seems pretty true to me.Zeno on the other hand, concludes that Achilles cannot overtake the tortoise, which is the valid conclusion. And the absurd conclusion reveals the falsity of the premises.
No, it is more the reverse of Michael's digit counter, just like Zeno's dichotomy scenario is the Achilles/tortoise thing in reverse.I don't think that this is representative of the OP at all.
What digit does the counter show after 60 seconds? — Michael
Yes, my example is more on par with Zeno dividing space than the OP dividing time. It has the same problem as Michael's counter: Measuring something where the thing being measured is singular, which makes the whole thing invalid.You have changed the divisibility of time in the OP to a divisibility of space in your interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover
I'm interested in your take on the nonexistent 'barrier' thing described at the lower half of my prior post in this topic. It also is a variation on something somebody else authored, but I cannot remember what it was originally called.it's actually a variation of Thomson's lamp. — Michael
It was unclear if this was addressed to the OP, or to me since this question was asked immediately after I posted the thing about the barriers. Anyway, not mine, but I can't find a link.Is there another source for this paradox? Or did you just invent this yourself? — flannel jesus
It is indeed unexplained why the guy, after taking the first step, is somehow compelled to continue his journey after 30 seconds and not just turn around. Mathematically it has some meaning, but it never has physical meaning, as several have pointed out.However, I recommend that Icarus stops looking for the last step down and starts looking for the first step up. He should find that as easily as he found the first step down. — Ludwig V
This is nicely illustrated by Zeno's 'dichotomy paradox'. Per wiki:How is it possible for him to ascend the stairs if there isn't a first step? — keystone
The specifications do not allow for a minute to pass, — Metaphysician Undercover
What do you mean stipulated? That Achilles cannot overtake is a non-sequitur. It simply doesn't follow from there being a way to divide the journey into infinite segments. This isn't a stipulation, it is merely a fallacious conclusion. Time not being allowed to pass was never a specification in the OP. Of course the lack of the stairs back up was actually a specification, and I find that contradictory.By what is stipulated, yes, Achilles cannot surpass the tortoise. — Metaphysician Undercover
Exactly. Step n takes 60/2**n seconds. That's very much a nonzero duration for any n.Each step takes a discernible amount of time which is a different time from the prior step. — Metaphysician Undercover
After a minute, yes. Do you contend otherwise, that the sum of 60/2**n is not 60?You say he reaches the bottom
Just like there is no last natural number, yes. There is no last step to 'be' at.yet there is not "last step".
It's pretty clear from the mathematics. Where do you expect him to be then at 61 seconds if not 'past them all'?How do you think it is possible that he got finished with all the steps, in the described order, yet there was no last step?
OK, so mathematics is not your forte. The sum of this infinite series is not 60 according to you.according to the prescribed formula for figuring the increments, there can be no finish time — Metaphysician Undercover
Your poetry asserts this, but the reverse can be done There is simply no first step in the process, just like there wasn't a last step on the way down. The sum of the same series in reverse order is also 60 seconds.The infinite staircase appears to only allow one to traverse it in one direction. — keystone
He reaches the bottom of something with no bottom. It taking a minute is fine, but there being a bottom is contradictory. Hence I think resolution. Just as there is no first step to take back up, there is no last step to reach, even if it is all reached in a minute.Despite the staircase being endless, he reached the bottom of it in just a minute. — keystone
Then you seem to define 'conscious' as having one of those 'self' thingys as defined by the quoted book.By sentient I mean conscious. Philosophical zombies behave as if they are conscious but are not actually. — Truth Seeker
That seems to be a straight assertion of dualism, but a non-dualist can also have a sense of self, so I must disagree with the book's definition.an internal individual who resides inside our bodies, making decisions, authoring actions and possessing free will — Quoting the description of the book
You can react to external stimuli, which is perception, and sentience is perception or feelings. Perhaps you cannot prove qualia (what you might designate as feelings), but it's hard to deny that you have perception. Perhaps a different definition of sentience is being referenced. It wasn't given.I am sentient but I can't prove to you — Truth Seeker
OK, I accept that,and retract the bit about the dictionary.Firstly, I am NOT referring to linguistic definitions: I am referring to conceptual definitions. — Bob Ross
In general,no,but I gave an alternate definition that is very much about causality. It solves the circularity problem. It is analyzable,and it works for how most people use the word, even if the typical person would reach for the circular definition you reference.Firstly, not all definitions are about causality.
I didn't define 'exists' in terms of 'being'. I used something far less circular. 'Being' is just a synonym, and can be defined similarly if you choose.Secondly, I don't see how this would provide non-circular definitions for concepts like 'being'.
That peculiarity renders the chosen definition rather empty in my opinion. I shy from such definitions and prefer something more pragmatic such as a relational definition. A exists to B if A in any way has a causal effect on B. Hence the nonexistence of unicorns because no unicorn seems to have a causal effect on humans, despite the legends to the contrary.This pecularity indicates, by my lights, that ‘being’ is a primitive concept and, as such, is absolutely simple, unanalyzable, and (yet) still perfectly valid. — Bob Ross
Both correct answers of course, which simply illustrates that there is never just one correct answer to 'what caused X to happen?"Why did the last domino fall?
Answer 1: Because the penultimate domino made it fall.
Answer 2: Because the number 7 is prime
Well, because the physical system produces that output for certain input values, which in this case happens to correspond to only inputs that, when represented by some standard, happen to encode prime numbers.How can a physical system, in which each piece is truly only following local physical rules, be said to produce a certain output "because the number 7 is prime"? — flannel jesus
I agree that it can be Turing complete, but it's hard to implement a normal gate since the domino one can only be used once, and gates need to be used multiple times. So it gets complicated, but I think it can be done anyway. The train track thing was easier since the same track and switch could be traversed multiple times.Dominos can make logic gates, which means the domino system is turing complete. — flannel jesus
Yes, that's just like the prime detector. There's no need even to describe the move. It matters not from whence the queen came, only that the board position includes it being at D4 as part of the state to be evaluated. Apparently you envision the prior state as the fixed setup, and the move in question as the input to be tested.We already have algorithms to calculate if a particular position is check mate, so it's possible, in principle, to set up a series of dominos such that the last domino will only fall over if, say, Queen to D4 is checkmate.
Yes, just like 'because 7 is prime'. You don't need to see it fall. You need only to realize that it would fall if Q-D4 is entered to know that the move would be checkmate. And if you take epistemology away, Q-D4 is still checkmate even though no move is ever entered and nobody knows about the dominoes. It is still checkmate because the last domino would fall if that input were entered.You've seen it fall, so you say "that domino fell because queen to D4 is checkmate".
Turing machines are deliciously inefficient. Computers are simply far more optimized than these deliberately inefficient devices that accomplish the same thing.And yet... how computers work already is not too far removed from that, don't you think?
Contrary to the popular belief, determinism has nothing to do with this. It has to do with the physics of our universe being causally closed. If it is (deterministic or random), then there can be no objective morality, or as 180 puts it:Is determinism true? How can we know for sure? — Truth Seeker
:100:There cannot be a vantage point for us outside of this causal nexus to differentiate right or wrong about assigning "actual moral culpability — 180 Proof
That's the common mistake. Determinism (or any closed physics) means that one cannot be held objectively culpable, which is very different from being held culpable.I don't take it for granted that determinism means you shouldn't hold someone culpable. — flannel jesus
The weather is closer. Fluid dynamics of a system in stable state (say water moving through a pipe, dam spillway) needs a description of that state, a calculus task. If it is dynamic (simulation of water waves), then it's more complicated, closer to the weather.couldn't one adopt the kind of approach that the weather forecasters (and, I believe, physicists trying to work out fluid dynamics, which is probably the same problem) have adopted? — Ludwig V
The entire paper is one hypothesis. There are not more that I am aware of.Comment - this possibility high-lights for me a question about Bostrom's first two hypotheses.
I posted his definition of 'posthuman', which is, in short, a level of technology capable of running the numbers he underestimates, and far worse, capable of simulating a posthuman set of machines doing similar simulations.That would require us to define what is meant by "post-human" and "extinction".
There you go. You seem to see both routes. The third path is extinction, or simple permanent loss of technology.Then we would have to deal with the difference between two different possibilities. We may go extinct and be replaced (or ousted) by some other form of life or we may evolve into something else (and replace or oust our evolutionary predecessors).
What two possibilitie? Humans that evolve into something we'd not consider human by today's standard? Many species do that all the time. Other possibility is 'ousted' as you put it. Our biological line is severed, as happens to nearly all biological lines given time.Given that inheritance is not exact copy and the feed-back loop of survival to reproduction works on us just as surely as on everything else, can we exactly define the difference between these two possibilities?
Good example. There are no dinosaurs (which, unlike humans, is a collection of species). The vast majority of those species were simply ousted. They have no descendants. But some do, and the alligators and birds are their descendants. They are not dinosaurs because none of them is sexually compatible with any species that was around when the asteroid hit. They are postdinosaur.They say that birds evolved from dinosaurs, and that mammals took over as dominant species from dinosaurs.
It depends on the species, or the individual. Mom has 2 kids. One of those has children of his own, and the other is ousted, a terminal point in the family tree.Which possibility was realized for dinosaurs?
Prediction of what? A simulation of history makes no predictions. A simulation of the future is needed for that, hence the weather predictors.Another problem. Given that a feed-back loop is at work on these phenomena, can prediction ever be reliable?
You really need to tell me what these hypotheses are, because I know of only the one. Two if you count the VR suggestion, but that doesn't come from Bostrom. i know of several that support a VR view, but none that has attempted a formal hypothesis around it.The third hypothesis suffers, for me
It the second possibility. He says one of the three must be true. It's not a list of three premises.The second premise - any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof) - seems obviously true to me. — wonderer1
If it is simulating at the particle level, yes. I can run an easy simulation of the planetary motions without simulating each bit. Each planet/moon/asteroid can effectively be treated as a point object, at least until they collide.The simulator would need to consist of more particles than the system which is being simulated.
Yes, and Bostrom claims several levels of depth, meaning the simulation is simulating the machines doing simulations.That's a rather fundamental problem. In practice, only things that are simpler than the simulator (or things treated simplistically) can be simulated.
Yes. If the goal was to simulate consciousness, they'd probably do one person, or a small isolated community (a closed system). And it wouldn't be a simulation of anybody real, but rather just a learning tool to show that a simulated person behaves like we do. If it worked, it would be a big blow to the dualists, but I'm sure they'd find a way to explain the results away.It seems to me that the person who would seek to disprove the second premise would need to prove that consciousness can arise in a simulation of something much more simplistic than the world we find ourselves in,
Posthuman is defined here:This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true:
(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage;
(2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof);
(3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor‐simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed. — BostromSimHypothesis
The trichotomy is reasonable, but worded in a misleading way. Point 1 makes it sound like this preposterous posthuman state is somehow inevitable if the human race doesn't meet an untimely demise along the way. This is nonsense since the posthuman state described is totally unreasonable, and human technology seems heavily dependent on non-renewable resources upon which this gilded age depends.The simulation argument works equally well for those who think that it will take hundreds of thousands of years to reach a “posthuman” stage of civilization, where humankind has acquired most of the technological capabilities that one can currently show to be consistent with physical laws and with material and energy constraints. — BostromSimHypothesis
Yes. That's Bostrom's whole point. He says we're probably all simulated, but it's based on the anthropic reasoning above, which makes many many unreasonable assumptions.So I have to imagine myself as being a sim and not knowing it? — Ludwig V
In that sense, the two are similar. Also, quite often, in both VR and a true sim, solipsism is true, but you know it because there are clues. We here are envisioning a scenario where the simulated reality is good enough that those clues get harder and harder to find.Regarding the question "are we in a simulation?" I interpret this as similar to "is solipsism true?" It's impossible to prove one way or another, but nevertheless - it's rational to believe we are not. — Relativist
Cool. I wasn't aware. Nice controlled test, and kind of pre-chat-bot, which is maybe a good thing. I wonder how trained the judges were; where was the focus of their questioning? To pass today with tools like chatGTP around, you'd have to dumb down the machine answers since it 'knows' more than any human, even if the majority of what it knows is wrong.Regarding the Turing test: it has been passed - to a degree.
It would seem fairly easy to pretend to be an unintelligent machine, but I presume these people were not attempting to appear nonhuman.Conversely, humans have "failed" the Turing test (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna163206) -- observers inferred that a human's responses were not humans.
Agree. The game playing AI does all that, even if it is confined to game playing. Early chess or go playing machines were like self-driving cars, programmed by the experts, using the best known strategies. Then they came up with a general AI (like AlphaZero) that wasn't programmed at all to play anything specific. There was only a way to convey the rules of the game to it, and it would learn on its own from there. After a few days of practice, it could beat anybody and any of the specifically programmed machines. That definitely meets all your criteria.Regarding "true" AI: IMO, it would entail a machine engaging in thoughts, learning as we do, processing information as we do, and producing novel "ideas" as we do.
Totally agree. Progress by imitation has its limits, but since a computer is not a human, to pass a Turing test it will always have to pretend to be something it isn't, which is hard to do even well after it has surpassed us in intelligence.Progress would not be measured by fooling people, but by showing there are processes that work like our brains do.
That is more relevant to this topic. To demonstrate how our brains work, you (probably) have to simulate it. To simulate it, you need to give it state and an environment (all this was brought up in prior posts). The state in particular is not exacty something you can make up. It needs to have grown that way through experience, which means a quick sim won't do. You have to start it from well before birth and run this really complicated simulation through at least years of life, providing it with a convincing environment all the while. Tall order. It would presumably take centuries for a single test to run, during which the hardware on which it is running will be obsoleted multiple timesBenefits include confirming our theories about some of the ways our brains work.
Then the test is invalid, I agree. If you click the link about the test being passed, the judges did not know which conversations were machines and which were people. They did know that there were five of each. Everybody (judges, machines, human subjects) knew it was a test.My argument is that if one starts the Turing test by specifying that the subject is a machine — Ludwig V
The Turing test was never intended as a test of consciousness.That's why the attempt to distinguish between the two on the basis of empirical evidence (Turing test) is hopeless.
True. Machines can detect skin cancer better than any human, and that's worth paying for (but there's probably a free app). In my case, the non-doctor tech that saw me googled my symptoms and read back to be verbatim the same information google gave me at home, but leaving off the part where it said "see your doctor if you have these symptoms". Obviously no actual doctor was consulted.But it might turn out that the machine is more successful than human beings at [medical diagnosis]
A 3 year old can imitate giving a diagnosis. Its how daddy gets covered by 20 bandaids. And if a machine can give a diagnosis (they can), then why would they have to imitate the ability that they actually have?I think that a machine can diagnose some medical conditions. Whether it can imitate diagnosing any medical conditions is not at all clear to me.
A few are false positives, which are often confirmed by a simple PM to them. The bots don't hold conversations, but rather give single replies to a question, and no more. Short, and often correct but obvious and not particularly helpful. If you reply to a bot-post, the bot will probably not notice it.Do you get confirmation about whether your "spots" are correct or not?
No more than is a tape recorder. Parrots don't pass a Turing test.Parrots imitate talking. Are they smarter than human beings?
In the Simulation Hypothesis, we are the simulated people, the ones inside the system. Do not confuse this with the VR hypothesis where the people are real and only their experience is artificial. Read the OP if you don't get this distinction.I thought you said that there were people inside the system. Now I'm really confused.
Indeed. I dragged in Relativist since the topic of Turing test came up, and he suggests that the test is insufficient to determine intelligence.I think that you are not talking about the same question as Relativist. (See below). — Ludwig V
Here again, the quoted comment concerns the Turing test, not the simulation hypothesis.And if a machine passes the test (it's a text test, so there's no robot body that also has to be convincing), then it exhibits intelligent behavior. The test is not too weak.
— noAxioms
Here, you are positing that you are starting with a machine. In that case, the question is whether the behaviour is really intelligent or merely seems to be intelligent. — Ludwig V
The Turning test is not a test for either of those. There's not even a test that can tell if your neighbor is conscious/sentient. If there was, much of the p-zombie argument would be immediately settled by some empirical test. The whole point of the term 'conscious' is that it is always defined in such a way that is immune from empirical evidence.even if the response was intelligent, it does not follow that the machine is conscious or sentient. — Ludwig V
The question is simple. I am communicating with some unknown entity via text messages, much like we do on this forum. The question is, is that with which I am communicating a human or not?The fundamental point is whether we can even formulate the question without begging it.
In a text conversation, yes. That's pretty hard to do, and we're not there yet.The Turing Test is passed by fooling people into believing there's a human giving responses in a conversation. — Relativist
Well, one of the ideas is to go outside those topics. I mean, none of the chat bots have long term memory, so one of their traits is that they don't ask any questions of their own since they cannot learn. I suppose clarification requests of questions posed to it might count as asking something.This is feasible today at least within a limited range of conversation topics.
You claimed the test is too weak. I claim otherwise. If it passes, it has long since surpassed us in intelligence. As a test of human-level intelligence, it is more than enough.What more are you looking for?
It's not empathy, but it very much is expressing empathy. People are also quite capable of expressing empathy where there is no actual empathy, such as the politicians that send their 'thoughts and prayers' to mass-shooting families, but do nothing about the problem.a computer can produce words that sound like it's expressing empathy - but it actually is not.
In a VR, yes, exactly that. People are real, and are fed experience of a simulated reality. Every video RPG does this.You are positing that it is people who are "in" the sim - i.e. (I assume) being fed the data. — Ludwig V
No. If you can do that, you very much are aware of the creator/creation status. It would be like talking to a god. In a VR, you can talk to the other players, and you can talk to the NPCs if the NPCs have enough intelligence to talk, but you can't talk to anybody outside the simulated universe.Plus, if I've understood you, you are positing that the subjects cannot communicate with whatever is running the sim
Nothing like dreaming.So how does this question differ from the brain in a vat, from Descartes' demon or from the supposed possibility that we are all dreaming? — Ludwig V
We are not bats. It's not about what it's like to be something we're not. We know what it is like to be a human. The question is, how might we (being the subject of simulation) detect that fact?So how does this topic differ from the question what it's like to be a bat?
Bostrom is half the story. Most popular fictions depict VR, not a sim. Matrix is a good example of a VR, however implausible.I'm afraid I didn't realize what the philosophical background is (essentially, Bostrom).
I didn't posit no ways ot testing. But depending on the quality of the simulation, it might get difficult. The best test is probably to recognize that there must be limits, and to test those limits.I don't find the question interesting, because if we posit that there is no way of telling, then there is no way of telling.
The 'can a computer think' topic was sort of about that. I suppose we could copy our own design and build an actual biological human, but in something other than by the normal way. Anything else is going to be trivially detectable. Not sure how that 'built' person would get loaded with experience. It's not like you can just upload software to a human. Doesn't work that way.The interesting question is under what circumstances we would accept that something we designed and built is a conscious being, i.e. a (non-human) person.
There is mention of the Turing test in earlier posts here. Passing it with a simulation is doing it the hard way. We're getting close to something that can pass the test now, but nowhere close to actually simulating the way a human does it. Perhaps you, like Ludwig here, mean 'imitation', which anything that passes the Turing test is doing by definition.The Turing Test is too weak, because it can be passed with a simulation. Simulating intelligent behavior is not actually behaving intelligently. — Relativist
Pain is not evil. I'd never want to change myself to be immune from pain. It serves an important purpose, and not an evil one.This is the traditional problem of evil. — Ludwig V
A statue, puppet, or a speaker blaring bird-of-prey noises to scare away geese, or a wooden duck lure, are all imitations/mimicry.I wish I knew what the difference is between a simulation and an imitation, a simulation and a mimicry, a simulation and an analogy, and a simulation and a model.
Remember, we're not worrying about what those running the simulation are calling the simulated things. We're supposing that we are the subjects here, the ones being simulated, and we (and only we) call ourselves human beings or people. That's the only definition that matters.I describe human beings, in contexts like this, as our paradigm of a person. — Ludwig V
That's kind of like suggesting that God is unethical to have created a universe that has beings that feel bad, and yes, there are those that suggest exactly that.I have to say, if these beings are to be conscious, I wish you luck in getting your project through your research ethics committee.
I wanted a universe that is simulated, instead of being instantiated in some other way. I do suppose that the simulated universe is a part of the container universe, but it's still a separate universe. That's questionable if it's an open simulation, but not all of them are. Much depends on the goal of running the simulation. Bostrom actually posits what that purpose would be, even if it is a totally naive one.My question now, is why not just talk about people living in a different universe?
It is the same universe as we are, because I posit that we are the simulated ones. How would be tell if that were true? The topic isn't about how to run a sim. The topic is about what it's like to be one.the sims you are describing are clearly in the same universe as we are.
There are definitely war elements in both, but that makes it more an analogy than a simulation. The do run simulations of war all the time, pretty much continuously. Yay cold war. Those simulations don't simulate the consciousness of anybody, and I don't think they even have people beyond statistical counts.Talking of sims, do you regard chess or (American) football as a simulation of war?
It is a parallel process, yes. Per relativity, simultaneous is an ambiguous term for events, and no, nothing in a any physical system requires spatially separated components of any process to be simultaneous in any frame. Per the principle of locality, one cannot depend on the other (they are outside each other's causal light cone), and thus the interactions can be simulated in any order, serially.I know human consciousness is a fairly hotly contested issue. But does anyone disagree that it involves multiple processes taking place simultaneously? — Patterner
Granted, but there's no need to, per the above comment. Any such transactions can be computed in any order without altering the outcome. Per the principle of locality, no spatially extended process can have a requirement of simultaneous operation.If we agreed that a process can take place in the scenario you're describing, you cannot write multiple things simultaneously.
On the contrary, time in the simulation has nothing to do with time for the guy with the pencil. Our pencil guy can set everything aside for a year and get back to it later. The simulated guy will not notice. No doubt each transaction will have a location/timestamp, and there's nothing preventing multiple transactions (all the transactions in a single iteration of the data) from having the same recorded timestamp. That is pretty much how simulations are done. Here is the state at time X, and then it uses that state to compute the next state at X+<increment> where the increment might be a microsecond or something. It might take a minute for a machine to simulate all the transactions to generate the next state. It might take the pencil guy several lifetimes to do the same thing, so we're going to need that society to train his replacements each time he retires.At no time, in no sense, is everything needed for human consciousness happening at the same time in the paper and pencil scenario.
At risk of opening a can of worms, how does 'modern physics' come into it?
I joined this and other forums to find out how the prominent philosophers (the ones you learn of in class) dealt with modern physics (narrowing the search to recent ones of course) and found that for the most part, they either didn't know their physics, or didn't care about it.
So I learned physics, or at least the parts of it relevant to the subjects I cared about.
Relativity threw significant doubt to Newtonian absolutism where there was one preferred frame and time was posited to be something that flows or progresses, that there was a preferred moment in time, and the universe was static, and either infinite age or somehow set in motion from some initial state at some point. Much of religious myths (especially the creation parts) requires the universe to be contained by time instead of the other way around, and this did not become apparent until about 110 years ago. The universe having a finite age is about a century old, and some religious teachings did at least bend with that one and put the creation event there.
Quantum mechanics really threw a spanner into the gears with suggestions that ontology might work backwards (that existence depends on interaction with future things), that identity of anything (electrons, rocks, people) is not at all persistent and thus I am not the same I as a second ago.
One can of course pick an interpretation consistent with your preferences and avoid the implications of the ones you don't like, but if doubt is to be eradicated, all the alternative interpretations contradicting the thing of which you are certain must be falsified.
And who knows what else might get discovered. Nobody saw QM coming, so all these people who held certain beliefs with certainty found themselves to be wrong or at least potentially wrong. So a declaration of 100% certainty is irrational. I mean, my certainty rests on the sum of two numbers (a pair of arbitrary real numbers say) being exactly one other real number, always and anywhere. I don't significantly doubt that, but I still question it. What if it's only a property of this universe that such a sum comes to that one solution and not a different one elsewhere?
— Wayfarer
Indeed it isn't, but the assumption is implicit. It's too obvious to bother calling out explicitly, or at least it was obvious until ~50 years ago.Persistence of self-identity over time is not discussed in Descartes
Your opinion. The opinion of others may vary.Beings are not objects or things
I knew what you meant, even if Wayfarer chose to reply to what you said instead of what you meant.I was thinking of philosophical zombies — Ludwig V
The Turing test (The closest 'Turing Hypothesis gets is the Chuch-Turing thesis, concerning what is computable, and is oddly relevant below) is an intelligence test for when a machine's written behavior is indistinguishable from that of a human. The large language models are getting close, and the easy way to tell the difference is to not ask them questions with factual answers. They also are not designed to pass the Turing test, so all one has to do is ask it what it is.My point is that there is no easy and clear way to state what the Turing hypothesis is trying to articulate.
A simulated person would be a person, just in a different universe (the simulated one). It's likely quite a small universe. You seem to define 'person' as a human in this universe, and no, the simulated person would not be that.Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct).
For me, a conscious being is a person and a simulated person is not a person, so this confuses me. Can you perhaps clarify?
And it was already used in somebody else's reply.why isn't 'dubit' a word? It ought to be.
— noAxioms
Well, since you have now used it, and I understand it (roughly, I think), it is a word now.
Not sure what the term 'active medium' means. Googling it didn't help. I can implement a Turing machine armed with nothing but paper and pencil. Per the Church-Turing Thesis mentioned by mistake above, that means I can do anything that is computable, including the running of the simulation.It seems to me you cannot simulate with paper and pencil, because it is not an active medium. — Patterner
But I am hitting 'run'. I wouldn't need the pencil if I didn't 'run' it.If you program everything necessary to simulate consciousness into a computer**, but never hit Run
There's a contradiction here. People is animal. A machine is not animal. But a machine can be people? That means a machine is animal and not animal.a person is a human being, i.e. an animal. ... Some physical structures are machines, and hence not animals, but I don't see why such structures cannot possibly constitute people. — Ludwig V
I think you are again envisioning imitation people, like Replicants. That's a very different thing than the simulation hypothesis which does not involve machines pretending to be people.But if they are to constitute people
No. The simulation is creating a biological person, not a machine person. Try to get that. Replicants are not grown from a zygote. A replicant can be trivially tested by an x-ray or just by sawing it in half, or so I suggest. Apparently in Blade runner, it was very hard to tell the difference, but that's also a fiction.So I think you are right to argue that some such process as this would be necessary to create a machine person.
That's right. Physics doesn't do spontaneous things (quantum mechanics excepted, which is a big problem if you want to simulate that). But classical physics isn't spontaneous, and yet spontaneity emerges from it, or at least the appearance of it. Anything in the simulation would have to behave just like that.Calculating is widely recognized as a rational activity.
Yet again, no computer is pretending to be a person, so it isn't a problem.To me, it makes no sense to deny that computers can calculate. The catch is that such rational activities are not sufficient to be recognized as a person.
Probably invalid in this case, and yes, I've decided that, but on weak grounds since I have never followed the argument from beginning to a preselected improbable conclusion.If you call it a rationalization, you have already decided the argument is invalid or unsound.
If the simulation is any good at all, and presuming monism, then yes, it would be painful to the subject in question. No, the computer running the sim would not feel pain, nor would the people responsible for the creation of the simulation, despite suggestions from Kastrup that they apparently should.Would a simulation of agonising pain be actually painful?
I didn't say that was the rationalization. I even accepted it since it was a reasonable statement in the absence of modern physics. It is him building on that foundation to his later conclusions that is the rationalization, which I clearly spelled out in my post.The logic of cogito ergo sum is neither rationalisation nor myth, it is the indubitable fact — Wayfarer
I agree that the logic presented is completely valid, but the premises are outrageous, and the conclusion is only as sound as those premises.That it is another universe, is one of hte ridiculous premises required for its probability to be an effective argument. This is what I'm getting - on it's face, its mathematically almost certain we are in a simulation set up by future generations. — AmadeusD
I don't take the argument seriously due to the faulty premises. I see no reason to actually suspect that I am a product of simulation, but I also don't rule it out, nor would I personally find it unnerving to actually find evidence that such is the case.But the invocations required to actually, practically, in real life take that seriously are unnerving to say the least, and perhaps the sign one is not being honest with themself.. if the theory convinces one.
OK. I admit to not reading the whole thing because I was only trying to point out similarities in the issues of BiV and VR, which are often aligned.But you did not go further into the argument. That is the opening argument for the BIV. But Putnam continues on to counter-argue that premises or claims above are necessarily false. If you're a BIV then to say "I am a brain in a vat" is false because you wouldn't be referring to a brain and to a vat. There's no reference at all! There is no causal link to make the argument sound. — L'éléphant
I don't follow that. If it says (without evidence) that it is a BiV, then the utterance is true if that is indeed the fact. It's just not something justifiable, at least not if the lies being fed to it are quality lies. So it isn't knowledge, but not all utterances are necessarily false. What about 2+2=4? Is that also one of the lies?If it is indeed just a black-box or non-human mind being fed false information, anything that comes out of its mouth referring to anything about the physical world is false. — L'éléphant
OK, I haven't brought this up, but if it is a true sim (not a VR), the sim is computing the values of a mathematical structure (this universe), which is sort of presuming something like Tegmark's MUH.The simulation hypothesis is a pitfall -- it looks attractive because it allows us to make arguments like "how do you prove we're not in a doll house?" but we fail to recognize the contradiction of the utterance.
Several differences. The sim is run at some finite level of detail. Does it have mitochondria? Depends on the level of detail, if it matters to the entity running the sim. The sim probably cannot run at the quantum level, and the real zygote does, and even deeper if there is a deeper.You said you would start the sim as a zygote. I am asking: what is the difference between this zygote and a zygote in reality? — NotAristotle
Yes, that. You don't need to pre-load the simulated thing with memory of a past consistent with the fake initial state of the simulation. That's the problem we're trying to get around. Don't know why you find this problematic. The system simulated then grows up into a conscious human with real memories of its upbringing, not fake memories planted by an initial state that probably doesn't know how memories are stored. The whole point of the sim after all is to learn these things.Or is the zygote you are postulating a mere simulation of a zygote?
And here I go doing exactly that, not denying it, but having doubts about it to the point of abandoning the realism it fails to explicitly posit.Per Descartes, I hold that the fact of one's own existence, that one is a subject of experience, is apodictic, it cannot plausibly denied. — Wayfarer
I do think there are ways, but most of the posters are using fallacious methods to justify their assertions.So, you don't think there's any criterion by which we can discern the difference. — Wayfarer
The possibility that I am a real being already is contingent on the definition of 'real', and not being a realist, perhaps my not believing that has nothing to do with any suspicion of being a product of a simulation.You admit the possibility that you're not actually a real being. — Wayfarer
Unclear on the question. The difference between reality (which doesn't supervene on something higher) and the sim (which does) is just that. Reality is supposedly a closed system, and the simulation (either kind) is not, and there is one of the places to look for empirical differences between the two.What is the difference between the simulation and reality if you are constructing "simulated people" based on the same historical states that result in non-simulated people? If the physicalness of both systems is identical in all respects, what is the difference? — NotAristotle
Bostrom assumes otherwise, but whatever realm is running his simulation doesn't need to be a universe like our own.I agree, generally. The paper, on it's face, is fairly convincing but it requires such a ridiculous set of premises (similar to the Fermi Paradox) that it doesn't seem all that apt to the Universe we actually inhabit. — AmadeusD
If you or Kastrup expect a kidney in one universe to produce urine in another, then you don't really know what a simulation does.I’m sure simulations of kidney functions, like other organic functions, may be extremely useful for medical research and pharmacology, without literally producing urine. — Wayfarer
But the question asked is how we might know (and not just suspect) that we are not the product of a simulation. A detailed simulation of you would likely deny his own unreality (as you use the word here), and would also deny that his consciousness is the product of his underlying physics. If he does this, he would be wrong about both. I'm not sure what you'd expect that simulation to yield.That’s the point - simulations may be useful and accurate, but they’re still simulations, not real things.
The simulation needs to provide an initial state that provides that history. History is, after all, just state. Hence my suggestion of starting the sim of a human as a zygote since there is no need to provide it with prior experience. But then you have to simulate years of experience to give it that history, but at least you don't need to presume what the mature brain state might be.Regarding your objection re: physicalism. The problem with conscious people within/part of a simulation has to do, in my opinion, with the historical necessities of consciousness. That is to say a simulated person does not have the requisite history to be conscious. — NotAristotle
It has to start somewhere, so the womb would be outside the system, an imitation womb, empirically (to the child) indistinguishable from a real mother, in every way. I suppose the placenta would be included in the system since it is, after all, the child and not the mother, but when it is severed, the sim needs to remember which half to keep as part of the system.and someone alive must come from someone else who is alive
To a simulation of low level physics, they pretty much are the exact same category, and both have the same problem of needing to exert some kind of effort to keep track of what is the system and what isn't, a problem that real physics doesn't have since it operates on a closed system.People and inanimate objects are not in the same category — Ludwig V
Similarly, a person (and not a brain) is what is conscious. Not even that, because an environment is also needed.What keeps the house warm, (not too hot and not too cold) is the entire system including the water, the pump and the radiators, with its feedback loops and not any one component.
Irrationality is required for consciousness? A computer is rational? I question both. Deterministic is not not rationality. I do agree that irrationality is a trait of any living creature, and a necessary one.A computer is arguably more like a conscious being, that it is probably too rational to count as one.
Any sim would be distinguishable from a dream state.If that's the point, we don't need the theory. We all experience dreams from time to time. And we know how to tell the difference.
Sometimes. One is often reft of rational thought while dreaming, but not always. I can tell sometimes, and react to knowing so.But we can't tell the difference while we are dreaming.
Yes, Wayfarer just below quotes Kastrup suggesting exactly that.The weather event would need to be wet and windy, and not just appear to be wet and windy." — bongo fury
It would be a piss-poor kidney simulation (pun very intended) if it didn't.Bernardo Kastrup says you can get a computer to run an exquisitely-detailed simulation of kidney function, but you wouldn't expect it to urinate. — Wayfarer
Well, the Sim hypothesis (all versions) as how we might know we are or are not in a sim or VR. You're speaking of a VR in this case. Your memories define who you are, and if those are totally wiped, it's somebody else in the VR, not the person who entered it.It doesn't have to be "at any time", it can just be at the start. And presumably a baby could be hooked up to the machine anyway, without any concern for their memories, no? — flannel jesus