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Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

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Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#151

Post by js8 »

komali2 wrote: post #7
js8 wrote: post #2

I like the idea that the reality is just mathematics, I thought about it independently, but it gets weird really fast. I yet to have read this essay, but I had two thoughts: 1. Similar to Turing completeness, actual physical reality might not matter for the internal observer. All Turing-complete machines can calculate same things and observer from the inside of the machine cannot determine on what hardware the machin…

Can you expand on #2? I don't understand maybe the word "theorem" in this context, or perhaps the meaning of "property of the result."

For example, consider a rather trivial theorem which says that if you have two positive integers in decimal representations Aaa...aa and Bbb..bb, of same length, then the sum of them is larger than number (A+B)00..00.

So this theorem gives you a property of the result (the result is larger than some number) without you having to calculate the result (sum the numbers) explicitly.

The Hashlife algorithm mentioned in this thread is another case, basically it's an algorithm to prove certain "theorems" about the Game of Life and applying those theorems to speed it up.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#152

Post by visarga »

westoncb wrote: post #49

It baffles me that people ignore the fact that they have subjectivity when making these claims. It makes a certain amount of sense since science itself aims to remove any taint of subjectivity in its practice, so folks who want to be thoroughly 'scientific' in other aspects of their lives (e.g. their personal philosophies of reality) carry over over this ideal. But it's also a contradiction since science scientific m…

> people sort of push this point aside either by saying that qualia/subjectivity could be generated by math

It's not math that generates qualia, it's embodiment. The fact that "math" is inside an agent, which is inside a world that evolves. The agent can move about and affect the world, and it has a utility principle (some needs to fulfill) that guide its actions and perceptions - that generates qualia. The source is being in the world, not math. Math describes anything, qualia describes the world as experienced by the agent.

If you take "being in the world, maximizing utility" as an explanation for consciousness, then you can easily classify various AIs and entities as conscious or not-conscious.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#153

Post by visarga »

goatlover wrote: post #126
titzer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It baffles me that people ignore the fact that they have subjectivity when making these claims. Do they? Everyone is entitled to their unquestioned assumptions as long as they state them outright and describe their parameters. I have yet to see dualists (which ultimately is at the base of this whole line of argumentation) admit that they posit subjective experience _without evidence_, since they equate asking quest…

Colors, smells, pains, etc. are not part of the mathematical or physical description, so you can't simply dismiss the problem of qualia by labelling it as dualism. Where do the colors, tastes, feels come from? What sort of math would result in those experiences? Here's another problem. You know about the physical/mathematical properties of the world by abstracting away from our experience of a world with color, sound…

> Remove the colors and how would you know about shape, extension, mass?

Most of abstract mathematics and philosophy deal in concepts that have no color, shape, or mass. And yet we deal with them. We don't need to have physical grounding for every concept.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#154

Post by visarga »

goatlover wrote: post #131
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Colors, smells, pains, etc. are not part of the mathematical or physical description, so you can't simply dismiss the problem of qualia by labelling it as dualism. Where do the colors, tastes, feels come from? What sort of math would result in those experiences? Predictive coding in the interoceptive and control networks of the brain, actually. Sure, it doesn't explain everything , but it pretty well dispels the int…

How do you get anything other than likely correlation from "Predictive coding in the interoceptive and control networks of the brain", and what does it have to do with physics or math? At most, you've provided a biological basis for consciousness. But why would any of that result in color, pleasure, etc?

> But why would any of that result in color, pleasure, etc?

Because it doesn't exist in a vacuum, it exists inside an agent, that is inside the world. And the agent has to achieve a goal, to maximize utility, by learning to act intelligently. This creates a complex value system for states and actions. The values are used to select our actions, and we experience them as "qualia".

So colors and pleasures are just sensory experiences accompanied by their action-values. In the end it's all a game, and qualia is generated by the game. We're mistakenly searching for qualia in the brain, while it was all around us, in the game itself. The brain is but one part of it.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#155

Post by visarga »

yorwba wrote: post #139
goatlover wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get anything other than likely correlation from "Predictive coding in the interoceptive and control networks of the brain", and what does it have to do with physics or math? At most, you've provided a biological basis for consciousness. But why would any of that result in color, pleasure, etc?

How would anybody ever get anything other than likely correlation?

In order to check a correlation we test it's causal predictive power in new situations. Causation has a special property that it can be used to simulate the future, while correlation does not.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#156

Post by visarga »

placebo wrote: post #76
westoncb wrote: post #49

It baffles me that people ignore the fact that they have subjectivity when making these claims. It makes a certain amount of sense since science itself aims to remove any taint of subjectivity in its practice, so folks who want to be thoroughly 'scientific' in other aspects of their lives (e.g. their personal philosophies of reality) carry over over this ideal. But it's also a contradiction since science scientific m…

You're right, and I also see how this obvious observation is consistently and elegantly ignored in most scientific or philosophical arguments that try and promote some totally "objective" account of reality. However, it's not really that surprising: Science over the centuries has steadily (and for it's time, justifiably) eroded the role of subjectivity in order to uncompromisingly get at what is consistently true (re…

Have you considered reinforcement learning as a paradigm that can explain the interplay of subjectivity vs objectivity? Artificial RL agents have perception, values, and can act in the world, learning how to maximize utility. They have a subjective view of the world given by their perception and value system (past learned). I think RL opens subjectivity up for examination.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#157

Post by placebo »

naasking wrote: post #148
westoncb wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The premise that subjectivity exists is not consistent with everything else we know without introducing additional structure to the universe that has no purpose but to stroke our egos. We must be using different definitions of subjectivity. I'm just referring to whatever one experiences at some point in time. Do you experience anything? Then you have subjectivity.

> We must be using different definitions of subjectivity. I'm just referring to whatever one experiences at some point in time. Do you experience anything? Then you have subjectivity. We are, because an ontology that takes subjectivity as primitive/irreducible is different than an ontology that reduces apparent subjectivity via third-party objective facts. You subscribe to the former, I subscribe to the latter. It is…

I don't subscribe to either (and I'd venture to say neither does westoncb). My view is that both are flawed interpretations of reality. Both dualists and materialists assume "objects" to have some sort of independent existence and the argument between them is that the former claims there is something else that also exists while the latter claims nothing else exists. However ask yourself, what sort of existence test can any object (or concept for that matter) pass without the subjective knowing of it? The moment an ontology presumes either objects or subjects as the core premise of reality, it is already one step removed from it.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#158

Post by hyperion2010 »

js8 wrote: post #2

I like the idea that the reality is just mathematics, I thought about it independently, but it gets weird really fast. I yet to have read this essay, but I had two thoughts: 1. Similar to Turing completeness, actual physical reality might not matter for the internal observer. All Turing-complete machines can calculate same things and observer from the inside of the machine cannot determine on what hardware the machin…

There is a seriously interesting question here about the information content of the theorem and whether it is equivalent to the Shannon limit on compressing the 'code' needed to run the computation. I bet someone published on this years ago but I haven't seen it phrased in quite the way you have it in point 2.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#159

Post by ozy »

westoncb wrote: post #49

It baffles me that people ignore the fact that they have subjectivity when making these claims. It makes a certain amount of sense since science itself aims to remove any taint of subjectivity in its practice, so folks who want to be thoroughly 'scientific' in other aspects of their lives (e.g. their personal philosophies of reality) carry over over this ideal. But it's also a contradiction since science scientific m…

Learning creates subjectivity.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#160

Post by daxfohl »

Wasn't Einstein'srelativity a product of intuition rather than of calculation? And, intuition of processes that far exceed the bounds that Darwinian evolution would have prepared us for?

If we all just shut up and calculated, we'd still be doing Lorentz transforms near speed of light "just because they work", right?

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