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Re: The halting problem revisited

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On 29/03/2011 3:43 PM, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote:
> Wigner designed the experiment to illustrate his belief that
> consciousness is necessary to the quantum mechanical measurement
> process. If a material device is substituted for the conscious friend,
> the linearity of the wave function implies that the state of the system
> is in a linear sum of possible states. It is simply a larger
> indeterminate system.

Thing is, it requires not only positing a collapse mechanism that is 
non-unitary, non-Lorentz-invariant, non-time-reversible, and on and on 
and on, but also positing a dichotomy between things that constitute a 
"material device" and some other sort of stuff that does not (but you 
can bet the name for it would start with an "S" and rhyme with "hole", 
and be suggested as proof of the existence of some dude whose name 
rhymes with Todd).

Or we can posit that Wigner's friend is also a "material device", in 
which case you realize that Wigner's friend just gets replicated into 
parallel worlds, and so does Wigner, and so does everyone eventually. 
Which is philosophically somewhat disturbing, and being a "material 
device" perhaps even more so.

This is probably why the *obvious truth* about QM is regarded as 
controversial instead of a settled matter: it flies in the face of not 
only commonsense intuition (I don't *feel* like I'm being duplicated!) 
but also nearly all widespread spiritual and theological beliefs (anyone 
remember the phrase "God does not play dice with the universe"?) and 
even our intuition about free will.

Yet, the experimental evidence says we must either accept this, or posit 
a non-unitary, non-Lorentz-invariant, non-time-reversible .......

> However, a conscious observer (according to his reasoning) must be in
> either one state or the other, hence conscious observations are
> different, hence consciousness is not material.

There's Wigner's non sequitur; if a conscious observer was in a 
superposition of states, and if consciousness was *part of the brain's 
function* rather than some mysterious external thing, then the observer 
would have two sets of experiences and in fact two consciousnesses, each 
experiencing only one of them.

What happens if you superpose a computer adding 1 and 2 and a computer 
adding 3 and 4? Two additions take place, separately but simultaneously, 
producing a 3 and a 7, respectively. Neither operation influences the other.

So, what happens if you superpose a computer running a self-aware 
program on one set of inputs and a computer running a self-aware program 
on a second set of inputs? Again, two separate self-aware computations 
take place, separately but simultaneously, and neither operation 
influences the other.

The implication is that Wigner cannot tell by introspection that he 
*isn't* one of two (or many more) superposed Wigners, each having 
received separate inputs, none influencing the others, because of that 
last part.

> The idea has become known as the consciousness causes collapse
> interpretation.

Which I'm quite sure will eventually join a list that also contains 
phlogiston, hollow Earth theory, and cold fusion.

Oh, and what *does* happen to free will if you're just a "material device"?

Why, nothing, of course. You only have problems there if you assume that 
"you" are floating out there somewhere, "willing" your brain and body to 
do something, and if that brain and body are deterministic all the 
"willing" in the universe won't influence them. But that presupposes the 
very dualism we're now presuming to be absent. So, instead, your will is 
something internal; it arises from the mechanical processes of your brain.

You have the sense of being able to do anything you want to do, within 
physics's constraints. This comes from the brain's labeling certain 
states of the universe as reachable if certain actions are taken. All of 
that is algorithmic; chess software does similar things under the hood 
to see if it has a checkmate in N moves and then act to win the game if 
it does.

So what is "will"? Ultimately it comes from whatever determines what you 
"want" to do, and what you then decide as a way of trying to bring it 
about. If what you "want" is a result of mechanical processes, and so 
are those subsequent decisions, what of it? You still want things; you 
can still figure out ways to try to get them and make the attempt. You 
don't magically lose these capabilities, anymore than a chess program 
suddenly loses the capability to win most games against human players, 
just because you discover that the whole process is mechanical!
It was all along, and it never bothered you before you knew about it.

-- 
public final class JSnarker
extends JComponent
A JSnarker is an NNTP-aware component that asynchronously provides 
snarky output when the Ego.needsPuncturing() event is fired in cljp.

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Re: The halting problem revisited Lew <noone@lewscanon.com> - 2011-03-29 14:05 -0400
  Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-03-29 20:43 +0100
    Re: The halting problem revisited "javax.swing.JSnarker" <gharriman@boojum.mit.edu> - 2011-03-29 20:24 -0400
      Re: The halting problem revisited Michal Kleczek <kleku75@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 10:05 +0200
        Re: The halting problem revisited "javax.swing.JSnarker" <gharriman@boojum.mit.edu> - 2011-03-30 04:41 -0400
          Re: The halting problem revisited Michal Kleczek <kleku75@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 11:35 +0200
            Re: The halting problem revisited Lew <noone@lewscanon.com> - 2011-03-30 07:38 -0400
              Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 15:48 +0100
                Re: The halting problem revisited Lew <lew@lewscanon.com> - 2011-03-30 10:35 -0700
                Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 19:46 +0100
                Re: The halting problem revisited Lew <lew@lewscanon.com> - 2011-03-30 13:24 -0700
                Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-03-31 00:04 +0100
                Re: The halting problem revisited Lew <noone@lewscanon.com> - 2011-03-31 00:00 -0400
              Re: The halting problem revisited "javax.swing.JSnarker" <gharriman@boojum.mit.edu> - 2011-04-04 20:28 -0400
            Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 15:44 +0100
            Re: The halting problem revisited "javax.swing.JSnarker" <gharriman@boojum.mit.edu> - 2011-04-04 20:26 -0400
              Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-04-05 01:32 +0100
          Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 15:42 +0100
            Re: The halting problem revisited Lew <noone@lewscanon.com> - 2011-03-31 08:31 -0400
        Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 15:41 +0100
          Re: The halting problem revisited "javax.swing.JSnarker" <gharriman@boojum.mit.edu> - 2011-04-04 20:34 -0400
      Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 15:38 +0100

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