My example is memorizing words/symbols without knowing their meaning, only to learn later how to read them. That's proof of information independent of...
That goes down a rabbit hole of info and posts to even more topics. Good reading. I was looking at Steffan's slideshow, and it goes into how Cantor's ...
Well, when was the notion of limits of a series introduced? Not back then I think. I'm not an expert in the history, but Zeno was definitely using tec...
Patterner bumped this old post, so I tracked down what was being referenced. You're making the strong claim that mind/consciousness can't come from ma...
I do, but Zeno's division of the task didn't seem to make anything impossible. To read Aristotle, Zeno seems to believe in the discreetness of anythin...
With the Penrose & Searle reference right there? The answer is obvious. Bostrom obviously doesn't hold this view. I hold them to be true out of necess...
@"Joshs" Just some side comments on the Zahavi quote That comment (the verb 'exist for', not to mention the tense, implies a universe contained by tim...
I must disagree there. If there are two different descriptions of a fictional situation, and the description affects the thing being described differe...
I start with a few. 1) It's not all a lie. I mean, I can't know that, but if it's all crap, then I can know nothing regardless of how I interpret the ...
I replied to much of your post, but all over there. In that case I reject your premise. The lack of a first step does not prevent the beginning of the...
Relativity does give a strong suggestion, but it is going too far to assert full incompatibility. The two premises of SR is where the trouble is. I go...
Bostrom seems to presume that consciousness is computational, and leaves it undefended. In such a simulation, nobody is being fooled. In a VR, is it a...
Given your reluctance to clarify the definition of the verb 'to start', I cannot respond appropriately to this statement. I gave a pair of options, or...
I looked up the SEP article on this, and I don't think I used the term incorrectly. It doesn't seem to presume any particular interpretation of mind. ...
This seems to be playing language equivocation games. You introduce the word 'start' here, undefined twice, once as a noun and once as a verb. Given c...
OK, you are a presentist then. Under raw presentism, the past doesn't exist, and you can't 'change' what is nonexistent. The eternalist view there is ...
Great. Then show the logic that concludes this, without resort to another premise. That logic has not been shown. It's a non sequitur until it is spel...
No you have not. Light cannot escape from one, so they cannot be photographed. What you see is probably X-ray radiation coming from the accretion disk...
It is. I say as much in my prior post. I've just never heard it called Block Time 'theory' before. The view cannot be logically argued for since it is...
While you're busy listing variants of presentism, you forgot moving spotlight. On the surface, they all make the exact same predictions, so from that ...
Well my quote above is not given from authority. Planck units are just a standard of natural units. A Plank length is a small distance, but the fact t...
what, because consciousness is not a physical process, or that physical processes cannot be simulated? You seem to be in the former camp. If that's th...
The sum of an infinite set of identical finite numbers is not finite, no matter how small the number being summed. It needs to complete in finite time...
If there was an easy knock-out blow to it, it wouldn't be a topic on philosophy/mathematical discussions. I see that you have an opinion, and that you...
Look at the context to which my "Zeno's horse" was a reply. You were talking about Ryle saying something on the order of "putting a mathematical harne...
Pick a number, say 27. I believe it has been shown that there exists a set the cardinality of which is 27, if that's valid terminology. One could also...
OK. I'll accept that. I do believe somebody has shown no limit to the potential cardinality of some sets. Missed one. :smile: Ditto with SEP. I worked...
It means that is isn't a finite sequence of operations. How is it a contradiction that there isn't a final natural number? Instead of just asserting i...
By definition, the sequence completes by having every operation occurring before some finite time. To demonstrate otherwise, one must find a remaining...
Agree. Are they? Does ?? have meaning? It does for numbers. It's a serious question. I am no expert on how transfinite ordinal numbers are treated. It...
Right you are. They are three options, and the premise (the one and only and false one) is that one of the three options is very likely to be true. In...
Bostrom does not say this. We create simulations today. He calls the state 'posthuman', and it apparently means a device capable of simulating all of ...
I said I had no problem with any of that. Is it a belief thing, like it is some kind of religious proposition or something? "Hey, I'm going rogue here...
Yes, the world would have to be bounded, probably more than once. Bostrom for instance suggests the detailed simulation be bounded at human brains (al...
They are part of the line. Yes, a point is dimensionless, size zero. Any sum of a finite bunch of zeros is zero. But the number of points on a line se...
No, none of those cases are examples of simulations. Yes, they're are crashing real cars. I'm talking about a computer model of a car crashed into a v...
The OP has some problems. Most importantly, he has a reputation for posting an OP and then never returning to the topic. Hence I won't bother with dir...
Michael's mechanisms (some of which he made up) are not resolved by addiing a single step task to the supertask. The supertask reaches 1 when all the ...
Yes. 'Planck is a physical concept, not a mathematical one. In mathematics, there is no number smaller than can be meaningfully discussed. Sure. A roc...
No. Nobody seem to have suggested that was possible. It simply isn't a supertask. Yes, I mean that, and it's not a mystery to me. If spacetime is cont...
I discussed that in my post, but you quoted the bit at the bottom which abandons the chessboard model in favor of quantum mechanics, calling the forme...
OK, that other meaning of 'count'. I think we're talking past each other. When asked for the difference between a mathematical and physical supertask,...
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...
No. In the dichotomy scenario, there is no first step to which that number can be assigned. OK, that meaning of 'count'. In that case, I don't see how...
I have more or less dropped out due to the repetitive assertions not making progress, but thank you for this post. Interesting. Is it a countable set?...
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 cen...
Good source. It says that the limit is approached as the input approaches the specified value. This means that the limit isn't reached at some finite ...
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 ...
1. A given halfway step cannot reach the goal. 2 There is a specific step that reaches the goal (per PSA) 3 Therefore this final step is not a halfway...
I showed that for a supertask, the PSA is not correct. So no, this cannot be for a supertask. Because a contradiction results from making that additio...
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