I guess I am pretty confused. And as I said, I’d be very open to the proper way to view such things.
It seems we’ve got one group of words (reality, universe, multiverse, world, nature,..) and another group of words (experience, and consciousness, and mind) and I am very confused at what each of these words refer to, and how they are related.
Is there something the way of a standard lexicon for that you can point me to?
I think one solution is to break it down, first beginning with only reality. We can then split reality into absolute reality and relative reality, which correspond to the absolute states and relative states of Everett’s model.
At this point, we haven’t made any distinct deviations from what our most general physics models are, nor from the traditions of philosophy (Kant, Plato, Leibniz, ect ect).
Has a mistep been made?
For the record, when Newton essentially defined the study of physics, he said “it will be convenient to distinguish reality into absolute and relative.” I’m paraphrasing by using “reality” where he said “time and space”. My point is the consistency of my suggestions with physics and philosophy and rational though in general are not some casual comment, but the consequence of an inquirey of the type you suggest.
If you want to discuss the nature of reality using a similar lexicon to what philosophers use, I recommend consulting the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/
I have a very strong philosophical background. I’ve discussed many of those topics with the authors.
Basically, what I’m trying to do is draw the attention to something that is usually missed by people engaging in these topics.
That is: absolute is not objective.
There is a fundamental disconnect with the way most people organize truth and reality.
They do no have clear concepts of objective and absolute. The sequence on how to use words, is basically 6 parables that state words are not absolute. It’s such a simple point, but most people can look right at that sentence, and not have the foggiest clue what it means.
Traditionally (in the history of philosophy) the Rationalist is the lone defender of the distinction between objective and absolute.
I’m curious if that tradition is held up by contemporary rationalists.
It may help if you stop focusing on words which seem to be tripping you up when they are used in different contexts. The word “rationalist” means very different things in different context. Don’t conflate “rationalist” in the strict philosophical sense with rationalist in the sense meant generally on LW.
Second, there is no universally accepted rationalist ontology. Some believe in Everett’s worlds, others don’t. A new interpretation, Interacting Many Worlds, seems to be gaining popularity. Also, not everyone here is a physical realist, so the same term “absolute reality” would mean different things to different people. And pushing Everett (which might well be proven a less-than-useful model at some point) is certainly a separate issue from standardizing the terminology.
On a mildly related point, you seem to consider “absolute reality” without regard to the observers being a part of it. This AIXI-like dualism fails once you dig a bit deeper. So8res talks about it in his recent post in Main about decision theories. Consider reading his posts.
My paragraph on QM got dense there and tried to cram a lot into a sidenote, which deserves more of an explanation.
I’m not advocating Many Worlds, which was something that DeWitt introduced.
Everett’s Relative State Formulation hinges on the difference between an absolute state (which is quantumly indetermine) and a relative state (which is a determinate measurement record produced by a neural net operating on the physics of the model).
Hugh Everett’s general model doesn’t predict “parallel worlds”. He predicted the measurement records acheived without the wave function collapsing are the same as what you would get if you apply the “special rule” of collapsing the wave function.
On each clock tick, the agent receives an observation (a bitstring/number) from the environment,
This would actually be in direct violation of Everett’s Relative State Formulation, which says there can be no special rules besides the physics engine that produces a measurement. Just as the Copenhagen had a special collapse event for a measurment, here is a special line of code (presumably) to initiate the measurement. In Everett’s views, the measurement must occur as an interaction according to the physics engine.
Now, “physical” is not a word I used in my original post. It is a word Everett used however. A purely physical observer interacting with its object in a purely physical way. I think it is important to understand that no metaphysical implication is made by the use of the word physical, except to say that it must be capable of being described by physics (ie, part of the physics engine).
May I humbly suggest that you learn more about the issues before suggesting weird linguistic reforms filled with applause lights?
That is a very good suggestion.
I guess I am pretty confused. And as I said, I’d be very open to the proper way to view such things.
It seems we’ve got one group of words (reality, universe, multiverse, world, nature,..) and another group of words (experience, and consciousness, and mind) and I am very confused at what each of these words refer to, and how they are related.
Is there something the way of a standard lexicon for that you can point me to?
I think one solution is to break it down, first beginning with only reality. We can then split reality into absolute reality and relative reality, which correspond to the absolute states and relative states of Everett’s model.
At this point, we haven’t made any distinct deviations from what our most general physics models are, nor from the traditions of philosophy (Kant, Plato, Leibniz, ect ect).
Has a mistep been made?
For the record, when Newton essentially defined the study of physics, he said “it will be convenient to distinguish reality into absolute and relative.” I’m paraphrasing by using “reality” where he said “time and space”. My point is the consistency of my suggestions with physics and philosophy and rational though in general are not some casual comment, but the consequence of an inquirey of the type you suggest.
If you want to discuss the nature of reality using a similar lexicon to what philosophers use, I recommend consulting the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/
I have a very strong philosophical background. I’ve discussed many of those topics with the authors.
Basically, what I’m trying to do is draw the attention to something that is usually missed by people engaging in these topics.
That is: absolute is not objective.
There is a fundamental disconnect with the way most people organize truth and reality.
They do no have clear concepts of objective and absolute. The sequence on how to use words, is basically 6 parables that state words are not absolute. It’s such a simple point, but most people can look right at that sentence, and not have the foggiest clue what it means.
Traditionally (in the history of philosophy) the Rationalist is the lone defender of the distinction between objective and absolute.
I’m curious if that tradition is held up by contemporary rationalists.
It may help if you stop focusing on words which seem to be tripping you up when they are used in different contexts. The word “rationalist” means very different things in different context. Don’t conflate “rationalist” in the strict philosophical sense with rationalist in the sense meant generally on LW.
Yeah, I made a huge mistake.
First, regarding word usage, http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/A_Human%27s_Guide_to_Words is a good sequence to start with, assuming you haven’t read it yet.
Second, there is no universally accepted rationalist ontology. Some believe in Everett’s worlds, others don’t. A new interpretation, Interacting Many Worlds, seems to be gaining popularity. Also, not everyone here is a physical realist, so the same term “absolute reality” would mean different things to different people. And pushing Everett (which might well be proven a less-than-useful model at some point) is certainly a separate issue from standardizing the terminology.
On a mildly related point, you seem to consider “absolute reality” without regard to the observers being a part of it. This AIXI-like dualism fails once you dig a bit deeper. So8res talks about it in his recent post in Main about decision theories. Consider reading his posts.
Thank you for thet pointers.
My paragraph on QM got dense there and tried to cram a lot into a sidenote, which deserves more of an explanation.
I’m not advocating Many Worlds, which was something that DeWitt introduced.
Everett’s Relative State Formulation hinges on the difference between an absolute state (which is quantumly indetermine) and a relative state (which is a determinate measurement record produced by a neural net operating on the physics of the model).
Hugh Everett’s general model doesn’t predict “parallel worlds”. He predicted the measurement records acheived without the wave function collapsing are the same as what you would get if you apply the “special rule” of collapsing the wave function.
So when AIXI says something like this:
This would actually be in direct violation of Everett’s Relative State Formulation, which says there can be no special rules besides the physics engine that produces a measurement. Just as the Copenhagen had a special collapse event for a measurment, here is a special line of code (presumably) to initiate the measurement. In Everett’s views, the measurement must occur as an interaction according to the physics engine.
Now, “physical” is not a word I used in my original post. It is a word Everett used however. A purely physical observer interacting with its object in a purely physical way. I think it is important to understand that no metaphysical implication is made by the use of the word physical, except to say that it must be capable of being described by physics (ie, part of the physics engine).