Re: 'Multiverse Theory' - Universe is a Virtual Reality Matrix

From: Jaxtraw (jaxtraw_at_nospamnobigfoot.com)
Date: 07/28/04 

Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 17:32:38 +0100

"Alex Green" <dralexgreen@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:42c8441.0407280149.6138c7fc@posting.google.com...
> "Jaxtraw" <jaxtraw@nospamnobigfoot.com> wrote in message
news:<1090944134.14321.0@echo.uk.clara.net>...
> > "Alex Green" <dralexgreen@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
> > news:42c8441.0407270645.21edcfd9@posting.google.com...
> > > "Jaxtraw" <jaxtraw@nospamnobigfoot.com> wrote in message
> > > [snip]
> > > >
> > > > As to how you know how many "directions" consciousness requires, or
that
> > it
> > > > is a "geometrical form within the brain", I am at a loss.
> > >
> > > This is the crux of the matter. Is conscious experience a state or a
> > > process? If it is a process then obviously it may well exist inside an
> > > information processor. If it is a state in the same way as, say, a
> > > particular arrangement of electrical fields in space are a state, then
> > > changing this state by encoding it in an information system will not
> > > reproduce consciousness unless the state in the processor is congruent
> > > with the original state. The fact that we experience many things
> > > simultaneously suggests that conscious experience is indeed a state.
> >
> > We do? I find my poor brain can only deal with one thing at a time.
>
> This is not true, much of your brain is an elegant parallel processor.

Okay, I used slopping language. My *consciousness* can only deal with one
thing at a time.

> Consider ordinary experience. When you look at this screen the first
> image corresponding to the screen is on the retinas of your eyes so at
> best you are looking at the retinas. But 'looking at retinas' is an
> incorrect description. No light flows from your retinas into your
> brain, an information processing system combines the input from both
> of the retinas, cleans up the 'image' and this simultaneous array of
> things in the brain becomes, by some physical phenomenon, what we call
> 'conscious experience'. How the brain does this is the truly
> interesting problem. It is not understood. But it does involve a huge
> number of simultaneous things.

I'm sorry, but you're just making things up. The combination and cleaning up
of the image can clearly be an algorithmic process. The suggestion that all
this in some way contributes to conscious experience, and that this somehow
means your consciousness is doing multiple things simultaneously is contrary
to everyday experience and unsupportable. Do an experiment; right now. Start
thinking about this posting. Then, while actively thinking about that, start
thinking about waht you would like for dinner. Now, while thinking about
both those things, start thinking about Godel's theorem. If you've actually
just managed to do those things, congratulations, you're the next stage of
human evolution, or God :o) The fact is, you will have to direct your
attention, your *consciousness* at each of those things one at a time. Only
the low level stuff, like image filtering, is running independently, and the
fact is that if you think about something, you'll stop even actively being
aware of what you're looking at. Your low level, non-conscious brain is
still monitoring it (checking what you're typing, keeping an eye out for
marauding predators) but should a marauding predator arrive, you'll find
your consciousness wrenched away from the intellectualisation and towards
what you're looking at.

*Nobody* can think about more than one thing at a time; and *thinking about
a thing* is what consciousness *is*.

> > At
> > least, I can only direct my attention to one thing at a time. I can't
solve
> > an equation and write a poem simultaneously; the best I can do is to
switch
> > rapidly between them, it seems :( If while writing the poem somebody
stamps
> > on my foot, I'll immediately stop the poetry and start thinking about
the
> > pain in my foot.
>
> These things are administered by auxillary information processors in
> the brain (speech areas etc). The main activity of the brain is simply
> creating and maintaining the conscious experience that naive people
> call the world but neuroscientists call the 'perceptual field'.

I doubt it. The main activity of most brains on the planet is running basic
processes that maintain the organism. The perceptual field is a useful,
associative model of the outside world, but it isn't consciousness.
Consciousness is that thinking thing.

> > That's not to say that my nervous system *as a whole*
> > cannot accept large number of inputs, nor to deny the fact that I can
walk
> > and do math simultaneously. But I'm not *aware* of all those inputs, and
> > walking is handled by some subsystem well below the conscious level. The
> > conscious bit of my brain seems really rather limited, unaware of most
of
> > what is occurring, blissfully unaware of why I reach the decisions I do
(hey
> > I want a ham sandwich, though why I like ham and not tomatoes I have no
> > idea).
>
> Again this seems to be naive realism (see:
> http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~lka/strongai.htm )

Please stop bandying about the mildly offensive labels. You can't win a
point by simply labelling some other point of view. You have to actually
prove your point. And no, I don't believe that there is a man in my head
looking at pictures of the world, if you think I do you haven't really
understood what I'm saying.

> things like doing math are trivial compared with the main business of
> the brain which is 'conscious experience'.

Agreed. Math is alogorithmic. As is most of the main business of the brain,
it seems. Consciousness seems to be some lately evolved additional
monitoring process whereby the brain can to a small degree monitor itself.

> Conscious experience is
> largely the perceptual field during waking life and dreams during
> sleep. This field is a simulation of a 'view' of the world from an
> abstract 'point eye'.

It does't seem to be a view in any usual sense. It's more associations. Most
of my thinking for instance is non-visual; while typing this the words form
in my head before I type them. Particularly striking for me is that, as an
example, when hitting a shortcut combination, the words "control, alt, del"
form in my head as I do it.

> Information processes in the brain create this
> simulation but it becomes conscious experience as a result of another
> physical phenomenon.

Furthermore, it's far from a simulation. At high (conscious) level, the
brain *at no point* contains a detailed simulation of the world. My
consciousness is only aware of those aspects that are directly relevant;
it's terribly poor for instance at understanding absolute distances, it has
a very poor understanding of three dimensional geometry. That's why us
humans are such terrible artists.

> >
> [snip]
> > > > A personal view here; I think that one reasonable POV is that
> > > > consciousness
> > > > *itself* is a simulation. We don't experience the real world at all;
we
> > > > experience a simulation of it, which is continually updated/modified
by
> > > > sensory data.
> > >
> > > Agreed.
> > >
> > > > By your reasoning, that internal experience/simulation is not
> > > > congruent with the real world, and thus consciousness is itself
> > impossible.
> > > > I find that hard to swallow.
> > >
> > > This does not follow. If you simulate a potato in a computer you do
> > > not expect to be able to shake your computer and obtain loads of
> > > spuds. Simulations are not the things themselves. What I am saying is
> > > that consciousness is an actual thing, a phenomenal entity which has a
> > > form so if we simulate it we should not expect to look inside our
> > > computer and find this thing within it. All we find, as in the case of
> > > the potato, is a simulation.
> >
> > That is because you are using a physical object as an example. Of course
my
> > computer does not contain a potato, even if I have a very good model of
one
> > held in its memory. The fundamental particles which constitute a potato
are
> > not physcially present inside the machine.
> >
> > But consciousness is a phenomenological observation of the behaviour of
a
> > system. It is not a physical object; it's not constructed from protons
and
> > electrons.
>
> Here we have our basic difference of opinion. If you believe that
> conscious experience is information processing then obviously it can
> exist in an idealised Turing Machine. If conscious experience were
> indeed information processing I would agree with your belief.

You keep chipping away at this information processing model; I'd be
interested to hear what your hypothesis actually is. If you believe that the
brain is a mechanism governed by the laws of physics, as it surely is, then
how does it reach a new state other than by evolution of its current state,
incorporating new inputs? That is all there is for it to go on.

The simple fact is, there is no positive evidence that the brain is *not* an
information processor; the anti-AI community generally lapse into vague
statements about insight at this point, but without supporting evidence. The
Godel's Theorem argument, for instance, goes something like this:

"Godel showed that there are statements which cannot be proved by any formal
system. If the brain is a formal system, it cannot prove these statements.
The brain can prove these statements. Ergo, it is not a formal system."

But in fact there is no evidence at all that the brain can do any such
magical thing. It can make some such statements; but it has not proved them;
it simply states them; much of "insight" and "originality" is simply the
random combination of things already known into new combinations, based on
experience. Effectively, it can take two proven statements, mix them
together, come up with a new one that may or may not be true. That isn't the
same as beating Godel, and it sure as heck doesn't prove that the brain has
some magic power unavailable to other systems.

> You state that "consciousness is a phenomenological observation of the
> behaviour of a system". I disagree. There is excellent evidence that
> the brain operates an information system that combines data from the
> senses, or from the modelling activity of dreams etc. This activity
> can be monitored using fMRI etc. and the areas of brain involved in
> binocular fusion, for instance, can be located. However, at some stage
> the information processing has done its work and created the data set
> that is the content of conscious experience. Conscious experience IS
> this conjoint set of data itself, not an observation OF it or further
> processing of it. Nothing flows from this data in the brain to further
> observers in the brain.

I've never claimed that it does. Obviously, to postulate an observer inside
the brain is to cause an infinite regression of postulated observers. But
that's my point; it's also why the Chinese Room is such a painfully hopeless
thought experiment. By searching for "the consciousness" we miss the point;
you can't tear apart a brain and find it; it's simply a behaviour of *the
entire system*.

> > The system which exhibits conscious behaviour *is* so constructed
> > of course, but neither of us are arguing that a real physical brain can
exist
> > inside a computer. We are discussing whether two different substrates
> > (brain, silicon) can exhibit the same behaviour.
> >
> > A behaviour is not a physical object. It has neither volume nor mass. I
> > think your potato is a straw potato :o)
>
> Behaviours can be considered in terms of flows and transformations but
> the buck stops at conscious experience. There is no further flow or
> transformation in the brain when information becomes conscious
> experience. Conscious experience is the output of cortical sensory
> processing, it is not a process itself.

"Consciousness" is, I repeat, simply a word we use to describe what the
brain does. And all we know for sure about what the brain does is that it
operates the body, accepts sensory inputs, makes decisions based on its own
state and those inputs, and is capable of a small degree of self
description. There is no evidence whatsoever that it is capable of anything
else, or that some unknown marvellous ingredient elevates it above the level
of being a very complex thermostat.

> [snip]
> > > Clearly conscious experience is the phenomenon in the brain that
> > > allows simulations to adopt an instantaneous state that is congruent
> > > with some of the state that corresponds to the position of an
> > > individual and the things in the space around that individual. This
> > > congruence explains why so many people are naive realists - they think
> > > that the simulation is the actual things.
> >
> > Maybe. I can't speak for them. But one should be cautious of suggesting
that
> > consciousness must be interacting with a real world. We can imagine a
brain
> > in a jar, whose nervous system is connected to a virtual reality device.
> > That brain may be convinced that it is an astronaut on Mars, because its
> > inputs tell it so, but it isn't. THere is now no model of the real world
> > inside it; its internal simulation (I'm on Mars) is now in no way
congruent
> > with the real world (I'm a brain in a jar). Has it now ceased to be
> > conscious?
>
> I have maintained throughout that dreams can be conscious experience.
> (In fact evidence from visual illusions, motion perception etc suggest
> that our experience of the world uses the modelling machinery that
> creates dreams).

Dreams seem to me to be movie-like; we are passive observers. Even in those
rare "conscious" dreams, where I am aware I am dreaming, on awakening I find
I was constrained and not really "conscious" at all. The brains of most
higher mammals seem to spend considerable effort trying to predict the near
future. Perhaps dreams are more in the nature of that predictive process
free-wheeling.

> > [snip]
> >
> > > Incidently, this 'state' is not a simple 3D array, it is one sided and
> > > corresponds to a set of vectors pointing at an observation point.
> >
> > Please present evidence for this statement.
>
> Conscious experience has a bizarre geometry.

I'm not aware that it has a geometry at all.

>Most people believe that
> what they see directly is actual things but we both know that our
> experience is a model in the brain based on sense data. Most people
> believe that light flows from the things in their experience across a
> space in their experience to a point eye in a head in their
> experience.

They do?

> We know that all of these things are actually modelled in
> the brain (for instance, you can dream that 'you' are looking out over
> a distant view of a sunset but the dream is wholly internal).

But, interestingly, we don't hold a detailed model of that sunset. It seems
more likely to me that all the brain contains, somewhere, is, to use a
computer analogy, a variable Currently_Looking_At="sunset". All, after all,
we need in the real world is the knowledge that what we are looking at is a
sunset. We don't need a model at all. Therein lies the old strong AI
argument; you can't do anything useful with your perception until you've
thrown away all the extraneous detail and boiled it down to a symbol for
"sunset".

> But having been modelled how do they become the field of things in
> conscious experience? What is the geometry of the perceptual field or
> the field within a dream? It has spherical symmetry, things occur
> simultaneously, things have a "sidedness" and things are directed at a
> fictitious "point eye" or observation point that contains nothing.
> This geometry is quite unlike a 3D arrangement in space, it is more
> like a 4D 'view'. See:
>
> http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~lka/conz.htm for a discussion.

Well maybe I'm odd, but my internal model doesn't have a geometry at all; it
operates on vague associations, kind of, "There's an elephant IN FRONT OF ME
and BEHIND the elephant is a forest, and OVER ON THE LEFT is a tree.." and
so on. I can "see" details if I look; "The elephant's grey and wrinkled".
But none of that seems much like a geometrical model. More like some kind of
associated set of symbols to me.

Your argument seems perilously close to the Cartesian Theatre with which I'm
sure you disagree.

> >
> > > Consciousness is a module or phenomenon that realises information into
> > > the particular state that we call conscious experience. It changes
> > > information as a general encoding into information as a congruent
> > > state. Your computer would need a hardware module for this phenomenon
> > > if it were to contain consciousness.
> > >
> >
> > It would be easier by far for it to simply model the behaviour of the
> > postulated hardware unit within its memory. You still haven't addressed
the
> > question of what would prevent it doing so.
> >
>
> When we dream things flow back and forth all over the brain,
> transferring and rearranging data. Lots of separate things flowing
> about is just lots of things flowing about. I think you yourself
> mentioned 'emergentism', 'emergentism' is an expression of the gut
> feeling that somewhere all these flows must become a particular state
> that corresponds to conscious experience. I have argued that conscious
> experience is clearly a 'state', a geometrical arrangement of things
> that naive realists call their experience OF the world. Encoding that
> state in the state of an information system loses its geometrical form
> because information systems transfer state data, not geometrical
> states themselves. It is this feature of information systems that
> would prevent them from containing conscious experience.

And I'm saying you have no evidence for any of this. I don't see any
evidence at all for a hard-wired geometry, nor that the brain is any more
multi-dimensional than an idealised Turing Machine. It can represent
multi-dimensionality within itself, but then so can our Turing Machine. It
seems we're a bit stuck :)

> Incidently, an information system that carried perfect copies of the
> geometrical state of things would be a replication of the things.
>
 Is there such a thing?

Ian

Relevant Pages

  • Re: A reply to Marvin Minsky.
    ... the brain doesn't explain WHY it is just the brain or ... why just a brain should have a conscious experience. ... missing something in our explanation. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: United States starting to execute the mentally impaired
    ... ruptured in his brain, and he collapsed on the bathroom floor. ... One morning just over a year after his accident, Rios was taken to the ... expert in consciousness disorders at Weill Medical College of Cornell ... patients will emerge from a vegetative state and which won't. ...
    (sci.med.diseases.lyme)
  • Re: Multiverse Theory - Universe is a Virtual Reality Matrix
    ... much of your brain is an elegant parallel processor. ... > the brain which is 'conscious experience'. ... > Conscious experience has a bizarre geometry. ... stream does not contain the position/extent data. ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: Multiverse Theory - Universe is a Virtual Reality Matrix
    ... much of your brain is an elegant parallel processor. ... > the brain which is 'conscious experience'. ... > Conscious experience has a bizarre geometry. ... stream does not contain the position/extent data. ...
    (sci.astro)
  • Re: Multiverse Theory - Universe is a Virtual Reality Matrix
    ... I find my poor brain can only deal with one thing at a time. ... My *consciousness* can only deal with one ... this in some way contributes to conscious experience, ... a very poor understanding of three dimensional geometry. ...
    (sci.physics)
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