RE: Idea dump - Key points from my early Theory of Everything'

From: pdugan (pdugan@vt.edu)
Date: Tue Jul 19 2005 - 08:56:00 MDT


A little crack pottery never hurt anyone, except for maybe cognitive
scientists trying to take the fate of the world in their hands with an AGI
project, it might just stand to hurt them. However, you are a hell of a writer
Marc, in at least the capacity to entertain us with your grand
ontologizing. People, artists, scientists, philosophers, mystics, have tried
to reconcile consciousness with external reality for millenia, but I think
a significant lesson to glean for Godel's theorem is that any system like this
is going to be a mere approximation of deeper reality.

  Your point about the universe decaying without consciousness at first struck
me as very anthropomorphic, but then again the problems are
inevitable proton decay and heat death are things that likely require very
powerful intelligences to remedy, so you have something there. Is
when you make Time a principal element of your ontology that you get into
trouble. You're admitting that time is a subjective function of
consciousness, yet this seems to preclude it as a basic facet of reality. You
ought to read Peter Lynds' papers regarding the non-reality of time
in the physical universe, if you haven't. Of course that begs the question,
does Marc Geddes believe consciousness is a physical property of a
material universe or something inherently different?

>===== Original Message From Marc Geddes <marc_geddes@yahoo.co.nz> =====
>Last time I do this. Really. Promise. Just that I'd
>earlier posted so much rather garbled stuff on SL4,
>and I know that historians might be reading the the
>SL4 list - I need to save my reputation in their eyes.
> Of course... I could be digging an even deeper hole
>for myself here ;)
>
>O.K, just a quick summary of the key points from my
>developing theory. Once I've got hard proof of these,
>I promise you'll all be the first to know. In the
>mean-time, these ideas should just be thought as
>intriguing food for thought
>
>----
>
>Presenting...Summary of the Geddes TOE! ;)
>
>----
>
>A. The 7 Universal Knowledge Domains (UKD's)
>
>a. There are 7 Universal Knowledge Domains. By
>'Universal' knowledge domain, I mean an area of
>knowledge which is 'universally applicable' i.e
>applicable everywhere in the multiverse where a
>sentient mind could exist
>
>b. The 1st UKD is concerned with *Possibility*, the
>2nd UKD is concerned with *Choice*, the 3rd UKD is
>concerned with *State*, the 4th UKD is concerned with
>*Connection*, the 5th UKD is concerned with *Time*,
>the 6th UKD is concerned with *Comparison*, the 7th
>UKD is concerned with *Space*.
>
>So; Possibility, Choice, State, Connection, Time,
>Comparison and Space.
>
>
>B The Periodic Table Of Cognition
>
>Was intended to list the fundamental categories of
>cognition, based on the theory of the UKD's. The
>skeleton starting point for this was posted on the SL4
>Wiki a couple of months back:
>
>http://www.sl4.org/wiki/MarcGeddes/UniversalDataTypes
>
>
>C Qualia - Consciousness as Time?
>
>a Consciousness is a manifestation of *Time* i.e The
>suggestion is that *Time* (physical definition) and
>*Conscioius Experience* are one and the same. Note
>that 'Time' is the 'stuff' of one of the UKD's.
>
>b Time/Consciousness serves as the *structure* of the
>universe. Consciousness is what knits the moments of
>time together. To be more precise, consciousness is
>what ensures that *causality* holds - to be even more
>precise - what ensures that there is a coherent
>mapping between cause and effect.
>
>c If the theory is correct, panpsychism is true.
>Qualia would have to be everywhere, because time is
>everywhere. So everything has some degree of
>consciousness. The degree and nature of that
>consciousness is determined by how tightly the moments
>of time *map* to each other at a given region of
>space. Sentients (like humans) are simply bits of
>thew cosmos where information about current states is
>tightly integrated with information about past states.
>
>
>d Note that the above theory is fully consistent with
>John Taylor's 'Relational' theory (which by the way is
>well supported by empirical data) - where
>consciousness is conjectured to be caused by the
>integration of current experience with past memories.
>
>e The ultimate purpose of consciousness according to
>my theory is revealed to be the 'knitting togther of
>moments of time' sufficiently that the universe
>continues to exist forever (without consciousness, the
>universe would dissolve due to a gradual weakening of
>causality - states would not be sufficiently
>constrained for effects to continue to map coherently
>to causes).
>
>
>D General intelligence and consciousness
>
>a General intelligence is the ability to *map*
>between the 7 UKD's. It is the ability to 'translate'
>the language of one UKD into the language of another.
>
>b Consciousness is *not* caused by an imperfect
>cognitive mapping mechanism, as some A.I researchers
>have thought. Consciousness is in fact caused by a
>*perfect* cognitive mapping, between one universal
>knowledge domain and another. Thus, my theory reveals
>that you cannot have general intelligence without
>sentience, because any effective mapping between the
>universal knowledge domains will produce
>consciousness.
>
>c Consciousness is simply a manifestation of the the
>7 Universal Knowledge Domains (7 UKD's).
>Consciousness exists because at root there are 7
>fundamentally different but equally valid ways to
>describe every part of reality and
>intelligence/consciousness is the manifestation of the
>mapping between these 7 UKD's.
>
>
>E Universal Values
>
>a There *is* a Universal Value System(by 'universal'
>, I mean a morality true for all sentients). The
>Universal Value System exists because of the coherent
>mapping between the Universal Knowledge Domain
>concerned with 'State', and the Universal Knowledge
>Domain concerned with 'Choice'.
>
>b From a, it follows that the level of intelligence
>is constrained by the level of friendliness. A
>function of increasing intelligence is Big Oh (maths
>notation) a function of increasing friendliness. This
>means that (in the limit), intelligence is constrained
>by friendliness.
>
>c The correlation between intelligence and
>friendliness gets better and better the higher the IQ.
> That's why in humans the correlation is weak (humans
>are not that smart). But there is no danger from a
>recursively self-improving unfriendly AI, because for
>sentients in general the correlation between
>friendliness and IQ will be very strong.
>
>d There is a Universal Value System (which includes
>moral values). The Universal Value System is composed
>of 14 finitely specifiable 'Universal Utilities' - 2
>for each of the 7 Universal Knowledge Domains.
>
>e All possible values systems are simply recursive
>elaborations and/or combinations of the 14 Universal
>Utilities.
>
>
>F Friendly Seed AI
>
>*To design a seed FAI, my theory implies that you only
>need to code the finite kernels for each of the 14
>'Universal Utilies', using the coding specifications
>implied by the structure of the 7 'Universal Knowledge
>Domains'.
>
>---
>
>That's about it folks. That's the essence of my
>theory of everything! Thanks for your patience.
>
>Posted by Marc Geddes - famous crack-pot ;)
>
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>---
>
>THE BRAIN is wider than the sky,
> For, put them side by side,
>The one the other will include
> With ease, and you beside.
>
>-Emily Dickinson
>
>'The brain is wider than the sky'
>http://www.bartleby.com/113/1126.html
>
>---
>
>Please visit my web-site:
>
>Mathematics, Mind and Matter
>http://www.riemannai.org/
>
>---
>
>Send instant messages to your online friends http://au.messenger.yahoo.com



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