Alternative computations at once

DIY experiment: Relativity of information

Whatever meaning we see in a computer or in the information it stores and the computation it does, this meaning is due to our own conventions. If we change the convention, we change the meaning. Without us to make the convention there is no meaning in a computer.

This is a JavaScript program that demonstrates that when a computer does a computation, it also does the computations for the other possible inputs, simultaneously. The alternative computations are "encrypted" in that computation, and they can be "decrypted" by changing the convention.

For this demonstration, the program verifies if a partition of a list of numbers into two sublists is fair, that is, if the sums of the two sublists of numbers are equal (the partition problem). The program does the verification only once, for a default partition which is maximally unfair, and it can decrypt the results for any other partition, finding even the possible fair partitions.

You can verify the source code by yourself (right-click and select from the menu to view the code or run it line-by-line). To put this in context, see my paper "Does a computer think if no one is around to see it?" and my YouTube videos "Are you a robot?" totalizing 46' minutes.

Input data

List of numbers:

Default partition:

User defined partition:

 Is consciousness grounded in matter or the other way around?

 

We will ask physics about physicalism, zombies, and consciousness.
This video is an as-simple-as-I-could explanation of this article https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/23108/.
We will use a bit of physics and math, but I'll introduce these smoothly, to make the trip easy and interesting. You can verify each step of the proof, and if you can find an error, please let me know. Many of the implications of this result remain open to be discussed later. 

Abstract of the article

If the mind of a sentient being would be reducible to its structure, any system with identical structure should be equally sentient. Based on the structural symmetries of Physics, I prove that this thesis has two unexpected consequences:

1) There would be an inflation of minds, living in apparently different worlds.
2) The content of these minds would be independent of the properties of the external world. That is, these minds would be unable to know anything about the world.

Since this contradicts empirical observations, structure alone is insufficient for sentient experience.

This excludes the purely physicalistic approaches to physics and consciousness. For physics to be as we know it, all physical properties have to be grounded in something sentiential.

Is your mind just a computation?

I made three videos, 46' together, about consciousness and computation.

In this series in three parts:

Can a computer have its own mind? Is your mind just a computation? We will see what Computer Science has to say. Don't worry, it's beginner level! DIY experiment so that you can verify what I say. The proof appeals to logic and experiment, not to phenomenal experience ("what is like", the "hard problem of consciousness", qualia, the experience of feelings, emotions, pain or pleasure etc) Based on my paper "Does a computer think if no one is around to see it?"  

In Episode 1, we will see that what we call computation is a convention, and it can be chosen in numerous ways.

 

 

In Episode 2, we will make an experiment to see that what we call computation is a convention, and it can be chosen in numerous ways. We will explore some implications.

 

 

In Episode 3, we will see that there is a way to know if your mind is just a computation.

The negative way to sentience (comments welcome!)

I wrote an essay about sentience and its relations to physics. For the moment, I  keep it on ResearchGate, and I am welcoming comments.

The negative way to sentience (comments welcome!)

Abstract. While the materialist paradigm is credited for the incredible success of science in describing the world, to some scientists and philosophers there seems to be something about subjective experience that is left out, in an apparently irreconcilable way. I show that indeed a scientific description of reality faces a serious limitation, which explains this position. On the other hand, to remain in the realm of science, I explore the problem of sentient experience in an indirect way, through its possible physical correlates. This can only be done in a negative way, which consists in the falsification of various hypotheses and the derivation of no-go results. The general approach I use here is based on simple mathematical proofs about dynamical systems, which I then particularize to several types of physical theories and interpretations of quantum mechanics. Despite choosing this scientifically-prudent approach, it turns out that various possibilities to consider sentience as fundamental make empirical predictions, ranging from some that can only be verified on a subjective basis to some about the physical correlates of sentience, which are independently falsifiable by objective means.

For the moment, you can read it and comment here.