From benros%primus@primus.lin.foa.se Thu Mar 3 02:11:37 1994 Received: from malin.foa.se (malin.foa.se [150.227.1.1]) by u.cc.utah.edu (8.6.5/8.6.5uucc-a) with SMTP id CAA09314 for ; Thu, 3 Mar 1994 02:11:19 -0700 Received: from primus.lin.foa.se by malin.foa.se with SMTP id AA13864 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for ); Thu, 3 Mar 1994 10:11:09 +0100 Received: by primus.lin.foa.se (5.0/SMI-SVR4) id AA14627; Thu, 3 Mar 1994 10:12:27 --100 Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 10:12:27 --100 From: benros@lin.foa.se (Bengt Rosen) Message-Id: <9403030912.AA14627@primus.lin.foa.se> To: mike.biesele@m.cc.utah.edu Subject: 3 AI-dialogues Content-Length: 20586 Status: RO THE MATERIALISTIC GHOST WORLD. A conversation over a cup of tea. Lisa is a slightly unhappy materialist. Her friend Harry is a specialist in computer science and physics. They have met in Lisa's apartment for a cup of tea. To Lisa's great despair, Harry is in a good mood. LISA: How terrible the world is. All these religions fighting each other. Why can't we all be friends? HARRY: Maybe people wouldn't bother so much about religion if they knew that materialism now has a ghost world of its own. LISA: You mean that Karl Marx and Lenin and the other famous materialists now live on in a special ghost world which is somehow different from the ordinary religious ghost world? HARRY: It's true that the memory of them lives on in this world, but that's not exactly what I meant. LISA: Well, what did you mean then? HARRY: There are intelligent computer programs in the number system. LISA: What? HARRY: There are intelligent computer programs in the number system, and that means that there is a very real materialistic ghost world. LISA: That's the silliest thing I've ever heard. There are no computer programs in the number system, only numbers. HARRY: Our number system contains every conceivable piece of information. The complete works of William Shakespeare is in the number system, there are digital recordings of the films of Ingmar Bergman, every CD-record that has been made and also every CD-record that ever will be made have their places among the numbers. I can quite firmly assure you that there are computer programs in the number system. LISA: But the number system isn't real. It's just an abstract human invention. HARRY: Like the ancient greek philosopher Plato, I don't agree. The number system can be explored in great detail. How can one explore something that doesn't exist? LISA: What does the number system look like then, if you explore it in detail? Can you tell me that? HARRY: It's large, and it contains mostly lots and lots of "digital noise", that is, random digits. The universe, by the way, is also large and it contains mostly lots and lots of vacuum. LISA: All right, there may be computer programs in the number system, but there aren't any INTELLIGENT computer programs there, because there aren't any intelligent computer programs at all. Computers can't have emotions and perceptions. HARRY: Well, I can't prove you wrong there, but if you don't believe in computer intelligence then you're not really a materialist, I think. LISA: Of course I'm a materialist, and I don't have to believe in computer intelligence. HARRY: No, I think you must believe in computer intelligence, or admit that you're a dualist, believing in a magical ghost world. LISA: So whatever I choose to believe, I'm stuck with a ghost world? HARRY: Exactly. LISA: What about quantum physics? Couldn't that save us from the ghost world? If the brain is some kind of quantum computer then there is no intelligence in the number system. HARRY: You surprise me Lisa. That's one more intelligent objection. But you must remember that quantum physics isn't fundamentally mysterious, like dualism, it's only strange and counterintuitive. It has a mathematical nature, and there would still be consciousness in Plato's world of abstract ideas, only you would have to use more advanced mathematics than numbers to capture it. LISA: But in the number system, and in Plato's idea-world, there is a complete absence of time. Numbers don't move and so they can't be conscious. HARRY: Well, I didn't think of that. LISA: Gotcha! Gotcha! Gotcha! HARRY: I'm only joking. Of course I have thought about that. Does not a CD-record contain time? LISA: Well, yes. HARRY: Yet, a CD-record is just a large number when you study it carefully. A number can be "played". LISA: But there is no record-player up in the sky, playing numbers. No, I'm telling you again that numbers don't move. HARRY: If a number contains consciousness, then it can play itself. Suppose that, at your birth, somebody had made a book containing a complete description of your brain. Every neuron and its state would have been written into the book in complete detail. LISA: But that's impossible, isn't it? HARRY: It's perfectly possible to do it with all computers. LISA: All right, go on! HARRY: A tiny fraction of a second later, a new book is made, again containing a complete description of your brain. LISA: And then a third book, and a fourth book, and so on? HARRY: Yes, we end up with a long array of thick books, containing your entire life. Your entire experience of being alive is in those books. The entire array of books can easily be coded into a number, and that number exists. LISA: Stop it! You're saying that that number is me, and there is no real world outside of my consciousness, and I don't have a body? HARRY: Possibly yes. However, most western scientists believe that there is actually a world outside of your consciousness, and your interaction with it is not a mere illusion. But the entire universe could perhaps be a very large number, or an irrational number. LISA: There are no colours in a number, no matter how many digits it contains. HARRY: True, and there are no colours in our world. LISA: I'm going to call for a psychiatrist. HARRY: For me or for you? LISA: For you of course. How can you say that there are no colours in the world? HARRY: Let go of the phone! There is light in the world, and light with different wavelengths. Some of that light enters your eyes and interacts with molecules in your retinas. Information about the wavelength of the light is fed to your brain, and it is your brain that creates the colours. Your brain paints the world. LISA: I see. How is that done? Where does the "paint" come from? HARRY: Good question. Next question, please! Well, the most radical explanation I've heard is that you don't really see colours, you only believe that you do. Time passing is also more or less an illusion, created by your brain. LISA: Were you serious about the universe being a number? HARRY: A number or some other mathematical structure, yes. What else could it possibly be? Something magical? LISA: So we are actually all just ghosts in the materialistic ghost world? That's all we are? HARRY: You're beginning to get the hang of it. Matter is ultimately made of ... nothing. Truly, what else could it be made of? Matter isn't more real than your perceptions. Imagine an abstract being in an abstract world, for instance a computer program for artificial intelligence living in a virtual reality, equipped with a virtual body. The creature is fooled to believe that his world and body are real, because "they can be touched". Lisa, you and I are such creatures, and our computer program is running on a computer that doesn't exist, that doesn't need to exist. LISA: But numbers are just so completely dead. How can anyone seriously believe that there is life in them? HARRY: Do you believe that there is life in me, Lisa? LISA: Yes, of course. HARRY: Why? LISA: What a silly question. Because you behave as if you were alive, I think. HARRY: Exactly. Now, if I showed you a number that behaved as if it were alive, would you not believe that it was? LISA: But there is no life in a number when you look inside it. HARRY: There might be no real life in you if you look inside. LISA: There are chemicals and fluids in me. There are no such things in a number. A number is completely "dry", maybe that's the difference? HARRY: I don't think so. I can build a, slow, computer where the signals are pingpong-balls rolling in plastic tubes, or I can make one, equally slow, where the signals are water flowing in little channels. If both machines perform the same computation, then the logical result is the same. Wet or dry doesn't matter. A bit is a bit, when it comes to computation. LISA: Is there no difference between performing a computation and "playing" a number? HARRY: Well, a computation is a special case of playing a number, but a computation is perhaps completely described by its initial state and its algorithm, because ... LISA: I hate it when you get technical, Harry. HARRY: I'm sorry. LISA: Consciousness can never emerge because there is a pingpong- ball lacking in a plastic tube. HARRY: I can think of situations where it is of great importance whether there is or is not a pingpong-ball in a tube. LISA: No, there is no life in a heap of pingpong-balls. HARRY: Again, there might be no real life in you. LISA: But I know perfectly well that there is. I cannot doubt that. My own consciousness is the one thing in the world that I can be really sure about. HARRY: Brilliant, Lisa! You have reinvented the famous main thesis of the famous french philosopher Rene Descartes: "cogito, ergo sum", "I think, therefore I am". He was a dualist. He concluded that a ghost in a truly magical ghost world interacts with your body. He believed that consciousness is a miracle of God. LISA: I think too, therefore I am too? HARRY: That's a nice sentence, Lisa. I quite like the ring of it. Are you sure you're not a dualist? LISA: I keep telling you that I'm not. HARRY: Still you seem to hang on to very dualistic ideas about the mind. LISA: OK. Let's say I change my mind. I'm now a dualist. HARRY: Do you believe that some molecules in the brain violate physical law? LISA: Of course not. HARRY: You're a materialist. LISA: Come on Harry! Give me a break! THE TEDDY BEAR EFFECT. A conversation in a pizza restaurant. Harry and Lisa are hungry. They're sitting at a table in a restaurant waiting for their pizzas to arrive. LISA: I went to the movies yesterday and saw "Jurassic Park" by Steven Spielberg. It's about dinosaurs in present time, created by mad gene scientists. It was so exciting that it almost made me feel sick. HARRY: You're a victim of the teddy bear effect, Lisa. LISA: Some of those dinosaurs were certainly no cuddly teddy bears. HARRY: The dinosaurs you're speaking about were really just patterns of light on the movie screen. When you believe that there was life in them, you make the same mistake as a child that believes that it can talk to a teddy bear and be understood. LISA: I understand, and you're boring. Are you going to ban cinemas? Are you going to take the little soft animals away from the children? How are you and your engineer friends going to exterminate the teddy bear effect? HARRY: The teddy bear effect cannot be exterminated, and I can explain why. LISA: Aha? HARRY: There is a teddy bear effect here and now, when you're talking to me. LISA: But you're not a puppet. I thought we had agreed that there is really life in both you and me. There are nerves in our bodies and not just cotton. HARRY: But my nerves are not in you, really. The model of me that you experience is actually your own invention. Your brain "paints" life in me just in the same way as it can paint life in a teddy bear. LISA: But I'm not doing wrong, painting life in you, am I? HARRY: Oh no. There can be a great similarity between model and reality. LISA: But it isn't necessarily so? HARRY: No. LISA: The only time there isn't a teddy bear effect is when I view myself? HARRY: There is a teddy bear effect even then. LISA: So my picture of myself isn't necessarily true. HARRY: No, but you already knew that, didn't you? LISA: Nothing is real. HARRY: You mustn't say that. The teddy bear effect for instance, is real and must be taken seriously. LISA: How can you know what's wrong, with your models of yourself and of other people? HARRY: Consider the gentle charm of a surprise. If you are sometimes surprised by other people or by yourself, then your crude models haven't entirely overwritten subtle reality. LISA: I'm surprised by how people fight and beat each other to death. What's so subtle about that? HARRY: I didn't think about that. LISA: Come on, Harry! You've got the answer to everything. HARRY: Maybe they fight so that people like me won't have the answer to everything? LISA: I'll have to ask Charlie Brown or Snoopy. HARRY: Charlie Brown doesn't exist, in reality. LISA: Now I get really angry at you, Harry. You go to far in your cynical truth telling. How can you say that Charlie Brown doesn't exist? I've seen him appear on television. You should be glad that I don't carry a gun. HARRY: Somewhere in Plato's world of ideas, maybe there is a little universe with some creatures in it that are very similar to Snoopy and the peanuts. Yes, there probably is. Friends again? LISA: Somewhere in the number system, there is a number that is the entire life of Charlie Brown. HARRY: Yes, that's the way it ought to be. LISA: I wonder if my life is a prime number. HARRY: Probably not. Prime numbers are scarce among the very large numbers. LISA: Couldn't you add a few digits to my life, to make it a little longer? HARRY: There's nothing to stop that, I think. LISA: Couldn't my life be an irrational number, that goes on forever? HARRY: Indeed, why not. You may have the information-theoretical equivalent of an immortal soul. LISA: Harry, what am I going to experience beyond death? HARRY: I can't promise you anything. These ideas stand on shaky legs. LISA: But what happens, if I am an irrational number? HARRY: The problem is that there are too many possibilities. There is a combinatorial explosion. LISA: Death is a combinatorial explosion? HARRY: Yes. LISA: Why isn't life a combinatorial explosion? HARRY: Maybe it is. Have you heard about Everett's interpretation of quantum physics? There may be many parallel branches of the universe. There could perhaps be infinitely many copies of you. LISA: What's the meaning of it all? HARRY: The ultimate meaning of life is to keep your teddy bear happy. LISA: You don't really mean that? HARRY: I can easily think of worse principles to live by. LISA: But seriously, Harry. What will I experience after death? HARRY: I don't know, but there's a distinct possibility that it could be rather unpleasant. LISA: You mean that I could be stuck talking to you forever? HARRY: But Lisa, you could have an everlasting conversation with Plato himself. LISA: Here are our pizzas now. Please be quiet and eat! FLICKERING RANDOM NOISE. A conversation. LISA: I've been thinking about your ideas about intelligence in the number system. HARRY: Yes. LISA: If the continuation of my life is an irrational number, then what will I experience? I have to ask again. HARRY: And I answer again that there are many possibilities. You could in principle experience anything, and there's not one continuation of your life, but many. You could experience that the sky suddenly has red and yellow stripes, you could find yourself on the moon when you blow your nose, when you pick your ear you could end up in the bedroom of queen Elisabeth. LISA: So there are many continuations of my life. What then will I probably experience. HARRY: A "typical" continuation would then be for you to experience flickering random noise. Flickering random noise is absolutely the most probable continuation. You could possibly experience some loss of memory, and you could remember things that have never happened. LISA: That sounds rather terrible. HARRY: Yes, indeed. LISA: Heaven and hell? Reincarnation and Nirvana? HARRY: Just forget it! Flickering random noise is what's waiting for you, in reality. Sinner or saint doesn't matter. Noble or low, brave or cowardly, black or white, rich or poor, for all the same: flickering random noise, no exceptions. The irrational numbers take no notice about your karma. LISA: How does mathematics know when I'm about to begin experiencing flickering random noise? HARRY: It doesn't. Copies of you begin experiencing flickering random noise all the time, if my ideas are correct. Millions of copies every second. LISA: The only thing I have ever experienced is the same old reality all the time. Can you explain that? HARRY: That can probably only be explained as a fantastic coincidence. LISA: What is the probablility that I would stay in the same world for any longer period of time, if your ideas are correct? HARRY: That probability is in principle equal to zero, I would think. (Unless our universe is constantly branching, and the set of branches has a higher mightiness than the set of irrational numbers.) LISA: Now don't you understand that something is completely wrong? I have a statement to make: you're a lunatic. HARRY: If there's something wrong, then we have proven either that the number system doesn't exist, or that computer intelligence is impossible. I build my argument on the two assumptions that the number system exists and that computer intelligence is possible. LISA: I've told you all along that computer intelligence is impossible. HARRY: Hold it! We must be careful and extremely thorough and not jump to conclusions. Have you heard the story about the astrologer, the physicist and the mathematician who were travelling by train in Scotland? LISA: No. Is it funny? HARRY: Maybe it's a little funny. The train was passing a field, and in that field was a black sheep. LISA: Yes. HARRY: "Look!", exclaimed the astrologer. "The scottish sheep are black." LISA: Yes. HARRY: "You're jumping to conclusions", said the physicist, "but there are black sheep in Scotland." LISA: And then the mathematician said? HARRY: And then the mathematician said: "There exists in Scotland at least one sheep which appears to be black on at least one side." LISA: Aha, and what's the point? HARRY: The point is that we have NOT formally proven that computer intelligence is impossible. The sameness of your surrounding world doesn't prove anything at all, except of course that there exists at least one continuation of your life where your surrounding world is the same. LISA: So I could in principle experience anything, in any instant? I could see stripes in the sky? I could suddenly be surrounded by flickering random noise? HARRY: Yes. LISA: And this not happening doesn't really prove that it's impossible? HARRY: Exactly. In most of the branches of your existence such things don't happen, but there may be a relatively small number of branches where peculiar things do happen. Imagine the surprise of Albert Einstein when he died, and suddenly found himself standing before the gates of heaven, accompanied by Saint Peter. LISA: How odd, that it may be possible to "record" consciousness, on a videotape or a CD-disc. HARRY: If consciousness arises from a computation, then it is possible. A computation can be recorded and stored, exactly like picture and sound. Your consciousness probably IS recorded and stored, within mathematics. LISA: But what if computers cannot be conscious? What is there then to be said about the human being? How then can consciousness be explained? HARRY: Well, I don't have a lot to say about that. LISA: Come on, Harry! Say something! HARRY: No.