Re: Guessing?
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 03:37:52 GMT
Message-ID: <kSzek.68210$kx.1445_at_pd7urf3no>
David BL wrote:
> On Jul 13, 2:54 am, Marshall <marshall.spi..._at_gmail.com> wrote: >
>> Various claims are sometimes made about possibilities
>> in physics that might account for some special mechanism
>> the brain has access to. Usually these are some kind
>> of quantum effects. My understanding is that the idea
>> that the brain takes advantage of quantum effects is
>> not generally accepted, but even if it were true,
>> that doesn't change the situation. Quantum effects
>> are computable. Quantum computers cannot compute
>> anything that regular computers can't. Even if some
>> hitherto-undescribed quantum effect exists, it will be
>> possible to build an abstraction for it. I would be
>> astonished to find that our computational models
>> aren't already up to the task, but even if they aren't,
>> we can simply expand them.
> > We don’t have a TOE and we don’t know whether the universe is > computable. Since noncomputable problems abound in mathematics I > would avoid being too presumptuous. > > QM+GR appear incompatible. On that basis Penrose conjectures that the > universe may be uncomputable. This is a logical possibility. > >
I realize this is a highly philosophical drift for c.d.t. and even though I usually scoff at the usefulness of such posts here, I can't resist saying that I think we can't know what it is that has determined the structure of our minds, no matter how much we think we understand or will eventually understand that process. For this reason, when we assess a system on the grounds of whether it is faithful to certain principles and axiomatic logics that we have in mind, we can make valid comments or criticisms about it, but only in the terms that our minds can express, eg., what they are stuctured to handle. What terms our minds have been capable of, whether by chance or some evolutional phenomenon is another question that seems outside our ken.
For example, what if we and the computers we use have some universal flaw that we and they have no appropriate structure to recognize? If that could be, then I'd say all human minds are susceptible to playing the same 'trick' on their owners. As long as the 'trick' is consistent and universal, I'd say it doesn't matter, because we'll never be aware of it. Received on Mon Jul 14 2008 - 05:37:52 CEST