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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 9/12/22 9:47 AM, glen∉ℂ wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com">Steve
Smith sasmyth at swcp.com, Sat Sep 10 11:00:22 EDT 2022:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">This suggests to me that the very
fundament of what I believe is "consciousness" is self-other
dualistic? Is there something unique about (our familiar form
of) consciousness that requires the self-other duality?
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
I agree with your orientation. But I reject the idea that we're
unique in our self-other reflectivity. It seems like even pond
scum engage in something like mimicry. </blockquote>
I will easily (eagerly) concede this point, replacing "we are
unique" to "this is what we often/pervasively take to be the basis
of our uniqueness".<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com">Similar
to what you aim at for question 2, the thing being made is a
reflection of the thing making, and vice versa. So a paramecium
following a gradient makes the gradient and vice versa. This looks
like primitive mimicry to me.
<br>
</blockquote>
Yes, this feels to be the dependent co-arising of Buddhist/Vedic
thought that continues to capture me more and more at every
(re)exposure to it.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com">
<br>
The only difference between us and pond scum is the complexity of
our internal machinery. I.e. pond scum *does* create a kind of
science and mathematics (SAM).</blockquote>
Agreed... <br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com"> It's
just that their SAM is obviously a mirror/dual to their internal
machinery. What Wolpert's asking/asserting is: Our SAM is a
reflection of our machinery. So the limitations of our SAM are
directly caused by our structure. But, of course, like you and
Dave have said, some of that structure isn't internal. It's
transpersonal, cultural. And that culture has a historicity,
momentum, inertia, caused partly by the built environment,
including normative behaviors/ideas.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com">
So a largely cultural tool like SAM has no choice but to
reflect/mimic both our internal machinery and the "nest" we've
built. Counterfactually, what alternative SAMs could we have built
if we or our nest were different?
<br>
</blockquote>
I offer Robert Forward's (working physicist who also wrote SciFi) <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/263466.Dragon_s_Egg">"Dragon's
Egg" </a>as a contemplation of this kind of emergence convolved
with Edwin Abbot Abbot's Flatland on the surface of a Neutron star,
unfolding on a timescale that has a human space-expedition observing
"life" emerging from "matter" (Creatura from Pleroma to quote
Bateson) in realtime, and then developing a culture (and SAM) that
ultimately transcended that of the space-faring future-humans. Not
quite *literature* but still an amazing contemplation/framing of
these ideas IMO.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com">
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">2. Restricting attention to what are,
in some sense, the most universal of humanity's
achievements, the most graphic demonstrations of our
cognitive abilities:
<br>
<br>
Why were we able to construct present-day science and
mathematics, but no other species ever did? Why are we
uniquely able to decipher some features of the Cosmic
Baker's hands by scrutinizing the breadcrumbs that They
scattered about the universe? Why do we have that cognitive
ability despite its fitness costs? Was it some subtle
requirement of the ecological niche in which we were formed
— a niche that at first glance appears rather pedestrian,
and certainly does not overtly select for the ability to
construct something like quantum chronodynamics? Or is our
ability a spandrel, to use Gould and Lewontin’s famous
phrase — an evolutionary byproduct of some other trait? Or
is it just a cosmic fluke?
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br>
The fitness payout vs the fitness cost, I would claim *is* tool
creation/use... both physical artifacts (e.g. neolithic cutting
tools) and mental constructs (models and logic, no matter how
limited) which could be *shared* (communicated).
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
I really like the idea that the tool and the context are the same
thing ... or perhaps 2 abstracted aspects of the same thing. But
your identity (fitness *is* tool creation) sweeps a lot of detail
under the rug.</blockquote>
What else are we going to sweep under a rug if not details
<grin>?<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com"> Some
fitness moves very fast (like many generations of gut biome within
an 80 year life span) and some fitness moves very slow (geology
astronomy). A tool like SAM emerges much slower than a tool like
an arrow[head]. Even a single theorem/proof within SAM develops
more slowly than a single arrow[head].
<br>
<br>
So, abstractly, it's reasonable to pair fitness-scopes with
tool-scopes. But that sort of strict partial order (again cf
List's levels paper) is prolly a fiction. I'd claim that
inter-level (cross-trophic) interaction is the rule, not the
exception. But in the context of Wolpert's question, what *could*
it look like? It seems to hearken back to Langton's "Life as it
could be".
<br>
</blockquote>
I'm behind in my reading here so must just acknowledge this and hope
to hold it in abeyance in my head long enough to catch up. (or fades
gracefully for you to remind us again, some more, forever until we
"get it"?)<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com">
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">3. Are we really sure that no other
species ever constructed some equivalent of present-day SAM?
Are we really sure that no other apes — or cetaceans or
cephalopods — have achieved some equivalent of our SAM, but
an equiva- lent that we are too limited to perceive?
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br>
As with the human archaelogical record, we only have
recognizeable (to our sensibilities) artifacts and preserved (if
from another era) or transported (if from another locale) to
apprehend/interpret. Our own Richard Lowenberg has spent some
time studying/co-creating with Koko
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://www.richardlowenberg.com/blog/koko-the-gorilla"><http://www.richardlowenberg.com/blog/koko-the-gorilla></a>...
his stories expand my idea of interspecies "communication" in a
way that may be responsive (if only mildly) to this question.
I don't know if our current understanding of the Cetacean or
Cephalopod world hints strongly one way or another, but I'd not
be surprised if either/both were to be "dreaming" in something
like SAM as they go about what sometimes seems like mundane
business (singing songs that travel halfway around the world in
one case while changing colors and
flowing/dancing/fiddling-with-stuff in the other).
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Well, I think both you and Wolpert are barking up the wrong tree,
here. I think other species *do* create SAM analogs. Wolpert hides
his error within "some equivalent of". What could "equivalent"
possibly mean, here? And why hedge it with "some"? It's neither
"dreaming" nor "equivalent". There is a family of possible SAMs.
But question 4 gets at this nicely. But I'm going to snip your
response to Q4 because it only confirms the question, w/o trying
to answer it.
<br>
</blockquote>
I will agree as best I can articulate my agreement. "equivalent" or
"dreaming" are the weasel words we have/resort-to when finding we
cannot leave our own "self" perspective enough to say otherwise. I
think the universality you are gesturing toward (or stating bluntly)
is the grail, but for the moment my expressions are caught in my
not-nearly-objective-enough perspective as the "self" that I
currently am (whatever that means and implies).<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com">
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">5. Ancillary abilities or no, are we
unavoidably limited to enlarging and en- riching the SAM
that was produced by our species with the few cognitive
abilities we were born with? Is it impossible for us to
concoct wholly new types of cognitive abilities —
computational powers that are wholly novel in kind — which
in turn could provide us wholly new kinds of SAM, kinds of
SAM that would concern aspects of physical reality currently
beyond our ken?
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br>
"Hypercomputation" in this context would be but one example?
Not just computing the extra-computable, or effing the ineffable
but qualitatively new structures that transcend that which we
all consider to be the limits to our conceptual universe? This
is an area where I am hopeful for CT becoming the language that
allows us (maybe not me, but many people) to express the
fullness of what our limited conceptions can express so that we
*can* recognize where they might be lacking or where a
meta-construct can be laid atop?
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Well, here is where I think your response to Q2 applies more than
this response. There should be punctuated catastrophes where the
current SAM crumbles, some parts of which may be used in a new
SAM. The idea that we are (and will continue to become) cyborgs
indicates to me that No, we are not unavoidably limited to
building off our current SAM. Maybe we have to go extinct and a
new species has to arise for our SAM to be completely
deconstructed. But I expect it to happen. I guess it all depends
on what we mean by "we".
<br>
</blockquote>
I especially, acutely, appreciate your return to the
definition/boundaries of self. I think we first crashed together on
this when I invoked the old saw of "enlightened self interest" and
you (at the time, as I remember it) insisted that "self" is an
illusion. This started me on the path I am still on which is
believing that "scoping of self" is a pervasive theme in these
considerations. "enlightened' is the usual suspect/inspected word,
with perhaps "interest" coming second, but "self" may be where the
richest ore is.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com">
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">6. Is possible for one species, at one
level of the sequence of {computers run- ning simulations of
computers that are running simulations of ...}, to itself
simulate a computer that is higher up in the sequence that
it is?
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br>
This might be argumentative or arbitrarily constraining? You
(Glen) stated early on that many examples of "hypercomputation"
have been debunked. If the very (f)act of human consciousness
(individual and collective) does not *gesture* toward
hypercomputation, then I don't know what else would. I accept
that creating controlled (physical or thought) experiments in
this domain is slippery. I look forward to seeing what comes
"next"... Before Kurt Godel flipped the world of
math/philosophy, I don't think Russel/Whitehead (or much anyone
else) had a hint that there was something beyond the
"boundaries" of knowledge they had circumscribed around
themselves?
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
What Wolpert's referring to, I think, is even more general than
Goedel's rather specific argument. So, while hypercomputation
might breach Church-Turing, it doesn't solve the philosophical
problem as posed by Tarski's "indefinability of truth". Again, I
think List's discussion of indexicality matters, here. Perhaps we
can rephrase Wolpert's question as "can traces of an indexical
graph do more than *approach* the non-indexical graph of graphs?"
Do we have something like the parallelism theorem (that any
parallel process can be fully simulated by a sequential process
given extendable time).
<br>
</blockquote>
More reading (of List) to (maybe) catch up (a little)...<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com">
<br>
I'm reminded of doing calculus with the hyperreals. Packing
infinities into a single symbol feels, to me, like "higher up in
the sequence".
<br>
</blockquote>
Oh my, the hyperreals! I *think* I know what you are gesturing
toward, but am hopelessly without traction. I will defer invoking
hypercomplex numbers as a lame distraction. <br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com">
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">7. Is the very form of the SAM that we
humans have created severely con- strained? So constrained
as to suggest that the cognitive abilities of us hu- mans —
those who created that SAM — is also severely constrained?
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br>
this is where I become more interested in the abstractions of
"what is life?" "what is intelligence?" "what is
consciousness"... because at the very least those questions look
to hop over the limits of "mere extrapolation" from what we are
most familiar with. the very terms
life/intelligence/consciousness may likely be the epitome of
those constraints? Deacon's "Teleodynamics" feels to me to be
one of those terms that might help us peek around the edge of
the constraints we already have (mostly) given over to?
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Hm. I haven't spent any time with teleodynamics. But it smacks of
Stanley's myth of the objective. I'll take a look. Thanks.
<br>
</blockquote>
I think there is something *very* subtle going on in question of
teleology and I think that Deacon sneaks up on it well with
Teleodynamics... in the idiom of the Princess Bride "I don't think
that word means what you think it means" applies to all uses of
"teleology"? I take teleology and specifically his teleodynamics
to be a recursive observation about "the illusion of purpose or
final cause". "Life" and "Consciousness" act *as if* they have a
purpose. This also references the illusion I find in Stephen's
stuck-bit about bidirectional path tracing. We find the answer to
the posed question by starting at a family of answers and working
back to the middle where it meets the forward chain from *the
question*...<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com">
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">8. Is this restriction to finite
sequences somehow a necessary feature of any complete
formulation of physical reality? Or does it instead reflect
a lim- itation of how we humans can formalize any aspect of
reality, i.e., is it a limitation of our brains?
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br>
It does seem to be a limitation of our primary modes of
conception of "what means reality". Wheeler's Participatory
Anthropic Principle
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler#Participatory_Anthropic_Principle"><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler#Participatory_Anthropic_Principle></a>
rears it's pretty head about this time?
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
I don't mean to be a broken record. But I think the focus on
"finite sequences" could be teased apart by explicitly discussing
indexicality. It's less about "teleodynamics", objectives,
purpose, etc. and more about whether one walks the graph like some
kind of control pointer or tries to (parallel) grok the whole
graph (of graphs).
<br>
<br>
Similar to nonstandard calculus, clumping whole graphs into nodes
of a higher order graph (like is done when trying to de-cycle a
cyclic graph into a dag - or perhaps ways to handle metagraphs)
seems to be jumping up in the sequence. Where this can be
isomorphically formal (as in nonstandard calculus), it seems like
we already do what Wolpert is asking for. (I might even channel a
skeptic like Marcus and say Wolpert's questions are nothing but
neurotic obsession.)
<br>
</blockquote>
I will have to defer again to being behind in my reading (thinking
in this case)... I haven't parsed your terms "jumping up in the
sequence" carefully enough to know what to think. My intuition is
that you are (as most always) "on to something" but I'm definitely
scrambling. Codifying it in terms of graphs is promising to me,
however.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com">
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">9. In standard formulations of
mathematics, a mathematical proof is a finite sequence of
“well-formed sentences”, each of which is itself a finite
string of symbols. All of mathematics is a set of such
proofs. How would our per- ception of reality differ if,
rather than just finite sequences of finite symbol strings,
the mathematics underlying our conception of reality was
expanded to involve infinite sequences, i.e., proofs which
do not reach their conclu- sion in finite time? Phrased
concretely, how would our cognitive abilities change if our
brains could implement, or at least encompass, super-Turing
abilities, sometimes called “hyper-computation” (e.g., as
proposed in com- puters that are on rockets moving
arbitrarily close to the speed of light [1])? Going
further, as we currently conceive of mathematics, it is
possible to em- body all of its theorems, even those with
infinitely long proofs, in a single countably infinite
sequence: the successive digits of Chaitin’s omega [69].
(This is a consequence of the Church — Turing thesis.) How
would mathe- matics differ from our current conception of it
if it were actually an uncount- ably infinite collection of
such countably infinite sequences rather than just one, a
collection which could not be combined to form a single,
countably infinite sequence? Could we ever tell the
difference? Could a being with super-Turing capabilities
tell the difference, even if the Church — Turing thesis is
true, and even if we cannot tell the difference?
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br>
Godel Numbering/Church-Turing seem to constrain this ideation
pretty solidly. Even though I'm a big fan of Digital Physics
ala Fredkin/Tofolli/Margoulis I think their formulation only
reinforces this constraint? I'd like to say that I understand
Tononi's IIT
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory"><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory></a>well
enough to judge whether it offers an "end run" around this or
not. More cud to gurge and rechew...
<br>
<br>
I'm also left reflecting on a very strange series of events
around Penrose where he asserted to me in private correspondence
in 1985 that "the key to consciousness was in the infinities of
a-periodic tilings". This was in response to a simulation I
built with Stuart Hameroff in 1984
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://experts.arizona.edu/en/publications/cellular-automata-in-cytoskeletal-lattices"><https://experts.arizona.edu/en/publications/cellular-automata-in-cytoskeletal-lattices></a>
demonstrating how information processing might occur on the
surface of microtubulin structures (Cytoskeletal Membrane) which
were only *mildly* non-traditional CA geomotry/topology (sqewed
hexagonal local geometry on a 13 unit diameter/3-off helical
lattice). He went on *later* (see Emperor's New Mind) to
invoke Quantum effects, but in 1985 he seemed quite adamant that
the magic dust of complexity-cum consciousness was in aperiodic
tilings. I dismissed this as "one-trick-pony-ism". I was
young and naive and arrogant.... now I'm old. I wish I had
engaged. As you probably know he and Hameroff climbed into the
same bed later
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-consciousness/#PenrHameQuanGravMicr"><https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-consciousness/#PenrHameQuanGravMicr></a>.<br>
<br>
<br>
I JUST found this strangely formulated (but recent) tangent to
the MT aspect of the topic:
<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.texaspowerfulsmart.com/tunneling-microscopy/mt-automata-holographyhameroff-watt-smith.html">https://www.texaspowerfulsmart.com/tunneling-microscopy/mt-automata-holographyhameroff-watt-smith.html</a><br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.texaspowerfulsmart.com/tunneling-microscopy/the-microtrabecular-lattice-mtl.html">https://www.texaspowerfulsmart.com/tunneling-microscopy/the-microtrabecular-lattice-mtl.html</a><br>
<br>
I don't know if any of this offers a possible "end run" around
the finiteness-problem.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Wow ... just .... wow. How you got from the overly reductive
representation of reality with finite sequences from finite
alphabets to MT facilitated light transduction is boggling! ...
but maybe in a good way. I *do* think there's something to be said
about a- and quasi-periodicity in relation to purpose-objective
optimizing (including for things like light transmission and/or
path integrals). And it may well relate to my dead horse of cyclic
graphs, which definitely targets non-finiteness.
<br>
</blockquote>
<p>I got there through what to me feels like a series of historic
coincidences and a faulty but long memory (artifact of
diachronicity over episodicity?). I was *barely* aware of
quasi-periodic tilings (Penrose only at the time). I dismissed
his offering at the time as his ego expressing itself into my
budding pursuit of some deep truths, but hindsight points out how
"everything is relevant" even if *my* current consciousness is too
lame to recognize it at any given point. <br>
</p>
<p>I also think there is something afoot with the Orchestrated
Objective Reduction (further along the chain of implication than
MT-facilitated light transduction) that is relevant to the larger
question that Wolpert's 12 point at?<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com">
<br>
A more specific question is why Wolpert relies on *standard*
mathematics? It's almost like he's committing an equivocation
fallacy, starting with standard math and then adding things that
*have been* added in nonstandard formulations. Prestidigitation?
Prestilinguation?
<br>
</blockquote>
I'm not sure of what the boundaries of *standard* you apply here...
I've probably just not listened closely enough (to you, or to all of
the Maths I've been exposed to along the way).<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com">
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">10. Is it a lucky coincidence that all
of mathematical and physical reality can be formulated in
terms of our current cognitive abilities, including, in par-
ticular, the most sophisticated cognitive prosthesis we
currently possess: human language? Or is it just that,
tautologically, we cannot conceive of any aspects of
mathematical and physical reality that cannot be formulated
in terms of our cognitive capabilities?
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br>
REminds me of the bad joke I can never tell right which starts
with a traveler asking a local how to get to a spot on the other
side of a natural barrier (river, mountain range, canyon, etc.)
and after the local tries to pick a route he can describe to the
traveler in language the traveler can understand without having
"been there" he gives up and says "well, you just can't get
there from here!" which we agree is patently not true. I get
this feeling whilst speaking with (familiars of) convincing
"mystics" of the caliber of the Dalai Lama or Thich Nat Hahn
(RIP)... I feel like these folks have traveled these realms
and if only I had already been into those realms myself, could I
understand some of their more nuanced descriptions?
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
That's an interesting take. My take was more banal ... like when I
watch my cat try to come *down* a ladder. I'm thinking "of course,
the idiot tries to come down forward. That's how cats work." I can
imagine some hypercognitive alien from another galaxy looking at,
say, our Standard Model of physics and thinking "of course that's
what these morons would come up with. [sigh]"
<br>
</blockquote>
I have a new kitten and puppy in the house. It is effing amazing
how capable the kitten (5 months to the puppy's 4 months) is in
nearly every way (navigation, locomotion, bathroom habits, human
emotional manipulation, etc). The puppy is learning to come down
the metal-spiral staircase (in the manner you say a cat comes down a
ladder). I am so lame that I come down many staircases (nod to
JennyQ and DaveW and the canonical Dutch Staircase) as if it is a
ladder. The puppy emulates the kitten, though with great (and
appropriate) distrust in his own footpad traction and center of
gravity and momentum vector, etc. The kitten goes
up/down/sideways, jumps from 7 feet to the floor without a slip or a
care... her phase-space awareness exceeds the puppy's and perhaps
always will? And that was all packed into her genome and
gestation... how?<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com">
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">11. Are there cognitive constructs of
some sort, as fundamental as the very idea of questions and
answers, that are necessary for understanding physical re-
ality, and that are forever beyond our ability to even
imagine due to the limitations of our brains, just as the
notion of a question is forever beyond a paramecium?
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br>
I suspect the answer is in the analogy here... If we believe
that the paramecium (or something of similar caliber) made the
long climb of becoming a complex multicellular multi-organ
complex capable of abstract language and logic and SAM through a
torturous series of intermediate evolutionary steps (mutation as
well as mashup), then perhaps the "magic dust" is (also?) in
emergence? Or if we defer to Bohm or Penrose/Hameroff or even
our beloved Pearce, then the magic dust is also quantum? I
know I'm just kicking the can down the road and under the rug
here. Just maundering speculatively.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Well, I think Wolpert's gone astray, here, in suggesting that a
paramecium can't grok question/answer. But his main question is
valid for reduction. And reduction, like everything else is
healthy in moderation. Are there missing pieces to our very
foundation that we could add that would immediately expand our
modeling abilities? I'm reminded of my discussion with Jon of
Tonk, introduction, and elimination. The logics without things
like introduction are comparatively impoverished. And graduating
from classical logics to paraconsistent ones blows your mind. So
Wolpert's idea that there may be some fundamental lego block that,
once we find it, there's no going back.
<br>
</blockquote>
More reading and thinking and revisiting. I've woefully failed to
follow your and Jon's discussions of (Prior's) Tonk, being
distracted along the way with the Card Game and the Musical sense of
the term and their separate etymologies. "Logics without
introduction" leaves me with grok-blok. I suppose it is
obvious? More reading and revisiting. "Why does head hurt when
Hulk try to think?"<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc2cc71d-d9b2-e447-97d7-6e2284f43171@gmail.com">
<br>
p.s. Sorry for breaking the threading. My home machine removes
messages from the IMAP server and stores them in the cloud. I
*could*, if I had the energy, access that on this laptop and
preserve the threading. But I'm being lazy because I have to jump
in the truck and continue driving.
<br>
</blockquote>
said to the worst thread-bending, thread-breaking, thread-tangling
creature on the list... and the implications of the
laptop/home-machine/cloud, truck/driving have me imagining you
having written this from a backwoods pub on the Olympic Penensula or
at the foot of Shasta with a Sasquatch reading over your shoulder
from his perch in a tree.<br>
<br>
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