OK OK, of course there are multiple definitions of the word "believe."
In the case of the scientist believing that the world is round, the scientist is not taking this fact on faith - it's an explanation that makes sense and that meshes well with everything else that the scientist has seen and learned about the world around him. The scientist accepts it as true and works from there, until he learns otherwise. In the case of a religous person believing in the bible, believing that God dumped a miraculous amount of water on the planet requires absolute faith. It requires believing in something that *cannot* be tested, that is outside of the bounds of the observable universe. That's a very different kind of belief, and I would argue that it's not a very useful tool for living in the universe.
In my previous post I was purposely using a narrow definition of the word in order to make my point, but I suppose that just makes my point confusing.
You say that all knowledge comes from yourself or from others, which I agree with. You also say that anything you hear from others is either believed or not believed. This statement I either agree with or disagree with, depending on which definition of "believe" you are using.
It's the difference between "I believe that's a storm blowing in." and "I believe in ghosts." You hear people make the claim that everything requires belief, but they don't qualify what kind of belief they're talking about. I assume they mean the second (I believe in ghosts) kind of belief, in which case they're wrong. I can apply the scientific method and easily come up with evidence that such and such a scientific article is "believable." I highly doubt that any amount of effort could produce scientific evidence of ghosts. If it did, then ghosts would be outside of the realm of the second-kind-of-belief (see above), and faith would no longer be required to "believe" in them. In other words, nothing that is actually real (interacts with the universe) requires second-kind-of-belief for justification.
Now you see why I like to use only one of the definitions of "believe!" Maybe we need another word... in fact, we probably already have one. Maybe there's a better way to put it?
OK, so give the guy a chance to find out if it's true. How does he go about doing so? If the guy finds a big wooden boat full of fossilized animal droppings on top of a mountain, does that prove the story of Noah's Ark? Of course not! It doesn't follow. If I find a sleigh on somebody's roof, it does *not* prove that Santa Claus is for real. For one thing, I can think of several other (far more likely) explanations off the top of my head.
For another thing, and this gets back to your life on Mars bit, you can't *prove* anything. If NASA said they found life on Mars, I would probably assume it to be true, as they are a credible organization, life on Mars does not violate my understanding of the universe, and I can't think of any motive for them to lie about it. Does this mean that I would have an absolute, unwavering belief that there was life on Mars? Absolutely not! Even if I saw it with my own eyes, standing on Mars, after traveling for months to get there, I wouldn't take it as absolute truth! I would be pretty damn sure, but a convincing enough argument could change my mind.
Now on the other end of the spectrum, if somebody tells me that something is true because it's written in a really old book, and it happens to not obey the laws of physics as we observe them, then I'm not likely to assume that it is true.
No it doesn't. I don't believe anything I read. If it comes from a source that I think is credible, then I'll assume that the information is fairly reliable. A scientist doesn't believe that the earth is round, no matter who says so. A scientist *thinks* that the earth is round, because somebody else explained it and it makes sense.
Beyond the issue that scientific "facts" are constantly being revised as we improve our understanding, no one can ever really "prove" anything about the physical universe - if anything in the universe is absolute, we'll never know it for sure.
In other words, if you theorize a universal law of gravity, you cannot prove that it applies universally. What are you going to do, test every particle of mass in the universe? You could take it on faith (believe) that it applies universally, but that's not necessary. You can just *assume* that it applies universally, unless some evidence shows otherwise. Maybe the theory is right, or maybe not. If it's the best we've got, then that's what we use.
"Space Invaders. Invade the alien homeworld and wipe thier type off of the face of the universe!"
Really, you can't tell which is really happening by playing the game. Depends on how you look at it. I wonder if any of the console versions (Atari, etc) came with any documentation that established the "story". I know Yars revenge had the plot in the manual, but I don't know about Space Invaders.
Of course, but the "slow copy" is equivalent. At any rate, if I had a way to make a copy of myself, why would I even *want* to destroy the original? I'd have as many backup copies as possible.
In other words, god is either the universe itself (all powerful,non-anthropomorphic, uninvolved in human affairs) or god is just like us, but with better technology. Neither is really a god, as being a god implies some sort of supernatural power.
I have to disagree with you. I do not believe in anything, and I think it would be foolish to do so.
If you choose not to decide, you have still made a choice
You're implying that "choose" can be swapped for "believe" and mean the same thing. Let's try it out:
"If you believe in not believing, you still believe."
Ok, the sentence makes sense, but I would argue that I do not believe in not believing. I simply don't believe. I have a model of the universe in my head that I use to make decisions, but I am not in any way convinced that the model is accurate. In fact, I think that it is very likely to *not* be accurate, based on my memories of prior experiences.
None of this requires belief - I'm not taking anything on faith. I'm just using the best information that I have. As far as my opinions on belief, those opinions are not themselves beliefs. They are opinions based on information that I've gathered from what appears to be the world around me.
Of course! Obviously, if there's a big wrecked boat on top of a mountain, then it means that this magical fairy tale story is true. If somebody found a sleigh on their roof, would you believe in Santa Claus?
What *WILL* it take for me to believe? That's the wrong question. What would it take to convince me? What would it take for me to think that the story is true, just as I think that men walked on the moon? If there were sufficient evidence that this happened, then I wouldn't *have* to believe it. Belief is never necessary in order to understand the world.
Can I ask a favor of everyone? Please take the world as you see it. This is where we are, this is what we've got to work with. Living in a fantasy world does no one any good.
It's science because we can see it. We "discovered" the big bang, in the same way that we "discovered" electromagnetism. We found an interesting property of the universe in which we live.
Miracles, on the other hand, are miracles because they defy what we see. They break the laws of physics. Miracles have no observational evidence, and can only be justified through faith.
Ha! Let's snap back to reality, folks, as the good parent poster has kindly reminded us to do. Even if somebody found a humongous ark on the top of a mountain, and even if it had ancient elephant dung in it, and even if an amazingly well preserved inscription like "Noah wuz here" were found carved into the keel, what would be the conclusion?
There are an infinite number of explanations, but most can be discounted. Maybe somebody built it on top of the mountain. Maybe somebody built it at sea level and dragged it up the mountain. Maybe they brought the elephant dung with them. Maybe they brought the entire elephant. Maybe a great magical being told some dude to build the boat and put the elephant in it, then used supernatural powers to flood the entire planet, thus floating the boat to the top of a mountain.
Our brains may be biological, but our minds are software. Say someone made a brain that was identical to yours, but was assembled from atoms that did not come from your current brain. Then say that this someone went and swapped your brain with the copy when you weren't paying attention. If the new brain is "programmed" the same way, i.e. all of the cells in the brain are organized and connected in the same way, and whatever other pertinent variables (chemistry of the intercellular medium, whatever) are properly adjusted, then you wouldn't even notice that your brain had been replaced.
What does this mean? It means that your mind, your awareness, the YOU that's experiencing everything your body does, is information. It's software. It's independent of the underlying hardware.
So, when you make a copy of a software program and run that copy on a different machine, is it still the same program? What if you destroy the original copy - does the program cease to exist? An individual copy can experience death, if it is somehow aware that it is being destroyed, but each copy is merely an instance of the program, which never "dies," as long as copies still exist. I guess what it comes down to is that we are all just instances of ourselves. Which is the real you - the instance, or the information that the instance represents?
That really seems unnecessary. If you were to knock someone out, "copy" their brain into a new body, and then destroy the original and wake up the copy, patient's experience would be: 1: go to sleep 2: wake up 3: Hey, I've got a new body!
So they're now the same person, but made out of different materials. What's the difference?
The first thing I did in that game was to try and climb down to the street.
"WTF? I'm glad this is a rental."
Hopefully with the sequel they removed the ridiculous ability to stick webs to the sky, too.
Re:Following distance? We don't need no stinking f
on
Intelligent Road Studs
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· Score: 1
I don't care what you use the right lane for, but the left lane is for passing. How people don't know this, I don't understand.
Tailgating is, of course, VERY BAD. Other shitty drivers are no justification. Now that I've got that established, I'd like to also mention that 90% of the tailgaters that I see on the road are tailgating because some other idiot is blocking the passing lane.
Being in the passing lane is a RESPONSIBILITY. Look in your rearview mirror. Now that you are in the passing lane, you are responsible for staying out of everyone else's way. If there is no one else blocking *your* way, then you better make every effort to move over/speed up for the person behind you. If you see a car approaching from 1/2 mile back at high speed, then floor it and move over! Wouldn't you like to expect others to do the same for you?
I swear, either minivans or automatic transmissions or some combination of the two causes people to forget how to drive. People are either totally oblivious, or they think they're in a bumper car. Take driving seriously. Focus on what you're doing, and on what the other cars around you are doing.[/RANT]
[MORE_RANT]Just another note for the asshole tailgaters out there: if some moron is blocking the passing lane, it does not justify endangering everyone's life by driving 1 car length behind him. Plus, if they're already that stupid, do you think they'll even get the hint? You're better off staying at a safe distance and flashing your lights/honking your horn. Oh, and in case you're a total dipshit, this only makes sense if the car does not have *another* car in front of it. Double check to make sure.[/MORE_RANT]
What I want to know is how the hell anyone has time to watch TV. How? By the time I get home from work, I have 4 or 5 hours before I have to go to bed - and I spend at least an hour or two doing chores, making dinner, washing dishes, etc. That leaves me with 3 hours a day of recreation time. There's no way I'm going to waste any of it watching TV. I've already got a lifetime's worth of projects started, but even if I'm just drinking a beer and relaxing I don't want to be sitting in front of a TV - it just draws your attention and sucks up your time. Is everyone else unemployed? Who are these people that watch hours of television every day? Do they do nothing but work, sleep, and watch TV?
How I spend my time doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things, but the last thing I need is a time sink just for the sake of wasting time.
Great, true Christians should follow the bible to the letter? So they should be out stoning people in the street and whatnot?
How about if we all base our values on what's best for society, instead of trying to follow some documents cooked up to control the populace thousands of years ago.
Yeah, plus the crosshair is just slapped on top of the stereogram, so you end up with two of 'em. I guess you just have to put your target at the midpoint...
In the case of the viewer's perception of the rock, you certainly don't need a complete history, or even a very accurate prediction of the future. There is a limit to how much information can be stored by your brain, and that's exactly the same amount of information that would be stored in the frame. If your brain can do it with what it's got, then so can the brain in the frame.
What I meant by "seeing" was having information from whatever you "looked" at. If you have information about something (patterns of connections in your brain that represent photons that hit your retina at some time in the past) then you "saw" it. You can't "see" the future, because information can't be gathered in that direction.
And no, I'm not trying to cop out by simply saying that this concept is possible - as you said, anything is possible, but occam's razor must be applied if we are to come up with useful theories. I would argue that it's a far more PROBABLE concept than the universe being a figment of your imagination.:) Which is more probable, that time as a dimension is somehow different from the spatial dimensions, or that we simply percieve it that way? I don't know how to determine which is a more useful way to view the universe, but I think that they're both worth examining.
Spatial dimensions do not seem to "flow" - a line in space covers multiple points along a spatial axis without having to iterate from one point to the next. Is time the same? Does an object exist at multiple points in time, or does it cease to exist at the current point once time "moves?"
How about this: the frame that shows the rock also contains a memory of where the rock was previously. The memory of previous states is a part of each state.
Not only that, but the current state probably also contains a prediction of where the rock will be in the next state. Now you have one thin slice of time, as thin as time can possibly be sliced, that contains information about the "past" state, the "present" state, and an expected "future" state (regardless of whether these other states truly exist). This would allow the "experiencer" to exist even if it depended entirely on change.
As far as being stuck in one state, the individual in the simulation would never feel like it was "stuck," even if it was. From inside the simulation, you wouldn't be able to tell if you were reliving the same instant over and over. Each moment would contain a new version of yourself, and each version would exist in its own frozen slice of the universe.
I suppose what it comes down to is how you treat the time axis. If you take a cube and call one particular dimension the "time" dimension, then you can slice the cube into layers that represent ticks of time. Is this time axis somehow special, in that a slice can exist only if no other slice exists? If so, you must introduce a fourth axis in order to have more than one slice. Calling time a dimension implies that all moments in time exist simultaneously, as there is no longer a time axis to measure along - you already used it up! In order for moments in time to exist independently of each other, you now need a meta-time axis.
If this special rule does not exist, then you just have a cube, and the "flow" of time from the perspective of a slice is just seeing along the time axis. The slice never moves, but information about other slices gives it the impression that it is moving. Because of various physical laws (entropy?) we can only gather information in one direction along this axis - from the past. If you could gather information from slices in the future direction, then you would not feel like time is flowing, just as you don't feel like spatial dimensions are flowing.
"...the viewer CANNOT be in the DVD; the DVD model is simply incapable of explaining the viewer..."
I think this is the very question we're trying to answer - can the DVD model explain the viewer? If time is continuous, then the DVD model does not represent the real universe, and therefore does not represent the viewer. If time and space are discrete, then maybe the DVD model works. It's difficult to say whether one "slice" of the universe can represent a thought. What is a thought, exactly? That's a difficult question. I think we can agree that a thought covers a span of time - that a "thought" in my head could last for several seconds, for example. Does this fit in the DVD model? I think that it does - that you could take the state of the brain at each step in the simulation throughout the duration of the thought, and at each step you could say that the brain is "thinking" the same thought.
I think that the DVD model *is* capable of explaining the viewer, but I certainly can't justify that opinion. As I said in an earlier post, no one has yet figured out how our physical brains generate our percieved consciousness. Not only that, but it also assumes a discrete, finite universe - certainly not something that I can show any evidence of!
"I'm simply saying that thinking requires dynamic physical processes that occur over time."
I absolutely agree with you. Thought does require change over time. With the static data model, though, time is merely another dimension in the data array! The question, I suppose, is whether consciousness exists when the data is frozen, or only when the simulation is actually being run.
BTW: I don't think that any of this is the truth, I just think it's an interesting possibilty. Sometimes interesting possibilities turn out to be very useful - but danger lies in assuming that something is true merely because it is possible. Maybe the DVD model is possible, and maybe it is not - I don't think we understand the universe well enough to disprove it yet.
Slashdot Mirror
In the case of the scientist believing that the world is round, the scientist is not taking this fact on faith - it's an explanation that makes sense and that meshes well with everything else that the scientist has seen and learned about the world around him. The scientist accepts it as true and works from there, until he learns otherwise. In the case of a religous person believing in the bible, believing that God dumped a miraculous amount of water on the planet requires absolute faith. It requires believing in something that *cannot* be tested, that is outside of the bounds of the observable universe. That's a very different kind of belief, and I would argue that it's not a very useful tool for living in the universe.
In my previous post I was purposely using a narrow definition of the word in order to make my point, but I suppose that just makes my point confusing.
You say that all knowledge comes from yourself or from others, which I agree with. You also say that anything you hear from others is either believed or not believed. This statement I either agree with or disagree with, depending on which definition of "believe" you are using.
It's the difference between "I believe that's a storm blowing in." and "I believe in ghosts." You hear people make the claim that everything requires belief, but they don't qualify what kind of belief they're talking about. I assume they mean the second (I believe in ghosts) kind of belief, in which case they're wrong. I can apply the scientific method and easily come up with evidence that such and such a scientific article is "believable." I highly doubt that any amount of effort could produce scientific evidence of ghosts. If it did, then ghosts would be outside of the realm of the second-kind-of-belief (see above), and faith would no longer be required to "believe" in them. In other words, nothing that is actually real (interacts with the universe) requires second-kind-of-belief for justification.
Now you see why I like to use only one of the definitions of "believe!" Maybe we need another word... in fact, we probably already have one. Maybe there's a better way to put it?
For another thing, and this gets back to your life on Mars bit, you can't *prove* anything. If NASA said they found life on Mars, I would probably assume it to be true, as they are a credible organization, life on Mars does not violate my understanding of the universe, and I can't think of any motive for them to lie about it. Does this mean that I would have an absolute, unwavering belief that there was life on Mars? Absolutely not! Even if I saw it with my own eyes, standing on Mars, after traveling for months to get there, I wouldn't take it as absolute truth! I would be pretty damn sure, but a convincing enough argument could change my mind.
Now on the other end of the spectrum, if somebody tells me that something is true because it's written in a really old book, and it happens to not obey the laws of physics as we observe them, then I'm not likely to assume that it is true.
Beyond the issue that scientific "facts" are constantly being revised as we improve our understanding, no one can ever really "prove" anything about the physical universe - if anything in the universe is absolute, we'll never know it for sure.
In other words, if you theorize a universal law of gravity, you cannot prove that it applies universally. What are you going to do, test every particle of mass in the universe? You could take it on faith (believe) that it applies universally, but that's not necessary. You can just *assume* that it applies universally, unless some evidence shows otherwise. Maybe the theory is right, or maybe not. If it's the best we've got, then that's what we use.
"Space Invaders. Invade the alien homeworld and wipe thier type off of the face of the universe!"
Really, you can't tell which is really happening by playing the game. Depends on how you look at it. I wonder if any of the console versions (Atari, etc) came with any documentation that established the "story". I know Yars revenge had the plot in the manual, but I don't know about Space Invaders.
You're implying that "choose" can be swapped for "believe" and mean the same thing. Let's try it out:
"If you believe in not believing, you still believe."
Ok, the sentence makes sense, but I would argue that I do not believe in not believing. I simply don't believe. I have a model of the universe in my head that I use to make decisions, but I am not in any way convinced that the model is accurate. In fact, I think that it is very likely to *not* be accurate, based on my memories of prior experiences.
None of this requires belief - I'm not taking anything on faith. I'm just using the best information that I have. As far as my opinions on belief, those opinions are not themselves beliefs. They are opinions based on information that I've gathered from what appears to be the world around me.
What *WILL* it take for me to believe? That's the wrong question. What would it take to convince me? What would it take for me to think that the story is true, just as I think that men walked on the moon? If there were sufficient evidence that this happened, then I wouldn't *have* to believe it. Belief is never necessary in order to understand the world.
Can I ask a favor of everyone? Please take the world as you see it. This is where we are, this is what we've got to work with. Living in a fantasy world does no one any good.
Miracles, on the other hand, are miracles because they defy what we see. They break the laws of physics. Miracles have no observational evidence, and can only be justified through faith.
It doesn't, but good luck coming up with a good explanation of where it came from and where it went.
There are an infinite number of explanations, but most can be discounted. Maybe somebody built it on top of the mountain. Maybe somebody built it at sea level and dragged it up the mountain. Maybe they brought the elephant dung with them. Maybe they brought the entire elephant. Maybe a great magical being told some dude to build the boat and put the elephant in it, then used supernatural powers to flood the entire planet, thus floating the boat to the top of a mountain.
Reality check, people.
What does this mean? It means that your mind, your awareness, the YOU that's experiencing everything your body does, is information. It's software. It's independent of the underlying hardware.
So, when you make a copy of a software program and run that copy on a different machine, is it still the same program? What if you destroy the original copy - does the program cease to exist? An individual copy can experience death, if it is somehow aware that it is being destroyed, but each copy is merely an instance of the program, which never "dies," as long as copies still exist. I guess what it comes down to is that we are all just instances of ourselves. Which is the real you - the instance, or the information that the instance represents?
1: go to sleep
2: wake up
3: Hey, I've got a new body!
So they're now the same person, but made out of different materials. What's the difference?
"WTF? I'm glad this is a rental."
Hopefully with the sequel they removed the ridiculous ability to stick webs to the sky, too.
Tailgating is, of course, VERY BAD. Other shitty drivers are no justification. Now that I've got that established, I'd like to also mention that 90% of the tailgaters that I see on the road are tailgating because some other idiot is blocking the passing lane.
Being in the passing lane is a RESPONSIBILITY. Look in your rearview mirror. Now that you are in the passing lane, you are responsible for staying out of everyone else's way. If there is no one else blocking *your* way, then you better make every effort to move over/speed up for the person behind you. If you see a car approaching from 1/2 mile back at high speed, then floor it and move over! Wouldn't you like to expect others to do the same for you?
I swear, either minivans or automatic transmissions or some combination of the two causes people to forget how to drive. People are either totally oblivious, or they think they're in a bumper car. Take driving seriously. Focus on what you're doing, and on what the other cars around you are doing.[/RANT]
[MORE_RANT]Just another note for the asshole tailgaters out there: if some moron is blocking the passing lane, it does not justify endangering everyone's life by driving 1 car length behind him. Plus, if they're already that stupid, do you think they'll even get the hint? You're better off staying at a safe distance and flashing your lights/honking your horn. Oh, and in case you're a total dipshit, this only makes sense if the car does not have *another* car in front of it. Double check to make sure.[/MORE_RANT]
How I spend my time doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things, but the last thing I need is a time sink just for the sake of wasting time.
How about if we all base our values on what's best for society, instead of trying to follow some documents cooked up to control the populace thousands of years ago.
RIAA Radar
What I meant by "seeing" was having information from whatever you "looked" at. If you have information about something (patterns of connections in your brain that represent photons that hit your retina at some time in the past) then you "saw" it. You can't "see" the future, because information can't be gathered in that direction.
And no, I'm not trying to cop out by simply saying that this concept is possible - as you said, anything is possible, but occam's razor must be applied if we are to come up with useful theories. I would argue that it's a far more PROBABLE concept than the universe being a figment of your imagination. :) Which is more probable, that time as a dimension is somehow different from the spatial dimensions, or that we simply percieve it that way? I don't know how to determine which is a more useful way to view the universe, but I think that they're both worth examining.
Spatial dimensions do not seem to "flow" - a line in space covers multiple points along a spatial axis without having to iterate from one point to the next. Is time the same? Does an object exist at multiple points in time, or does it cease to exist at the current point once time "moves?"
Not only that, but the current state probably also contains a prediction of where the rock will be in the next state. Now you have one thin slice of time, as thin as time can possibly be sliced, that contains information about the "past" state, the "present" state, and an expected "future" state (regardless of whether these other states truly exist). This would allow the "experiencer" to exist even if it depended entirely on change.
As far as being stuck in one state, the individual in the simulation would never feel like it was "stuck," even if it was. From inside the simulation, you wouldn't be able to tell if you were reliving the same instant over and over. Each moment would contain a new version of yourself, and each version would exist in its own frozen slice of the universe.
I suppose what it comes down to is how you treat the time axis. If you take a cube and call one particular dimension the "time" dimension, then you can slice the cube into layers that represent ticks of time. Is this time axis somehow special, in that a slice can exist only if no other slice exists? If so, you must introduce a fourth axis in order to have more than one slice. Calling time a dimension implies that all moments in time exist simultaneously, as there is no longer a time axis to measure along - you already used it up! In order for moments in time to exist independently of each other, you now need a meta-time axis.
If this special rule does not exist, then you just have a cube, and the "flow" of time from the perspective of a slice is just seeing along the time axis. The slice never moves, but information about other slices gives it the impression that it is moving. Because of various physical laws (entropy?) we can only gather information in one direction along this axis - from the past. If you could gather information from slices in the future direction, then you would not feel like time is flowing, just as you don't feel like spatial dimensions are flowing.
I think this is the very question we're trying to answer - can the DVD model explain the viewer? If time is continuous, then the DVD model does not represent the real universe, and therefore does not represent the viewer. If time and space are discrete, then maybe the DVD model works. It's difficult to say whether one "slice" of the universe can represent a thought. What is a thought, exactly? That's a difficult question. I think we can agree that a thought covers a span of time - that a "thought" in my head could last for several seconds, for example. Does this fit in the DVD model? I think that it does - that you could take the state of the brain at each step in the simulation throughout the duration of the thought, and at each step you could say that the brain is "thinking" the same thought.
I think that the DVD model *is* capable of explaining the viewer, but I certainly can't justify that opinion. As I said in an earlier post, no one has yet figured out how our physical brains generate our percieved consciousness. Not only that, but it also assumes a discrete, finite universe - certainly not something that I can show any evidence of!
"I'm simply saying that thinking requires dynamic physical processes that occur over time."
I absolutely agree with you. Thought does require change over time. With the static data model, though, time is merely another dimension in the data array! The question, I suppose, is whether consciousness exists when the data is frozen, or only when the simulation is actually being run.
BTW: I don't think that any of this is the truth, I just think it's an interesting possibilty. Sometimes interesting possibilities turn out to be very useful - but danger lies in assuming that something is true merely because it is possible. Maybe the DVD model is possible, and maybe it is not - I don't think we understand the universe well enough to disprove it yet.