I think the "free will is oncompatible with determinism" argument misunderstands how time works. Everything is fully determined in history. From a viewpoint outside of our time, past and future are equally "visible". Time as a flow of events is just an illusion of human perception, so arguing from that perspective is like arguing about what flavor of ice cream tastes best.
I'm not sure I buy into that. I recall once seeing some argument that some anti-particles experience time backwards, though I'm sure it's not as simple as that. As to time travel I don't know enough of the theory behind that.
Either way even if we can go back and forth without changing the present that doesn't necessarily make the universe deterministic (though the universe would need some cool acrobatics to allow that), just because I can play a tape and watch who wins a game doesn't mean the game was fixed.
"Arguing about the definition of a word" and "arguing about the idea behind the word" - the same? Different? Welcome to theory of language!:)
Re point 1 - I've always seen this as "eaing the menu" (as do many physicists). It's a useful and predictive model, but there's no reason to think the universe knows what it means for "someone" to "observe" an event. It's goofey, and not the good kind.
You mean "eating the menu" ? (I always double check spelling when using quotes:) )
AFAIK an "observer" is anything that interacts with a potential configuration of the particle, though I don't know quantum as well as I should.
I've yet to see a good description of point 2 that was anything beyond "put a black and a white marble in a bag; pick one; examine it later; it's white, so you instantly know the other is black". Not very interesting. Until someone has a practical method to force the decision post-hoc, it's just BS (the model says this should be possible, but most scientific models are full of holes that you work around when using them).
You mean you don't like the thought experiment from a practical perspective, or a theoretical one?
Or in other words, synchronicity (common prior cause) doesn't violate causality, and so it isn't profound. It's easy to turn on a light buld here and on th moon and the same instant without any information traveling faster than light, after all.
I think that's the idea. Take two bags, put in a white marble, than a black marble on top, than separate them.
We don't know if the bag is large enough that the marbles can change order inside.
Later, when they're separated pull the top a marble from each. If you get the same colour marble from each than the bags are deterministic, if they don't match than the bag allowed them to shuffle.
You'll forgive me if I refuse to get all in a knot over this whole "global warming" paranoia. You young 'uns may not remember the "global cooling" predictions/concerns of the mid 70's. Heck, they were even suggesting that we blow soot all over the arctic region snow pack to absorb light/heat.
The scientists shrug and tell us that those models were too simplistic and wrong. Now, of course, the new models are spot on and we're all going to fry.
Not buying into the hysteria this time either.
So you equate a small handful of climatologists, thinking for a very short period, that we may experience global cooling, with virtually every climatologist, thinking for decades, that we will experience global warming.
Some people really want to believe that consciousness is supernatural, the result of a soul and not mere physics. Using the argument above you, you defin consciousness/soul/etc as the source of free will, and say "see, it's outside the deterministic universe". As I say, it's a bit of a jump, but it makes people happy.
I think you need to include the consciousness as the source of free will step in that argument. To leave it out assumes it's accepted that there's an essential irreducible part of our consciousness. Essentially the old "So what's the earth resting on? A giant turtle! And what's under the turtle? It's turtles all the way down!"
I personally find that argument, simply pushing the entire consciousness into an abstract undefinable "soul" to be a weak rationalization, particularly considering how much ones consciousness can change depending on circumstances.
As to the free will/consciousness link I personally think that consciousness is a completely physical process, one that would work in a completely deterministic system. I think "free will" requires consciousness (ie, a non-sentient random number generator doesn't have free will) but consciousness has no free will requirement.
I'm personally not that concerned about whether we have free will or not, even if our decisions are part of a completely deterministic system it's also a chaotic system. And I don't really see how the existence or lack of free will jeopardizes my consciousness. Either it's deterministic at a level too chaotic to matter, or it's random at a level over which I have no control. The only way it matters is if you have some big random irreducible soul which you label supernatural and refuse to examine it anymore, of course at that point you're no longer looking for answers but trying to avoid them!
Most philosophical disciplines can be reduced to an argument over the definition of a word: * Moral theory - "good" * Espistimology - "know" * Theory of identity - "self" or "same" * Theory of language - well, all words:) etc.
In moral philosophy, you generally dead-end into the "is-ought gap": there's no priciple of logic that lets you reason from an "is" to an "ought", so you need moral axioms as your first principles, and there's no way to argue about whether an axiom is true.
I think they're arguing more about the idea behind the word, if they're arguing over the definition of the word itself then they should just get a new set of dictionaries.
If they need to use different definitions to get differing moral axioms then I think they're arguing more for the purpose of arguing than trying to find truth.
In TFA a very similar question is being asked - where does free will come from? If particles don't have it, how does it come from the interaction of particles - there's no princlple of physics that would let you jump that gap. I think it's a profound question.
But then most physicists don't seem to understand that Schrodenger's cat was a reduction-ad-absurdum (even though that was Schrodenger's intent), and they probably won't understand that this is as well.
I got a somewhat different slant from the article, this is basically what I think it said.
1. When you poke a certain subatomic particle in a specific, but randomized way, it always has a configuration specific to the way you looked at that particle. Kind of like rolling a dice and when you do look at it whatever side you choose to look at will turn out to be 6.
So the question is was that side 6 all along and merely force you to choose it, or did it become 6 after you chose to look at it?
2. Now take two dice and synchronize them completely, now spread them far apart so nothing can communicate with both of them without breaking causality. Now roll them in a completely identical way so we don't break the metaphor, and choose a side to look at.
Most of philosophy is arguments about the definitions of a few simple words. "Free will" is one of those definitions that it's interesting to argue about.
I admittedly don't know much formal philosophy but I've heard that arguing over definitions is actually a mistake people sometimes make when they're trying to talk philosophy.
If you're arguing about definitions you're not really discussing ideas and you need to step back and figure out what you're actually discussing.
I'm *beginning* the discussion by pointing out that a definition of "free will" that excludes determinism is an assumption about a fundamental concept. If that definition is true, one should be able to provide an argument that it is true, no?
A definition is what it is, an arbitrary labelling, if we don't like it we change it. I perhaps may argue that my definition of free will is the most common word/concept association but I don't have to justify the labelling anymore than I have to justify that the word "orange" should refer to a particular fruit.
Plenty of people would argue that in a deterministic universe all consciousness is an illusion!
And I'm still completely baffled as to how they would do this, perhaps they're using some weird definition for consciousness?
The argument goes as follows: 1) We live in a deterministic universe. 2) We have free will. 3) Free will is not compatible with determinism. 4) Therefore, The source of our free will must lie outside this universe. 5) Therefore, my religion is correct!
There's a bit of a jump between 4 and 5, but that hasn't dissuaded hundreds of philosphers and theologicians from making this claim for thousands of years (I'm pretty sure this argument predates Christianity, but I don't have a reference handy). This is a very emotionally compelling argument, as people like to believe that they are special and not just meat.
I dispute 3. It's popular these days to dispute 1. Few people feel comfortable disputing 2.
Are you sure this was supposed to be an argument for consciousness being an illusion since I see nothing about consciousness in that argument.
Regardless, as I mentioned previously you can make that argument if you place the source of free will outside the universe (I'll let you place supernatural deities outside the "universe"). But all you're really doing is pushing part of yourself outside of the deterministic universe. If you use what I believe to be the common definition of free will than you need something non-deterministic. A fully deterministic system cannot have free will.
I believe that we have free will, *and* that the universe is completely deterministic. The two concepts are orthgonal.
I have no problem with that argument.
Assuming of course that some part of you is separate from the universe.
If however, all of you is part of the universe, than for you to have free will means your actions are not completely deterministic, which of course means that the universe is not completely deterministic.
Similarly, if I consciously decide my next actions, then I necessarily have free will, regardless of whether the universe is pre-determined.
So you're resolving the discussion by using a different definition of free will? Even if your actions are completely deterministic if you choose to take them(1) than you have free will?
If you define free will as choice than you've done nothing but make the whole free will debate kind of pointless since you're now asking if a tautology is true.
And of course a new debate about determinism would start up since the original question was never actually resolved.
You might argue that in a deterministic universe all consciousness is an illusion - but that's an unreawrding path to travel.
I wouldn't argue that and I don't see how anyone could.
We've quite obviously conscious, true we don't have the ability to strictly quantify what consciousness is, nor where to draw the live between conscious and unconscious, but as for my self, I can assure you I'm quite conscious.
Besides, I don't see a relationship between that and determinism unless you want some supernatural non-deterministic "soul" floating about.
1. Not a contradiction, choice, like gravity, is a mechanism for initiating an action and is fine being deterministic.
how many generations have pigs been slopped from table scraps?
do domesticated pigs have higher IQs than wild boars?
Probably not, assuming the higher IQs had a genetic basis (and not just cooked food allow bigger brains regardless of genetics) then humans developed bigger brains because the cost of a bigger brain, the extra calories required, no longer outweighed the added benefits of intelligence, thus the big brained individuals were more likely to raise successful offspring.
For the equivalent to happen with domesticated pigs there would have had to be a similar selection in favour of intelligence. However, the traits that farmers select for tend to be things like size and tameness. A bigger brain would use up calories that could be better used to generate size and tameness would probably be negatively correlated with intelligence.
Thus if anything the pigs would have lost intelligence since domestication.
As to the being fed by table scraps, I'm not familiar with historical pig farming practises but I don't see farmers generating enough cooked table scraps to form a significant portion of their animal feed.
Why didn't you just learn traditional shorthand instead of all of that rube goldberg mess you did? About as fast as it gets, a "standard" for decades for note taking before "word processing" was even invented.
Because I'm a programmer and LaTeX is a useful skill to have, because my writing sucks and I'm a decent typist, and because my notes were really damn readable.
You'd think that with computers as fast as they are now, they could do real time previews of latex output side by side with the text files that create them... kinda the reverse of reveal codes back in the day on WP?
Back in uni I took notes for all my courses in LaTeX (much easier to read than my illegible writing). I wrote the notes in emacs, converted to dvi with latex, and viewed the dvi with kdvi which updated the display as soon as the new dvi was generated.
With a little practise it was still tricky keeping up with the profs notes on the board, but I had a much easier time of actually reading the notes I took.
There are generals. Presumably, they're generals because they have important shit to do.
If you are flying your general around, do you want him able to work, or do you want him twiddling his thumbs in an airplane seat?
The idea behind the capsules is that you can fly generals around WITHOUT it having to take them 'out of action'. They can be on the plane and doing all the things they could do if they were not on the plane.
Hell, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars making sure the President can be productive on his 747. A few hundred thousand for the next level down in the command chain doesn't seem unreasonable.
I think the objections are coming from the fact that the name is "comfort capsule" and the requirement is to be "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule", this suggests the objective is much more comfort than productivity.
Of course making them comfortable can also them more productive, but there was no evidence of that reasoning in the article (of course the article could be biased).
"Look over HERE at this shiny UFO distraction thing so you won't look over THERE and see Americans agree with Kucinich's stands on all the issues at 60-70% rate.
Are you kids being forced to grow up without health insurance while you are waving that stupid shiny distraction thing?
I originally just meant it as a joke, however, as I've pointed out in further posts, I believe the decision making process of someone who holds beliefs such as that is flawed. It's not the only, or even the most important decision making issue I've seen in politicians, but it's certainly not a positive.
The only thing Kucinich ever said was he's seen something he didn't know what it was. So have you. So have I. That's what "unidentified" means.
Judging by the clip either Kucinich believes his experience was paranormal in some way or he's an amazingly bad communicator.
Matters not. I'm not eglible to vote as I live on another continent but if I lived in USA... I am an atheist but I still could vote for someone who claims to have had a religious experience. I wouldn't believe in it but I still could vote someone as long as it didn't affect his job as a president (such as trying to get creationism back to schools). Someone having had a religious experience or having seen an UFO doesn't matter as much as what they do when they are elected.
I'm in a bit of the best situation and you logically take the best you're offered.
However, I don't believe those beliefs don't matter, I've noticed a huge correlation between wacky beliefs in religion or the paranormal and poor decision making in other areas. The problem is there are very few circumstances where you can hold those beliefs and be intellectually honest, the stronger your belief the more intellectually dishonest you have to be to hold it. Once they're tricking themselves in one area their reasoning in other areas starts getting comprimised.
You've never seen something you couldn't identify? Whatever.
Of course I have.
The difference is I just didn't assume that just because I didn't know what it was that it must be intelligent life from another planet.
I have no idea what Kusinich saw, or thought he saw, but I'm pretty damn sure that he isn't one of countless people who've all seen real UFOs but have all been so spectacularly unlucky as to come away with no evidence.
That being said it's a mostly harmless belief, but it is almost certainly an unsound belief and its very existence suggests his decision making process isn't quite sound.
I used to be willing to believe that religion was also a mostly harmless belief, then I started to see how that belief caused some people to make very unsound decisions. Just look at Bush to see how bad that unsound basis can be in practice.
I don't know enough about Kusinich to know if he's one of "the best of the worst", but I consider the belief in UFOs to indicate a real vulnerability in his decision making process.
I'm curious if you try to leave old-age diseases and disorders for traditional medical research and take on the problems leftover? What areas of aging has traditional medical research been ignoring?
Being someone who'd rather not die anytime soon if given the choice, I'm curious how long you'd estimate until the first breakthrough*?
I'd be curious to see confidence intervals as well.
* For lack of a better metric lets define a breakthrough as the point where, within a 5 year period we have the ability to extend the life expectancy of a healthy person more than 5 years.
Others have listed potential problems, I'm interested in the follow-up question to those: what do you look for to say "this won't work"?
Simply stating "I believe it can" is the realm of religion. What evidence would it take to convince you that it isn't possible after all?
Actually "I believe it can't" would be the realm of religion since religion is the only thing that could make like ultimately non-replicable.
There is a possibility that we won't ever have the necessary intelligence to create the technology to replicate life but I find that unlikely since we have enough genetics already that we should be pretty close to being capable of improving our own brains in a bit of a positive feedback loop.
The only probable scenario I can see stopping humanity from extending our own lives indefinitely is something happening to the human race before it happens (ie downfall of civilization).
For us in particular the big question is if it's feasible within our lifetimes.
It's about threat assessment. China is one of the only powers which, if it wanted to could do some bad things to us. Brazil? France? Nigeria? Not so much. China, on the other hand has a space program, a nuclear program, and a sufficiently large pool of potential military that IF they wanted to go to war with us, it could be pretty nasty.
When planning defense, you have to look at people as potential attackers -- even if they're friends, or just nonaggressive in the past. It's not aggression vs China, but rather a recognition that they are a potential threat. Just like when you look at (and plan) modes of risk management and escape when on a plane, so too do you look at ways of mitigating the harm that could come in case of a war.
Then again trying to complete a military encirclement of China, and constantly talking about them in terms of military conflict, isn't necessarily the best way to keep a non-aggressive rival non-aggressive.
I skipped a step in my own logic. Between the last two paragraphs I meant to say, denying protections to enemies who will not wear uniforms is a very strong measure a nation can take to keep its opponents civilized.
In fact, the public's failure to recognize this fact ITSELF weaken's the Convention - that is a horrible shame. The world needs to be more civilized, even in war - not less.
As it turns out I think that step is still missing.
I don't care how many protections you grant to properly uniformed prisoners, you're not going to convince members of the Mahdi army to openly walk around in official uniforms and engage American forces in conventional combat, even the Iraqi army wasn't that dumb this time around.
An insurgency fighting against a vastly superior force is always going to choose anonymity over wearing a target.
To follow your argument the Geneva Convention is no longer relevant to the first world at all since we only ever fight against vastly inferior forces and they're too smart to wear uniforms.
To beat an insurgency you need to destroy their greatest weapon their anonymity, and to destroy that you need to destroy their support in the community, and the worst way to do that is to treat prisoners poorly.
Look at Iraq, how things really hit the fan after Abu Ghraib and the population became outraged. If a priority had been placed from the beginning on treating prisoners well I'm convinced the ensuing years would have been a lot more peaceful.
When the student defended their authorship then teacher than preceded to inquire about the passage of the report where the student claimed 20 years of research in the field.
You should proceed to this question, not precede your accusation with it.
One of several side-effects of being late for work and rushing to post.
I had a high school student turn in a long report that obviously wasn't her work. I googled it and she had cut and pasted about 10 pages of material right from Wikipedia into her report. I brought her in, told her that some of the writing didn't look like she wrote it:
Me: "Did you write this whole thing yourself?" Her: "Yes, of course!" Me: "Are you sure" Her: "Yes, 100%" Me: "Well, a huge chunk of your report is straight from Wikipedia." Her: "Um, yeah, well, um I wrote that Wikipedia page." Slightly OT but that reminds me of a classmate back in high school.
We had to write a report on something, I don't recall what, but the teacher felt the submitted work was somewhat above the writing level of that particular student and questioned its originality. When the student defended their authorship then teacher than preceded to inquire about the passage of the report where the student claimed 20 years of research in the field.
I wouldn't be surprised if it screwed up the laws of physics and some other fundamental constants, but I'm not a physicist and thus can't attest to it. You're fighting a lost cause. Slashdotters have been pointing this out to him for years, but he just ignores it and repeats the same claims a few stories later. That doesn't keep him from hanging around dead threads for days and weeks coming up with new bogus arguments, though.
But, for your own edification, try here. Indeed, when I started I figured he was just anti-AGW, which can sometimes be reasoned with.
When I found out the full deal I should have realized that reason wouldn't work.
His rationalizations were still kinda funny to read though!
....Millenia? We didn't really have the modern scientific method....
The Bible is not a scientific textbook, but a compilation of things that the God of creation desires for us humans to know by faith. We live most of our lives by faith not sure knowledge. You don't know for sure that the wheels will stay on your car, but you have a reasonable faith that they will not fall off.
Unlike all other constellations visible to the naked eye, the stars of Orion are gravitationally linked. God asks Job if he is able to unlink them. God also mentions the Pleiades and asks Job if he is able to link them.
The phrase "stretched out the heavens" occurs a number of times in scripture in connection with a creative activity of God. Modern science tells us that indeed, the universe was stretched out from a single, a very compact point.
Long before scientists discovered the water cycle, King Solomon wrote about it in the Ecclesiastes 1:7. Is it possible that God might have communicated this truth to one of the wisest human beings ever?
(...These came from scientists, not priests...)
Most early scientists were Christians that believed that the universe and the earth were created by a rational intelligent God, that could therefore be explored and understood by men. Just as human laws come from human minds, so too the natural laws, the laws of physics also, come from a mind, the mind of God. We can walk on the moon because of the consistent predictable laws which God instituted for the entire universe.
Indeed most early scientists were from the West and thus Christians, however in every time period there is a strong inverse correlation between religious belief and scientific ability.
(..There's also the fact we can see evolution occurring...)
All such so-called evolution examples I have ever come across are confined to the adaptability already inherent in all living organisms. Perhaps you can give me an example of where this is NOT the case.
Well from the link with "5.1.1.1 Evening Primrose (Oenothera gigas)" a mutation caused the number of chromosomes for a plant to change from 14 to 28, the offspring with the different number of chromosomes couldn't breed with the original and thus were a new species.
And of course there's also fossils.
(..Having radioactive decay rates change for no reason..)
Perhaps you can give me a reason why radioactive decay rates could not change over time. We have only known about radioactivity for a relative microsecond of time. In all of nature and there are few things as constant as change.
I wouldn't be surprised if it screwed up the laws of physics and some other fundamental constants, but I'm not a physicist and thus can't attest to it.
However considering it's been perfectly constant for all the time we've been able to measure radioactive decay, and most of the other constants of the universe have kept constant as well, I'd say the onus would be strongly on you to show why they would change.
Btw, you earlier claimed that the bible supported the big bang theory, if your belief includes the big bang do you think the universe is billions of years old but the earth is only 6000? If you accept the big bang theory I don't see the trouble with carbon dating.
(..Why do you follow your particular god?...)
Because my God, Jesus Christ, is alive, where as all others are very much dead. My God has revealed secrets of the workings of our universe as part of the revelation of his will to mankind. The scientific truth of the Bible is not exhaustive, but very much in agreement with modern knowledge. My God is the only one that is not part of this creation but is outside of it, transcendent beyond time and space. He was willing to become a man and thereby enter his creation. He alone effectively deals with the root cause of all of men's problems, namely that which He calls sin. He calls
Slashdot Mirror
I think the "free will is oncompatible with determinism" argument misunderstands how time works. Everything is fully determined in history. From a viewpoint outside of our time, past and future are equally "visible". Time as a flow of events is just an illusion of human perception, so arguing from that perspective is like arguing about what flavor of ice cream tastes best.
I'm not sure I buy into that. I recall once seeing some argument that some anti-particles experience time backwards, though I'm sure it's not as simple as that. As to time travel I don't know enough of the theory behind that.
Either way even if we can go back and forth without changing the present that doesn't necessarily make the universe deterministic (though the universe would need some cool acrobatics to allow that), just because I can play a tape and watch who wins a game doesn't mean the game was fixed.
"Arguing about the definition of a word" and "arguing about the idea behind the word" - the same? Different? Welcome to theory of language! :)
Re point 1 - I've always seen this as "eaing the menu" (as do many physicists). It's a useful and predictive model, but there's no reason to think the universe knows what it means for "someone" to "observe" an event. It's goofey, and not the good kind.
You mean "eating the menu" ? (I always double check spelling when using quotes :) )
AFAIK an "observer" is anything that interacts with a potential configuration of the particle, though I don't know quantum as well as I should.
I've yet to see a good description of point 2 that was anything beyond "put a black and a white marble in a bag; pick one; examine it later; it's white, so you instantly know the other is black". Not very interesting. Until someone has a practical method to force the decision post-hoc, it's just BS (the model says this should be possible, but most scientific models are full of holes that you work around when using them).
You mean you don't like the thought experiment from a practical perspective, or a theoretical one?
Or in other words, synchronicity (common prior cause) doesn't violate causality, and so it isn't profound. It's easy to turn on a light buld here and on th moon and the same instant without any information traveling faster than light, after all.
I think that's the idea. Take two bags, put in a white marble, than a black marble on top, than separate them.
We don't know if the bag is large enough that the marbles can change order inside.
Later, when they're separated pull the top a marble from each. If you get the same colour marble from each than the bags are deterministic, if they don't match than the bag allowed them to shuffle.
It's a little hard to grasp (unfortunately a somewhat fundamental quality of quantum) but this explains how forcing can work.
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/04/configurations.html
You'll forgive me if I refuse to get all in a knot over this whole "global warming" paranoia. You young 'uns may not remember the "global cooling" predictions/concerns of the mid 70's. Heck, they were even suggesting that we blow soot all over the arctic region snow pack to absorb light/heat.
The scientists shrug and tell us that those models were too simplistic and wrong. Now, of course, the new models are spot on and we're all going to fry.
Not buying into the hysteria this time either.
So you equate a small handful of climatologists, thinking for a very short period, that we may experience global cooling, with virtually every climatologist, thinking for decades, that we will experience global warming.
Some people really want to believe that consciousness is supernatural, the result of a soul and not mere physics. Using the argument above you, you defin consciousness/soul/etc as the source of free will, and say "see, it's outside the deterministic universe". As I say, it's a bit of a jump, but it makes people happy.
I think you need to include the consciousness as the source of free will step in that argument. To leave it out assumes it's accepted that there's an essential irreducible part of our consciousness. Essentially the old "So what's the earth resting on? A giant turtle! And what's under the turtle? It's turtles all the way down!"
I personally find that argument, simply pushing the entire consciousness into an abstract undefinable "soul" to be a weak rationalization, particularly considering how much ones consciousness can change depending on circumstances.
As to the free will/consciousness link I personally think that consciousness is a completely physical process, one that would work in a completely deterministic system. I think "free will" requires consciousness (ie, a non-sentient random number generator doesn't have free will) but consciousness has no free will requirement.
I'm personally not that concerned about whether we have free will or not, even if our decisions are part of a completely deterministic system it's also a chaotic system. And I don't really see how the existence or lack of free will jeopardizes my consciousness. Either it's deterministic at a level too chaotic to matter, or it's random at a level over which I have no control. The only way it matters is if you have some big random irreducible soul which you label supernatural and refuse to examine it anymore, of course at that point you're no longer looking for answers but trying to avoid them!
Most philosophical disciplines can be reduced to an argument over the definition of a word: :)
* Moral theory - "good"
* Espistimology - "know"
* Theory of identity - "self" or "same"
* Theory of language - well, all words
etc.
In moral philosophy, you generally dead-end into the "is-ought gap": there's no priciple of logic that lets you reason from an "is" to an "ought", so you need moral axioms as your first principles, and there's no way to argue about whether an axiom is true.
I think they're arguing more about the idea behind the word, if they're arguing over the definition of the word itself then they should just get a new set of dictionaries.
If they need to use different definitions to get differing moral axioms then I think they're arguing more for the purpose of arguing than trying to find truth.
In TFA a very similar question is being asked - where does free will come from? If particles don't have it, how does it come from the interaction of particles - there's no princlple of physics that would let you jump that gap. I think it's a profound question.
But then most physicists don't seem to understand that Schrodenger's cat was a reduction-ad-absurdum (even though that was Schrodenger's intent), and they probably won't understand that this is as well.
I got a somewhat different slant from the article, this is basically what I think it said.
1. When you poke a certain subatomic particle in a specific, but randomized way, it always has a configuration specific to the way you looked at that particle. Kind of like rolling a dice and when you do look at it whatever side you choose to look at will turn out to be 6.
So the question is was that side 6 all along and merely force you to choose it, or did it become 6 after you chose to look at it?
2. Now take two dice and synchronize them completely, now spread them far apart so nothing can communicate with both of them without breaking causality. Now roll them in a completely identical way so we don't break the metaphor, and choose a side to look at.
Now each person will find the dice lan
Most of philosophy is arguments about the definitions of a few simple words. "Free will" is one of those definitions that it's interesting to argue about.
I admittedly don't know much formal philosophy but I've heard that arguing over definitions is actually a mistake people sometimes make when they're trying to talk philosophy.
If you're arguing about definitions you're not really discussing ideas and you need to step back and figure out what you're actually discussing.
I'm *beginning* the discussion by pointing out that a definition of "free will" that excludes determinism is an assumption about a fundamental concept. If that definition is true, one should be able to provide an argument that it is true, no?
A definition is what it is, an arbitrary labelling, if we don't like it we change it. I perhaps may argue that my definition of free will is the most common word/concept association but I don't have to justify the labelling anymore than I have to justify that the word "orange" should refer to a particular fruit.
Plenty of people would argue that in a deterministic universe all consciousness is an illusion!
And I'm still completely baffled as to how they would do this, perhaps they're using some weird definition for consciousness?
The argument goes as follows:
1) We live in a deterministic universe.
2) We have free will.
3) Free will is not compatible with determinism.
4) Therefore, The source of our free will must lie outside this universe.
5) Therefore, my religion is correct!
There's a bit of a jump between 4 and 5, but that hasn't dissuaded hundreds of philosphers and theologicians from making this claim for thousands of years (I'm pretty sure this argument predates Christianity, but I don't have a reference handy). This is a very emotionally compelling argument, as people like to believe that they are special and not just meat.
I dispute 3. It's popular these days to dispute 1. Few people feel comfortable disputing 2.
Are you sure this was supposed to be an argument for consciousness being an illusion since I see nothing about consciousness in that argument.
Regardless, as I mentioned previously you can make that argument if you place the source of free will outside the universe (I'll let you place supernatural deities outside the "universe"). But all you're really doing is pushing part of yourself outside of the deterministic universe. If you use what I believe to be the common definition of free will than you need something non-deterministic. A fully deterministic system cannot have free will.
I believe that we have free will, *and* that the universe is completely deterministic. The two concepts are orthgonal.
I have no problem with that argument.
Assuming of course that some part of you is separate from the universe.
If however, all of you is part of the universe, than for you to have free will means your actions are not completely deterministic, which of course means that the universe is not completely deterministic.
Similarly, if I consciously decide my next actions, then I necessarily have free will, regardless of whether the universe is pre-determined.
So you're resolving the discussion by using a different definition of free will? Even if your actions are completely deterministic if you choose to take them(1) than you have free will?
If you define free will as choice than you've done nothing but make the whole free will debate kind of pointless since you're now asking if a tautology is true.
And of course a new debate about determinism would start up since the original question was never actually resolved.
You might argue that in a deterministic universe all consciousness is an illusion - but that's an unreawrding path to travel.
I wouldn't argue that and I don't see how anyone could.
We've quite obviously conscious, true we don't have the ability to strictly quantify what consciousness is, nor where to draw the live between conscious and unconscious, but as for my self, I can assure you I'm quite conscious.
Besides, I don't see a relationship between that and determinism unless you want some supernatural non-deterministic "soul" floating about.
1. Not a contradiction, choice, like gravity, is a mechanism for initiating an action and is fine being deterministic.
Even if there food was cooked and the farmer didn't selectively breed where was the selective pressure for intelligence?
It still takes extra work to make a bigger brain and in the simplified farm environment I don't see that being an advantage.
how many generations have pigs been slopped from table scraps?
do domesticated pigs have higher IQs than wild boars?
Probably not, assuming the higher IQs had a genetic basis (and not just cooked food allow bigger brains regardless of genetics) then humans developed bigger brains because the cost of a bigger brain, the extra calories required, no longer outweighed the added benefits of intelligence, thus the big brained individuals were more likely to raise successful offspring.
For the equivalent to happen with domesticated pigs there would have had to be a similar selection in favour of intelligence. However, the traits that farmers select for tend to be things like size and tameness. A bigger brain would use up calories that could be better used to generate size and tameness would probably be negatively correlated with intelligence.
Thus if anything the pigs would have lost intelligence since domestication.
As to the being fed by table scraps, I'm not familiar with historical pig farming practises but I don't see farmers generating enough cooked table scraps to form a significant portion of their animal feed.
Why didn't you just learn traditional shorthand instead of all of that rube goldberg mess you did? About as fast as it gets, a "standard" for decades for note taking before "word processing" was even invented.
Because I'm a programmer and LaTeX is a useful skill to have, because my writing sucks and I'm a decent typist, and because my notes were really damn readable.
You'd think that with computers as fast as they are now, they could do real time previews of latex output side by side with the text files that create them... kinda the reverse of reveal codes back in the day on WP?
Back in uni I took notes for all my courses in LaTeX (much easier to read than my illegible writing). I wrote the notes in emacs, converted to dvi with latex, and viewed the dvi with kdvi which updated the display as soon as the new dvi was generated.
With a little practise it was still tricky keeping up with the profs notes on the board, but I had a much easier time of actually reading the notes I took.
It's about productive.
There are generals. Presumably, they're generals because they have important shit to do.
If you are flying your general around, do you want him able to work, or do you want him twiddling his thumbs in an airplane seat?
The idea behind the capsules is that you can fly generals around WITHOUT it having to take them 'out of action'. They can be on the plane and doing all the things they could do if they were not on the plane.
Hell, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars making sure the President can be productive on his 747. A few hundred thousand for the next level down in the command chain doesn't seem unreasonable.
I think the objections are coming from the fact that the name is "comfort capsule" and the requirement is to be "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule", this suggests the objective is much more comfort than productivity.
Of course making them comfortable can also them more productive, but there was no evidence of that reasoning in the article (of course the article could be biased).
That's nothing.
A few years back my friend's roommate walked into their apartment while it was being robbed.
She recognized the attacker, it was a friend of someone from the building.
My friend gave the name and address of the thief to the police.
Think anything ever happened? (after months of pestering)
Nope.
"Look over HERE at this shiny UFO distraction thing so you won't look over THERE and see Americans agree with Kucinich's stands on all the issues at 60-70% rate.
Are you kids being forced to grow up without health insurance while you are waving that stupid shiny distraction thing?
I originally just meant it as a joke, however, as I've pointed out in further posts, I believe the decision making process of someone who holds beliefs such as that is flawed. It's not the only, or even the most important decision making issue I've seen in politicians, but it's certainly not a positive.
The only thing Kucinich ever said was he's seen something he didn't know what it was. So have you. So have I. That's what "unidentified" means.
Judging by the clip either Kucinich believes his experience was paranormal in some way or he's an amazingly bad communicator.
I'm in a bit of the best situation and you logically take the best you're offered.
Huh, I wrote this and I have no idea what I typed.
Guess I didn't proofread properly.
So you've both seen UFOs?
Matters not. I'm not eglible to vote as I live on another continent but if I lived in USA... I am an atheist but I still could vote for someone who claims to have had a religious experience. I wouldn't believe in it but I still could vote someone as long as it didn't affect his job as a president (such as trying to get creationism back to schools). Someone having had a religious experience or having seen an UFO doesn't matter as much as what they do when they are elected.
I'm in a bit of the best situation and you logically take the best you're offered.
However, I don't believe those beliefs don't matter, I've noticed a huge correlation between wacky beliefs in religion or the paranormal and poor decision making in other areas. The problem is there are very few circumstances where you can hold those beliefs and be intellectually honest, the stronger your belief the more intellectually dishonest you have to be to hold it. Once they're tricking themselves in one area their reasoning in other areas starts getting comprimised.
You've never seen something you couldn't identify? Whatever.
Of course I have.
The difference is I just didn't assume that just because I didn't know what it was that it must be intelligent life from another planet.
I have no idea what Kusinich saw, or thought he saw, but I'm pretty damn sure that he isn't one of countless people who've all seen real UFOs but have all been so spectacularly unlucky as to come away with no evidence.
That being said it's a mostly harmless belief, but it is almost certainly an unsound belief and its very existence suggests his decision making process isn't quite sound.
I used to be willing to believe that religion was also a mostly harmless belief, then I started to see how that belief caused some people to make very unsound decisions. Just look at Bush to see how bad that unsound basis can be in practice.
I don't know enough about Kusinich to know if he's one of "the best of the worst", but I consider the belief in UFOs to indicate a real vulnerability in his decision making process.
So you've both seen UFOs?
I'm curious if you try to leave old-age diseases and disorders for traditional medical research and take on the problems leftover? What areas of aging has traditional medical research been ignoring?
Being someone who'd rather not die anytime soon if given the choice, I'm curious how long you'd estimate until the first breakthrough*?
I'd be curious to see confidence intervals as well.
* For lack of a better metric lets define a breakthrough as the point where, within a 5 year period we have the ability to extend the life expectancy of a healthy person more than 5 years.
Others have listed potential problems, I'm interested in the follow-up question to those: what do you look for to say "this won't work"?
Simply stating "I believe it can" is the realm of religion. What evidence would it take to convince you that it isn't possible after all?
Actually "I believe it can't" would be the realm of religion since religion is the only thing that could make like ultimately non-replicable.
There is a possibility that we won't ever have the necessary intelligence to create the technology to replicate life but I find that unlikely since we have enough genetics already that we should be pretty close to being capable of improving our own brains in a bit of a positive feedback loop.
The only probable scenario I can see stopping humanity from extending our own lives indefinitely is something happening to the human race before it happens (ie downfall of civilization).
For us in particular the big question is if it's feasible within our lifetimes.
It's about threat assessment. China is one of the only powers which, if it wanted to could do some bad things to us. Brazil? France? Nigeria? Not so much. China, on the other hand has a space program, a nuclear program, and a sufficiently large pool of potential military that IF they wanted to go to war with us, it could be pretty nasty.
When planning defense, you have to look at people as potential attackers -- even if they're friends, or just nonaggressive in the past. It's not aggression vs China, but rather a recognition that they are a potential threat. Just like when you look at (and plan) modes of risk management and escape when on a plane, so too do you look at ways of mitigating the harm that could come in case of a war.
Then again trying to complete a military encirclement of China, and constantly talking about them in terms of military conflict, isn't necessarily the best way to keep a non-aggressive rival non-aggressive.
I skipped a step in my own logic. Between the last two paragraphs I meant to say, denying protections to enemies who will not wear uniforms is a very strong measure a nation can take to keep its opponents civilized.
In fact, the public's failure to recognize this fact ITSELF weaken's the Convention - that is a horrible shame. The world needs to be more civilized, even in war - not less.
As it turns out I think that step is still missing.
I don't care how many protections you grant to properly uniformed prisoners, you're not going to convince members of the Mahdi army to openly walk around in official uniforms and engage American forces in conventional combat, even the Iraqi army wasn't that dumb this time around.
An insurgency fighting against a vastly superior force is always going to choose anonymity over wearing a target.
To follow your argument the Geneva Convention is no longer relevant to the first world at all since we only ever fight against vastly inferior forces and they're too smart to wear uniforms.
To beat an insurgency you need to destroy their greatest weapon their anonymity, and to destroy that you need to destroy their support in the community, and the worst way to do that is to treat prisoners poorly.
Look at Iraq, how things really hit the fan after Abu Ghraib and the population became outraged. If a priority had been placed from the beginning on treating prisoners well I'm convinced the ensuing years would have been a lot more peaceful.
When the student defended their authorship then teacher than preceded to inquire about the passage of the report where the student claimed 20 years of research in the field.
You should proceed to this question, not precede your accusation with it.
One of several side-effects of being late for work and rushing to post.Me: "Did you write this whole thing yourself?"
Her: "Yes, of course!"
Me: "Are you sure"
Her: "Yes, 100%"
Me: "Well, a huge chunk of your report is straight from Wikipedia."
Her: "Um, yeah, well, um I wrote that Wikipedia page." Slightly OT but that reminds me of a classmate back in high school.
We had to write a report on something, I don't recall what, but the teacher felt the submitted work was somewhat above the writing level of that particular student and questioned its originality. When the student defended their authorship then teacher than preceded to inquire about the passage of the report where the student claimed 20 years of research in the field.
But, for your own edification, try here. Indeed, when I started I figured he was just anti-AGW, which can sometimes be reasoned with.
When I found out the full deal I should have realized that reason wouldn't work.
His rationalizations were still kinda funny to read though!
....Millenia? We didn't really have the modern scientific method....
The Bible is not a scientific textbook, but a compilation of things that the God of creation desires for us humans to know by faith. We live most of our lives by faith not sure knowledge. You don't know for sure that the wheels will stay on your car, but you have a reasonable faith that they will not fall off.
Unlike all other constellations visible to the naked eye, the stars of Orion are gravitationally linked. God asks Job if he is able to unlink them. God also mentions the Pleiades and asks Job if he is able to link them.
The phrase "stretched out the heavens" occurs a number of times in scripture in connection with a creative activity of God. Modern science tells us that indeed, the universe was stretched out from a single, a very compact point.
Long before scientists discovered the water cycle, King Solomon wrote about it in the Ecclesiastes 1:7. Is it possible that God might have communicated this truth to one of the wisest human beings ever?
(...These came from scientists, not priests...)
Most early scientists were Christians that believed that the universe and the earth were created by a rational intelligent God, that could therefore be explored and understood by men. Just as human laws come from human minds, so too the natural laws, the laws of physics also, come from a mind, the mind of God. We can walk on the moon because of the consistent predictable laws which God instituted for the entire universe.
Indeed most early scientists were from the West and thus Christians, however in every time period there is a strong inverse correlation between religious belief and scientific ability.
(..There's also the fact we can see evolution occurring ...)
All such so-called evolution examples I have ever come across are confined to the adaptability already inherent in all living organisms. Perhaps you can give me an example of where this is NOT the case.
Well from the link with "5.1.1.1 Evening Primrose (Oenothera gigas)" a mutation caused the number of chromosomes for a plant to change from 14 to 28, the offspring with the different number of chromosomes couldn't breed with the original and thus were a new species.
And of course there's also fossils.
(..Having radioactive decay rates change for no reason..)
Perhaps you can give me a reason why radioactive decay rates could not change over time. We have only known about radioactivity for a relative microsecond of time. In all of nature and there are few things as constant as change.
I wouldn't be surprised if it screwed up the laws of physics and some other fundamental constants, but I'm not a physicist and thus can't attest to it.
However considering it's been perfectly constant for all the time we've been able to measure radioactive decay, and most of the other constants of the universe have kept constant as well, I'd say the onus would be strongly on you to show why they would change.
Btw, you earlier claimed that the bible supported the big bang theory, if your belief includes the big bang do you think the universe is billions of years old but the earth is only 6000? If you accept the big bang theory I don't see the trouble with carbon dating.
(..Why do you follow your particular god?...)
Because my God, Jesus Christ, is alive, where as all others are very much dead. My God has revealed secrets of the workings of our universe as part of the revelation of his will to mankind. The scientific truth of the Bible is not exhaustive, but very much in agreement with modern knowledge. My God is the only one that is not part of this creation but is outside of it, transcendent beyond time and space. He was willing to become a man and thereby enter his creation. He alone effectively deals with the root cause of all of men's problems, namely that which He calls sin. He calls